Her eyes sink to Arthur’s mouth, and he forces his body still lest it catch fire again. “You should too,” she whispers, then stands up and leaves him alone with the dead.
•••
THE BONFIRE BLAZES UNTIL AFTERmidnight, and though a handful of older women and their husbands remain to usher the embers and ashes into death, the square quiets. Mairwen strays farther and farther into the fields, tilting and a bit drunk, worried and reckless and cursing herself for kissing Arthur Couch. If love can protect Rhun, if that’s all she can do, she must not divide her heart! Finally, she collapses onto the cold grass and stares up at the stars. They blur and blink, and Mair’s mouth is still hot, her heart a mess.
She was in love with Arthur Couch for two minutes when they were children, when she found out her friend Lyn was not a girl after all, though she was still unsure how it should matter to her and their friends. Mair stared at Lyn as he became a boy, and she remembers clearly the look on his face when he chose what to do, which part of himself to cling to, which rules he’d allow to define him. But for a moment—a wild, mysterious moment—he’d been both a boy and a girl, and neither, and Mairwen had the eager idea that Lyn-Arthur could stand with her at the edge of the Devil’s Forest.
That moment passed, that between space, that shadow where possibilities lived.
Arthur never stepped into it again. He chose the worst parts of boys, thinking they were the strongest when they were only the leastgirl. It made him hurt Rhun, and that Mairwen has no interest in forgiving.
Next time, she thinks as she lays on the cold ground,next time, as if Arthur passed along a sickness. This is Rhun’s next time. She presses her hips back against the earth, puts her hands to her waist and slides them up along her bodice to her flattened breasts. Her eyes fall closed and she touches her lips.
Later Mairwen wakes up, chilly and light-headed. Glad her mother never bothers to worry when Mair forgets to sleep in her loft, she climbs to her feet, stretches all the way up to the sky, and turns toward the Sayer homestead.Next time.
She’s thought of something she can do.
There is plenty Mairwen Grace knows about magic (life and death and blessing between), and plenty she knows about the bargain (the devil is an old god of the forest, and a witch’s heart is the heart of the spell), and there is one way she can think to use magic and love to save Rhun Sayer.
Four hours before sunrise, the night is crisp and still, but bright as twilight thanks to the moon and stars casting silver over the rolling valley. Mairwen pauses at the vista before her: the pale stone houses of Three Graces shine like pieces of the moon itself; the spreading gray fields; thin smoke weaves up from chimneys and vanishes in the scatter of stars; their mountains wait dark and calm and strong.
It will never be the same without Rhun.
Rhun Sayer who’s kind to everybody, who stops to help carry water or mend a torn doll, who is so good at reading his competition he always knows if he can get away with letting them win. He used to lift Mair up onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowd at the spring games, until she was too old for it to be proper, and he lifted little Bree Lewis instead. Rhun never drinks too much to walk straight and endures his cousins’ teasing like an oak in an autumn storm. He forgives Arthur over and over again. Once Mairwen complained to Haf that he’s overprotective of her, and Haf replied,Not of you, of everybody.
He was born a saint, and nobody in town doubts it.
Rhun himself never has.
He is so perfect, he’s going to die.
She walks quickly at first, but shifts faster as her heartbeat picks up and she thinks of her intentions. Rhun can’t be alone tonight. He must know how much she needs him, how much they all need him, alive and real, not a name on a cold memorial. Rhun deserves to know he’s loved, more than—than Arthur, more than herself.
There are just enough moonbeams under the trees for her well-adjusted eyes to clearly see the way up the path. No light shines from the Sayer house, though a flicker of candle glow presses through the small window of their outbuilding. It’s long as a barn, where the Sayers store hunting tools and weapons, and an odd collection of deadfall branches Rhun’s grandfather used to make furniture. Mairwen sneaks toward the window and carefully widens the shutter gap to peer inside. Rhun’s small brother Patrick sleeps on a pile of deerskins with Marc and Morcant Upjohn, and one other boy she can’t recognize for how his features are blocked by sprawling hands. The four boys have feet on stomachs and heads under arms, layered like puppies. It means Rhun will be alone in the room he used to share with Arthur and Brac.
She goes to the main house, surprised to discover the front door open. But two of the Sayer deerhounds spread across the entryway like snoring furry shadows. Mair walks up slowly, and Saint Branwen lifts her bearded face.
“There, Bran,” Mairwen says softly, and hears the thump of the dog’s hairy tail. The other, Llew, stretches all four of his legs out straight, shivering with the release, but doesn’t bother standing. He trusts Branwen, Mair thinks, as she scratches the dog’s neck and behind her ears. She then steps carefully over both hounds in one large effort.
The house is dark, even the hearth banked down, and smells of ash and blessing thistle. She pauses to let her eyes adjust again. It won’t do to knock into the broad table or stumble over a stool. Nona and Rhun the Elder bed upstairs, for Nona claimed the valley view from the second floor within days of arriving in Three Graces, and wouldn’t give it up for convenience nor love.
The walls are hung with wooden saint blessings, gloriously pronged antlers, and a small painting of a grand lady Nona brought with her from the rest of the world. No bundles of drying herbs hang from this ceiling, though several heavy hooks bear pots and wooden spoons. The packed floor is covered with a few furred skins, and the furniture Rhun’s grandfather made huddles in odd proportions because he rarely cut or carved his wood into regular forms. One arm of a chair might be longer than the other, but curved so gracefully it would insult the saints to trim it. The stools are smooth to sit on, but not square in shape or even circled.
As a whole, the home always strikes Mairwen as odd and particular, but comfortable. She can imagine herself living inside it, when she imagines living inside any walls at all.
The door to Rhun’s rear room is only a rectangle arch with a heavy wool blanket tied across. Mair skims her fingers down the coarse material, scratching slightly as a warning. She lifts the blanket aside and enters. Here, with only two high, narrow windows in the outer stone wall, she can barely see.
“Mairwen?”
She hears him moving in the darkest corner. Shadows shift, and there he is, standing off his low bed. “Rhun,” she answers.
“What are you doing here?”
Mairwen takes the three steps necessary to put her against him. She peers up at his shadow-concealed face. Only the glints of eyes and teeth are visible. In reply, she lets go of her square shawl so it slithers off her shoulders and she unlaces her bodice. She takes a deep breath as her ribs are released from the gentle pressure and shrugs out of it. She unbuttons the waistband, then steps out of her skirt to stand in only her wool shirt and stockings, suddenly running hot with anticipation. Twisting her fingers together, she opens her mouth to speak, too aware of the brush of cloth against her breasts, the sharpening of her skin, the loose bramble of her hair a teasing pressure between her shoulder blades. Her belly quivers and pieces of her she usually ignores knot tight. All she’s done is take off her outer layer of clothes.
Rhun does not need to be invited any louder.
He reaches for her, taking her hips in his hands. Mair touches his chest, realizing he’s in even less than she: an old, worn pair of braies loose and threadbare and soft. She touches his skin and flattens her hands over his chest, dragging her palms over his dark nipples to his stomach. It’s smooth and soft with a layer of bounty and health, rich as the earth, and she digs her fingers to find the hard, flexed muscle beneath.
