xix. In which Arthur sees his family, but not the way he expects
Arthur’s last attempt at escaping the vale had been yesterday morning.
Too nervous to reapproach the brambles, he’d tried to climb over the tree-house. He should’ve known he’d fail; Arthur had
never been much of a tree climber. Sasha was much better.
He’d fallen, landed on his back with a yelp, and winded himself. Ira had found him sprawled in the snow. As when he’d discovered
Arthur amidst the trees the day prior, he’d been pale and tight-jawed. But he hadn’t growled or snarled or lunged at Arthur
and grabbed him. He’d merely asked, in a strained voice, what had happened, and made Arthur wiggle his fingers and toes and
move his arms and legs to make sure he hadn’t been paralyzed in the fall.
(He had not.)
Despite Calyx’s objections, Ira had helped Arthur to his armchair (when had Arthur started thinking of it as his?
he wasn’t sure), warmed the heating pad for him, and checked periodically to make sure he could still move his limbs.
Eventually, Ira had regained his color and lost the tension in his jaw.
And Arthur had realized, in astonishment, that he’d been frightened.
Even though the forest, this time, could not be blamed for anything that might’ve happened.
The fall had been entirely Arthur’s own fault, the climb his own ridiculous idea.
For the rest of the day, Arthur sat in his chair, nursing a strained back and reading a novel. By Saturday afternoon, between
chair, heating pad, and a pain-killing ointment, Arthur’s back felt better except for the occasional twinge. His mood, however,
had taken a sharp dive. He tried to read, but he couldn’t help thinking what a long life it would be, with only three books
and one watch and no Sasha to run in and interrupt his reading.
Freya purred in his lap. That didn’t help, either. He kept wondering whether the children missed her.
For a while, he sank into the story, but at last—realizing he’d read the same paragraph several times without absorbing it—he
closed his book with a sigh. To his surprise, he found Ira turned toward him at a sharper angle than usual, like he wanted
to get the best look he could at Arthur with his one functional eye.
“What?” Arthur asked.
Ears pinkening, Ira turned hastily away. “Nothing.”
There was a stick of charcoal in his hand and a yellow block of paper in his lap. He often had something in his hands in the
evening hours they whiled away by the stove, but usually it was work. Laundry to fold. Torn clothes to mend, or clothing he
was altering for Arthur. Garlic to jar. Root vegetables he’d taken down from the ceiling to peel for tomorrow’s supper. A
knife and a block of wood to make a new foot for the bedside table when it wobbled. Pruning shears, because Calyx needed periodic
pruning like the cat needed brushing.
This didn’t seem like that.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asked.
“Drawing.”
Arthur’s interest was piqued. “I didn’t know you could draw.”
“It’s been a long time. I haven’t . . . Being here, without even the seasons changing—I ran out of new things to draw ages
ago.”
Arthur leaned over. “Can I see?”
Ira’s ears were pinker than ever. Biting his lip, he handed Arthur the yellowed paper.
It was covered in sketches of Arthur. Arthur reading in his chair, sitting one way, then another, because sitting properly
in chairs was another on the long list of things he was bad at. Arthur frowning, or smiling, or with eyes close to the page
as he got lost in a particularly tense scene. The sketches were quick and simple, lines layered over lines without erasure,
but it gave them softness.
Arthur caught Ira’s gaze, not sure what to say. The sketches, the sharing of them, felt like a gift.
Ira cleared his throat.
“You’re very expressive.” He took the block back, set it aside. “I wanted to sketch you the other day—you made so many faces
while you were repairing the watch—but it’s been so long, and there was the shirt to alter for you . . .”
“Are there more?” Arthur asked. “If you don’t mind showing me?”
Ira went to the chest of drawers by the bed, returning with a sheaf of yellowed papers. Calyx nosed at him; Ira leaned into
its fronds and vines.
“I used to draw George a lot. I liked drawing people, but I saw so little of anyone but him. Think it got on his nerves sometimes.”
He handed the papers to Arthur and perched in his chair, drumming his fingers on his thighs.
Arthur’s eyes prickled, but he smiled. There was a portrait, George wearing a grin so like Charlotte’s.
“It looks just like him. You’re very good.”
“Thanks.”
Arthur sifted through the drawings, drinking them in as if a rain of new images might deepen the pool of memory. The portrait
was the most detailed, like George had sat for it, but the rest were sketches like those Ira had done of Arthur. Profiles
in various moods. George reading or sorting plants. One of George looking over his shoulder, annoyed, as if Ira’s incessant
drawing of him had indeed gotten on his nerves.
Arthur chuckled, but a lump swelled in his throat.
“Lottie certainly does look like him,” he said, tracing his father’s brow with a finger. He missed Charlotte telling him about
the latest development in her favorite radio program. Sasha running to show him a bug she’d found. Jonas asking questions
about their father.
He wanted to cry, but he handed the drawings back and sat blinking in his chair. Ira deposited Calyx in its spot by the stove
and put the drawings, charcoal stick, and block of paper away.
Returning to his seat, he touched Arthur’s shoulder briefly. “Are you all right?”
Arthur swallowed. “It’s just, I promised them I’d come back.”
“Your family?”
Arthur nodded. “You seem to expect me to accept that this is my home now. But I can’t bear the thought I might never see them
again.”
Ira hesitated. “There is a way. It isn’t . . . It won’t . . . You won’t be able to speak to them. I want you to know that.
But you could see them.”
“How?”
Ira nodded him toward the table. Careful to avoid tangling his antlers in the items hanging from the ceiling, he took down the silver basin, filled it with water, and set it before Arthur.
“In my memories?” Arthur said in disappointment.
Ira shook his head. “It can do that, if you wish. But it can show them to you now, too. Wherever they are, whatever they’re
doing. For memories, hair. For this . . .”
Taking Arthur’s hand, he produced a pocketknife. Arthur recoiled. Ira released him.
“Do you want to see them?”
Arthur’s hand tingled at the prospect of making contact with the blade, but he nodded.
Ira opened the knife and held it to Arthur’s fingertip. He paused.
“It may disorient you. It’s not like seeing the memories.”
Arthur let out a breath. The blade flashed, his finger stung, and a drop of blood fell into the basin.
He stood inside his cottage kitchen, gazing out at the heathery cliffside, the dark and turbulent sea beyond. His heart pounded
at the change. The windows rattled in their panes.
“Ira?” Arthur said, but he could no longer see or hear the Lord of the Wood. He felt a pang, imagining Ira in the vale alone.
Until he turned and saw the children.
To his surprise, they sat at the table not with Charlotte but with Kitty Tierney. His worry softened: Charlotte had asked
for help in his absence! He’d hoped she might but hadn’t actually expected her to.
The thought didn’t last long. Sasha slumped, her head on her arms. Jonas picked at their lower lip, a habit they’d mostly
grown out of but sometimes fell into when stressed. Each of them had a plate of fresh biscuits, but neither had eaten any.
Sasha’s plate was shoved off to the side.
“Children?”
They didn’t respond. Arthur moved toward them, feeling oddly like he was in a dream.
Kitty’s eyes flickered between the two children. She broke a biscuit into pieces and said, in a voice of forced cheer, “Well!
Time yet before bed. What about that story, then, Sasha?”
Sasha sniffled. To Arthur’s astonishment, fat tears slid down her cheeks and dripped from her nose.
“Sasha,” he said weakly. “Duckling, don’t cry. Everything’s all right—”
Kitty touched Sasha’s elbow.
“There now,” she said soothingly, but her brow furrowed. “Your mam’s smart as anything, and besides, she’s got that—that Miss McIntire
with her. She’ll come back all right.”
Arthur’s blood ran cold. “Come back from where?”
Kitty didn’t answer.
“What if she doesn’t?” Jonas asked, picking at their lip. “What if Uncle Arthur never comes back, and she doesn’t either?”
“Jonas,” Arthur croaked. “I’m right here. Where’s Lottie? Jonas—”
None of them noticed him. A trick, that’s all it was. A trick of a silver basin and a knife and his own blood, and a man with
antlers who’d told him he could see his family.
He reached for Sasha. His hand passed through her, as if he were a ghost—as if she were.
“I’m sure she will,” Kitty said. “With your uncle in tow, I shouldn’t wonder. If anyone can come out of that forest alive,
she can. Come now, children, let’s have a story and I’m sure we’ll all feel much better for it.”
Arthur tore from the kitchen. The forest? Charlotte wouldn’t have gone into the forest—no, not even to look for him. It was
foolishness, and Charlotte was not a fool. She was in the house. She had to be.
“Lottie!”
The sitting room was empty. Her bedroom, too, and her boots and cane were not in their habitual place beside her bed, nor
her coat on its hook. Still Arthur searched, thundering up to the attic as if he might find her sorting through old clothes
or broken furniture.
“Lottie!”
Into the washroom without even knocking. Through his workshop, out into the garden, as if she might’ve been hanging laundry
by moonlight.
All deserted.
“Lottie,” he whispered.
The small stretch of heather between the fence and the forest’s edge was empty. Flattened by wheels the way it had been flattened
by his father’s feet thirty years before, when Arthur had run outside this same way, too late.
He threw the gate open and sprinted into the trees, but no sooner had they closed around him than he was sitting in a chair
at a tiny table in a funny wooden house. He gasped for breath, glancing around wildly in confusion.
“I did warn you,” Ira said quietly beside him.
Blood congealed at Arthur’s fingertip. He pictured the slump of Sasha’s shoulders, Jonas picking their lip, the missing boots
and coat and cane, and the same empty yard he’d run outside to three decades ago.
“Arthur?”
Arthur shoved back from the table, bolted to his feet, and ran outside.
“Arthur—”
He didn’t make it far. Yards from the door, Ira caught his hand, tugged him to a stop. His eyes went over Arthur’s face in
alarm.
“What’s wrong? What did you see?”
Arthur yanked his hand from Ira’s. His voice was high with panic. “It’s Lottie—she’s come after me—she’s in the forest—”
Snow soaked into his socks, but he didn’t care. Ira blocked his path.
“Let me pass,” Arthur said.
In the doorway, Calyx unraveled, clicking. Ira held his hands up, talking to Arthur as if he were a spooked horse.
“Come inside. I’m sure we can—”
“I have to find my sister!”
“Arthur—”
Arthur pushed past. Ira grabbed his wrist, but Arthur whirled around, wrenched away, and shoved him.
“Let go of me!”
Calyx slammed into him.
Vines squeezed around his stomach and ribs, spiraling down his legs and binding them. Clawing at the creature, Arthur collapsed
in the snow.
“Don’t,” Ira said, his hoarse voice laced with panic for the first time since Arthur had met him. “Calyx, stop!”
Vines shackled Arthur’s wrists. Calyx wrenched his head back—then tendrils slithered into him. His nose. His mouth. His ears. Ira was shouting, but it was distant, muted.
Arthur screamed, tried to, but he choked on plant matter. Leaves sealed over his face, vines wrapped around his neck—he gasped
for breath, couldn’t breathe—stars burst behind his eyelids—
He was free. Sucking down air, he scrambled away from where he’d been, afraid he’d find himself trapped again.
“Arthur?”
Several yards away, Ira wrestled Calyx under control. It had grown bigger than Arthur had ever seen, spilling vines and fronds
over Ira’s arms and shoulders. Tendrils swayed in Arthur’s direction. He backed away.
Ira’s face was pale, his eyes wide and horrified. “Arthur—”
A vine shot in Arthur’s direction. Arthur turned and ran.
“Arthur!”
He sprinted blindly across the vale, launched himself at the brambles, and clawed his way into them. They smacked him, stinging
his cheeks and neck and hands.
“Arthur!”
He was buried in brambles. They yanked on his clothes and arms. A thorn pierced the fleshy part of his hand.
Somewhere behind him, Ira swore. With an unpleasant dragging sound, a vine wrapped around Arthur’s ankle. He kicked at it,
made contact.
“Calyx, stop—”
Angry clicking, a growl, and Calyx let go.
The brambles grew thicker and thornier, scratching Arthur’s face, catching on his hair, snaking around a wrist, more thorns
piercing his skin. He kicked forward inch by inch.
A mrowr sounded in his ear. Freya crept past, winding through the canes with ease. Arthur gritted his teeth and followed. Thorns tore
his shirt and skin.
Then he fell forward. With a splash, he landed face-first in frigid water and sat up sputtering. Behind him, Ira called his
name with increasing desperation.
Arthur squeezed his eyes shut. He still felt Calyx forcing vines down his throat, into his nose and ears.
He still saw the wheel tracks in the heather behind the garden back home.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he splashed away from the vale.