xxx. In which Charlotte gains a new pet
The snow was up to Charlotte’s ankles, dampening her socks. She was colder than she’d been all day, but the bite of snow distracted
her from the memory of the faces and voices.
Nearby, a blue tit alit on a branch and burst into song. Elspeth laughed, running a hand through her hair. Charlotte let out
a breath; the forest had been so silent. Whatever this place was, the sickness hadn’t touched it.
A tangle of greenery dropped into the snow before them, startling the mule. Elspeth quieted him but drew closer to Charlotte.
The greenery stretched over them menacingly.
Almost menacingly. It wobbled as it grew, half frozen, the tips of its leaves and vines black with cold.
Then it sneezed: curled in on itself, shivered violently, and exploded. Vines, leaves, and flowers unspooled around it. Elspeth
dragged Charlotte back with a curse, but the plant thing flopped in the snow. It clicked miserably, so softly Charlotte almost
thought she was imagining it.
Handing Elspeth her cane, she approached.
“Lottie,” Elspeth said sharply, but Charlotte crouched in the snow with difficulty.
A tendril shot up, swaying in her direction. It curled back in a moment later, shivering. The plant creature reminded her of Freya. Not as she was now, but as she’d been three years ago: a scrawny kitten hiding under the Throckmorton-Prentices’ chicken coop, hissing when Charlotte found her.
Charlotte held out a hand. “It’s all right. We won’t hurt you.”
“What’re you doing?” Elspeth said incredulously.
“I think it’s cold.”
The tendril uncurled, reaching for Charlotte’s hand, and made contact. It wrapped around her wrist.
“That’s right,” Charlotte said soothingly.
“We’re cold, Lottie. Leave it be. It’s some sort of eldritch—something.”
Various appendages dragged themselves toward Charlotte, seeking warmth. The plant creature pulled itself into her arms and
snuggled into her. Charlotte wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but it seemed harmless now.
“Why, it’s nothing but a houseplant. Let’s take it with us.”
She rose on joints stiff with cold. The plant creature slung down several vines; the extra support stabilized her.
Elspeth stared.
“What?” Charlotte said.
“Who are you?”
Charlotte flushed, but she cradled the greenery in her arms. It had been the same with Freya. The children had been over the
moon about their new pet but seemed to have expected her to turn it out of the house because she wouldn’t let the cat sit
on the table. Arthur had been astonished she’d brought a cat inside in the first place. Did people think she was heartless?
“Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
Elspeth shook her head but handed Charlotte’s cane back without further objection. As they rounded a bend in the snow, the unmistakable signs of habitation distracted her entirely from Charlotte’s new pet.
Everything was half buried, like no one had been here in some time. The little stone well and matching oven. The table with
crates jumbled beneath it. The laundry line. Scattered stools not unlike one Arthur had made for Charlotte in recent months,
albeit more soundly constructed.
In the face of a massive, bulbous oak tree ahead was a door.
“We made it,” Elspeth breathed. “We’re here.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s like Gran’s stories. ’Cept for all the snow, I guess.”
Releasing the mule’s bridle, Elspeth stumbled toward the door as if in a trance. Charlotte hesitated, wondering whether she
should see to the animals, but went after her. Tendrils unfurled from the greenery to telescope in the direction of the tree.
Elspeth wrenched the door open.
“Elspeth—”
She’d already disappeared inside. Charlotte heard her clomping around, calling hello, so it seemed she hadn’t met an untimely end. Nonetheless, Charlotte was cautious as she ducked inside.
The house was tiny, a single room except for whatever might be up the low set of stairs curving around the back, and disappointingly
empty. But no dust had accumulated. The coals in the woodstove, though dark and cold, had been burning recently.
Elspeth disappeared up the stairs. Charlotte staggered toward the bed in the corner and sank onto it, stroking the greenery’s
fronds. The throbbing over her left eye jabbed at her. She winced.
Then she saw the tool kit.
It lay on the bedside table, so familiar that Charlotte forgot where she was and what they were doing.
She opened the kit and took stock. A collection of miniature screwdrivers.
A case opener. A cleaning cloth. A straight, nickel-plated brass bar with a thick middle and thinner, notched ends, one smaller and one larger.
She could never remember the name of the latter, but it was undoubtedly Arthur’s: The drip of paint on it had been there for years.
A tendril reached for the tool kit and poked at it. The plant creature clicked faintly.
“Lottie?”
She blinked. Elspeth had come back from wherever the stairs led and was frowning at her.
“All right?”
Charlotte closed the tool kit. Her chest buzzed. “Arthur’s been here.”
“How do you know?”
“This tool kit. Watch-repairing tools. They’re his.” Charlotte clutched the kit to her chest, half expecting him to pop out
of nowhere. The plant creature curled over her arm. “I’d know them anywhere. He’s been here.”
Elspeth examined the stove. “Can’t’ve been gone long. Someone’s been here within the last couple days, that’s sure enough.”
Charlotte’s hope at finding the tools faded.
“He was here. He must have been safe—” if he’d had his tool kit out, though she couldn’t imagine how he would’ve come by a
watch to fix in the middle of the forest “—so why did he leave?”
The only reasons Charlotte could imagine Arthur would have left a safe place, after running into danger in the forest, were bad ones.
Something, or someone, had chased him out.
Or killed him. Turned him into a tree. There had been so many of those twisted, terribly human trees.
Would Charlotte even recognize her brother, if he had joined their ranks?
You’ll never find me, his voice whispered in her head.
Her fingers dug into the tool kit. She breathed deeply, in for four, hold for four, out for four. The plant creature crept over her shoulder, shivering, and draped around her like a cloak.
“Hey, now,” Elspeth said. “You know he was here. That’s something.”
Charlotte laughed wetly.
“I mean it.” Elspeth crouched beside her. Her eyes flickered toward the plant creature, but she let it alone. “Maybe he’s
headed back to Seacliff. Lord of the Wood might’ve gone to take him home, same as he did for my gran and your da all them
years ago.”
“Maybe.” Charlotte wanted to cry. “But I could have found him here and gone home myself. Or I could’ve trusted he’d make it
back and stayed home in the first place.” Realizing what she’d said, she flushed. “That is—”
Elspeth smiled crookedly. “S’all right. You could’ve been home and I could be looking on my own. Looking on my own was the
plan anyhow, till I met you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“S’all right.” Elspeth dropped into one of the armchairs by the stove, wrapping herself tightly in her cloak. “Know you’re
none too fond of me. We’re working together, that’s all.”
She seemed morose, and no wonder. Charlotte had been so astonished to find a positive sign of her brother that she’d forgotten
all about Elspeth’s sister. Now she’d implied she’d rather not be traveling through the forest with Elspeth at all. Not that
she wouldn’t rather—but that was because of the forest, not Elspeth, though Elspeth was irritating and sarcastic and dreadfully informal. She was kind, too, in her deeds if not always in her words, and among the trees she’d been . . . Charlotte didn’t know what to term it. Scared. Vulnerable.
Charlotte abandoned the tool kit and joined Elspeth by the stove, the greenery swaying on her shoulders. The armchair she
sank into offered a small amount of comfort. After three days in a gig, over bumpy forest paths, a proper chair was a relief.
The plant creature slid from Charlotte’s shoulder, formed into a ball, and rolled toward the stove. Finding the coals cold,
it clicked fretfully.
“Maybe your sister was here, too,” Charlotte said.
Elspeth let out a long breath, gazing into the dark stove. “Don’t have to tell me lies to make me feel better. She’s been
gone for weeks. I know it’s just as likely I’m looking for a corpse.”
Her face twisted. Maybe she’d heard her sister’s voice in the trees. Taunting, telling her, You’ll never find me, the way Arthur’s voice had taunted Charlotte.
Charlotte wanted to comfort her, but that one sentence had been her attempt. Silly to have said it. It was the sort of thing
Arthur might have said, and that was well enough for him.
She didn’t like to sugarcoat things, though. If that’s what he did, she couldn’t do the same. If he believed the pleasant
things he said, she wasn’t sure how he managed it. Denial, maybe, and that certainly didn’t do anyone any good.
Maybe not, then, seemed a worse thing to say. And if Charlotte had already considered that Maggie might have been here but taken everything
with her when she left, Elspeth must have considered it, too.
She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “I don’t dislike you, you know.”
“Sure, it’s a fact I’m just about your favorite person.”
“Don’t . . .” Charlotte turned toward her. “It’s true that . . . Well, you do annoy me often enough.”
“There you are.”
“And we’re very different,” Charlotte said, ignoring her. “And goodness knows you have no sense of propriety.”
Elspeth snorted, but it seemed an improvement over the way she’d been staring into the stove. Charlotte heartened.
“But you’ve been good to me,” she continued. “Helping me home when we met, even though you didn’t have a clue who I was, and
I know I was rather belligerent about it. You’ve been sharing your cloak with me for two days. I know you’ve been freezing
today, but you wouldn’t take it unless we shared.”
“Right,” Elspeth said—acknowledging the borrowed cloak, Charlotte thought, but Elspeth crouched beside the stove to build
a fire.