Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
OLIVER’S HANDS SHOOK as Felipe cut the roots from his arms. Daphne Stills was gone.
His brain refused to acknowledge what he saw, but deep down, he knew she deserved it.
She killed so many people, and for what?
It wasn’t even for the factory or the workers.
She had done it for her. As he rubbed his wrists, Oliver watched the Lady coalesce back into something approximately human, apart from the trail of shadow bleeding onto her dress.
Oliver drew in a steadying breath. They still had one more bargain to make.
Glancing at his mother, Oliver did a doubletake.
Where her gnarled hand had once been clutching the wound, it now held the hilt of the ivory dagger.
As if sensing his thoughts, the Lady turned toward him. “Do you know why I agreed to your mother’s bargain?”
“No, ma’am.”
A sharp smile played on her lips. “When I agreed to become the Lady of the Dysterwood, I thought your ancestors would build a town that would worship me. Instead, they kept me to themselves. They stifled me. A god needs worship and sacrifice to have any real power. Your mother’s desperation allowed me to spread my roots.
She gave me powers I could never have on my own all in exchange for your protection in my woods.
Her magic flows through me and I through her.
Humanity yearns for immortality, and she comes as close as any.
” As the Lady stepped closer, she stretched until she towered over Oliver and Felipe.
“Aldorhaven has started to understand my power, but you— you will tell everyone of the Lady of the Dysterwood. You will tell them I have dominion over the living and the dead. You have seen it with your own eyes. You will submit to me again, ringbearer. You will tell them that if they worship me and give me my due, I will give them everything they could ever need.”
Felipe gave Oliver a sidelong look and clasped his hand. A cult— the Lady of the Dysterwood wanted a cult. That might work in their favor. When the Lady returned to her normal size, Oliver fought to speak.
“I was hoping I could ask you for something. It’s much smaller than anything my mother or ancestors asked of you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “A family trait it seems. Go on.”
“I have never met any of my parents, and I would like to meet my mother. I would like her freed from the tree,” he clarified.
“And what do you think you can offer me?”
Oliver resisted the urge to quail under the Lady’s stare. “In exchange, I would like to formally dissolve any covenants you made with my family. No more iron or wood, and no constraints the Jarngrens put on you. I get to meet my mother, and you get the freedom to spread your roots.”
Will made a strangled noise behind Lucien. Trust me, Oliver silently pleaded as the Lady gave him a curious onceover.
“You know you can’t have her back. She can never be a parent to you.”
“I know. I said I would like to meet her, not possess her.”
“You have half an hour. Then, she’s back in the tree.”
“In exchange for dissolving all the covenants my family made.”
The Lady’s eyes gleamed at the prospect. “You have a deal.”
Oliver held his breath as the oak shifted.
Bark smoothed and lightened into pale flesh as Joanna Jarngren peeled away from the trunk inch by inch.
She staggered into the bog on shaking legs, taking a step for the first time in nearly forty years, but the resolve in her eyes hardened as she tightened her grip on the dagger.
When the Lady bent to pluck Felipe’s ring from the muck, his mother stalked towards her.
Can you kill a god? Only if you have become a god yourself.
The dagger gleamed in her hand as she raised it high above her head and plunged it down.
Felipe grabbed Oliver’s hand and hauled him around the far side of the tree.
He was no longer protected in the Dysterwood, and they had to get out of the Lady’s sight.
Oliver jerked and covered his ears at the primal screams that ripped from the Lady’s throat.
Felipe’s arms bracketed him as the Dysterwood trembled.
Water lapped against their trousers, and the boards clacked into each other as the sky wavered between night and day.
Oliver wrapped his arms around Felipe as a wave of energy blew through the Dysterwood.
The hyphae exploded from the tree, raining down on them, and the ground beneath their feet rocked as the tree groaned and listed backwards.
They stumbled back into the icy water. It flooded through Oliver’s clothes and dragged him down, but before he could sink, roots hauled him up.
He grabbed Felipe’s hand as Will coaxed them back to the path on a bed of peat and roots.
Oliver braced himself, waiting for the Lady to smite them when Will helped him to his feet, but she was gone.
Where she had once stood there was only an ivory knife and a smoldering pile of pine tar and shadow.
Relief washed over Oliver as he crushed Felipe to his chest. His partner was cold and wet and holding his injured arm stiffly, but he was safe.
Guilt welled in Oliver’s breast as he scanned the glade and found Lucien staring numbly at the water.
“He’ll be okay eventually,” Felipe offered, squeezing his shoulder. “Do you want to meet your mother?”
He wasn’t sure he could. His mother had bartered her life to save his and had accidentally become something more.
She was a god-killer or a god now, in her own way, and being his mother paled in comparison to all of that.
After thirty-seven years, he wasn’t even sure she would remember him or care about him beyond that he freed her from the Lady’s hold.
No, she had loved him once, dearly, and he wanted to say goodbye and ask her for a favor.
“Come with me?”
“Always,” Felipe replied softly as he took Oliver’s hand.
His mother, or what was left of her, stood at the roots of the fallen tree, still as a statue.
Gone was the avenging angel, and in her place stood a young woman in a plain blue dress with wide, owl-like eyes.
Compared to the Lady, she looked small and insignificant, yet he could feel the magic rolling off her.
Where the Lady’s had smelled of pine tar, hers was softer and more floral.
Following her gaze, Oliver found a pile of bones tangled in the tree’s upended roots.
“Mom?”
When she turned to face him, the breath rushed from his lungs.
She looked like the woman in the photographs, but it was strange to see her standing before him frozen at twenty-five.
She was younger than he was, yet her eyes seemed impossibly old as they roamed over his face and down his body until she reached where his hand joined Felipe’s.
“You returned to your love? I wasn’t sure it would work,” she said softly.
Her voice was huskier than he expected it to be, and he wondered if one day she would become inhuman like the Lady.
The only constant in life was change. Her eyes ran over his face and clothes.
With a hesitant hand, she reached up and rubbed a lock of his hair between her fingers.
A small, fragile smile crossed her lips as she stepped back.
“I recognized you, though I don’t know how. The magic, maybe. I can feel it flowing through me and you even now. Yours feels familiar. What did my mother name you?”
“Oliver.”
She turned the name over in her mouth. “And you’re happy?”
“I am.” Tears burned the back of his eyes as he struggled to ask a question he already knew the answer to. “Are you gone? Really gone?”
“If you mean, can I leave the Dysterwood? No, I can’t. I’m dead out there and alive in the woods, in a way.”
When she nodded toward the bones, Oliver asked, “Would you like us to bury you? Then, you could be at peace.”
“No, I think I would like to be alive again for a while.”
“Are you the new Lady of the Dysterwood?” Will asked cautiously as he stepped closer.
Joanna’s face brightened with a silent laugh. “No, I don’t aspire to godhood. I killed her to free everyone. I do not wish to take her place.”
“Then, what will you do?”
“There’s often a woman in fairytales who lives in a house at the center of the woods who feeds lost children, walks them home, and is never seen again.” She eyed the fallen tree hopefully. “I think that is who I might be.”
Felipe’s hand tightened in Oliver’s. If she was willing to take that role, then they wouldn’t have to destroy the Dysterwood somehow.
He wasn’t sure they could or if it would cause a vacuum or something equally bad.
This was a far better alternative as long as she could relinquish the Dysterwood’s hold on the town.
“Can you pull the woods back?” Oliver asked. “The Lady cut the town off from the rest of the world.”
His mother thought for a long moment and nodded. Her face went unnaturally still as her eyes widened enough that Oliver could see stars reflecting in their depths. The trees swayed in a gentle breeze, and with it, he swore he could smell the flowers from the meadow.
“It will take time to pull it back fully, but the road will be open soon. You are free to leave.” The guilt must have shown on Oliver’s face because she stepped forward and lightly held his arms. “You can always come back and visit if you want. I’m not going anywhere, and the way will always be open to you. ”
Tears burned Oliver’s eyes as Felipe wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “Thank you, Mrs. Jarngren. It was a pleasure to meet you. We should get back. Our friend is waiting for us.”
Oliver nodded, but he couldn’t bear to walk away and leave her standing in the glade alone. He promised himself he would come back again before they left and introduce her to Gwen.
“Is the Dysterwood open to me? I would like to stay,” Will said softly to Joanna, “if you’ll have me.”
“You too?” Lucien cried from behind them. “You’re leaving me too?”
Will deflated with a sigh and said to Lucien, as much as to them, “I helped make this mess, and I want to stay and fix it. I know where the bodies are buried. I read all the family history, so I know what the Dysterwood was like before things went wrong. Between Aunt Daphne and the Lady, the Dysterwood is a shadow of what it once was, and someone needs to put things to rights.”
“So that has to be you?”
When Lucien looked like he might sink to the mud again, Will slowly put his hands on his cousin’s shoulders and stared into his eyes.
“It doesn’t have to be, but I want it to be me.
I don’t plan to stay forever, but I need to be away.
I can’t answer more questions. I can’t have them ask where Aunt Daphne is, Lucien.
You know what will happen. You know who will be blamed for her disappearance. ”
“What will I do without you and Mother?” he asked miserably.
Lucien gave him a piteous look. “You will fix things in Aldorhaven with the Paranormal Society’s help while I fix the Dysterwood. We both need to put things to rights. That is, if I’m permitted to stay.”
“The Dysterwood will be open to anyone who needs it,” Joanna said gesturing to the glade, “though it may take me a few days to make a proper home.”
“I can rough it.”
Oliver and Felipe stood near the tree as Will and Lucien said their goodbyes.
As Felipe left to warn Lucien they would be leaving soon, Oliver frowned thoughtfully.
He wasn’t certain how he felt about Will staying behind or his mother becoming something not quite human, or being younger than him, but they deserved to finally live.
A prickle of magic tingled against his neck a second before a finger tapped against his shoulder.
When Oliver turned, he found his mother holding the amber ring.
A small smile curled her lips as her gaze trailed from his heart to Felipe’s.
“I think you’ll be needing this.”