viii. In which Arthur narrowly avoids falling into a pit, but his luggage, alas, does not
By early afternoon, some of the shine had worn off the adventure. Arthur’s back ached from sitting the same way for so long;
it was a matter of time until his spasm returned. With a horse and cart, Cormac had told him, three or four days would see
him to the other side of the forest, if no harm befell him and he didn’t stop much, but he’d already stopped twice: once to
stretch his legs and piss behind a tree, once to rifle in the suitcase for the heating pad Charlotte had packed him. He didn’t
need it yet, but he stuffed it inside his knapsack, preferring to have it close by.
An hour later, the cart bumped hard over something in the path, jolting Arthur from his seat. Cursing, he clung on and pulled
Maurice to a stop.
At his side, Freya opened her eyes, annoyed at the disturbance. Arthur massaged his chest, breathing hard. He’d been daydreaming
about Port Lorne, hardly paying attention to where they were going since they had not yet come to a fork or turn. Now he was
paying for it with a strained back.
Maurice threw himself into the harness, but the cart didn’t move. Dismounting with a grimace, Arthur patted the gelding’s neck.
“All right, old fellow, no need for that. Let me take a look. I’m sure our wheels have gotten stuck.”
He retrieved the shovel and knelt beside the front driver’s-side wheel with a groan. His knees ached in protest, but he gazed
under the cart.
A human hand flopped out.
Arthur yelped. He scrambled away, wielding the shovel like a sword. His chest heaved.
The fingers curled in the dirt, pale and still. Trembling, Arthur stuck the shovel back in the cart and dug through his suitcase
for a torch, trying not to imagine the fingers wrapping around his ankle while he wasn’t looking.
Kneeling back beside the hand, he turned on the torch and followed its thin beam of light along the fingers and wrist, beneath
the cart, to the arm they were attached to. Freya settled at his side; it made him feel marginally better.
“Hello?”
A low groan. Christ. Had he killed someone? He’d certainly run them over.
Arthur rocketed to his feet and reached for Maurice’s bridle, so jittery the gelding tossed his head and snorted uneasily.
Stroking his neck, Arthur focused on his own breathing, in for four, hold for four, out for four: a cycle Charlotte had taught him in her earliest days as a healer, to help him calm down when he panicked. Freya twisted
around his legs, mewling.
“Watch out, Freya,” Arthur said. “All right, Maurice. Let’s—let’s see if we can get the cart off them, hmm?”
It took some maneuvering, but Maurice was a patient horse. Freya oversaw their efforts from the driver’s seat.
Arthur’s neck kept prickling as if someone other than the cat were watching. He would’ve been almost grateful, desperate for help with a situation he hadn’t foreseen and felt unequal to, but no one was there. He had the uncomfortable feeling it might’ve been the trees.
When the cart was safely off to the side of the path, Arthur got a clear view of the hand’s owner.
It was a boy, seventeen or so, buried in the path up to his shoulders. His flaxen hair was brown with mud. His face and arms
were scratched, his shirt more dirt than cloth. No wonder Arthur hadn’t seen him; so much moss blanketed him it might’ve grown
there.
His face was white and waxen, veined in black—and unfortunately familiar. A village boy. Hamish, Arthur thought his name was.
Arthur let out a breath. The boy’s eyes opened, blue and filmy and threaded thinly with black veins. Arthur shrank back, but
the boy gasped something that might’ve been a word.
Heart pounding, Arthur bent close. “What?”
Hamish reached for him. Hesitantly, Arthur took his hand. The boy coughed black ooze, his grip crushing Arthur’s fingers.
Arthur resisted the urge to pull away, but his spine tingled.
“Brigid,” the boy croaked.
Arthur’s stomach clenched. Ma’s convinced she’s eloped like Mary did, but we’re afraid she’s gone into the wood. Perhaps Brigid Tierney had done both, or tried to.
Before Arthur could decide what to say, Hamish’s cheek dropped to the leaf litter. His fingers went slack.
Arthur skittered away as if death were a contagion. He turned to Maurice and rested his forehead against the horse’s neck,
breathing deeply, in for four, hold for four, out for four.
When he turned around, a stunted, twisted tree stood where Hamish had been.
Arthur’s mouth went dry. “Hamish?”
No response. Not even the rustle of leaves or the call of a bird. Arthur reached for his shovel, holding it up like a bat, and approached the tree. Its roots bumped out of the earth, angled like Hamish’s arms had been.
“Hamish?”
Dirt shifted beneath Arthur’s feet. A tangle of root bent like fingers.
Arthur backed hastily away, dumped the shovel into the cart, and vaulted into the driver’s seat, sticking the torch in his
knapsack.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Maurice started forward without waiting for Arthur’s command. Arthur grasped the lines, then froze. The gelding seemed certain
of where he was going, but the path had moved. Before Arthur had stopped the cart, it had run straight ahead the short distance
he could see through the trees. Now it veered left.
The forest had shifted, just like in his father’s stories.
He swallowed. He’d always wondered why, in those stories, nobody noticed the paths shifting before their eyes. Now he didn’t
have to wonder. The forest had waited until his back was turned.
“Do you think it still leads to Port Lorne?” he asked the cat in a hushed voice. She rested a paw on his thigh as if to make
sure the forest didn’t do away with him as it had Hamish.
The farther the cart bumped onward, the more Arthur saw to unsettle him. They passed a beech carved with the ghostly scars
of decades of lovers’ initials, the freshest of which were BT + HM. Brigid and Hamish. They’d passed by together, perhaps planning to start a new life in Port Lorne as Brigid’s older sister
had in Glenwhistle. Thinking the forest so beautiful until it swallowed them.
Swallowed Hamish. Arthur hoped Brigid had found her way back to the village. Black ooze dripped from their initials, staining the beech’s smooth, gray bark. Arthur’s stomach flipped. He rubbed the rowan cross in his pocket like a good luck charm.
Occasionally, he noticed black ooze dripping from another tree. Arthur didn’t want to touch any tree, but the black ooze made
him stay particularly far from the ones it stained.
The underbrush rustled. Arthur halted the cart.
“Who’s there?”
He grabbed the shovel, planning to whack whatever came at him at least as hard as Sasha whacked him while playing pirates.
“I warn you I’m armed!”
The rustling reached a peak. Arthur stood in his seat, swinging the shovel before him in what he hoped was a threatening manner.
Freya slipped from the cart, gazing at the underbrush with a twitching tail. She pounced. The rustling stopped.
Arthur lowered the shovel. “Freya?”
She trotted back with a dead squirrel clutched in her mouth, hopped into the cart, and deposited her prize at his feet.
“Er . . . thank you.” At least it wasn’t something worse. “You can have it. I’m . . . not hungry.”
The cart rumbled onward. Freya brought the squirrel with her. Arthur wished she hadn’t.
The romantic notions he’d had about the wood dwindled as afternoon wore on and evening shadows crept in. The beautiful golden
light of an autumn afternoon faded into menacing grays and blacks. More and more trees dripped black ooze the farther he ventured.
Some took on strange forms, branches bent into uncomfortable angles like broken limbs. The path shifted again and again, never
when he was looking. At last, it disappeared.
Not knowing what else to do, Arthur drove onward.
His muscles ached; without the path, the cart jolted constantly over rough ground.
Maurice’s ears twitched back and forth. His gait had slowed to a creep, as if he hoped the forest wouldn’t notice him.
Freya had slipped from the driver’s seat into the space between Arthur’s suitcase and the shovel, where she hunkered down until only her golden eyes were distinguishable from the shadows.
Arthur pulled his knapsack into his lap like a shield.
The earth rumbled. Arthur shot upright, his back spasming, but he clutched the lines with one hand and his knapsack with the
other.
“What was that?”
The cat hunkered farther down in her space. Maurice twisted his neck to look about, ears twitching. He stamped uneasily.
Another rumble.
The forest floor opened behind them.
The horse screamed. The cart backed into the maw of the sudden pit. A rear wheel slipped over the edge.
Arthur swore, stumbled down, threw his knapsack as far from the pit as he could, and grabbed Maurice’s bridle. The cat streaked
past and up a tree.
Maurice would not calm down. He reared, wrenching Arthur’s arm.
“Come on, come on,” Arthur moaned, but the cart slipped backward. Terrified of losing the horse, Arthur fumbled with the harness, then gave
up and lunged for the shovel. His suitcase slid to the back of the cart, but he left it. He stabbed at the traces, striking
repeatedly until they frayed and broke and slithered free. The cart slid into the pit and vanished, taking Arthur’s suitcase
with it.
Maurice shot forward, but Arthur grabbed his bridle. Trembling, he garbled out, “It’s all right, you’re all right, it’s all
right,” over and over.
With a final rumble, the earth closed. A tree sprouted, grew, and died, dripping with the same black ooze as so many others.
Arthur’s chest heaved. He looped the driving lines over a healthy branch and crept toward the tree, shovel in hand. He tested each step, afraid the ground would give way beneath him, but it was as solid as ground should be.
The ooze smelled faintly mechanical. Arthur reached out but withdrew without touching it. He touched the shovel’s blade to
it instead.
With a faint hiss, the metal corroded. Arthur flung the shovel aside and skittered back to the horse. Freya slunk down from
her tree.
No cart. No way of getting Mrs. Livingston’s clock back from Port Lorne, if indeed he made it there. He had a horse but no
saddle and didn’t know how to ride; he didn’t know if Maurice was saddle-broken anyway. The path had moved, he didn’t know
where it was, and it had shifted about so much he couldn’t be sure of reaching either Port Lorne or home even if he found
it. He had no luggage except for his knapsack with its single change of clothing, heating pad, three romance novels, shaving
kit, torch, water bottle (half empty), and a few herbs he wasn’t sure he remembered how to use.
He couldn’t even use the heating pad, because he had no way to heat it, because he was Arthur and hadn’t thought to pack a
firelighter or matches, though he’d known he’d spend more than one night camping in the forest.
“This is very bad.”
His voice was insignificant in the expectant silence of the wood. Freya brushed against his legs, but her company was paltry
comfort now.
Figuring he was far closer to home than Port Lorne, Arthur turned reluctantly back the way he’d come. The way he thought he’d
come. He could no longer tell.