The Lord of the Wood

Thirty years ago

It had been an awful day. Most days were awful for twelve-year-old Arthur Throckmorton. In the seaside fishing village of

Seacliff, where most boys his age were already strapping and calloused from working the sea with their fathers, Arthur was

a slender pink thing with soft hands, a mop of golden hair, and watery blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles that never

sat quite right.

This late summer evening, his spectacles were more crooked than ever, having been forcibly removed, peered through, jeered

at, and stomped on. The frames had bent; miraculously, the lenses had not broken. Arthur had been walking home from the convent

after lessons, forgetful of his usual care because Mother Superior, aware of his deep interest in timepieces, had given him

an old clock that no longer worked. He’d been trying to figure out what was wrong with it when a group of boys hardly older

than he had accosted him. It was difficult to say what, precisely, their gripe with Arthur was, but almost everyone in the

village found him odd. He didn’t understand why, except for his bastard status and a vague feeling of difference.

He’d snuck past his mother on the way into the house, bruised, bloody, with bent glasses.

If she saw him like that (again), she’d fuss and worry.

Rather than joining her in the sitting room, Arthur called a greeting from the kitchen and crept into the bedroom he shared with his five-year-old half sister. He’d been there ever since.

As bedtime approached, Arthur was lying on his stomach in bed, finishing his homework. Maths. Always maths. Sister Mary Paul

insisted on it. The numbers, which had a nasty habit of rearranging on the page before his eyes, blurred as his spectacles

slipped yet again.

Someone knocked on the door.

Arthur bolted upright, trying to straighten his glasses. “Don’t come in!”

Too late. His stepfather—the only father he’d ever known—had cracked the door, entering the room with Charlotte in his arms.

At the sight of Arthur shamefaced on his bed, with a split lip and bruised eye, George Throckmorton sucked in his cheeks.

“It’s nothing,” Arthur mumbled.

George tucked Charlotte into bed without comment, kissed her forehead, and withdrew. Charlotte clambered out of her bed and

into Arthur’s. She cocked her head at him, eyeballing his bruises.

“Does it hurt? It looks like it hurts.”

“Yeah.”

To his relief, she ceased her examination and snuggled into his side. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Arthur repeated, even though he wasn’t. But he had his sister. That was something.

Their father returned, his medical kit in hand. He was a doctor, not a fisherman. A proper doctor who’d gone to university

in Port Lorne and everything, not that that held much weight in Seacliff: Since his return, the villagers had thought George

too high-and-mighty, too book-learned and citified.

It didn’t stop them from coming to him for every injury and illness, however. This was his first time home since morning; a bout of flu had swept through the village. Tomorrow he was off to Port Lorne to restock his medical supplies—a trip he took every year—so today he’d seen his patients.

Shedding his coat, George nudged Charlotte aside and sat on the edge of Arthur’s bed. A silver acorn on a chain gleamed on

his neck.

“Why aren’t you in bed, my little love?” he asked Charlotte.

“I’m not sleepy.”

George shook his head with a chuckle, but his expression sobered as he turned to Arthur. “Let me see, son.”

Arthur set his glasses aside. There was George calling him son as he always did, because to George they were kin, the same as if he had sired Arthur himself. That simple appellation always

made Arthur feel better, no matter how bad a day had been.

George was grave but calm as he examined Arthur’s bruises. He was a comforting presence, a big man whose belly shook when

he laughed. His skin was the same warm brown as the tip-tilted eyes he shared with his daughter. They had the same rounded

chin and high forehead, too, although Charlotte had ochre skin and her mother’s freckles and button nose.

Not for the first time, Arthur wished he took after George. He resented looking (he supposed) like the man who’d run out on

his mother before Arthur was born. Alas, he didn’t take after George in any respect. His one ill-fated foray into medicine

two years ago had ended in ten minutes. He’d trailed George through Seacliff, intending to visit patients with him. The first

cut of the lance had sent Arthur fleeing outside, where he’d sat with his head between his knees until rain had chased him

into the general store for shelter. He couldn’t stomach the sight of blood. At the ripe old age of ten, he’d found following

in his father’s footsteps as a doctor out of the question.

If George was as disappointed in Arthur as Arthur was, he never showed it. Now, he dotted cream onto Arthur’s lip and eye. Arthur winced.

“Who was it?” George asked, but Arthur shrugged. It hardly mattered who. Snitching would make things worse. Nothing could

be done anyway.

His father sighed but didn’t ask again. He packed the cream away, straightened the frames of Arthur’s glasses (more or less),

and kissed Arthur’s forehead. Maybe they were alike in one way, Arthur thought hopefully. The villagers never said George

was odd, because he was a proper doctor and a respectable man—even if he’d married, as they termed it, a fallen woman—but

the villagers were never so soft with their sons. All George was to Arthur was softness, and that was all Arthur was, too.

“You won’t tell Mam, will you?” Arthur said.

George tucked Charlotte back into her own bed. Despite her insistence she wasn’t sleepy, she’d fallen asleep curled in her

brother’s quilt.

“She’ll want to know,” George said. “She worries about you.”

“That’s why I don’t want to tell her.”

George shook his head. “I think she’ll notice, unless you figure on staying in this room until that bruise heals.”

Arthur snuggled into his bedclothes, feeling better except that tomorrow was Wednesday. Lessons. Another opportunity for the

boys to jeer at him.

And likely more maths.

He thought of Port Lorne, the great city at the northern tip of the forest abutting the Throckmortons’ garden.

His father had told him about a clock shop in the city that sold not only clocks but parts and tools for their building and repair.

George had brought Arthur a travel repair kit after last year’s trip; Arthur had been itching to see the shop ever since.

He imagined it walled in ticking timepieces, with tools and gears shining on the counters.

“Dad,” he said, “can I come with you to Port Lorne?”

George gave a small smile, and Arthur’s heart sank.

Sure enough, his father said, “I’m afraid not, duck. Not this time. I’ll take you when you’re older.”

He’d been saying that for years.

“That’s what you always say.”

George’s smile disappeared.

“Please?” Arthur said. “I’m practically grown now.”

George’s mouth twitched. “You’re twelve, son, and there are your lessons to think of.”

“Most of the other boys aren’t even in school anymore! They work with their dads. Why can’t I go with you?”

“Because I said so.”

“But—”

“No.”

Outside, a wind blew in off the sea to the west. The windowpanes rattled in their frames.

George pinched the bridge of his nose, took a breath, and gave a small smile. “I’ll have to fix those when I get back. I’ll

teach you how.”

“Dad—”

His father’s voice was firm, final. “Good night, Arthur.”

George clasped his medical kit and left the room.

Something small and aching cracked open in Arthur’s chest. He always hated it when his father went to Port Lorne; he hated

it all the more because George kept promising to take him but never did.

Arthur listened to the rattling of the windows. His father would teach him to fix them, and he would try to learn, but such

masculine pursuits always seemed beyond him.

Behind the cottage garden, the forest’s silhouette was faintly visible, a black shape against a blue-black sky. In the morning, George would vanish into its depths as he did every year at this time.

He’d told Arthur so many stories about the forest. Its dangers and enchantments. Its lord, whom George had met once, long

ago. He’d given George the silver acorn.

Do you think he’d like me? Arthur had asked once. The Lord of the Wood?

Of course, his father had said.

Unlikely Arthur would ever meet him, however, since his father wouldn’t take him to Port Lorne.

In the other room, his parents murmured together, their words a low rumble. Arthur slipped out of bed, pausing when a floorboard

creaked to make sure Charlotte hadn’t awoken. She sighed and turned over.

Arthur cracked the door.

“—pack a bag for Arthur?” his mother was asking.

His heart leaped; perhaps his father had changed his mind.

“Not this year,” George said. “Maybe when he’s older.”

That maybe hadn’t been there before, Arthur noted. His eyes stung.

“I worry about him, Eileen. He’s so . . . You know what he’s like.”

Arthur’s heart stuttered.

“Yes.” His mother’s voice was soft, concerned. “I had hoped the other boys might take to him by now, but . . .”

Silence. Arthur pressed his ear to the door, desperate to hear more. To know what words clung to the end of his father’s so, his mother’s but. To know what, exactly, his parents thought he was like. Whether they had an answer for his uneasy relationship with Seacliff.

“I think he’d like Port Lorne,” George said, “but I worry he’d be worse off being here after. I’d rather take him when he’s grown—seventeen or eighteen, maybe—when he’s old enough to make his own way if he wants.”

Seventeen or eighteen! Arthur’s hands balled in his nightshirt. He’d thought, when his father said “older,” that he’d meant soon. Thirteen or fourteen, since twelve evidently wasn’t older enough. Seventeen or eighteen might as well have been a hundred, it seemed so far off.

His father was speaking. Arthur pressed his ear back to the door.