The Lord of the Wood

xxxiv. In which Arthur falls into a fog

Arthur’s arms were leaden after carrying the cat for hours, but he wouldn’t put her down. She’d curled against his chest and

started purring and hadn’t let up.

His tears had dried, but he kept thinking: Why did I ever come here? What was I thinking?

Everything was a mess. He’d lost track of the days, but probably Mrs. Livingston’s cousin was dead. The clock might’ve sold

to someone else. Charlotte was in the forest, and maybe she was dead, too. Arthur’s grand adventure had been danger and misery

and a plant creature that had hated him on sight, and far too many wet socks, and injuries that, though magically healed,

throbbed periodically, as did his back. The only good of the whole situation had been Ira.

Now Ira was a beast. And they’d said terrible things to each other. And Arthur would probably die alone in the forest, without

reaching the heart of the wood, and so would Charlotte, and the children would never know what had happened, and Ira would

be a beast forever—or until the forest succumbed to wood sickness, and he died, too.

No wonder Arthur had been so afraid of getting everything he’d ever wanted.

Reality never lived up to one’s expectations; it burst the shining bubble of one’s dreams. Better to never have a chance of achieving them.

Then one could take comfort imagining they might one day come perfectly true.

The wood might prove enchanting instead of bedeviling.

The one upside—if it could be called that—was that Arthur thought he understood, at last, why his father had not told them

more about the Lord of the Wood. Why he’d spun a story of a forest prince, met once and left in gratitude. Had anyone asked

Arthur about the Lord of the Wood now, he might’ve done the same.

The thought brought little comfort. It restored George’s memory, but it sank Ira’s: The reality of him hadn’t lived up to

Arthur’s imaginings.

His stomach twisted. That was hardly fair, was it? Blaming Ira for being a person who got scared and angry and irrational.

For not resembling the mental image Arthur had carried so long—not only of the Lord of the Wood as George had described him,

but of the romance that might one day sweep Arthur away as it swept away the heroines in his novels.

Not for the first time, Arthur wondered what his father would’ve thought of what had happened between him and Ira. He wanted

to believe George would’ve accepted it without question, the way he’d always accepted Arthur without question. He’d always

seen things differently than most of Seacliff, perhaps because he—like so few villagers then—had ventured beyond it.

But Arthur remembered his father’s hesitation when he’d asked about the old fisherman and his friend, the answers George had given.

George had never hesitated before or since when answering his children’s questions, not even (to Arthur’s immediate regret) when Arthur had asked where babies came from.

If George had hedged his answer, it must’ve been because he found the truth shameful.

After all, he and Eileen had been a unit, and Eileen had been deeply uncomfortable with anything odd about Arthur the older he’d grown.

Not Charlotte, though. When she was twelve, she’d snorted and said, How silly, about their mother refusing to teach Arthur to bake biscuits, and taught him herself. When she was fifteen, their mother

had found one of his novels lying around, and Charlotte had claimed it was hers. She’d pretended to read until their mother

turned back to her needlepoint. That night, after Eileen had fallen asleep in the room she’d shared with Charlotte, Charlotte

had snuck into Arthur’s room and shoved the book into his hands.

I don’t see how you can read anything so saccharine.

The sex scenes are quite good, Arthur had said, even though the sex scenes were the least important bit to him, and she’d made him flip to one to show

her. He’d been mortified as she’d sat on the edge of his bed and read it with interest. With the same practicality of her

later years, she’d told him she might as well learn about sex from his romance novels if their mother wouldn’t tell her anything

about it, as seemed likely. Eileen teased Arthur periodically about sowing wild oats, only asking that he didn’t get any girls

into trouble, but she’d told Charlotte that good girls needn’t concern themselves with such things until marriage—even though

Charlotte had pointed out she could hardly perform her marital duty if she didn’t know what it was.

That was something, Arthur thought hopefully. Charlotte had always been there for him in a way no one else ever had. If anyone

would understand about him and Ira, it was her. He didn’t know whether he’d tell her, if she were to appear before him this

moment—though it seemed an awfully big secret to keep—but he hoped he’d have the chance to decide.

“I will,” he mumbled into the cat’s fur. “I will. I’m going to replant the heart of the wood, and then—”

Then he’d find his sister, somehow, and he’d throw himself at her and promise never to leave again.

The wood would be the beautiful place of enchantment he’d always imagined, the cottage would be as he’d left it, and they’d all live happily ever after.

Even if it was harder to pretend he wasn’t lonely, now.

Freya squirmed in his arms. He set her down, stretching. His elbow ached; he’d had one hand clenched around the acorn at his

neck the whole way. The acorn, warm and alive, was guiding him to the heart of the wood.

The forest was silent. Yesterday’s wind had died away. No leaves rustled. No birds called. No creatures slunk across his path,

although perhaps that was for the best: He didn’t care to see another deer or bird with translucent skin showing its ribs

or skull or vertebrae.

The silence unnerved him, however. Arthur held his father’s watch to his ear to hear it ticking. The quiet, constant sound

calmed him.

Ever more trees oozed black down their trunks. Arthur steered as far from them as he could. He didn’t know what the ooze would

do if it touched him, but he remembered it corroding the tip of his shovel days ago.

“Do you think we’re close?” he asked Freya.

As usual, she didn’t respond. Instead, she gazed up the trunk of a nearby birch, tail twitching. Claws outstretched, she shot

toward it.

“Freya?”

With a chitter, a small green creature darted out of the foliage above. Blue cap mushrooms sprouted in its wake. The creature

was a person, if people were a foot tall and mossy, with hair that trailed into their body and clothes or maybe was their body and clothes. It vaulted from the birch to a nearby aspen, skirted down the trunk with the cat in pursuit. Then

it darted up Arthur’s body.

He flinched at the tickle on his trousers, his shirt. The creature scurried up him like a squirrel. To his relief, the blue caps it trailed didn’t follow, nor did the cat. Growling, she glared at the thing but sat lashing her tail at Arthur’s feet.

The creature peered into his face with eyes as brown and ancient as a tree.

“Oh,” he breathed.

The creature prodded him with a tiny finger and scampered over his shoulders, snuffling at his hair. He laughed.

Freya’s tail lashed faster as her eyes followed the creature. She launched herself at it, clawing into Arthur. He yelped.

“Freya—”

Chittering, the creature sprang from his shoulder onto a branch overhead. Freya followed. She and the creature chased each

other along boughs, blue caps sprouting behind them, until, with a final, impressive leap, the creature reached the shelter

of its birch. It vanished in the birch’s branches as if it had melted away. The tree’s yellow leaves trembled, then stilled.

Freya mewled, her hindquarters wiggling, but Arthur dragged her from her branch.

“I wish you hadn’t scared that thing off,” he told her.

He’d liked its liveliness, after the silence that had grated on him since he’d parted from Ira, but the cat merely grumbled.

He contemplated luring the creature back with . . . whatever such a creature might like, food or a shiny trinket like his

father’s pocket watch or—he didn’t know what. But Freya would undoubtedly go after it again.

The blue caps the creature had left burst and shriveled. Spores drifted through the air. Holding his breath, Arthur stepped

closer.

His stomach clenched. Internally, the toadstools were threaded with black. Examining the birch, he discovered it also had

black veins creeping up from the base of its trunk. More blue caps clustered there, similarly veined.

Arthur hugged the cat and continued on his way.

After a while, they came upon a stream. From a distance, the sight heartened him. Perhaps he could follow it to the heart

of the wood, or a good chunk of the way, and he’d have fresh water to drink and fish to eat (if he caught any).

Then he reached the bank. Most of the trees nearby oozed black. The water was black, too, and smelled mechanical.

His stomach turned. Not quite the saving grace he’d hoped for. His throat was dry; he was suddenly thirsty, with only that

black water to drink because he’d already emptied his bottle.

He shut his eyes and focused on his breathing. He’d been traveling for hours. He might be as little as a day from the heart

of the wood. Surely he could make it that long without food or water.

In the meantime, the stream could guide him, the sound of it a comfort though the sight of that black water wasn’t. That would

have to be enough, but the disappointment was hard to bear.

Gradually—so gradually that, at first, Arthur didn’t notice—a mist rose. Then he thought his spectacles were fogging. He put

the cat down and wiped his lenses on his shirt several times, to no effect.

Freya twisted between his ankles. He stumbled over her and fell.

Cursing, Arthur pushed upright. His back twinged. He winced.

The mist had thickened to fog. Now Arthur could barely see six inches in front of him.

“What is this?”

Freya mewled uneasily.

The stream still burbled to their left. That was something, Arthur told himself, but a fog arising in the afternoon, that he hadn’t noticed until he was in the thick of it, made his skin prickle.

Around him, the forest had vanished. He could no longer see trees, stream, grass, or sky. Leaves crunched; his heartbeat pulsed

in his ears. The cat kept underfoot until he picked her up. She burrowed into him.

Arthur didn’t like that. He’d figured that, as long as she was nonchalant about the forest, there was nothing to worry about.

Her apparent anxiety about the fog increased his own.

He fell to his knees, narrowly avoiding dropping her. His knapsack crashed over his head. He swore and shook it off. His back

twinged so badly he couldn’t get back up. In fact, he wanted to lie down on whatever nice, springy surface he was kneeling

on. A thick bed of moss, maybe.

Bed. That sounded nice.

Freya seemed to agree. She climbed out of his arms and curled on the ground. In a moment, she was asleep.

“Freya?” Arthur gasped.

Gasping was all he could manage. The fog pressed on him like a physical thing. It should’ve been cold; wasn’t fog cold? This

fog was warm. Had it been pressing on him? It was comfortable, now. Soothing.

The fuzzy black animal beside him seemed to think so. He was almost certain he used to know what the fuzzy black animal was,

but he couldn’t remember. It was unimportant anyway.

He couldn’t remember his name, either, but that seemed equally unimportant. All that mattered was that his back had stopped

twinging (had it ever twinged to begin with?), the fog wrapped around him like a blanket, and he was pleasantly sleepy. He

removed his spectacles, lay down, and closed his eyes, calm washing over him. He would lie down for a while, and when he awoke,

he’d go back to what he’d been doing, whatever that was . . .

He frowned. Now he’d lain down, he was rather less comfortable. Something dug into his hip, a hard point that disturbed his rest.

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a rowan cross. His frown deepened as he gazed blurrily at it. It was important for

some reason.

The fog grasped at him, but he shuddered it off.

“Not now,” he murmured. “I’m trying to . . .”

Arthur shot upright, reaching for his spectacles. His sister. Charlotte had given him the rowan cross. He gripped it tight,

its points digging into his palm, his mind clearer for focusing on it. He didn’t know how long that might help. He was short

of breath; perhaps breathing in the fog was doing this to him.

How had he ever thought it warm and comfortable? Fumbling for his knapsack, he wrenched a handkerchief free and held it over

his nose. He shouldered his knapsack and scooped up the sleeping cat, hoping he could negotiate cat, cross, and handkerchief

at once.

The fog’s grasping fingers made him want to peel his own skin off. He shook his head, shuddering away from it. It came at

him from every side, but he squeezed his eyes shut and trudged forward. He’d walked into it; he could walk out of it.

Lottie, he thought, clenching the cross. Lottie, Lottie, Lottie—

Something crunched underfoot. Several somethings. Arthur tripped but righted himself and kept going.

Then he was free. His mind cleared; his breath returned. Clutched uncomfortably in one arm, Freya awoke with a disgruntled

mrrf.

“Are you all right?” Arthur asked. She headbutted him. “What do you suppose . . . ?”

He turned warily toward the fog. Now he was out of it, it didn’t look like normal fog. It was vaguely gold despite the dimness of the forest, which was darker than it had been earlier. Stumbling through the fog, he’d lost time, and he wasn’t sure how much—but it seemed more time than it had felt.

He’d lost the stream, too.

The fog dissipated. As it did so, strange spindly forms appeared on the ground.

Arthur stepped toward them, gripping the cross tighter than ever. Skeletons. In the moss were skeletons. Three people, a bird,

a squirrel, one that might have been a fox. Each laid out as if its owner had lain down and fallen asleep like he’d nearly

done.

His breath hitched. “Let’s get out of here.”

He jogged away, the cat bouncing in his arms. He didn’t remove the handkerchief from his nose until he’d put distance between

them and the fog.