xxiv. In which Arthur takes a dunking
Arthur was no longer a person; he was a throbbing mass with a mangled neck. He drifted in and out of awareness. Ira’s breathing,
harsh. His own bones jolting with each step. Freya skittering, her cries. Ira swearing as she got underfoot, almost tripping
him.
A new sound, a creaky voice like a tree that had learned to talk.
“Oho!” The voice twinkled. “My young lord! And with a human. How long’s it been since the last one? Must be near as long since
last I saw you.”
“Not now, Maud. He needs in the pool.”
The throbbing sharpened as Ira shifted Arthur in his arms.
Then, a strange sort of nothing.
Arthur opened his eyes.
He was surprised to find he could. He hadn’t been able to do much of anything since the attack except gurgle and cough blood.
As far as he could tell, he was underwater, but it didn’t feel like water. It was neither warm nor cool. It had permeated
his clothing but didn’t feel wet. It was silent but not in the usual way, where water pressed upon the ears, where the silence might be broken by movement
or bubbles.
Small, smooth pebbles in green and blue and purple—like sea glass, though it could not be sea glass in this motionless water—layered the bottom of the strange pool.
Its walls, or sides, or edges, Arthur couldn’t see.
He might’ve been alone in the middle of a great ocean, except that there were no fish, no seaweed, no anything.
Just the sea glass, and the water, and his arms making no ripples as they windmilled.
That surprised him, too. He could move his arms. His legs. He no longer throbbed with pain, but thick redness ribboned lazily
from his neck.
Panicked at the sight of his own blood, he sucked in a breath, panicked harder—then stopped, heart hammering, because no water
had entered his lungs. He could breathe, in fact. His breath whooshed harsh and quick, matching his heartbeat.
Ghostly figures materialized. The faces of woodsmen, some with axes in hand; villagers, some of whom Arthur recognized, or
thought he did, sour and pinch-faced. Blood pounded in his ears.
One figure pushed through the rest. The bottom dropped out of Arthur’s stomach.
Dad? he said soundlessly.
George Throckmorton smiled, translucent and wavering. Arthur thought he’d remembered his father perfectly, but it seemed George’s
tip-tilted eyes were warmer brown than he’d pictured, his black hair thicker, his belly rounder. In a trance, Arthur swam
toward him, arms and legs pinwheeling, the wound in his neck forgotten. He barreled into his father, gripping him tight in
a hug that wasn’t quite there.
Dad, he said.
George rubbed his back then pulled away. If he’d heard Arthur at all, he didn’t acknowledge it. Just turned his son’s head, wearing the same calm, serious expression he’d worn whenever Arthur had come home with a black eye and broken glasses as a boy.
He pressed a hand to Arthur’s neck. Light spilled from his palm, so bright Arthur’s eyes squeezed shut. When his father withdrew,
he opened them. George nodded at him.
Arthur touched his neck but couldn’t find where the creature had clung to him. His fingers came away clean, although he couldn’t
tell if that was because he was underwater or because he was no longer bleeding.
His eyes prickled. Dead for thirty years, in the middle of an enchanted pool in the forest, his father was caring for him.
Arthur reached for him. The spirits faded away, one at a time, until, with a small smile, George faded, too.
Dad, Arthur said, but his father was gone.
Hands gripped his shoulders. Someone wrenched him from the pool. As his head broke the surface, his lungs flooded. He landed
on his knees on a pebbled shore, spewing water.
“Arthur.” As it had when Calyx had attacked, panic laced Ira’s hoarse voice. “Arthur.”
He clutched Arthur’s shoulders, but Arthur shook his head and coughed up more water.
“He’s fine,” the creaky voice said dismissively.
“He was down there for almost ten minutes. He’s human, Maud.”
“He’s not bleeding anymore, is he?”
At the words, Arthur reached for his neck. It was uninjured.
Ira crouched before him, a hand tight on one shoulder. He touched Arthur’s face carefully—so carefully, his touch a whisper
like he feared he’d break Arthur open. With a pang, Arthur realized the fur on his hands had thickened and spread.
“Are you all right?” Ira asked. “Can you say anything?”
Arthur opened his mouth but merely wheezed. He coughed several more times, swallowed, and managed to rasp, “Dad.”
Ira let out a breath. He released Arthur, rather to Arthur’s disappointment, and examined his neck, his hands, and his face.
The thin white scar on his cheek from his first morning in the vale was still there, but the pool had healed his more recent
injuries from the brambles and the bruises Calyx had left. Freya conducted her own inspection before vigorously cleaning Arthur’s
wet hair.
Ira rounded on a tiny old woman who looked as if she’d grown from a tree. “You might have warned me.”
She shrugged. “You wanted him healed. He’s healed.”
Arthur stared. Standing no higher than his knees, she had skin as brown and wrinkled as the bark of the yews behind her, a
shock of white hair, and deep-set eyes as silver as the acorn around his neck. Her apron was stained green with moss. Several
ravens hopped back and forth, looking up when she spoke.
She prodded Arthur with a stick. “So it was his cat that almost ate me, was it? I can’t say I like him as much as the last one.”
“The last . . . what?” Arthur asked.
“Human,” Ira said. “George, she means.”
“That’s the one,” the woman said.
Arthur bit his lip. How much better than him had the forest known his father? The sight of George in the pool had been a comfort,
but he’d been no more than a ghost. None of the questions Arthur had had about him since setting out had been answered; it
seemed they never would be.
“This is Maud.” Ira nodded at their surroundings. “She’s the guardian of the pool.”
Trees with yellow-edged, fernlike leaves ringed banks pebbled with the same colorful stones as the pool’s bottom. More ravens perched in their branches, preening or watching the proceedings of the four figures below with bright eyes.
The water’s surface was silver and unnaturally still. Arthur shuddered, remembering how nothing it had felt.
Before him loomed a tangle of ancient yews. Their branches dipped to the ground, groaning like old men. Their mossy boughs
formed a rough circle like the entrance to a fairy realm.
Arthur wasn’t convinced they weren’t. Maud and the still, silver water certainly seemed folkish.
“When we get out of here,” he rasped, “I’m not going to find fifty years have passed without me getting any older, am I?”
Ira let out a huff of laughter. “No.”
Maud prodded at his paws with her stick. “Do I get a proper greeting, now your friend is safe?”
“Sorry.” Ira’s expression softened as she pulled his face down to her level, pressing her forehead to his. “I’ve missed you.”
“Long time,” she said. “Long, long time.”
Ira pulled away, gripped her hands, and peered into her eyes. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
She patted his cheek like a grandmother. A raven hopped onto his knee, nudging his hand until he stroked its feathers.
“If the sickness had come here, you’d know.” She nodded at Arthur. “For one thing, your friend would still look like a fuath’s
chew toy.”
Wet from the pool, Arthur shivered. Water dripped from his hair into his eyes and ears, his trousers chafed uncomfortably,
and his socks—well, wet socks were basically the worst thing ever, evil spirits with horrible teeth aside.
Dislodging the raven, Ira knelt before him and pressed his hands to Arthur’s cheeks. He swore.
He reached for the buttons of Arthur’s shirt.
“What are you doing?” Arthur squeaked, with a strange thrill of panic.
“We need to get you out of these wet clothes.” Ira’s voice was a low growl, angry in a way Arthur had grown to recognize meant he was worried. “Maud, a fire.”
She had one crackling within moments. Magic, Arthur thought.
Then he stopped thinking, because Ira yanked the shirt from his shoulders and reached for the button of his trousers.
With another odd thrill, redder than ever, Arthur pulled away. “I’m perfectly capable of that, thank you anyway.”
Maud wheezed with laughter, a susurration like wind in the leaves. The ravens laughed with her; their laughter was unsettlingly
human.
Nodding tightly, Ira went to retrieve their furs and bags. His limp was more pronounced than usual, now he’d carried Arthur
through the forest.
Arthur peeled his wet socks and trousers off, racked with shivers. Maud dropped his knapsack at his side. He flushed, turning
away; she laughed.
“Good heavens. Humans are silly about nudity. You’ve spare clothes in that, he told me. And a heating pad, which might do
you some good once I warm it. Here.”
She handed him a towel. Arthur mumbled a thanks and dried hastily. He yanked a spare set of clothes out of his knapsack; he’d
packed two, his own and a set Ira had altered for him.
He re-dressed, picturing Ira on his knees, reaching for Arthur’s trousers. He reddened again and tried to stop picturing it.
When he turned, fully clothed, Ira wrapped several furs around him. Their spring-flower scent enveloped him alongside their
warmth.
“Thanks.”
Arthur’s teeth chattered. Underwater, the water had felt like nothing. On shore, it felt like water in all the worst ways.
“Sit here a spell.” Maud dragged over a log larger than she was so Arthur could sit by the fire. “You warm yourself till the soup’s done.”
She nudged him toward the log with her stick, then disappeared with his heating pad into a wizened stump nearby. A bit of
bark like a tiny chimney smoked at the stump’s top. White-spotted red toadstools grew around the door like a garden.
Freya crawled into the stump but came flying out followed by tiny kitchen implements and a string of what were unmistakably
curses, albeit in a language with the same creaky quality as Maud’s voice. Ravens went flying and settled back in the surrounding
trees.