Taru scrambled up into a defensive crouch, her arms spread wide as if she could block Bhaltair and the kludde from the man’s view. She glared up at him, trying not to think about all the nothing she could do if he stepped to her.

But he didn’t step to her. He stepped back, lifting his leather-gloved hands in front of himself and shaking his head. He glanced past her, assessing the kludde and Bhaltair.

“I’m an apothecary,” he said, returning his attention to her. “My name is Ruskin. I live in a nearby village. I came into Denlinne Forest for a particular type of tree whose leaves are used for treating injuries from impact and overexertion, and whose berries help improve resistance to illness.”

Taru caught his attention darting back to Bhaltair and the kludde.

The man continued as if she had asked him to. “Some of the people in my village plant these trees by their homes because they believe it wards off evil, though the ones in the village don’t grow nearly as tall as the ones here, and the villagers don’t like me foraging in their front gardens, so… here I am. Some of them also use the branches for weaving, in a magical sense. But that’s not what I do. I just make medicine.”

Taru glared.

The man rushed to say, “What I mean is, I mean no harm. I think your dog is shadow-touched. So is the elf.”

“Alfar,” Taru snarled.

“As you say, as you say. I can make medicine for them. Do… do they have names? Do you?”

Taru’s fists clenched with her uncertainty. The man—in his mauve cloak, taupe boots, and weathered tricorn hat—certainly didn’t look like he meant harm, but some of the cleanest people in Shude were the worst kind. What’s more, this man came from a nearby village and, in this forest, that made her extremely uncomfortable. 

Besides, he’d just insulted Bhaltair.

“Look, please, your friends need help. I can help. Please let me. I’ll just do what needs doing and be on my way, I assure you.”

“I don’t know you won’t poison ‘em,” she growled, and the man frowned. 

Then he frowned deeper. “Why would I do that?”

Taru shrugged. “Why’s anyone do anything?” she grumbled, though his reaction sat well with her, like he genuinely didn’t know why anyone would. She straightened and jerked her chin up. Looking down her nose at him, she said, “How’d you know your human recipes’ll work on alfar?”

The man shook his head. “All my recipes are from elves—ah! Alfar. We’re a lot more similar than you realise.”

Taru pursed her lips. He was saying all the right things and he looked like he meant them.

“Here, look.” He opened his cloak. 

Taru flinched first but then, when nothing hit her, peered at his chest in guarded curiosity. 

Cross-crossing his pale leather waistcoat were straps of various materials. Wrapped several times about his waist and hips was a length of thick stone-coloured fabric embroidered with purple flowers, over which were a number of belts. From all his straps and belts hung full and empty bottles, latched books, sheathed tools, cinched pouches, and a coil of rope. 

Taru spied a glint of steel on either thigh and stiffened. Neither were the thing she had feared most: an axe. Regardless, the man reached for neither the daggers to the left nor the shears to the right. Taru relaxed as, with very deliberate movements that kept his hands in sight at all times, the man unbuckled a leather strap on his chest. 

Ruskin held up a wooden chest clasped shut by an intricately decorated keyhole-less lock. He said a word that poured through the air like smoke before rushing into the contraption. Then, it clicked open. Removing his hands from its sides, Ruskin muttered another word and left the unlocked box hanging in the air between them. “I’m going to open it,” he said, and Taru tensed, uncertain what to expect.

What was revealed inside was none of the thousand terrible things that had flown through her mind. Instead, with a chorus of rattles and clinks, rows upon rows of clasped jars and corked bottles unfurled like a blooming rose from the chest’s rectangular base. Liquids, powders, rocks, crystals, leaves, twigs, and berries filled the glass containers. Some bottles even contained swirling smoke. Others contained twisting, jerking things Taru didn’t have names for. In others were deep red items, solid and liquid, that she daren’t name. Suffice to say, the materials Ruskin worked with were not only floral or mineral in nature. At the centre of the angled rose stood a mortar and pestle beside a stove and cauldron. None of them were any bigger that Taru’s clenched fist. 

She had spent long enough in the infirmary at SET to know that this was undoubtedly an apothecary’s kit.

“Let me help them,” Ruskin said, and Taru looked up at him.

After a moment, she dropped her arms and nodded, looking back at the vast shadowy beast she had been trying to sing back to health. The rise and fall of its chest was still too quick, and parts of its fur still writhed with shadowy worms.

Ruskin’s cold eyes took her in before darting past to Bhaltair and the kludde. 

“How long since they were possessed?” he asked, his kit bobbing through the air as it obediently followed him to the kludde’s face.

She shook her head. “Less than an hour for Bhaltair,” she said, scurrying to them to check their pulse. “Longer for the… dog.”

Ruskin looked across at her, his attention unerring. “Does the dog not have a name?”

Taru blinked. “Kludde,” she said.

“Kludde,” he repeated, watching her.

She nodded, holding his eye though her nerve was faltering.

He returned his attention to Kludde’s face and she returned her attention to Bhaltair’s pulse, letting out a shaky huff of anxiety. 

“A simple name,” the man said.

“He’s a simple dog.”

“He is a she.”

“He, she, they, it?” she chuckled nervously. “What does it really matter to a dog?” Bhaltair’s pulse was fine. A little quick, but steady. She sat with them while the man examined Kludde.

He lifted her upper lip to inspect those hand-length jet-black teeth. Then he pulled up an eyelid to reveal an expanse of white, not a dot of red in sight. “The gums are pink and the sclera are white,” he said. “There’s some discolouration around the capillaries, a slight blackening, but the veins and arteries seem unaffected. I’d say your song did what was necessary to save further infection. She’s stable for now. I can mix up a tincture that you’ll need to apply to the gums every night for three days. Otherwise, I can press a powder tablet to be held under her tongue.”

“How many times would she need that?”

“Just once.”

“Probly that, then.”

Ruskin looked uncomfortable. “If you’re sure.” He hesitated. “But it is very strong and likely to have some unwanted side effects.”

Taru gnawed on her bottom lip. “That’s fine,” she muttered.

Ruskin shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll make it up after I’ve seen to the alfar.”

“Bhaltair,” Taru corrected.

“As you say.”

As Ruskin shuffled closer, Taru shifted away. After a moment of saying words over his hands which made the air shimmer around them, Ruskin lay them on Bhaltair and began to check them over as they had done with Kludde. Just as he was about to sit back, however, he paused, staring at Bhaltair’s neck.

“What’s this?” he muttered. With forefinger and thumb, he peeled Bhaltair’s high collar away from their jaw to reveal sprawling veins of glassy white clutching at their throat. “Is this…?” Ruskin tentatively touched one of them, sending ripples of purple along it. He snatched back his hand as the vein regained its shimmering sheen and hastily buttoned up Bhaltair’s collar, muttering, “Nothing I can do, there,” before turning his attention to his kit.

“What do you mean, nothing you can do?” Taru demanded. “Nothing you can do for what?”

Ruskin tilted his head in grudging acceptance. “Your friend was pretty far gone but that’s a better job patching up the damage than I could do. Your song must’ve been stronger than I thought. Bhaltair, was it? Yes, Bhaltair will do just fine after a long rest.”

With that, Ruskin began popping the corks from jars, dashing powders and sprinkling chopped herbs into his mortar. With each new addition came a muttered incantation. Then, he unlatched a notebook from one of the many straps, wrote something in it, tore out the page, ripped it into tiny pieces and tossed them into the mortar. The contents popped with a puff of periwinkle dust.

“My name’s Taru,” she said. “I’m an engineering manager in training from Shude.”

“Nice to meet you, Taru. Please hold on. I’m coming to a very complex part of the procedure.” Then, without invitation, he continued, “I need to combine the camoyard with the vistsilk without triggering a reaction from the engorged cat’s tail. If I do it wrong, I’ll only be able to tell because the mixture’ll begin to whistle. It’s a very quiet, high whistle at first, and I’ll be able to fix it if I hear that, but if I don’t, then the whole thing will be neutralised and good for nothing. So we’ll have to be very quiet for some time until the powder begins to turn deep blue, like the sky between night and day. That’s when we’ll know that I’ve been successful.”

Taru stared at their profile in open-mouthed noncomprehension. Then, she snapped her jaw shut.

“Quiet, please.”

She pursed her lips and waited, stroking the back of Bhaltair’s hand absentmindedly, gaining some comfort from the slight warmth of their skin, despite its now obvious scarring.

“And there we are. All done.”

Ruskin glanced at her hand on Bhaltair’s. Though he looked away quickly, Taru felt uncomfortable, as if the simple action of offering comfort to a friend was somehow unpleasant for the man to witness. She pulled her hand back and tucked it into the sleeve of her shirt.

“So…” she began, pulling her knees up to her chin, “you… heard my singing?”

“I did. Your voice is… interesting.”

Taru smirked to herself. “That’s probly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about that,” she muttered.

Ruskin threw her a small smile and returned to his work, spooning deep blue powder into a tool like a flat nutcracker he had unhooked from one of his waist belts. “I did wonder if I was playing witness to the death of some kind of feline.”

“Right,” Taru barked, blushing furiously, “that’s us done with that topic, thank you very much.”

Ruskin smiled in a way that scrunched up his eyes to nothing and broadened his face with glee. He was suddenly decades younger. 

He slipped the pressed powder tablet under Kludde’s tongue and held her mouth closed with both hands. From between the lips came a quiet fizzing noise, but Kludde did not move. After a short while, however, her racing breathing calmed to a slower rhythm.

“There we are,” Ruskin said, pulling back from Kludde and gently petting her cheek. “That should help her out. I could really do with finding those trees, though. I used up the last of the leaves I had in her tablet.”

Kludde’s breathing changed, then, and she shifted onto her stomach. Taru grabbed Bhaltair and scrambled to drag them away.

Ruskin asked Taru, “What’re you—?” with a frown just as Kludde’s rear end lifted into the air, her front legs reaching out in front of her in a vast stretch. 

Kludde shifted her weight forward and kicked out her back legs before shaking her entire body. The force of it rustled the trees. Then, her wine-red eyes dropped to the floor. There, they found Ruskin.

“Th-there, girl,” he tried to soothe her, but it didn’t matter.

Kludde yelped in surprise and bolted away into the darkness, leaving nothing but kicked up dust and shadows in her wake.

Ruskin turned an accusatory look on where Taru was clinging to Bhaltair’s sleeping form. 

She offered him a sheepish smile but, cheeks flushed and voice riddled with indignation, he yelped, 

“I knew that wasn’t your dog!”