Find our bones.Why would they ask this of me? My stomach roils with terror, with all the unknown. It doesn’t matter. None of this is what I signed up for. None of it is going according to plan. But I’m here, and the dead are asking me to find their bones. I’m going to see it through.
Beneath my feet, the ground is velvet smooth with crushed leaves. I forge a path between the trees, the air around us reeking of sulfur and lemons. There is no birdsong, no wind causing the branches to creak and sway. All around us, the wood is still. As if it is waiting, watching, biding its time until it can open its gaping maw and swallow us whole.
My body aches to run. A restless energy spreads throughout my limbs, and we make our way deeper between the silver trunks.
A branch snaps, and my hair stands on end.
I hold my breath, crouching behind the nearest tree.
The air goes rank. Spilled guts, old blood, and nausea hollows out an ache in my stomach. I search the forest, looking for any hint of another presence, more waiting, watching dead things. But there is nothing, not even the slightest hint of a breeze or stirring.
And then movement.
But not from the woods, from my pocket.
I curl my hand around the cloth enveloping the bell, stilling it. Ransom’s eyes catch my movement.
“What’s it doing?”
I withdraw my hand and push deeper between the trees. “I don’t know, but I’m not going to worry about it now.”
A chill dampens the air, not so much a breeze, but a lack of everything. Like all the hollow spaces of the wood have expanded. Drawn closer. I stop in my tracks and turn my chin to the moon glowing down at us from between branches. How can time be told without a ray of sun?
This rowan wood is notmyversion. It is a land at war with itself. Between Ithrandril and Erybrus. Light and darkness.
My body chills.
“Do you think we’ll find them here, our mothers?” I search the sea of silver-barked trees.
Ransom scuffs the ground with the toe of his boot. “I don’t want to think about where they are if they’re not here, Thorn.” His face is soft, a sort of darkness harboring in the corners of his eyes.
I grit my teeth. If our mothers aren’t in the wood, does that mean they have already made their choice between our brother-gods? I push the thought away and take Ransom’s hand in mine.
“We will find them.”
He smiles a cracked line, shadows playing in blotches on his face. “I believe you.”
His words renew me, and I press forward, undergrowth shushing against my boots.
“If you were the brother-gods, where would you keep souls?”
I think of Lilith, of Ethel. We know where their bones are, don’t we? Beneath the soil of the churchyard. Buried below headstones scratched with their names.
Ransom looks at me as though I have maggots crawling from my ears. “Do you think Erybrus is here, then?”
I shake my head. “In the Rending, Ithrandril separated himself from Erybrus, cast him into a place where Ithrandril could not reach. You calledthis place an in-between, but it’s a purgatory.” I bring to mind the shape of Bram’s lips when he spoke the word. “It’s a holding place, I think. The souls trapped here have neither claimed Ithrandril or Erybrus. They still have deals to make, a peace to find before they can make their decision.” A shiver tenses my spine. “Though, I feel Erybrus here has a greater presence than any other god.”
Ransom follows my hand, his eyes widening. “This is a hungry place.”
Back home, the world is creeping slowly toward winter. But here, on the other side of living, there seems to be little sense to the earth. Heat smashes against chill, trees caught in stagnant autumn, a moon ever-hanging in the sky. And now, smoke. As though fire is burning along the horizon.
“Should we follow it?” I ask.
Ransom straightens his collar, runs fingers through his hair. “My concern, Adelaide, darling… What is causing it?”
What does it matter? We are here to slip three souls back from beneath Erybrus’s nose. Ithrandril’s too, if we are right.
Ransom’s thinking the same thing I am, but he’s not looking, not really. I see it in his eyes, a kind of glazed look. No focus. But to me, the trees are alive. They shimmer in hues of black, red, and ashen gray. Through their limbs, the sky is crimson, the moon a diamond lost to blood.
