The Lord of the Wood

xii. In which Arthur ill-advisedly crosses a bridge

Arthur sprinted alongside the stream, afraid to leave it. With each of the eagles’ whistles, cold air blasted behind him,

closer than before. But the stream was all he had. If he lost sight of that, he feared it wouldn’t matter what the eagles

did to him.

The water dove thundering into a ravine. Arthur stumbled, avoiding the chasm. Freya’s claws dug into his chest.

Winging along behind him, the eagles caught sight of him. One opened its terrible beak and let out another whistle. A burst

of wind cut through him like a knife.

Arthur fell to his knees, numb with cold. The blood froze on his forehead. Frost spread over leaves and flowers, rocks and

bark. Ice crackled across the waterfall.

Breathing hard, Arthur struggled to his feet. He staggered along, the cat at his side, with one eagle following. Its mate

winged onward without it, vanishing in the trees.

Arthur skidded to a halt. A swinging bridge swayed over the ravine.

Its ends were speared into massive trees whose bark had grown around them, or perhaps the bridge had grown from the trees.

Its rails were not rope but long, thin twists of bark and wood.

Moss and lichens stained them gray-green.

The planks were raw and soft with age; several were missing.

At the bridge’s far end, brambles grew so thickly in the shadow of tall black pines that there seemed no way past.

Arthur swallowed. The bridge looked treacherous. He didn’t know what lay beyond the brambles, or if he could get through them

in the first place.

The eagle whistled behind him. Arthur rubbed his arms with numb fingers. Gritting his teeth, he started across the bridge.

“Oh, I don’t like this,” he moaned.

The cat raced past, her fluffy tail waving in his face. He watched her closely, certain she had a special animal sense for

which planks were safe.

Then he stopped watching, because the eagle was closing in. He stumbled along. Planks creaked. Frost crackled. A plank cracked

underfoot, and Arthur lunged for the bridge’s sides.

The plank gave way. Arthur’s leg slipped six inches. The straps of his knapsack dug into his shoulders.

The eagle cried out, closer now, the frost thickened to ice with a sharp crack, the cat bounded back across the bridge as

if to help—

The eagle was upon him.

Arthur yanked his leg up. Freya launched herself at the raptor, clawing into one massive wing. Snapping its beak angrily,

the eagle rammed the bridge, buffeting Arthur against its sides.

“Freya,” he croaked.

The cat yowled. The eagle shook her off; she hurtled toward Arthur’s head. He tried to catch her in his arms, caught her with

his face instead, and yelped in pain.

With a crack and a roar, the sides split, the far end came unmoored, and the bridge collapsed.

“Freya, jump!” Arthur yelped.

She pushed off his back and skidded with a yowl into the brambles.

Arthur leaped after her. The knapsack weighed like an anchor.

His fingers scraped stone, not enough. He clung to the bridge as it fell, slamming into the side of the ravine.

The eagle whistled once and winged away. Little comfort, now that Arthur clung to a crackling length of bark slick with frost.

He tried to pull himself up. Rose an inch, slipped back down. He clung tighter.

“Freya?”

A disgruntled, furry head peered into the ravine.

“Help me,” he moaned. His hands slipped. Pieces of the bridge cracked apart and fell away, splashing into the stream far below.

His breath hitched. In for four, hold for four, out for four, in for oh dear his hands were slipping farther—

The bark split. Arms straining, Arthur renewed his grip and pulled himself up—up—up. He dug his feet into the side of the

ravine and pushed off, hurtling upward into thorns.

The remains of the bridge buckled and dropped, landing with a distant splash at the bottom of the ravine.

Arthur struggled away from the thorns with a whimper, so desperate to be free of them he nearly fell after the bridge. Heart

pounding, he sat on the narrow strip of earth between the ravine and the brambles with his head in his hands. His face was

scratched. His arms and shoulders ached.

“Mrrf,” Freya said, twisting around him. He let out a breath, comforted by her soft, warm aliveness.

Arthur staggered to his feet, taking stock.

He was alive. He wasn’t frozen into a block of ice; his fingers were stiff but not blue.

That was something. He had the cat, who wound around his ankles with a purr.

Charlotte’s rowan cross and his watch-repairing kit were in his pocket.

His father’s silver acorn hung from his neck.

Miraculously, he hadn’t lost his knapsack.

He shrugged it off, afraid it might have come open during the encounter and lost his books.

All three were in place, alongside the paltry other items he’d had in his knapsack instead of his suitcase. He sat back with

a sigh. That was something, too.

But there was a sharp drop before him, thick brambles behind him, and massive eagles who knew where. He shuddered. If they

returned, he’d be a sitting duck. He was alone except for the cat. His forehead wasn’t bleeding anymore because the blood

had frozen, but it would surely resume bleeding once he warmed up. His fingers were so stiff he doubted he could’ve done anything

about that even if he’d had more medical knowledge.

“Come on, Freya. Let’s get off this ledge.”

Whatever was beyond the brambles, it had to be better than here. The cat picked her way through them without so much as a

scratch.

“Show off,” Arthur said.

He plucked at the nearest cane, careful not to catch his fingers on the thorns. To his astonishment, at his first touch, the

brambles pulled aside, creating a narrow trail.

Arthur peered through. All he could see was Freya’s furry form and darkness.

She mrowred at him.

“If you think it’s safe.”

He clutched his knapsack to his chest and sidled sideways through the brambles. They closed behind him as he went. He swallowed,

feeling like he’d stepped into the cup of a carnivorous plant.

The brambles opened into a thicket of pine trees, through which was whiteness. The pines enveloped Arthur in their spicy scent but, like the brambles, gave way before him and closed behind him. He wasn’t sure why they’d let him through. Whether that was good or not.

“Thank you,” he said, just in case.

Neither trees nor brambles responded. Probably for the best.

Arthur turned around and dropped his knapsack.

It was snowing.

Not just snowing—fat, fluffy snowflakes drifting in the soft gray twilight—but snowy. Snow blanketed the ground and iced branches like gingerbread. It was the second of September, but in this little woodland

vale, it was firmly winter. The doing of the terrible, cold-bringing eagles, perhaps.

The vale looked lived-in. The snowy clearing had a firepit, a stone oven and well, a clothesline, and a low table with several

crates jumbled beneath it. Rough-hewn stools scattered in the midst of everything else. An arched wooden door stood in the

face of a bulbous wooden house to the left.

None of the trees was stained black. A blue tit hopped along the branches of a nearby fir, singing and perfectly opaque. It

was almost hard to believe Arthur hadn’t imagined the skeletal animals and oozing trees.

Nonetheless, he advanced into the clearing cautiously, hugging his knapsack to his chest. “Hello?”

No one answered. Everything was well-kept, but the falling snow had obscured any recent footprints.

Arthur bit his lip. It seemed strange the forest would offer a haven after putting him through so much, but the vale seemed

safe enough. Safer than where they’d been, at any rate, but whose home was it? Whoever lived here might jump out and attack,

or challenge him to a series of riddles, of which he’d get the last wrong and be turned to stone, or eaten, or perhaps they’d

skip the formalities and eat him right off the bat.

Well, no good standing here.

He knocked on the door of the oddly shaped house. “Hello?”

Not a house: a tree. Rather, it was a house, but a house built into—or growing from—an oak tree with an impossibly distended belly. Instead of a roof, the crown

of the tree branched up and out, extending past the surrounding evergreens in both directions. Arthur gaped, recollected himself,

and knocked again.

“I don’t mean to intrude, but . . .”

The door creaked open. Arthur swallowed. Notwithstanding their helpfulness, he didn’t like the way things kept responding

to him—as if someone were watching.

He peered into the tree-house. “Hello?”

It was unlike any house he’d ever seen, all wooden curves and smooth edges. The door and windows curved into funny, fairy-tale

shapes. Greenery draped the walls and stairs, but he couldn’t tell whether it grew from them or had been hung there. The thin

light of a winter evening filtered through the windows and, somehow, the ceiling. Craning his neck, Arthur found the ceiling

wasn’t a ceiling so much as the dense and tangled canopy of a tree, except that no cold or snow came through. Odds and ends

dangled from the branches: dried bunches of herbs, coils of rope, bags of roots and apples, and a curious silver basin.

For all its wonder, the house was tiny. By the door was a small round table with a single chair tucked under it. Beyond were

a woodstove and two armchairs, one shabby, the other barely touched. A double bed with a curved headboard and a patchwork

quilt squeezed into the far corner alongside a small side table and a chest of drawers. An icebox and counter were along the

front wall. A short, low staircase curved around the wall behind the stove and disappeared, perhaps to a washroom. That was

it.

The house was warm and dry, however, which was all Arthur could wish for.

A fire crackled within the stove; a pot of stew simmered on its surface.

Arthur’s mouth watered. Someone must have been here recently, to have left the fire going, but he stepped farther into the house without thinking.

His extremities stung in the sudden warmth.

No longer did he wonder whether the vale was safe, what eldritch creature might live here, why the forest might have led him to safety after all the tricks it had played.

His whole concern was for his immediate needs, all of which the house promised to meet.

Freya had already wandered as far as the armchairs, nosing at them as if to determine which was more comfortable.

“By all means,” Arthur said. “Make yourself at home.”

He staggered toward the woodstove, but his legs wobbled and gave way. Now that he seemed safe, his body had given up on, well,

everything.

Not sure what else to do, he kicked his shoes off and dragged himself to the bed. He collapsed on the patchwork quilt, too

exhausted to bother getting under it. The cat curled into a fluffy black ball at his side. Within minutes, they were both

asleep.

They hadn’t been asleep long when they awoke to a figure standing over the bed.

The cat hissed and streaked across the room, darting under one of the armchairs.

Arthur’s heart hammered, but he sat up slowly. The figure was a man, mostly. Shorter than Arthur by several inches, with pallid

skin, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in a long time, and dark hair in a knot. A scar ran from his left brow to his cheek, his

eye milky and faded; his other eye was hazel, dark and mossy in the dim light of the woodstove. He wore old furs and a knee

brace, put his weight on his left leg.

The man had antlers. Autumn leaves, crimson and gold, wound around them. A tangle of greenery curled over his shoulders and

around his throat as if it had grown there.

Arthur’s breath caught. The man was like something from a fairy tale.

Or he was, until he growled, “This is too much.”

Arthur scrunched his shirt in his fists. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude, I—”

“Is it not enough for men to destroy the forest? Must you penetrate my very home?”

Gripping Arthur by the shoulder, the man dragged him from the bed. Arthur’s mouth went dry. The man’s fingers dug into him,

hard and hurting.

He threw Arthur into the snow. Arthur landed hard on his elbows, socks damp and skin stinging with cold. The man stood over

him, chest heaving. Breath curled from his nose like steam. A tendril of greenery lifted from his shoulder as if looking over

it.

Freya slipped past and stood over Arthur, her fur standing on end.

“Get out,” the man said, his voice low and hoarse, “and if the forest lets you live, tell the rest of your kind to stay away.”

Arthur rolled shakily to his knees. He noticed, with a shiver, that the man had a wolf’s paws instead of human feet.

“All right,” Arthur gasped, “all right, I’m going—let me grab my shoes and I’ll—”

The man lunged. Arthur flinched, but the man merely grabbed the silver acorn hanging from his neck and glinting in the winter

twilight. Freya hissed; he ignored her. The green tendril shot toward her, bobbing about her ears. She batted it away.

“Where did you get this?” the man asked.

“It was my father’s,” Arthur squeaked.

The man’s grip tightened, knuckles against his throat. Arthur swallowed.

The man’s eyes flickered over his face. “Your father?”

“George Throckmorton.”

The man’s anger drained away, leaving his expression unreadable. The greenery at his shoulders swayed confusedly.

“George Throckmorton,” he repeated under his breath.

He let out a huff of something like laughter. His breath fogged Arthur’s glasses.

He released the acorn, hand dropping to his side. For the first time, he considered Arthur. Arthur shrank under his gaze,

wondering what he was looking for. What he saw.

“You must be Arthur,” the man said.

Arthur’s skin prickled. He hadn’t known what to expect when he’d found the vale, when he’d entered the tree-house, but it

wasn’t this. He didn’t know what to make of this angry little man with his antlers and paws, his scar and knee brace, who

was unknown to Arthur but knew his name.

“How do you— I don’t—” Arthur got to his feet, hugging the cat. She twisted in his arms to glare at the man and his greenery.

“Who are you?”

The man dragged a hand over his face.

“The Lord of the Wood,” he said.