Chapter 7
“Your father always wanted a son,” my mother says. “He wanted to name our firstborn ‘Andrew.’ When your sister was born, I saw the look of disappointment on his face before he could hide it. My love for him died slowly, and that look was the beginning of the death.
“Three months after Anne’s birth, he was already talking about trying again.
Trying for a boy. He wanted someone to carry on his legacy, to travel with him.
He wanted a younger version of himself. Maybe he was beginning to feel his own vulnerability to time, and he thought that a male heir would provide some level of immortality.
Men have strange impulses and beliefs about such things.
“I had torn badly when I birthed Anne, so I persuaded him to wait, and when persuasion didn’t work, I rebuffed him outright.
At last he openly threatened to leave me and find someone else to bear children for him.
So I yielded, and we began trying for a second child only seven months after Anne’s arrival.
“Your father arranged his travel so that he would be home around the times when I might be fertile.
When he was visiting other cities, he would speak with physicians, herbalists, and fortunetellers.
He asked each of them how he might ensure that his next child was a son.
Many of the people he consulted were probably charlatans, but he swallowed their words like the purest truth and paid them accordingly.
He made me take all sorts of strange tonics, despite my protests.
He would slip powders into my food and stir strange herbs into my tea, until I became very ill.
“When I got sick, he confessed what he had been doing. I made him promise to stop all the potions and superstitions. Slowly I recovered, and we resumed our attempts to have a child, this time naturally… or so I thought.
“Believe me, I didn’t know what he was doing.
I thought he had come to his senses. He only told me what he’d done years later, when I was fretting to him about your lack of speech.
I’m not sure why he confessed. Surely he knew it would make me hate him more.
But perhaps he wanted my love for him to die.
He had already strayed from our marriage bed by then, and perhaps he thought my hatred would ease his own guilt, if he had any.
I’m not sure he could actually feel regret.
” Mama’s voice trails off, her gaze growing distant.
“Tell me what he did,” I say quietly, though the urgency in my soul wants to scream the words.
“He promised there would be no further interference with the pregnancy. He swore we would have a child naturally, no matter what the outcome. But then someone told him the tale of the Barrow-Man. He never revealed who it was, but they gave him a name to speak, and they said he should go to the Barrow at midnight. He was told to set out a dish of mingled milk and honey, a piece of raw beef, a handful of berries, and a round loaf of fresh bread. Then, standing beside the Barrow, facing north, he must cut his palm and drizzle a bit of his blood into the dish of honey-milk. While doing so, he should speak the name and make his request of the Barrow-Man.”
“What the fuck,” I whisper. “He did that?”
“He did.”
“And what happened?”
“A great seam opened in the hill, and the Barrow-Man appeared. He ate the meat and drank the contents of the dish while your father repeated his request. Then the Barrow-Man went back inside the hill for a moment. When he returned, he gave your father a vial and instructed him to make me drink the liquid inside.”
“You knew better,” I interject.
“You’re right. I wouldn’t have done it, and your father knew that.
So he broke his promise, and he put the contents of the vial in my tea.
I thought it tasted strange, so I only drank half of it, and I tossed the rest out when he wasn’t looking.
The Barrow-Man had been very clear to your father that I should drink every drop, and your father thought I had. But I didn’t.
“When you were born, your father took one look at you and stormed out of the room. I knew he was furious about having another daughter, and I hated him even more deeply for it. That night, while I was sleeping, exhausted from the labor, your father took you from your crib and carried you into the forest.”
“What?” I gasp.
Mama nods, a solemn horror in her eyes. “He took you to the Barrow. He shouted the Barrow-Man’s name and demanded that he come forth.
The hill opened, and the Barrow-Man came out.
Your father railed at him for failing to fulfill their bargain.
He held you out for the Barrow-Man to see.
The Barrow-Man came near and touched you on the forehead with one fingertip.
He told your father that I must not have drunk all the liquid, and that he wasn’t responsible for the result.
“The Barrow-Man said something about needing more supplies or subjects; your father was never certain about that part. The Barrow-Man walked to the top of the hill, and he whistled several times, until all kinds of creatures of the forest left their holes and burrows and came running to the Barrow. They ran straight into the crack of the hill, dozens and dozens of them. Then the Barrow-Man went back inside, and the seam of the earth closed up. Your father yelled again, but no one answered. In his fury, your father laid you down at the foot of the Barrow and started walking home.”
A sick thrill runs through my stomach. “He left me?”
“You were there for hours. He got all the way to the edge of the forest before he thought better of it. He went back to find you. You were still where he left you, screaming, so he picked you up and carried you home. That last part, about him leaving you in the forest—I didn’t know about that the night before he left us, when you were twelve.
Even when he first confessed to me about his deal with the Barrow-Man, he was too much of a coward to admit that he abandoned his infant daughter in the fucking forest.” Her voice turns cold with rage, and her eyes snap with a vengeful fury I’ve never seen from her.
“You could have died from exposure. You could have been eaten by wolves. When he told me about that, I lost my mind. I—” She cuts herself off, a muscle throbbing along her jaw, a vein pulsing in her temple.
What did you do? I want to ask the question, but I dread the answer. Secrets are safeguards. So I remain silent, and I squeeze her hand.
She lets out a shaking breath, as if the pressure of my fingers released something that was tightly coiled inside her. “Do you hate me?”
“Never.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you until now. I convinced myself it was better not to. But I need you to stay away from the Barrow from now on.”
“You’ve let me walk in those woods for years,” I point out.
“Because I knew the Barrow-Man wouldn’t emerge unless he was called.
Grandmother Riquet took over the old woodcutter’s cottage shortly after your father left, and she has a particular kind of influence.
She thought she could help you, and she told me it was safe as long as you traveled in the daylight and stayed on the path. ”
“Is there something special about the path?” I ask. “Something that keeps it safe, keeps it from becoming overgrown? And Grandmother… what’s special about her? She has always refused to talk about herself or her past.”
Mama purses her lips, then says carefully, “I’m not sure how much I should tell you about her. Some secrets aren’t mine to share.”
“I fear she’s growing too old to remember them,” I say. “She has seemed odd lately. I think whatever influence she had over the forest is waning, or it’s gone. Things are changing in there, becoming dangerous and distorted.”
“Distorted?” My mother frowns. “What do you mean?”
I hesitate, unsure how much I should say. “I don’t think any search parties should go in there looking for Herron.”
“So his father should give him up for dead?”
Wincing, I nod.
“What else did you see, Sybil?” Mama asks, concern darkening her gaze. “What aren’t you telling me?”
My mind fills with images of Herron’s eyes, Grandmother’s teeth, and the enormous two-headed wolf. But if I tell Mama everything, she might become so worried that she goes into the woods herself to see if Grandmother needs help. And I can’t lose her.
“Just promise me you won’t go into the forest,” I say.
“Only if you’ll promise me the same.”
I hesitate, because as terrible as my last experience was, I feel connected to Wormsloe, drawn to the creatures who live there.
According to her tale, my ability is tied to the Barrow and the Barrow-Man.
He might be the only one who can explain my summoning power.
Perhaps he could even take it away. What a gift that would be, to be normal. Would he ask for something in exchange?
“Sybil.” Mama’s voice is sharp. “Promise you won’t go in there again. Not even to look for answers. It’s not worth the risk. Do you understand? You are beginning to love Beresford, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure. And you have misgivings about him, anyway.”
“Yes, but I acknowledge that I could be wrong. He could be a good man who would devote himself to your happiness, in which case you shouldn’t risk your future by delving into the dark bargain your father made.”
“What about Grandmother Riquet?” I counter. “She’s ailing. She might need our help. How can I abandon her?”
Conflict tightens my mother’s features. “You’re my daughter. Maybe it’s terrible of me to say this, but I care far more about you than I do about her. If she is nearing death, and her influence can no longer help you or protect you, then yes, I do need your promise not to visit her again.”
“And you won’t visit her either.”
“I won’t.” But her eyes flick down for the barest of seconds.