xxxviii. In which Charlotte meets the Lord of the Wood
Long after their lovemaking had finished, Charlotte was still rumpled in bed, curled into Elspeth’s side. Elspeth, rumpled
herself, stroked her arm and kissed her forehead, her nose, her eyes. The corners of her mouth lifted whenever Charlotte caught
her gaze, but she’d hardly glanced away once. The sex must have left Charlotte looking positively taken apart.
“What?” she murmured. She was exhausted, but not in a bad way; for one thing, she felt like she might fall asleep and stay
asleep.
“I dunno.” Elspeth shifted, leaning over her. “Different, seeing you like this.”
“Denuded of my clothing?”
Elspeth laughed. “You ain’t hardly naked, Lottie, I barely got a thing off you but your drawers. I’ll own I’d like to see
you that way next time, if you’re amenable.”
“You really are dreadfully vulgar.”
“You didn’t seem to think it was vulgar when I had my tongue up your—”
Charlotte hit her with a pillow. Elspeth fell back beside her, chuckling. Charlotte kissed her into silence.
When they broke apart, Elspeth touched her cheek.
“Seeing you relaxed, I guess.” She propped herself on her elbow, a hand on Charlotte’s hip. “Feels like your mind’s been going since the moment I met you, with all the things you gotta do and all the people you gotta take care of, even when you’re in pain. And now it’s quiet.”
Charlotte’s eyes prickled. She liked the weight of Elspeth’s hand on her hip. She wanted to like the way Elspeth understood
her, too, but she couldn’t yet. It was mortifying, being known this way.
Elspeth watched her carefully. “It’s like you think use is all there is to a body. Like you think you gotta earn rest, or . . .
or someone caring for you. But it ain’t, and you don’t.”
Mortifying, yes—but Charlotte wanted to learn to like this. She sighed, snuggling into Elspeth.
“I’d like to believe that,” she said, “but it’s difficult. I can’t do as much as I used to, since my illness, and in Seacliff . . .
Well, it’s just how everyone thinks. How everyone lives—how can you live, otherwise?”
Elspeth bent and kissed her brow.
“Port Lorne, too, darlin’. But you know what? Gran and Granddad worked themselves half to death when me and Maggie was growing
up. I watched ’em. Always told myself it wouldn’t be that way for me. And it don’t have to be for you, neither.” She hesitated.
“I’d make sure of it. If you wanted that.”
Charlotte’s breath hitched. Before she could respond, however, there was a flump across the room: the plant creature dropping
to the floor. It scrambled toward the window, tendrils swaying.
Charlotte sat up, her back twinging. Her pain had been low all day, but the movement coming on the heels of physical exertion
reminded her how easy it was to overdo things.
“What do you suppose has it so excited?”
“Dunno, but I’ll see what’s what.” Elspeth reached for her shirt and boots. “Stay here.”
“Not a chance.”
Charlotte tugged her clothes back into place and reached for her cane. Elspeth grabbed the poker from beside the stove and
slipped out into the snow with Charlotte at her heels. The plant creature slung itself after them, darting back and forth
like an excitable dog.
Beyond the brambles, an angry howl split the snowy silence. Charlotte shuddered. The plant creature nosed at her hand, then
went weaving back and forth again.
Another howl, louder and angrier than the last. Brambles withered and died, crumbling to dust. They left an opening wide enough
for a horse, beyond which was a swinging bridge.
Limping off the bridge was something misshapen. The plant creature shot forward, bowling into the thing as it cleared the
brambles. The thing fell with a crunch of snow and a curse. Elspeth stood in front of Charlotte, armed with the poker.
“Calyx—” A low growl. “Calyx, stop it.”
The plant creature whirled away and trotted happily back to Charlotte. It sat at her feet, tendrils waving.
“Calyx. Is that your name?”
It nosed at her hand.
The thing before them struggled to its feet. It was a beast, with a wolf’s legs, paw-like hands, antlers, a fanged snout,
and a face something like a wolf’s and something like a stag’s and something like a raven’s. One leg was twisted, one eye
scarred. Angry red streaks slashed across one cheek. Moss and lichens grew in the scar and the ruff of the beast’s neck.
But he had black hair tied in a loose knot like a human’s, except for the white flowers dotting it like stars.
Human eyes, too, one hazel, one milky. Except that he was without shoes, he wore human clothes: trousers, a linen shirt with toggles—spotted with blood at the shoulder—and a fur cloak he had become tangled in.
With a snarl, he flung the cloak away. Charlotte gasped; the snarl gave her goose pimples.
The beast looked up. Elspeth stepped forward, raising the poker, but a tendril shot out and wrenched it away.
“Hey—”
Calyx whipped the poker so hard it flew over the remaining brambles. Elspeth whirled on the plant creature, but the beast’s
eyes fixed on Charlotte. His face slackened.
“Charlotte Throckmorton, I presume,” he said, in a hoarse voice.
“Prentice,” Charlotte said automatically, but her brain stalled out. Why did the beast know her name?
He nodded and trudged toward them. They backed away, but he merely went to the door. Calyx gamboled after him until he went
inside. It stood uncertainly at the threshold, but Charlotte scooped it up and followed him into the house.
“Arthur was right,” the beast said. “You do look like George.”
Her heart beat painfully. “You’ve seen Arthur.”
He hung his cloak on a peg, limped toward the stove, and sank into the shabbier of the two armchairs.
“I know he was here.” Charlotte’s voice shook. “His tools are here.”
“He was here.”
“Then where is he now?”
“I left him.” The beast dropped his head into his paw-like hands with a low moan. “Oh, God. I left him.”
Charlotte perched in the other armchair. Elspeth stood over her like a bodyguard. Calyx wrapped one tendril around Charlotte’s
arm, reached for the beast with another.
“Left him where?”
The beast dragged his hands through his hair, leaving it bedraggled. Calyx unwound itself from Charlotte to drape over his
shoulders.
“In the forest. Alone.”
They seemed in danger of getting no more from him, for he dropped his head in his hands again, his breathing quick and harsh
in a way familiar to Charlotte. To her astonishment, she realized he was in the grips of a panic attack.
He was a beast, and he’d seen Arthur—but Charlotte was a healer before she was anything.
She bit her lip, touched the beast’s arm.
“Lottie,” Elspeth said sharply, but Charlotte said, “It’s all right.”
To the beast, she said, “Breathe with me.”
He raised his face to hers. It was alarming: the fangs, the cervine ears on a face both canine and corvid, the human eyes
at odds with all his animal features. The blood dried on one cheek, the moss and lichens growing from his fur. But his eyes
were bright and scared, latched on to her desperately as so many eyes had been in her years of healing.
“Give me your hands,” Charlotte said.
They were nearly paws, thick-fingered, clawed and furry, with metacarpal pads. Charlotte swallowed but gripped them. She didn’t
have to tell him to hold her gaze; he was already doing it. To her surprise, he started breathing the way she’d intended to
show him, in for four, hold for four, out for four, before she’d begun.
“That’s it. Together, now.”
After several cycles, his breathing calmed. He let out a long breath. Calyx nuzzled his cheek with a vine.
“Did you teach Arthur that,” he asked, “or did he teach you?”
Charlotte’s eyes stung. That was why he’d known the breathing cycle: Arthur had taught it to him.
“I taught him.” She gripped the arms of her chair, trying to order her errant thoughts. “Are you the Lord of the Wood?”
The beast gazed at her dolefully. “I am.”
He bent over, massaging his gnarled right leg with a grimace, or what Charlotte thought was a grimace. With his strange, bestial
features, it was difficult to tell.
Her brain had gone all numb and funny. Her thoughts swirled, a confusion of her father’s stories, the beast before them—so
different than the figure in the tales—and question upon question about Arthur. How long he’d been in the vale. Why he’d left.
Why the Lord of the Wood had, evidently, gone with him, and why they’d parted.
“You seen a girl?” Elspeth asked in a strained voice. Charlotte reached for her hand. “Would’ve been—hell’s bells, I don’t
know—three weeks ago now or so. Looks a good bit like me, except she’s taller, and fairer, and her nose’s crooked.”
“Arthur’s the first human I’ve seen in almost thirty years,” the beast said. “I was trapped here. Until he came.”
A muscle ticked in Elspeth’s jaw. Her fingers crushed Charlotte’s. She’d known she was probably looking for a corpse, but
she’d thought she’d find it. She’d thought the Lord of the Wood would know what had happened.
“If you haven’t seen her,” Charlotte said, “isn’t there any way to—to find out what happened? To see where she is?”
The beast dragged a hand through his hair and launched to his feet. Calyx swayed on his shoulders. Charlotte tamped down a
prickle of jealousy. She’d come to think of the strange little creature as hers in the last couple of days, but it was clearly
his.
The beast brushed past to retrieve the odd silver basin.
“This.” He filled it with water, growling when some sloshed on the floor. “Spill a drop of your blood into this, and you can see where she is now.” He set the basin on the table and sat. “It won’t be pleasant.”
Elspeth didn’t move from Charlotte’s side. “Is it safe?”
“Safe, yes. But it may be disorienting.”
He held out a pocketknife.
“What d’you think?” Elspeth asked Charlotte in a low voice.
“I think, if we want to find our siblings, we have to take whatever he can give us.”
Elspeth approached, took the knife without touching the beast’s fingers, screwed her face up, and pricked her finger. A drop
of blood splashed into the water.
Elspeth froze.
“Elspeth?”