“It’s awful bad,” Larkin said when he saw the disaster of Cate’s leg.

Honesty. Good manners and honesty. I liked those qualities in a person.

“Oh, now, you know better than that. There are things still to be tried,” Cate said. She turned to me. “I’ve been teaching Larkin about healing. This and that. Now and then. Else it will all be wasted when I go.”

She closed her eyes, clearly worn out by all the talk.

“First we clean it,” Larkin said, swallowing. “Then the honey. Then we take care of the fever.”

I was glad to have an order to things.

It had been just hours since I’d found this place, this woman, her wound. If I’d had an order to this day, it might have sent me back to bed instead of out into such a surprising world:

Eat breakfast.

Feed Maisie.

Find bee-gift on trail.

See wild dog on path to river.

Go fishing with Samuel.

Build fire.

Get bee stung.

Learn that Quiet isn’t mine anymore.

Put snake in Daddy’s bed.

Climb mountain.

Find dog again.

Find the hag.

Make fire.

Cook rabbit and trout.

Feed Cate and Captan.

Go back down-mountain.

Look for Samuel and Quiet.

Feed potion to Daddy.

Get honey.

Get stung some more.

Climb mountain again.

Meet Larkin.

And now there was more to come, all in this one same day:

Clean terrible wound.

Pack with honey.

And surely other things I could not predict.

But it all felt oddly perfect, so we lit the lamps as the day went dark and washed our hands with tallow soap and spring water. Then we pulled Cate’s blanket down to her feet and stood staring at her poor leg.

My mother had taught me not to say the Lord’s name in vain, so I didn’t. But I did send a prayer skyward before I took up my spoon, and Larkin his, and we began to carefully scrape the maggots off Cate’s ruined skin, tapping our spoons against the lip of the jar so the maggots would fall, like dollops of oatmeal, to collect in the bottom.

We breathed through our mouths as we worked, the smell of her leg sweet and sour both.

Even Captan retreated to a far corner, though he watched us steadily from there, his eyes like small moons in the lamplight.

When we had removed the last of the maggots, I used my spoon to scrape away the pus welling up out of the holes that the fisher cat had made.

I decided that I would never again be able to eat custard without thinking of that pus.

“What does it look like?” Cate asked through her clenched teeth.

Larkin held the lantern close and peered at it.

“I need to cut you to get the honey in there.”