We soar through a storm, my black-winged tormentor and I. I cannot control his flight, I can only hang on his strange, waxy feathers with all my strength and pray that I do not fall. He ascends steeply through the churning gray clouds, faster and faster, as if pursued by some invisible, demonic predator.

Then, with no warning, he plummets. The air is so dense with fog I cannot even see the ground racing up to meet us. I open my mouth to scream, but a cold wind blows my cries inward. My mouth fills with an icy, foultasting rain.

After a moment I hear voices.

“Henbane. Mandrake root. What else was in the tea?”

“Mallow and feverfew.”

The scratch of a pen. “Fascinating. This information is priceless, priceless.”

The cold, hard edge of a metal spoon presses against my lip.

Now I lie in darkness—true, simple darkness, the kind that comes from having one’s eyes shut against the light. The firmness beneath me is not the feathered bed of a raven’s back, but the length and breadth of my own straw-stuffed mattress.

The word emerges from my lips with a will of its own. “Weed—”

“Look! She wakes.”

I open my eyes. The first thing I see is Weed’s face. I seize his arm and dig my fingers into his flesh.

“Do not go back inside that garden,” I beg. “Promise me, Weed. You must not go near it!”

“Jessamine—my darling—you are alive—”

“There is evil there, the Poisons will destroy us all—swear to me, Weed! I will not release you until you swear it!” I clutch him harder. My nails pierce his skin like talons until the blood flows. He cries out in pain, and the spoon that was in his hand clatters to the ground.

“Yes, of course I promise—I swear.”

I let go of him. He cradles his wounded arm and stares at me as if I have gone mad.

“Better to let me die like the lamb—than to go back there,” I manage to say, before collapsing back on the bed.

30th June

Jessamine is awake. She knows me, and has been able to speak a few words. My heart fills with hope, yet I must remember what the Poisons told me: This is no cure, merely a respite. She could slip away from us again at any time.

Better to let me die like the lamb. That is what she said.

How did she know about the lamb? She, who lay silent and icy lipped on the bed the whole time I endured that wretched task? While her body fails, what strange journeys does she take in the fevered prison of her mind?

If she were a healing herb or even a blade of grass, I would hear her very thoughts. But she is flesh—frail and all too mortal. A blank to me.