xxxii. In which everything goes to shit
Though the morning was cold and gray, the rain had petered out. Arthur was loath to leave the cave, not least because he’d
fallen asleep reading a romance novel aloud, at Ira’s request, and awoken in Ira’s arms and didn’t want to relinquish their
comfort. But Ira kissed him, tugged on his knee brace, and was out of the cave before Arthur could object.
He couldn’t object anyway, since Ira reached for his hand and held it as they walked onward. Ira kept smiling, and every time
he did so, Arthur felt a thrill. He had done that. All right—probably the acorn had done it in part: No new greenery had grown
on Ira’s face or body overnight, nor did any sprout as they went.
Still, Arthur had had a hand in making Ira happy. It felt like quite the accomplishment.
The cat was considerably less pleased with the circumstances, having to pick her way through wet undergrowth, but the two men had all but forgotten her.
Arthur’s neck and hand throbbed periodically, but since he couldn’t do much for the phantom pain, he squeezed Ira’s hand for comfort whenever it happened, without mentioning it.
The wild hunt may have gotten them off track, but feeling as he did now, he was hopeful of reaching the heart of the wood soon.
He whistled tunelessly without realizing he was doing so. Ira smiled.
They had not gone more than a couple miles when Ira bent with a groan.
“Is it the tarnish?” Arthur asked.
Ira tried to straighten—then screamed, dropping to all fours. His eyes crumpled against the pain. Arthur fell to his knees
beside him. If this was the tarnish spreading at the heart of the wood, it was far worse than it had been before.
“Ira?”
Ira clawed at the ground. His pack slipped from his shoulders.
“Clear-cutting,” he said through gritted teeth. “They’re clear-cutting. I can feel—”
He broke off with another scream. The ground trembled. The forest quaked with rage and fear, or maybe it was Ira’s rage and
fear, or both.
Ira’s eyes flew open, his right eye the same milky color as his left. Their depths reflected a woodland hollow with trees
cracking and falling as men worked at them with horrendous machines, no axes but brush cutters and feller bunchers.
He screamed again. In his scream was the roar of felled trees and the bellow of a stag and the anguish of a dying man. He
fell to the ground, convulsing.
“What do I do?” Arthur cried. “Tell me what to do.”
But there was no one to tell him what to do, no one to rely on except himself. He clenched his fists on his thighs.
Hands shaking, he shoved sticks and stones away from Ira. He folded one of their furs under Ira’s head and turned him on his
side. Ira groaned, tears streaming down his face. Despite the acorn, moss thickened, spreading down his neck and into his
shirt. Lichens bloomed across his arms. Tiny toadstools burst between his claws and exploded with spores. Like the forest
thought the pain would stop if Ira became part of it.
Arthur swore. He needed something to treat the convulsions, but he feared Ira would turn into a lump indistinguishable from the forest floor when he wasn’t looking. He scrambled upright, searching the undergrowth in panic like the right medicinal plant would helpfully present itself.
Ira lurched to his feet, breathing hard. Tentatively, Arthur reached for him.
“Ira?”
Ira looked past him, both eyes milky white. He sprinted into the trees, shivering into a stag as he went.
The stag bugled, shaking the treetops. Freya hissed.
Arthur’s mouth went dry. “Ira!”
Freya threaded through his legs, nearly tripping him, but he scooped her up and sprinted after the stag. The cat yowled as
she bounced in his arms, clawing into his shoulder.
“Ira!”
Arthur followed the path of dying flowers left behind, his legs like jelly. The ground trembled underfoot, but he gritted
his teeth and kept going.
Another bugle, and now men were shouting, too, as the stag burst upon them. Machinery screeched, groaned, and went silent.
Horses screamed; several burst through the trees, buffeting Arthur. He cowered, clutching the cat tight.
The bugle shifted to a howl. Guns fired. Arthur’s heart was in his throat.
“Ira,” he croaked, and the trees opened up.
The work camp was a graveyard of trees and men. Arthur couldn’t tell whether Ira or the forest itself had killed the men,
but greenery crept over them with long, curling fingers. Around them, collapsed tents crumpled. Machinery belched acrid smoke.
In their midst stood a wolf with heaving sides. Ira was every bit the eldritch beast: massive, eyes white and glowing, moss tinging his ruff green in wolf form as it had grown across his face in human form. A woodsman approached, axe raised. Ira snarled and snapped.
Arthur sprinted toward them.
“Don’t!” he cried, hardly knowing who he was saying it to, but it didn’t matter; no one heard him.
Wolf and woodsman lunged at each other at the same moment. Ira yelped.
The forest responded.
The ground rumbled and opened, swallowing tents and machinery. Shocks of fern and bugleweed grew in their place. Roots bound
woodsmen where they stood. Their clothes and skin hardened into bark, and they were trees, with the same misshapen limbs as
those in the vale. Other woodsmen hacked at their roots, as if felling the new trees would turn their friends back into men.
The trees screamed. The woodsmen stumbled away, turned, and fled. Distant screaming and crunching told Arthur the forest was
having its way with the survivors.
His stomach churned. He hadn’t wanted them to hurt Ira, knew it hurt Ira when they hurt the forest—but they were working men
with wives and families at home. Trying to keep roofs over their heads and bread in their mouths, the same as the fishermen
and cannery workers in Seacliff.
Freya scrambled out of his arms and vanished up a tree.
“Freya—”
In the woodsmen’s midst, Ira shuddered. His form cycled from wolf to stag to raven to man and back, so quickly Arthur barely
glimpsed each before it passed. Like Ira couldn’t decide what form to take. His eyes flickered between white and hazel.
Swallowing, Arthur ran to his side. The wound in Ira’s shoulder bled through its bandages.
“Ira—”
Arthur touched his arm, but Ira shook him off, still cycling through forms.
“Don’t,” he growled, as he turned briefly into something not quite human but not quite wolf or stag or raven, either. His
eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want to—”
His voice gave way to a deep, cervine groan.
The transformations stopped. He was a stag now, white-eyed and gold-pelted. Nostrils flaring, he turned toward Arthur.
Arthur swallowed. “Ira?”
“That’s him!”
More woodsmen came running through the trees, armed with axes and rifles; they must have been working nearby. Several of them
skidded to a stop by collapsed tents or humanlike trees, dropping their weapons to search for friends—until the stag roared.
The men ran at him, but Ira flung the first off with his antlers—shifted to a wolf, bit another’s arm—shivered into a raven,
flitting upward from a third’s attempt to shoot him. Back to a wolf to launch himself at another’s throat. Arthur’s mouth
went dry, but he could only watch, horrified.
Several men escaped, but that did not comfort him. He grabbed one’s arm as they passed, struggled as the man tried to throw
him off.
“Don’t,” Arthur croaked. “Don’t go that way. The forest will—”
“Leave off,” the man snarled, wrenching away.
He vanished into the undergrowth with his friends. The men screamed, but the screaming cut off in a crack of bone and crunch
of bark. Arthur’s stomach turned.
A stag again, Ira stood amidst the remains of the deserted work camp. His antlers were rusty with blood.
A boy with a mop of dark hair bolted from a collapsed tent. He wore a worker’s clothes, but he couldn’t have been more than
seventeen. Snorting, Ira raced after him.
“Ira, don’t!”
Trees shifted. The boy changed direction, but he was trapped between the stag and a thick growth of trunks. His face strained.
Whipping around, he threw a rock. It bounced harmlessly off Ira’s chest.
“Don’t,” Arthur cried, but the stag lowered his antlers and pawed at the ground like a buck during the rut. The boy backed
into the trees. He swallowed. The stag menaced him, tossing his head.
Arthur squeezed between them. “Ira, stop!”
The stag stopped.
His antlers were too close to Arthur’s chest. Arthur reached for him.
“Don’t.”
The boy pressed into Arthur’s back, breathing raggedly. Arthur’s hands fell to his sides.
“Don’t. Ira, please. He’s just a boy. You wouldn’t harm a child.”
At the moment, he wasn’t sure of that. Ira wouldn’t harm a child—but surely he wouldn’t murder an entire work camp, either,
and the bodies of the men he and the forest had slain were scattered around them. He wasn’t Ira, now. He was the Lord of the
Wood, taking his vengeance for the wood’s destruction.
The stag snorted again, his breath hot. Arthur swallowed.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”
The stag’s nostrils flared. Slowly, he raised his head.
Arthur spoke to the boy over his shoulder. “Go.”
The boy tensed. “What about you?”
“He won’t hurt me.” Arthur wasn’t certain of that just now, either. “Go, now.”
The boy rabbited away. Bellowing, the stag bolted after him. Arthur blocked his path, skidding on wet leaves. His knapsack
dug into his shoulders. The stag turned on him.
“Ira—”
The stag menaced him until Arthur backed into a tree, antlers at his throat. Their prongs pricked him.
He swallowed uncomfortably.
“Ira, please.” He moved his lips as little as possible. “It’s me. It’s Arthur.”
The prongs pressed into his skin. He gasped, gripping the stag’s antlers.
“Please.” His eyes stung with tears. Ira didn’t know him. “Please.”
Blood beaded at his throat. A droplet trickled down his neck. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut.
With a hiss, Freya launched herself at the stag. She clawed his cheek. He snorted and flung her off.
Then, with a scuffling and a rustling of leaves, the antlers were gone. Arthur slumped against the tree, rubbing his neck.