5. Chapter 5
The wood stood in judgement as Serich and I approached, sinisterly silent, watchful, its eyes unfettered by the fogs. I had the sense the wood knew my future, that it had written it many years ago. What did it make of Serich and me, I wondered, as we stood here grim and girded?
Probably that we were delicious idiots.
He’d told the village watch that he’d spent the night in his father’s empty home, packing up what few possessions were left behind, and hadn’t heard the ruckus in the square.
No, he hadn’t seen me, hadn’t even spoken to me in years.
I assumed they bought the story because he was a soon-to-be priest. And a man.
We’d had little time for conversation as we’d packed up the useful items from the cottage and slipped out the back doors.
Old weapon belts circled our hips, and slung over our backs were satchels packed to bursting, seams straining against bits of stale bread, salted beef, spare clothing.
Slithering through the brush behind the cottage like bandits, we’d crept up the line of trees, far from the eyes of villagers.
What had they done to the Warren home, in their search for me?
I could hardly bear to think of it. There had been no time for goodbyes with Livvy so I said one now as I clutched my satchel and gathered my courage.
I told her I loved her, how sorry I was for all I’d put her through.
That she didn’t have to cover for me anymore.
Serich and I twisted to look at each other at the same time. I didn’t know how he could manage to offer me anything resembling a smile, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
“What the hell are you doing, Serich?” I said, shaking my head. “Why are you willing to go in there?”
“You’re a supplicant,” he said simply, looking back into the wood through the gnarled, ancient trees.
A sultry haze of fog seeped out from between them, curving and twisting as if trying to seduce us.
I couldn’t tell if it was a sighing breeze or a voice I heard calling through the underbrush.
“I can’t turn my back on you. Father Hull would kill me.
You sought out God with a heavy burden and he led you to me. I’m all you have.”
“It wasn’t God I was looking for, it was Father Hull.” I held out a hand to meet a tendril of fog as it crept nearer. It coiled around my wrist as if it liked me. Wanted to be friends.
He didn’t miss the bitterness in my tone. “Is this why you’ve not spoken to me since I joined the church? You’re angry at God for what you think He let happen to you, and me by association?”
“You rarely leave the church.” I shook my wrist gently so the fog dispersed. “I can’t go in and you never came out. I wasn’t trying to avoid you.”
And it hadn’t been It invading my mind which drained the faith we’d all been raised with.
Why was a woman’s virtue more important than a man’s?
Why must a wife obey her husband, when it didn’t go both ways?
How could I put my faith in a god who would happily cast Livvy into Hell, all for the crime of being attracted to the wrong gender?
Could she truly mean so little to Him? Did her kindness, her goodness, count for nothing?
Those were the sorts of questions that usually drew some sort of response from It, but I heard nothing back.
I need you, I told It as another curl of fog trailed through my hair, lifting it, weighing it. Wrapping it around a smoky finger. Even inside my head, the words trembled. I need you now and I never ask you for anything. I closed my eyes, let a few moments pass. Nothing.
Serich was staring at me when my eyelids flipped open in defeat, his father’s falchion in his hand. “We should go. Make the most of daylight. Everything in there will be sleeping. Are you ready?”
I nodded, swallowing the knot in my throat.
The fog withdrew as if in surprise when I stepped forward, and inched back toward the wood. Playing with me like one would a kitten with a string.
The wood was a world of green and gray, black and brown.
Serich and I looked from right to left when we entered, like we were checking for oncoming carts.
The world breathed around us, eerily hushed.
I felt as if it were cocking its head, taking our measure.
Perhaps dreaming up a list of all the wicked things it could do to us by nightfall.
The smeared palette of the gray sky was latticed with branches when I looked up, silence pressing upon my eardrums, the sort of quiet that crept beneath your skin like a vicious itch.
It smelled of earth and rot and greenery, as I’d expected.
Scaly trees bent and bowed close together as if whispering to one another twisted sweet nothings, large leathery leaves like black hands reaching out.
Cobwebs clustered at the joints of branches, spiders weaving sticky, silken threads.
“Which direction should we go?” Serich asked, just above a whisper.
“South is all It said. It’s pouting right now, so I can’t ask for any more guidance than that.”
His lips had settled into a grim line as he consulted the rudimentary compass that had belonged to his father. “South, then.”
We set off.
Keep your breathing slow and steady, ears pricked, It had told me years ago when it taught me how to stalk bunnies and really hear the world around me. Listen to your body, know the sounds it makes as it moves. Watch your step. Look left, right. Now what do you hear?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The wood swallowed our footsteps, drank in our bodies so we were little more than shadow as the branches above our heads thickened and obscured the sky.
Beside me, Serich had all but dissolved into the fogs.
The dead leaves beneath our feet made no noise, soggy from the mists.
Quiet as the grave. Under different circumstances, I might have called it peaceful, but I didn’t trust this calm veneer.
I had a feeling it would blow open soon enough and wicked things would come swooping out.
But the fogs thinned the deeper we forged. I was wondering if Serich and I were staying mute as some sort of sign of respect for the wood when he opened his mouth.
“Have you truly stopped believing?” He sounded so earnest that I couldn’t even laugh.
“How can I be possessed by a demon and not believe? I believe in Him. I just don’t like him very much.” I caught my tongue between my teeth, biting down on the tip, bracing myself for the response I felt was coming: That perhaps that was precisely why I had found myself invaded.
“God has a plan for you, Des.”
“Oh, does He? Well, I didn’t like it.”
He ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch and when he straightened, his eyes sparkled like coins. “How do you know? It isn’t finished yet.”
“I hope you haven’t prepared a bunch of sermons for our journey,” I said lightly.
We walked in silence for a minute. I didn’t know Serich anymore, not really. I couldn’t tell if I’d hurt his feelings or if he was simply lost in his own thoughts.
Then I veered suddenly, right into Serich, to avoid a colony of fat, pallid mushrooms with throbbing gills the color of an open wound.
I found most fungi disgusting, but these were unsettling in a way I had never seen before.
The thick, fleshy caps, speckled with rusty freckles, pulsated as though with a heartbeat.
I wanted to stamp out the lot of them, but who knew what might come gushing out if I did.
Serich’s arm slid around my waist to steady me, managing a small smile. “If that’s the worst we’ll find in here, I’d be a happy man.”
And off again we went.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as we wove through trees one after the other, picking our way over another cluster of mushrooms, “about your father.” I had stood at the back during the burial, the farthest I could get from the little cemetery near the church, my skin burning as if I stood beneath an angry sun.
I’d never seen Serich look so solemn as he tossed that first handful of wet earth into the grave.
Serich bit back his bottom lip, let it slide out slowly from between his teeth. “Thank you. The fever took its time. He refused to see a healer for weeks. I should have forced him.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said gently.
“Everyone has been a little too quick to assure me of that, and I don’t believe a word of it.” His smile was shallow. “I knew he needed a healer early on. I should have called one when he wouldn’t.”
I could have told him that a healer wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing.
My mother had been good friends with one when she had taken ill with the very same fever, and nothing she had learned from Hélène had helped in the end.
It took her strength and then her voice and then her mind.
In its crescendo it finally leached her of her life, boiled it right out of her.
All the cold compresses and fever-teas hadn’t made her any cooler.
The moment it has you in its teeth, you’re gone, I could have told Serich.
Would that have made him feel better or worse? I couldn’t decide, so I said nothing.
Another long silence. I wasn’t sure how to fill it, unwilling to prod at the fresh wound of his father’s death.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked eventually.
My mother and I had moved to the parish when I was twelve.
We’d had not two coins to rub together and she’d heard Lord Fletcher needed help in his Monde’s End manor in exchange for room and board.
I’d known Serich two years before my wicked roommate moved in, and even then, not well.
“My whole life.” He said it simply, no bitterness, no ragged edge of melancholy. “I plan to die here. I never want to leave.”
I shot him a surprised look. “You can’t possibly like it here.” Nobody liked it here, we just got on with it as best we could and made a concerted effort not to think too hard about the futility of it all.