A priest stood with him, alongside two figures: her friend Venus Forscythe and Captain Coriander Burr, Oliver’s low-born friend from the navy. Venus and Captain Burr stopped whispering as soon as they saw her.
Persephone stepped warily into the clearing. “Oliver… what is this?”
He extended a hand. “It’s our wedding night.”
Persephone stared. “But… but you said…”
“My grandmother does not control me,” Oliver said. He moved to Persephone and took her by the hands. “I do not care who she wants me to marry. I wantyou,Persephone.”
Persephone looked to the priest, then to Oliver, then to Venus and Captain Burr. “But… she would never let us…”
“She cannot stop us. I will marry you here and now. We have a priest. We have two witnesses. We will be wed before the Gates of Eden and all the laws of England. And when we sign the papers, I will file them with the courts, and then there is nothing she can do.”
Oliver looked down at her, eyes bleary but bright. He got down on one knee. “Persephone Elderwood, will you be my wife?”
Persephone’s eyes began to water. “What am I supposed to say?”
He kissed her hands. “Say yes.”
She smiled wide, and tears began to fall. Oliver took her by the hand to the altar. Venus handed her a bouquet and touched her arm like a friend. Oliver clapped Captain Burr on the back and thanked him. Then Persephone met Oliver beneath the arch of flowers, and the priest began to speak.
Elswyth gasped. The world flooded back to her. The vision of the hedge maze vanished, and she was back in the catacombs again, looking at her sister’s warped face.
“You… you loved him. And he loved you,” Elswyth said.
Persephone looked at Elswyth with her lone eye. She tried to nod, and the wood around her head creaked. Then her face began to tremble and a thin opening appeared in the wood where her mouth should be. Blood stained the edges of it, dripping down her chin.
“Don’t… hurt him… please,”Persephone said. Her voice was little more than a whisper and her wooden lips barely moved. Persephone’s eye bored into Elswyth, and something desperate shone there.
“Take… him…”
“The prince?” Elswyth said. “Take him where?”
Persephone closed her eye as though concentrating. The wood of the tree groaned and a seam cracked open on Persephone’s left side. The bark there peeled away, curling like paper, exposing Persephone’s left arm, half-fused to the wood. Bloody sap dripped from it, falling in sticky sheaths to the floor.
She held something in the crook of her arm. Something pale and fleshy, pressed to her left breast.
“Take… him… please…”
And then Elswyth saw it: A face. Four limbs. A tiny belly.
Persephone offered her the baby.
The infant slept peacefully in the crook of his mother’s arm. He was covered in the same bloody sap but otherwise looked normal. He had no branches or growths like his mother, only soft skin. He was sickly, perhaps, and small, but he was alive. Somehow, miraculously, alive.
“You… must… go…”Persephone said. The baby began to squirm, threatening to wake and scream, longing for the dark quiet of its mother’s arms. The secret cradle of her wooden heart.
Elswyth took the baby from Persephone, holding it uncertainly. Persephone concentrated again and her trunk groaned shut. Then, somehow, she smiled.
“Take… care… of… him,”Persephone rasped.
Panicked tears fell from Elswyth’s eyes. “I will, Persephone. Ipromise, I will.”
Persephone smiled one last time, and then her face went slack.
“Persephone?” Elswyth asked.
Her sister said nothing. Her living eye slowly dulled to gray.
