Sinking onto the step, Oliver watched Felipe weave through the crowd with practiced ease. As much as he wanted to be a good partner to Felipe, he couldn’t bring himself to join him. After everything that happened the previous day and night, he was too afraid someone might recognize him as Stephen Jarngren’s long-lost son or that he would say something that would make it obvious that this mess was probably his fault due to trespassing in the woods. When he and Felipe first came outside, things had calmed down a little after the initial shock of finding the road blocked, but with every passing moment, the tension grew with the crowd. The new arrivals were asking questions the men who first discovered the severed road had no answers for. Some of the men, especially the younger ones, were getting louder, and even from his perch on the porch, Oliver could feel the hornets stirring in their nest.
Mr. Hughes had mentioned that it got ugly in town during the days after Horace Ridder turned up dead, and Oliver feared the townspeople were already primed to revolt. Across the road, Felipe locked eyes withOliver as he spoke to Mr. Allen. Patting the innkeeper on the shoulder, Felipe cut through the crowd and returned to Oliver’s side with an uneasy smile. Under his eyes were deep, halfmoon bruises despite the jerky and cheese Oliver had pressed into his hands. He knew it hadn’t been enough to replace breakfast.
“So what’s the verdict? Am I going to be tarred and feathered for this?” Oliver asked softly, nodding toward the woods.
“I doubt you caused this. It was just unfortunate timing.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences like this. It has to be connected.”
Settling on the porch beside him, Felipe sighed and whispered, “Even if it is, the tension is less about the woods and more about Mayor Stills ignoring them. They sent someone up to tell him what happened over half an hour ago, and he still hasn’t showed. Some of the men were talking about trying to drive the cart through anyway or taking an ax to the trees.”
Oliver’s heart leapt in his throat with panic. He had no true tie to the Dysterwood, yet the thought of the trees and creatures being subjected to such violence pained him. “Do you think they would really do that?”
“Mr. Allen seems worried they will.” Dropping his voice and leaning closer, Felipe added, “I overheard him telling someone that he lost his older brother to the woods years ago. He was reminding one of the younger men from the mill that people who go in don’t come out.”
Except me, Oliver wanted to say. “I don’t understand it. Why live in a place like this if people disappearing is the norm? I’m surprised someone hasn’t tried to burn it down or destroy it already. If it took you, I would.”
“Do you think people haven’t tried?”
When Oliver looked up, Mr. Allen stood watching him with a tired frown.
“If you take a swing, you get pulled in. Fires smolder but never take hold. Those who try are usually swiftly met by misfortune.”
“Why put up with it though? Before all this, you could leave andgo somewhere where things like this don’t happen. You did leave for a time.”
“I did, but tragedy can happen anywhere. If my brother hadn’t disappeared into the Dysterwood, he could have fallen from a horse or drowned in a creek or died of fever. We put up with it because Aldorhaven, strangeness and all, is home. And I left to start over as someone new, not to escape the town itself. As long as we respect the Lady and her woods, we’re cared for. The Dysterwood feeds the mill and ironworks, which keeps most of the town employed. Without its steady flow of bog iron and mature trees, there would be no Aldorhaven.”
Mr. Allen paused as if he wanted to say more but stopped himself. Felipe caught the pause and looked to see if Oliver had noticed as well. Before either one of them could ask him about it, an engine grumbled in the distance. The men milling in the road quickly stepped aside as a steamer trundled down the road. It was at least a decade older than the one they were borrowing from the Paranormal Society, but it was far less utilitarian with its excessive brass trim and midnight blue exterior. In the driver’s seat, Lucien Stills swallowed hard as he looked at the chaos around him before he carefully inched the steamer as close as he could to the second cart.
Lucien had barely put it in park when the back door swung open and Mayor Stills swept out in his frock coat and top hat. His dark grey brows were drawn low as the waiting crowd parted to let him through. He stomped over to the tree line, giving the uncanny pines a wide berth. For a long moment, the mayor stared into the woods in silence as the crowd waited. While Oliver couldn’t see the mayor’s face, he thought the man’s shoulders and jaw slowly tightened beneath his mustache the longer he stood there. By the time Lucien clamored out of the idling steamer, the crowd had converged again. He tipped his bowler and greeted everyone he passed as he wove through the crowd to find his father. Oliver watched from the porch as Lucien finally reached the end of the road. His mouth opened in silent horror and his green eyes widened. He looked to his father, who said nothing, beforehalf-raising a hand to his lips. Lucien turned to the men, looking as if he were going to speak, when his father gave him a hard, quelling look and turned to the crowd instead.
“This is it?” he snapped. “From what your messenger said, I was expecting to see the road buckling or a pit to hell opening in the center of it. They’re merely Dysterwood trees, like all the rest of them surrounding town. I don’t understand why there are twenty of you standing around gawping at them or why you bothered to call me out here. There’s nothing I can do about this.”
“But it’s the only road out of town, sir,” said the man who had been driving the cart from the papermill. “I can’t deliver the paper to Camden if I can’t get out of town.”
“Well, the road is closed. You will have to deliver the paper when the barge comes in.”
“That’s four days from now! My boss will—”
“And what about food? We’ll run out eventually if deliveries can’t come in.”
“The mail can’t come in more than once a week then.”
“My wife’s great-aunt is supposed to come next week. I can’t put her on a barge.”
The mayor scoffed and shook his head. “I doubt you wanted to deal with your meddling in-laws anyway, Tom. Consider this a gift from the woods,” Luther Stills replied dismissively. Turning to the rest of the crowd, he scowled. “You all need to pull yourselves together. This isn’t the first time the woods have blocked a road, and it won’t be the last. You know the Dysterwood can be fickle. The road will open when it opens, so there is no reason to get hysterical over a little missing mail or a few late deliveries. There’s enough food in town to last us for weeks, so spare me your melodrama about becoming the Donner Party. If you’re so worried, Jackson, you can ration your meals. The rest of us will be fine. As I said, this has happened before, and it will happen again.”
“When was the last time it happened, Stills?” a redheaded man in his late twenties shouted. “I don’t remember a time when the roaddisappeared.”
A murmur trickled through the crowd, and Lucien looked nervously between his father and the other men as he wrung his hands. The mayor straightened and narrowed his eyes at the younger man.
“I’ve been mayor longer than you’ve been alive, Anthony Ekland, so I think I would know the goings on of this town far better than you do.”
An older woman with grey hair stepped up to Anthony’s side. “Well, I’m as old as you are, Luther, and I don’t remember that happening either. First, the dead. Now, this. Something is going on.”
Luther’s face reddened with anger. “You all have short memories. The road to the creek disappears from time to time and the river leads you in circles, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that this one did too. It will appear again soon. In the meantime, make plans to use the barge when it comes through. If you can convince your brother and mother to loosen their purses, Anthony, I’m sure you can convince Captain Langdon to make a few more trips to Aldorhaven. Now, get back to work and go about your business. Staring at the trees won’t make the road open any sooner.”
A fair-haired man near the carts yelled, “What about the bog iron and log supply? My brother told me we’re running low. Some days nothing comes down the river.”
