“You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen. Any minute now, he’ll—” Felipe pressed his eyes shut against the sting of tears. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to feel the moment when the tether snapped. He had come too close to that once before. “I need to do something. I can’t just leave him to die.”
“I know, and we won’t.” Holding her hand up for silence, Gwen pushed her glasses up her nose and steeled herself as she crossed the hill to stand at Felipe’s side. Her eyes trailed to the knife in his hand as she said only loud enough for him to hear, “I have a theory about Oliver, though I can’t prove anything yet. Is he still doing all right as far as you can tell?”
Closing his eyes, Felipe reached for the tether. It felt odd, like it was solid on his end but stretched like a rubber band on the other. He gave it one tug and waited. When no tug came in response, his pulse quickened, but if he focused, he could still sense Oliver’s nebulous presence on the other end. A relieved sigh escaped his lips before he could stop himself.
“He’s still alive. It doesn’t feel like he’s in danger, but I can’t besure.”
“Good, then I’m probably right. While you were busy sneaking off, I asked Mr. Allen about the woods. See, I remembered that he mentioned only one family can go into the woods without repercussions and that they don’t help anybody come back out. Well, today, someone in town said something similar about the town’s founding family. I think Oliver’s father was part of that family; that’s why he’s still alive. But if you or I run in there after him, we might not be so lucky.”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Felipe replied, pressing his finger into the sliver of exposed blade before inching up the hilt.
As if sensing his intentions, Gwen’s magic surged around his legs, and she gripped his arm so tightly he didn’t dare look away from her as she said, “There are fates worse than death, Felipe. You know that. And there’s a possibility your presence could make whatever’s in there turn on Oliver.”
“Then, what do you propose we do?” he asked, his voice cracking as blood dripped down his hand.
“We wait.” Holding his gaze, Gwen’s features softened as she gently pulled the knife from his hand. “If Oliver’s allowed into the woods unharmed, then he should be allowed out. We have to trust he can find his way back to us.”
Felipe’s gaze trailed to the woods as the cut on his hand bloomed with pain. If he couldn’t protect Oliver, what was the point of having him around? The fight left him so quickly his knees would have buckled had it not been for Gwen and her powers prodding him away from the trees and toward a bench with a view of where Oliver disappeared. Collapsing onto the wet stone, Felipe barely noticed the umbrella over his head or Gwen pressing a handkerchief over his bloodied hand. All he could do was cling to the tether under his heart and wait for Oliver to come back to him.
***
Oliver stared up at the fleeting glimpses of sky as he followed the winding path deeper into the Dysterwood and tried to figure out how long he had been walking. When he first fell into the woods, he had frozen where he landed with tears in his eyes, waiting for the moment when something would step from the shadows to take his life. He didn’t know how long he knelt there, but when nothing dropped from the canopy to tear him limb from limb, Oliver’s fear cooled into caution. Magical spaces like this always had rules. Most were to be respectful, keep to the path, and take nothing, and if nothing else, Oliver was good at following the rules. Keeping his arms close to his sides, he stayed to the center of the dirt path that cut through the forest like a knife and hoped it would lead him back to Felipe and Gwen.
Somehow, he had expected something far more sinister from a man-eating forest than pine and oak trees that rose so high and thickly around him he could scarcely see the sky. What he could see peeking through the branches as he rounded the bend told him it was the wrong time of day. Though he knew he hadn’t been walking for that long, the sky had taken on the red hue of an evening after a storm when it had been barely past one and about to pour when he left. Much like the desecrated cathedral, the world around him looked and felt wrong. There was something uncanny about the Dysterwood that made it ancient yet ageless, but where the cathedral’s island teemed with creatures ready to pounce if they strayed, the Dysterwood seemed to be holding its breath and watching him from afar.
If anything, the forest was too quiet. Oliver had little experience with nature after living in Philadelphia and Manhattan for all his life, but he thought forests were supposed to be teeming with creatures. So far, all he had seen were insects. Moths flitted around the moss and plants covering the forest floor like a living carpet, and at eye level, an emerald beetle climbed a tree and beat its wings at him when hestopped to look at it. Once or twice, he caught movement from the corner of his eye, only to turn and find the space between the trees empty. A voice in his mind that sounded remarkably like Felipe scolded him for never carrying a blade, not that it would have done him much good. Oliver appreciated people like Felipe who could fight, but it wasn’t for him. He had his wits and his experience, and he had to make peace with that being enough. He regarded the bees and the pitch pines with reverence and hoped that whatever lurked within the Dysterwood could understand that he meant no harm to them and only wanted to leave in peace.
Walking until his heels and back ached, Oliver lost all sense of time in the Dysterwood. The sky never changed, but the trees gradually gave way to scrubby, brown grass and pink flowered bushes. Hope swelled in his breast. He had made it out of the forest without incident, so maybe the forest would let him go back to Felipe and Gwen. At a strange pressure in his chest, Oliver stopped midstride and focused on the tether. The comforting weight remained beneath the apex of his heart, but Felipe felt farther away than he had ever been before. The tether hadn’t stretched uncomfortably as it did when they ventured too far apart. Instead, it felt like the tether had turned to taffy and had been stretched so far that it sagged beneath its weight. Oliver tried not to think too hard about the implications of that. So long as the connection between them still lodged beneath their ribs, he and Felipe would be fine.
Felipe. Oliver stuffed down his feelings to keep them from trickling across the tether and worrying Felipe. He didn’t know whether to be concerned or relieved that Felipe hadn’t appeared in the Dysterwood to rescue him. Time seemed to move differently in the Dysterwood, so maybe he had only been gone a few minutes in Aldorhaven. He hoped that was the case and not that something horrible had happened to keep Felipe from finding him. Oliver thumbed the ring he had given him.Don’t go where I can’t follow. He had broken that promise before he could make one of his own. Shutting his eyes, Oliver focused on Felipe’s end of the tether. Fear mixed with yearning and darker thingsOliver couldn’t parse brushed against his mind. He had to get back to him. If he did, he would make sure to give Felipe the ring hidden in his trunk and remind him how much he loved him.
When Oliver opened his eyes, dusk had suddenly fallen over the Dysterwood. His heart pounded in his ears as his eyes adjusted, and he realized he no longer stood at the edge of the trees but in the middle of a narrow strip of land surrounded by water. As he stood there waiting for his mind to catch up with his body, his feet sank deeper into the mucky banks, and water rushed into his shoes. Oliver grimaced as he staggered forward with heavy, sodden feet. The well-worn dirt path had been replaced with narrow wooden boards that sank beneath his weight. With each step, the rich, sweet scent of decay wafted from the bog below, and all around him crickets chirped and cicadas droned. Pops of green and blue swamp gas glowed above the water, dimly illuminating his path before disappearing into the shadows. Ahead, the glow grew stronger, but Oliver slowed his pace, despite the quickening of his pulse, when his ankle rolled in the mud and something brushed against his leg. One misstep and he would violate the first rule of these sorts of places: do not stray.
Water wicked up his trousers, and Oliver tried not to think of what lurked below the surface as he stepped from one worm-eaten tread to another. Something was definitely down there. The unseen creatures nudged at his mind like an itch, but he didn’t dare take his attention off the shadow looming at the end of the path. So far, the creatures had slithered away from him, though he could feel them like the appraising flick of a snake’s tongue or the drone of a hovering mosquito. As Oliver took another sloshing step forward, the moon disappeared, and what he had assumed to be a will-o’-wisp or lantern turned out to be flickering luminescent fungi growing over the twisted trunk of a massive oak tree.
An oppressive hush fell over the woods as Oliver followed the path to where it ended at the tree’s trunk. The oak at the center of the glade was unlike any he had ever seen. While the other trees in the Dysterwood grew tall and straight, this one stood with its limbs akimboand its trunk painfully arched. It was as wide as their living room back home, and even though he couldn’t see exactly where the tree’s bare branches ended against the dusky sky, it had to be at least two stories tall. With so little ground beneath it, the tree should have toppled over and sunk into the muck long ago, yet it stubbornly blocked the path.
Oliver’s eyes trailed over the clusters of scalloped mushrooms growing up the tree’s trunk over its many limbs. Up close, he could see a delicate net of hyphae hanging down from the branches like willow boughs. They burrowed deep into the water as if to anchor the tree in place. All across the hyphae beetles and slugs crawled and writhed while something white bobbed in the still water near the tree’s roots that looked suspiciously like bones. A voice in the back of Oliver’s mind urged him to flee, but there was nowhere for him to go. The next board had been swallowed by the tree’s bulbous roots, and when he looked back, the way he had come had been overtaken by the bog.
Perhaps, the tree was the way out. As Oliver squinted at the bark for any sign of a door or an answer to the riddle, he wished he had Felipe’s night vision. Up close, it was an unending mass of brown, but when he stepped as far back as he dared on the remaining tread, a shape slowly came into focus. In the dim light of the mushrooms and the fool’s fire, the bark before him almost looked like a human face. Two large knots made wide eyes while curves in the bark formed a narrow nose and a pointed chin. He followed them lower to find the outline of a neck and shoulders. Nature had grown a life-size effigy in wood and moss.
Hovering a hairsbreadth above the bark but never touching it, Oliver traced his hand down the figure’s frame until he caught a flash of white where their heart would have been. The decorative ivory handle of a knife jutted from the oak as if the bark had grown around it for decades and swallowed it to the hilt. Beside it, gnarled, wooden fingers grasped for the knife, and on the third finger of their right hand, tarnished gold glinted. Much like the knife, the tree had grown around the ring and held it tight. Crouching down, Oliver had expected to find a gold band or something elaborately jeweled, but upon closerinspection, he realized it was an old signet ring. The carnelian face was wide and eroded from years of use, and in the dim light, he couldn’t make out the images carved into its face. Oliver straightened and double-checked the tree for anymore hidden trinkets or a sign that there might be another way that didn’t violate the rule of respect. His only choices were the ring, the knife, or trekking back through the swamp. Power, violence, bonds made, bonds cut, he couldn’t be certain what his choices meant, but he knew going back through the dark, rippling water would be his undoing. While there was no way to go around the tree without straying, there was one other option.
“I want to go back to Felipe,” Oliver whispered to the tree. “I know I’m a stranger in your wood, but I mean no harm and have taken nothing. Please, I just want to go back to my love.”
Nothing happened, but something in the air changed. Oliver met the knotty eyes of the face in the bark and found them staring back at him with something akin to recognition. He swore he could sense something human in those eyes as they held his gaze, though he wasn’t certain if that scared or comforted him. A snap echoed through the silent bog. The ring that had been trapped in the wood now hung from a gnarled, oaken finger. When Oliver looked back at the effigy trapped in the bark, whatever spark was there had been snuffed out and only a swirl of bark remained.
“Thank you,” Oliver said before carefully pulling the ring from the splintered finger.
The metal warmed his palm as he inspected it in the hyphae’s dull glow. Drawing in a calming breath, Oliver slipped the ring onto his right hand and pictured Felipe’s face.
“I want to go back to Felipe.”
The words had scarcely left Oliver’s lips when cold, boney fingers wrapped around his ankles and dragged him under.
***
Felipe sat on the bench alone, still as death and soaked to the bone. He had sent Gwen back to the inn when the rain grew harder. People like him didn’t have to worry about catching a chill, but she did. And after everything, she deserved to be somewhere safe and warm. Gwen had been reluctant to leave him alone; he couldn’t blame her for fearing he would throw himself into the woods the second she was out of sight. As tempting as it was, he had promised her he would only charge in if he sensed Oliver was in danger, and he was a man of his word. Still, he suspected she stood behind a mausoleum watching him for several minutes before finally heading back to the Allen Inn.
