xiv. In which Arthur visits a grave
The cottage was bright and clean. Arthur sat in his faded floral armchair, reading a romance novel with earplugs in because
Charlotte, in her armchair and embroidering a handkerchief, was listening to her favorite radio program. A fire crackled in
the grate. The children played war on the rug at their mother’s and uncle’s feet. Sasha was winning, of course; Jonas was
losing with good grace, which Sasha hadn’t learned to do yet.
Then Sasha asked Arthur if he’d read his book aloud. That should’ve been his first clue things were amiss, because Sasha never
asked him to read his books aloud, lest she hear a kissing scene. But Arthur, delighted, obliged. It seemed a perfectly sensible
thing to do.
Waking was a slow business. The images faded, but the ease and comfort of an evening spent by the fire with his family remained.
Arthur was exceptionally warm, the cat purring on his chest. The window wasn’t even rattling. Any moment, Charlotte would
call him down for breakfast, if she was up. Since her illness, she sometimes slept late.
With that thought, Arthur decided to get up.
If she was asleep, he could make her breakfast in bed.
Or, well, he could ask Jonas to help him make her breakfast, since Arthur needed supervision in the kitchen for anything other than baking.
Even toast eluded him: It either burned or turned out closer to stale bread.
He opened his eyes, squinting. How odd. The attic was never so bright, no matter the time of day; the window over his bed
was small, and the attic was all unwhitewashed beams and planks. He felt around the windowsill for his glasses, but the sill
wasn’t wide enough and his glasses weren’t there.
Arthur found them on a bedside table on his other side. He frowned. He didn’t have a bedside table.
When he put his glasses on, his heart sank. The bed was not his own.
He let out a long breath. The Lord of the Wood. He was in the Lord of the Wood’s house—in his bed—in a wintry vale in the
middle of the forest. By the looks of it, Ira had tucked him into extra blankets while he’d slept. Good thing, too. As Arthur
shoved them aside and swung his legs over the bed, he shivered. The frigid floorboards stung his feet.
A dream. Arthur had dreamed he was home. It had felt so real—
He turned over and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he were home. If the Lord of the Wood was to be believed, Arthur would never go home again.
He should’ve known. Stumbling into the relative safety of the vale had seemed too good to be true, but he’d been too exhausted
to worry about it.
What would Charlotte think? The children? He’d promised to return. He’d thought he’d bring back the clock, and Agnes would
give him the rest of the money, and they’d all be better off.
Instead, he’d spend the rest of his life in this eternal winter. His family would never know what had happened to him, the
same as when his father had vanished.
He wished George had found his way to the vale. If he had, surely he’d be here now. Older, grayer, likely less cheerful, after three decades in a sunless, snowy vale far from his wife and children, but alive and well. It would almost have been worth being trapped here.
Arthur sat up slowly. “Ira?”
A movement overhead caught his gaze. Calyx dropped to the floor and swayed over him. Gasping, Arthur scrambled farther back
onto the bed.
Freya darted between them. Her ears flattened, but she made no noise as she glared at the plant creature.
Arthur’s voice quivered. “It’s all right.”
He hardly knew which of them he was talking to. Fronds shifted in his direction. Anything further he might’ve said died in
his throat.
Calyx turned away and slid across the floor, its leaves and vines and branches and flowers shifting and weaving until it was
dog-shaped. It pushed the door open and vanished outside.
Letting out a breath, Arthur patted Freya’s side. “I don’t like that thing, either.”
A pair of lumpy woolen socks had been left on the bedside table. Like the extra blankets, they had not been there when Arthur
had gone to bed. He softened at the sight. Ira had left them out for him.
He pulled the socks on and braved the frigid floorboards to stir up the coals in the woodstove. No spare logs to be found,
but stirring the coals did something, at any rate. Arthur warmed his hands. He found his shoes, shrugged on his coat, and
crept outside. Following him to the door, Freya put one delicate paw in the snow and sat in the doorway with a disgruntled
meow.
The Lord of the Wood was nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, neither was his plantish guardian.
Arthur’s breath fogged before him. His coat was inadequate for this kind of cold, but he snuck toward the brambles. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting Ira or Calyx to pop up and stop him.
The brambles were thicker and pricklier than he remembered. He thought they would part before him as they had yesterday, but
they didn’t.
“Open up, please.”
Nothing happened. Arthur’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
“Please?”
Nothing.
“I just want to go home. Let me go. Please.”
Determined to escape, he tugged thorny canes apart. The forest was enchanted; surely the bridge had magically repaired itself
since yesterday. If he could just get through these damn brambles, he could cross the bridge and go home.
He lost his grip on a cane. It smacked him in the face. He stumbled back, clutching a cheek scratched so deeply it bled. His
throat closed up; he wanted to cry.
“Please,” he whispered.
Freya braved the snow to wind around his legs comfortingly. He sat, heedless of the damp and cold, and rested his chin on
his knees. He’d get home. He’d find another way out of here, no matter what Ira said. Somehow.
“It won’t have grown back, you know.”
Arthur’s head jerked up. Ira stood before him with a cord of wood in his arms. His antlers gleamed in the gray morning light,
as did the claws on his massive wolf’s paws. Calyx trailed behind him, shrinking and morphing into a shape not unlike a cat.
Freya glared, unamused.
“What?”
Ira stowed all but a couple logs beneath the table. “The bridge. The forest could regrow it, but it won’t.”
“Why not?”
“The better to keep me here.”
Arthur got to his feet. “So when you said you don’t leave the vale . . .”
Ira gave a slantwise smile. A wolfish smile. Arthur shuddered.
“The forest makes it difficult.” The smile vanished. “You must be cold. Come inside. Let’s take care of that scratch.”
Arthur glanced back at the brambles. He’d only hoped the bridge had grown back, but he’d been certain the brambles would let
him through. Now they seemed determined to keep him here.
Inside, Ira wiped blood from his cheek and dotted a salve on the scratch. Calyx stood guard beside him.
“No harm done. It’ll heal before you know it.”
Ira stirred up the coals in the stove. To Arthur’s relief, Calyx turned away. It dragged itself into Ira’s empty armchair
and draped itself over the whole thing.
“It’s trying to protect me,” Ira said suddenly. “The forest.”
Huddled in his own chair, Arthur said nothing. Freya jumped into his lap.
“It thinks I’ll be safe as long as I’m in the vale,” Ira continued. “As long as nothing changes. That’s why it’s always winter
here. Nothing changes in winter, the forest thinks. It’s right, a bit. That’s why the wood’s sickness hasn’t infected the
vale yet.”
He crouched beside the stove with a log.
“Of course, it won’t work.” The log went into the stove. “One day, the sickness will spread here as it has everywhere else.
I’ll die, and the forest will die with me.”
He didn’t sound upset by this, merely resigned.
Despite himself, Arthur felt a kinship with the Lord of the Wood. As Seacliff had been dying a slow death since the draining of the fishing grounds, Ira’s home was dying a slow death from wood sickness.
“Is all this because the heart of the wood was chopped down?”
Ira stiffened but said, after a long moment, “There’s something I should show you.”
He rose with a soft groan, rubbing his knee, and glanced at Arthur.
“Have you eaten yet?”
Arthur shook his head. Ira pulled a fur from the pegs by the door and tossed it at him.
“Eat. Stew is in the icebox. Then put that on and come find me.”
“Come find—”
Ira had already stalked outside. Calyx scrambled off the armchair to follow.
Arthur lifted Freya onto the floor. “Not very chatty, is he?”
He ate the stew cold, straight from the icebox. Freya begged for bits of meat. Had they been home, he would’ve resisted the
begging (or tried to), but the cat had to eat.
When they’d finished, he wrapped the fur around himself. It was thick and warm and smelled, faintly but surprisingly, of spring
flowers. Arthur closed his eyes, breathing in the scent and trying to pretend he was home, on a bright May morning, hanging
laundry with Charlotte. But there was the scent from the woodstove, too, and the sting on his cheek where the brambles had
struck him. With a sigh, he headed outside.
Ira had left clawed pawprints, bordered on one side by odd drag marks that must have been made by his guardian. Arthur followed
them.
Around the side of the house, Ira had returned to chopping wood. Despite the cold, he’d shed his furs and shirt. His back was corded with muscle—and his shoulders were feathered. Glossy black feathers like those of a raven winged from shoulder to shoulder across his upper back.
Arthur inhaled sharply. The paws and antlers had been quite enough.
Calyx huddled at the base of a nearby tree, smaller than usual. It shuddered at each chop of the axe, tendrils sliding over
itself as if shielding nonexistent ears.
Wiping his brow, Ira turned and threw down the axe. The feathers were less noticeable from the front, barely rounding the
tops of his shoulders. Instead, Arthur was confronted with his chest and the trail of fine, dark hair running down his stomach
and into his trousers. The sight threatened to do funny things to him, like make him blush for unclear reasons. Arthur tended