xl. In which Arthur has a re but also, unfortunately, wood sickness #2
sure how Ira would react to being run to and held.
When the beast had gone still, Sasha poked him in the stomach. “Ira?”
He snorted in her face, making her fall off of him. She laughed.
“No fair!” Then she spotted Arthur. “Uncle Arthur!”
Ira scrambled to his feet, gazing at him. “You’re all right.”
Arthur let out an oof as Sasha flung her arms around his middle. He bent, groaning.
“Gently, dearest,” Charlotte said. “Your uncle isn’t entirely in one piece.”
Jonas hugged him, too, more carefully. Arthur hugged them back with one arm, his throat closing up, but he was aware of Ira’s
eyes on him all the while.
“Come along, children,” Charlotte said. “It’s past your bedtime.”
“Bedtime?” Sasha said in a scandalized voice. “How do you even know what time it is? We’re in the forest.”
“Your uncle’s pocket watch. Come, now.”
Charlotte squeezed Arthur’s arm, nodded at Ira, and dragged the children back to the fireside with Calyx supporting her.
Ira had stridden toward Arthur like he, too, might fling his arms around him. Instead, he stopped several feet away, shoving
his hands into his pockets. The lichens growing in the ruff of his neck thickened before Arthur’s eyes.
Arthur fumbled for his acorn, but Ira stepped closer and stilled his hand before he could undo the chain.
“Don’t. It’s all that’s keeping the sickness from spreading faster.” His eyes were red rimmed and baggy. “Your sister says
her companion’s sickness didn’t even show up for a week because she was wearing one, but she hadn’t shown any symptoms yet.
We’re not sure how long it’ll keep yours at bay.”
Moss and lichens tinged his arms green. Still a beast, but becoming increasingly plant matter, too.
“Charlotte has an acorn now, too,” Arthur said. “Surely—”
Ira shook his head. His hair hung messily around his face, like his knot had given up. “We tried. The chain won’t fit me,
with . . .”
He gestured at his ruff, thick and furry and green with growth.
“There must be something—” Arthur started, but Ira wrenched away.
“Don’t— Why do you always—”
He paced, not limping as badly as he had when they’d parted. He had a new knee brace, one of vines woven tightly together
about his transfigured leg.
With an effort, he stopped pacing. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Then,” Arthur said, unable to help himself, “if you flew to the heart of the wood with her acorn—”
Ira shivered into a raven. One of his wings was fur rather than feathers—winged in shape, but useless for flight. He hopped several times, flapping, but barely made it a foot into the air before sinking back to earth.
“Oh,” Arthur said in dismay.
Ira shivered back into the beast he’d been, winced and rolled his shoulder. “I aggravated my injury flying here anyway. Charlotte
was kind enough to change my bandages again. We’ll walk. In the morning.”
His eyes kept flickering to Arthur’s face and away.
“Here,” he said suddenly, “you shouldn’t be on your feet.”
As he had in the cave the other day, Ira waved a hand, but he slumped almost before the gesture had been completed. A vine
wriggled from the dirt, trembled, and died.
“What happened?” Arthur asked.
Ira leaned against a silver sapling with a grimace.
“Used too much energy getting here. Harder to grow things from nothing when I’m injured anyway.” He stroked the sapling’s
trunk and spoke to it. “Could you . . . ?”
The sapling quivered. The silver trunk shivered and melted, reforming into a mass of low-hanging branches that wove through
each other until they’d formed a little bench. When it wasn’t trying to kill him, Arthur thought, the forest’s magic was really
something. Perhaps Ira didn’t consider it his power the way growing something from nothing was, but Arthur doubted a tree would’ve helpfully made a seat that way at his
own request.
“Thanks,” Ira said to the sapling. Its upper branches dipped as if in a bow.
Ira offered a hand like he thought Arthur might slap it away. Arthur took it gratefully and sat on the silver bench.
“You can sit, too,” he said. “If you want. I don’t mind.”
Ira bit his lip but joined him. The bench was so small their thighs and shoulders bumped together.
They gazed through the haze of slender silver trunks around them.
Ira clenched the bench’s edge, leg bouncing like he was anxious.
Not the way he so often was, his fear masked as anger, but the way Arthur usually was.
It reminded Arthur how scared he’d been throughout their time together—and how badly Arthur had handled it the last time they’d seen each other.
He touched Ira’s thigh. The bouncing stopped.
“Listen,” Arthur said softly, “I’m sorry for getting so mad at you.”
Ira’s brow furrowed, but he said nothing as Arthur squeezed his thigh and let go.
“You were scared,” Arthur continued, “and I knew you were scared, and I should’ve—I don’t know—let you be scared for a bit,
or kept trying to calm you down, or, well, I shouldn’t’ve gone off on you like I did.”
Ira hesitated.
“I needed to hear it,” he said. “And I don’t know that you could’ve calmed me down. I think I needed time away. I just wish
I hadn’t left you undefended to get it.”
Arthur’s expression softened, but Ira looked away like he couldn’t bear it. His leg started bouncing again.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice. “For everything. Even before—in the vale—every time I was scared, I lashed out at you.”
He hunched, dragging paw-like hands through his bedraggled hair. Before he could think about it, Arthur tucked the loose strands
behind a cervine ear. The ear twitched toward him.
“The longer we spent together,” Ira continued, “the more I felt like a person. But then the forest took me over, and it felt
like the Lord of the Wood was all I was or ever could be. I was so scared, Arthur, I was so afraid of hurting you—but I hurt
you anyway, saying what I did.”
“You were right, though.”
Ira glanced at him. “No.”
“Yes.” Arthur smiled bitterly. “Everything you said about me—it was true. I’ve always been too scared to change my own life.
This is the first time I’ve ever really tried to do something. To see things through.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Ira reached for his hand, fingers curling uncertainly around Arthur’s. “Charlotte told me how
you cared for her, growing up. How you asked that woman if you could repair clocks for her, even though you were afraid to
knock on her door.”
Arthur opened his mouth but closed it again without speaking. He had been afraid, knocking on the Livingstons’ door that first time, twelve years old, with Charlotte’s small hand in his—but he’d
done it anyway. Because someone had needed to put food on the table. Because Charlotte had been a child and needed looking
after.
He glanced back through the trees, where she sat by the fire with Calyx, telling the children a bedtime story. His eyes stung.
She’d been taking care of him far longer and better than he’d ever taken care of her. She’d come into the wood for him.
At last he said softly, “I’ve never thought of it that way.”
Ira gave a tentative smile. “I could tell. You’re more than you think you are, Arthur. You did what you had to for Charlotte
then, and you’ve done what you could for me since the moment we met.”
Arthur’s throat was thick with things he didn’t know how to say. When you came, it felt like spring, he remembered Ira saying. Like you woke me up. Arthur felt like he’d been awoken instead, like Ira had unlocked doors and solved riddles that had been a mystery all his life.
Angling toward Ira, Arthur looped his arms around his neck. Ira’s breath hitched.
“I’m glad you came back,” Arthur whispered.
Ira’s eyes flickered over his face. “I had to.”
Hesitantly, he touched their foreheads together, relaxed when Arthur pressed against him. He stroked Arthur’s face. As always,
his furry fingers curled in to keep his claws away.
Arthur sighed, oddly contented considering the state of him. “How far to the heart of the wood?”
“A couple hours, if we stay on track and keep a good pace.”
“That might be a tall order for some of us just now.”
“Calyx can carry you. It carried your sister the whole way here. I think it’ll be able to carry you both, so she doesn’t wear
herself out walking. It’ll need the night’s rest first, it’s never grown that big before, but I think it can do it. And the
children have the horse.”
Arthur smiled. A real smile, this time, at the thought Ira had put into the well-being of his family. He kissed Ira’s furry
snout. Ira huffed a laugh, his breath sweet like spring flowers.
Behind them, Charlotte cleared her throat. Arthur pinkened, but she gave them a small smile.
“There’s supper, if you’re up to it. Mind you don’t wake the children.”