xiii. In which Arthur meets the Lord of the Wood
Arthur’s heart sank. This? This was the Lord of the Wood?
In his many daydreams over the years, Arthur hadn’t imagined this. He’d imagined a benevolent fairy prince, girt in autumn
finery, who would welcome him as he’d once welcomed George Throckmorton.
The Lord of the Wood gave a crooked, bitter sort of smile. “I don’t look it, do I?”
Arthur flushed. He’d been staring, trying to recapture a piece of his father in the other man’s face. The eyes like sunlight,
the hair like shadows. His inky hair in its knot was the only thing about him that Arthur recognized from George’s stories.
The cat squirmed out of Arthur’s arms. She wound around his ankles, glaring unceasingly at the Lord of the Wood.
“Dad didn’t—” Arthur ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. You’re not what I expected.”
The Lord of the Wood knew his name. He didn’t know why that should be. George had met him long before he’d married Arthur’s
mother.
“You’re bleeding.”
Arthur touched his forehead. The blood had mostly congealed, but a small wet spot crept down his face. He shuddered.
“Yes, those—those awful eagles.”
The Lord of the Wood squinted into the twilit sky as if he might see them winging overhead. “Stormwings. They bring storms
in from the sea every year. Earlier than they used to.”
“Is that why it’s winter here?”
“It’s always winter here.” The Lord of the Wood nodded toward the open door of the tree-house. “You’d better come inside.
I’ll patch you up.”
He turned toward the door. Those wolf paws left massive clawed prints in the snow. Freya sniffed at them and growled.
Arthur hugged himself, shivering. “My lord—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Arthur faltered. “Then what do I call you?”
The Lord of the Wood’s shoulders hunched. For a long moment, Arthur thought he wouldn’t answer, and Arthur would have to resort
to an awkward um, excuse me whenever he wanted to address the other man. Being. Beast. Whatever exactly he was, with his antlers and his paws and his
human face with its angry eyes and beautiful hair.
At last the Lord of the Wood said, “Ira. My name is Ira.”
Arthur twisted his fingers together, wondering whether his father had known the name. Why his father had never mentioned the
scar or knee brace—though many fishermen in Seacliff had something like them—or the antlers or paws. “Why are you letting
me in?”
“Because you’re bleeding.”
“But . . .” Arthur took a step forward. A tendril shot up from the Lord of the Wood’s shoulders; he hastily stepped back.
“A moment ago you were ready to throw me out. Now you want to take care of me. I don’t understand.”
Glancing back at him, the Lord of the Wood raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to stay here in the snow with your forehead bloody?”
“No.”
“Then come inside.”
Arthur tried, but the tangle of greenery slipped from the Lord of the Wood’s shoulders. It rose up right in his path, clicking
faintly. Vine, leaf, branch, and flower grew until it loomed over him, creature-like. It swayed threateningly. Arthur swallowed.
The Lord of the Wood—Ira—turned. “Enough, Calyx.”
The plant creature reached for Arthur with a tendril.
“Calyx.”
Calyx shrank, until it was the size and roughly the shape of a small dog, and trotted past him into the house.
“What the hell is that?” Arthur croaked.
“My guardian,” Ira said in distaste. “It should leave you be now.”
Arthur wasn’t reassured by that should, but he traipsed into the tree-house with the cat mewling disapproval at his heels.
He stood in the doorway until Ira nodded him toward the unused armchair. Calyx sprawled beside the woodstove like a dog, though
its shape had gone vague. Arthur gave it a wide berth.
His glasses fogged up; he wiped them on his shirt and put them back on. The cat leaped into his lap. His socks were squishy
with melting snow, which made him wish he didn’t have feet, but he couldn’t bring himself to take them off.
Ira shed his furs and hung them on a row of pegs by the door. Without them, he was small and lean, wearing mended trousers
and a linen shirt with toggles sewn on. He limped through the room for a rag and water, then sat in the other armchair to
remove the knee brace from his twisted right leg.
Arthur tried and failed not to stare at his paws, reddened when Ira caught him.
Ira’s mouth pressed into a grim line, but he didn’t comment. “Let me see.”
Arthur scooted his chair closer. The cat growled as Ira touched him.
Tendrils shot from Calyx’s strange, lumpy amalgam of plant anatomy, turning toward Freya.
Arthur ran a hand through her long fur until she quieted.
He was grateful to have his own self-appointed guardian, given the circumstances, but he wished she wouldn’t set the plant creature off.
Ira dabbed blood from Arthur’s forehead. Arthur studied him. The scar over his left eye. The long, dark lashes. The curve
of his nose, lips, and chin. The gentle expression he wore, though he’d been so angry to find Arthur in his home in the first
place.
Ira’s eyes met Arthur’s. Arthur flushed. Eye contact felt too intimate at the best of times. Far more so now, when the Lord
of the Wood was inches away, tending his wound, and it didn’t matter that the left eye was milky and unseeing. But he couldn’t
turn away as Ira’s gaze flickered over him.
“I see him in you,” Ira said. “George. You have kind eyes like he did.”
Arthur’s skin prickled. No one had ever said they’d seen George in him, except occasionally his mother when she was trying
to make him feel better about himself. Now someone had, he felt his father had been keeping secrets. Like the rowan cross
in Arthur’s pocket that Charlotte had found in their father’s things.
Arthur’s hand clenched in the cat’s fur. “What was he to you?”
“He was my friend.”
Looking away, Ira opened his hand. Arthur was both relieved and disappointed to no longer endure the Lord of the Wood’s gaze,
but he didn’t think about it long: A single leaf grew from Ira’s palm.
Arthur’s breath hitched, but Ira plucked the leaf and smoothed it over his forehead like a gauze pad as if it had been nothing.
“He talked about you all the time,” he continued. “You and your sister. How tall you’d gotten. The latest trouble you’d been
into.”
His eyes flashed once more across Arthur’s face. Arthur reddened. The only trouble he’d ever gotten up to was being pushed
around by the other boys. Nothing to have made him seem bold and intrepid.
“He was terribly proud of you both,” Ira said, and Arthur couldn’t take it anymore.
“He always told us he just met you once.”
His voice rang in sudden silence. Calyx clicked ominously, but Arthur hardly noticed.
Ira’s brow furrowed. Swallowing, Arthur lowered his voice.
“He said you saved his life, and he never saw you again.”
Ira’s hand lingered on Arthur’s forehead. Freya swatted at his fingers. Calyx surged up from its spot by the stove, but Ira
smacked the tendril that reached for the cat. The plant creature curled up with an angry rustle.
“Would you like to see?” Ira asked.
“See?”
Ira reached for the silver basin hanging from the branches overhead. He filled it with water from a pitcher and handed it
to Arthur. Nudging the cat from his lap, Arthur placed the basin there instead.
It was shallow, of dimpled silver, with a leather strap at one end. Arthur’s reflection peered up at him.
Ira plucked a strand of long, dark hair from his own head and dropped it into the water.
The basin glowed; the water rippled. When the ripples stilled, Arthur was looking at his father.
He was younger than Arthur had ever seen him, with thick black hair kept longer than he’d worn it in later years. He sat leaning
against a tree, shivering, his skin ashen with illness.
A stag approached. Larger than most red deer, with a glorious golden mane and antlers twined in autumn leaves. The Lord of the Wood. Ira.
The air shivered around him, and he was a man—but different than he was now. No antlers grew from his head; his boot-shod
feet were human rather than canine. His eye was unscarred, his leg untwisted. He crouched beside George and felt his forehead,
giving a small, reassuring smile when George’s brown eyes cracked open, fever bright.
The image shifted. George Throckmorton was well, his color better, eyes no longer glazed with sickness. He sat in an armchair—the
same armchair Arthur sat in now, Arthur realized with a jolt—drinking from a mug and laughing. His laughter echoed, shivering
through Arthur. He’d never thought he’d hear his father’s laugh again.
Ira sat across from him, also laughing, and perhaps that was even more surprising than the way he’d transformed from stag
to man. He rose to refill George’s mug.
Arthur’s heart thumped painfully. “I don’t understand. How . . . ?”
A new image. George and Ira hiking the forest together. Trees turning gold and crimson bent as if in greeting. A hare rabbited
across the path, whole and healthy. Not one tree dripped ooze. Birds sang in the branches; none was translucent or veined
with black.
Pausing, George pointed at fleshy, pinkish fungi growing out of reach on an elder.
Jelly ear, he said, his voice echoing as his laughter had, and Arthur wanted to cry, hearing his voice. I could use some for the spate of flu going around the village, if I could get at it.
You can get at it.
Ira touched the tree. The fungi slid down the trunk and stopped within easy reach.
You are a wonder. Smiling, George harvested several fleshy fruits. Someday you’ll have to tell me how you do that.
“Wood and water hold memories,” Ira said now, standing at Arthur’s side. “These are mine.”
Arthur ran a finger along the basin’s lip. “This isn’t wood.”
“In the same way this is—” Ira reached for the acorn hanging from Arthur’s neck, his fingertips brushing the hollow of Arthur’s
throat “—the basin is. They both come from the same tree.”
Arthur’s skin twitched at his touch. Hard to reconcile Ira-of-memory with the Ira before him now. Not merely because of the
physical differences, but because it was difficult to imagine Ira-of-now smiling as he had in the memories.