Chapter 27
She did not know how long she lay in John’s garden, curled up with her back to the stone wall.
Bees buzzed somewhere above her, and a snail crawled over her hand, but she could not make herself move.
Her mind skipped through the events of the night before like a scratched record under a gramophone needle.
The adrenaline that had pushed through her grogginess before was gone, leaving her floundering in her own memories.
There were things she could remember in vivid detail—the owl driver’s eyes, Thornwood whispering in her ear to stay close, the look on Carlyle’s stone face in the darkness—but everything else came in splinters.
They would appear briefly, then tumble into a completely different memory.
She remembered mirrors and jumping frogs, but as separate entities divorced from time.
John did not see her when he first emerged from the cottage to tend the bees and the flowers. She watched him with detached curiosity. To Mouse, he seemed to exist in an entirely different world than she did. She had more in common with the snail on her hand than she did with John.
Her train of thought broke when Smudge’s head rounded the door, followed by the rest of her. She careened straight for Mouse, barking.
“Jesus Christ,” John said, dropping his watering can.
“Language, John. What would God say?” Mouse whispered as Smudge licked her face.
John did not laugh. He did not even seem to hear her. Perhaps she just said it in her head.
He pulled off his coat and dropped it over her. She wondered if he did it out of panic. She could not remember if she was cold. He glanced at the roses and winced. “Can you stand?”
“I’m not sure if snails can stand,” she said.
John wrinkled his nose. Part of her, a part that was slowly coming back to life, recognized that her words made no sense. She was not a snail. She was a human being. Or at least, she was mostly a human being. She shivered. Well, then, she was cold as well. John was right, as usual.
She wiggled her toes and whispered, “I think I can stand.”
John helped her up, his grip around her shoulders firm. The few feet into the cottage felt like miles. Smudge kept pace with them, licking at Mouse’s ankles.
The change in temperature between the garden and John’s kitchen cut into her, and it took all her effort to fall back into a chair before huddling further down into herself.
She studied the lines on his kitchen table, tracing them with her enchanted pinky before John pressed a hot cup of tea into her hands.
The smell was pungent, and the plumes of steam rising from it scalded her face, but she leaned into it.
Mouse tipped the cup up to her lips, drank it down, and had another full cup in hand before the warmth inside her began to match the heat of the room.
And even then, it took another two cups before she stopped shivering.
When John stretched toward her to pour a fifth cup, she pulled it away.
“Any more and I’ll drown.”
He deflated, and his hands shook as he deposited the kettle to its place on the stovetop.
“Thank Christ, you sound like yourself again,” he said.
Mouse kept the teacup between her palms, soaking in the last warmth from the porcelain.
“Well, you can tell me I am an idiot,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the kitchen. She dashed them away desperately. She could not lose sight of John. He was her anchor in a storm, and unmooring would be dangerous. John reached across the table and took hold of her wrist.
“Mouse, you must tell me. What did Thornwood do?”
She sighed. “It’s all so strange, complicated, and frankly, mad. I can barely understand any of it.”
“I will go into town and call the police.”
Mouse laughed bitterly. “What could they do?”
“What could they do? They could arrest the bastard! He drugged you, or took advantage of you, or something, Mouse! You cannot possibly defend him now.”
“I’m not defending him. There is just so much you don’t understand, or cannot believe, and I don’t know where to begin.”
“Why not when you met him?”
“When he was a statue?” John’s brow knit.
Mouse could tell she was not making sense again.
She held her cup out to him. “Never mind what I said earlier. More tea for me and pour a cup for yourself. I will try to explain everything, but I need you to be patient with me as I try to get everything out. I may not make sense at times, but by the end, you’ll have everything you need to understand.
And you must believe me, or this is pointless. Can we try that?”
John dragged his hand over his eyes. “We can try.”
It took Mouse a good part of the morning to fully explain how she came to his rosebushes the night before.
“I knew there was something wrong with Thornwood,” he said. He’d made them toast and laid out a spread of raspberry lavender jam, marmalade, and butter. “And all this time, I thought you were cutting me out with all your talk of Faeries.”
“To my credit, I did try to tell you.”
“After I caught you in a lie,” he snapped.
Mouse took a bite of toast, melting into the taste of butter and fruit.
“My wedding breakfast,” Mouse joked, and he shot her a dark look. If he had been Catholic, Mouse was sure he would have crossed himself.
“I’m sure that ceremony holds as much water as a sieve,” he said.
“It felt real to me,” Mouse said. Her memories were sliding into order now, as though speaking was enough to ground them, allowing her to stack the timeline together like bricks.
“He knew he was doing something wrong; I could see it in his eyes. But I think he told himself that his plan benefited both of us. He asked the Faerie King not to hurt me, after all.”
His chair creaked as John leaned back.
“Was that too generous?” Mouse asked.
“Much too generous! He tricked you into marrying him, Mouse.”
“He did not trick me into saying yes. He barred me from changing my mind.”
“Which is the same thing, isn’t it?”
Mouse took a long sip of her tea. It bit into her tongue, piping hot. She thought of the spell breaking and their kiss.
True love breaks all enchantments, the foolish girlish part of herself whispered. She kicked the thought away.
“It is,” she admitted.
“Finish your drink,” John said. “We need to prepare you for the next train to the city.”
Mouse blinked at him, uncomprehending. “What do you mean? I can’t leave.”
“Please, enlighten me why you think you stand a chance against magic that makes walls turn to forests and men turn to stone, and I will happily listen.”
Mouse’s mind stuttered like a faulty motorcar engine.
“Right, that is my thought as well. There isn’t anything to be done. You can’t stay here, so it is best for you to get as far away from the village as possible.” He pushed away from the table and mounted the stairs.
Mouse trailed behind him, unsure how things were moving so quickly without her input. Was she still under the spell, somehow?
“You’ll need to borrow some clothes.”
John opened the closet door in his bedroom. Swaths of black cloth met them. Pushed to the side were patterned shirts and a few tweed jackets. Mouse recognized Bertie’s signature colors.
John blushed scarlet as he pulled them out, hands hovering over a robin’s-egg blue shirt and a tweed jacket with hues of dark green and brown.
“You would make an unconvincing vicar, atheism aside,” said John in a rush. “Bertie’s taste in fine-cut clothes will make you look more like an eccentric than a madwoman on the train. Although, we will be safest with a large overcoat and a cap to hide your hair.”
John scooped a scuffed leather bag from the back of the closet floor and proceeded to stuff clothes inside.
He went to the drawers, pulled out a slim wallet, and threw that inside as well.
Coins jingled within, but he didn’t blink, instead turning back and pulling an armful of scarves from a wooden box.
“I can’t take all these things,” Mouse said at last.
“You can hardly wear your clothes. You look like you ran through a field of thorns with them. And besides, it’s better if you leave in disguise.”
“There is no need for subterfuge. No one will come after me.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“This is—” Mouse cut off abruptly as a blast of golden light flooded through the windows.
She grabbed hold of John and dove for the floor.
Her heart pounded as memories of shells and broken soldiers danced in her mind, paired now with bursts of Faerie magic turning all it touched into beasts.
Her shoulder dug into John’s hip while his shoe caught her shin.
John groaned. “Jesus, Mouse.”
The light did not fade. Mouse crawled to the window, forcing herself to move in centimeters until her eyes cleared the windowsill.
Blinding gold shone through the woods from the direction of Thistlemarsh Hall.
The color swirled, growing brighter by the second.
It was so overwhelming that it took Mouse a few seconds to realize that the light was not the only change.
When the light touched the trees, the plants thickened and bubbled, shot through with magic.
They sprouted limbs covered in thorns, razor-sharp leaves, and teeth that snapped at the light.
Indifferent, the wave of gold coasted over the side of the hill.
“My God,” John whispered behind her. “The village.”