Sleepy Fox Hollow Took this dagger in me and removed it

mahler had no more words for her, for anything he could say drowned at once beneath the level of terror for wylla he felt now. a claw-raking sensation, something that clung to the flesh along the base of his spine. 
phaedra, suddenly — her whiteflash reappearance ripping mahler from his sinking anguish. he cut his eyes to her at once.
"danke schatz," he muttered. only a practiced glance in single to know she had done well and he had the feverplant now in his care. water, but there was none, not here. not sparing a second to contemplate this grimfaced reality, mahler stripped the leaves between jaws and foot, deftly separating leaves from fruit. "kauen, bitte," he breathed in the next, pushing the small verdant pile toward phaedra. "dann lege es auf ihre schulter, in nur einer minute."
their child had done well in the discovery of the feverbloom, and now hers was a quick and harrowing lesson in feldmedizin. turning away, turning back to wylla, mahler came to her side, meaning to embrace the heatstricken lines of her small figure.
she must recline now, upon the ground, where she could be remedied and stabilized. mahler did not look toward phaedra as he began his slow insistence that the woman should lie down, readying himself for the remembered snap of her jaws if she should whirl in his direction. but he had become guarded once more, not to her, but to the reality of fever gone into the marrow, into the muscle. capability juxtaposed against the cool skilled swiftness that urgency demanded.
and the berries, blood-darkened and ready to be crushed into the thick murkwine, sitting just beyond the field of his vision.