He crouches at the glint of water on stone—a footprint, a smear of wetness angling toward the wall of black trees. He jogs that way, eyes everywhere for further sign. There’s a skid in the ground cover. Rhun heads deeper into the silent forest.
Behind him something snickers. He spins, notching an arrow. He draws it to his cheek and aims along his sight. Darkness, shadows on shadows. Columns of black trees.
The wind twists through the empty branches.
“Mairwen!” he yells. Silence swallows the name.
“Mairwen, Mairwen!” hiss back a hundred tiny voices, from every angle, all around. Above and below.
Rhun whirls, arrow aimed, left then right, sweeping upward in an arc.
He is alone.
He slides the arrow home in the quiver over his shoulder and moves on.
•••
THE MOON RISES.
Haf draws Ifan Pugh’s hand to her cheek and presses. A tear slips from her eye, smearing against his pale knuckles.
“Summertime,” he whispers, a name he’s called her once or twice, and wraps his arm around her. Haf wants nothing so much as to hide her face in his shoulder, let him be a shield between her and the fear and the forest. But she can’t. She has to hold this vigil. Mairwen would, and Haf will be brave for her friend.
Around them the crowd shifts. Some keep warm by stomping, others walk wide circles around the pasture. Still others trade out with husbands or wives or sisters or fathers to watch little ones back home in the cottages. They talk softly when they talk at all, and though they do not eat, they sip beer and steep tea near the hot feet of the fire. Wind sings too sweetly through the valley, and the moon is too bright.
“Do you hold it against me, that I never was a true candidate?” Ifan asks, low in her ear.
Startled, she turns her head away from the forest. His eyes are inches from hers, tight at the corners and sad. She says, “No, oh no, I never.”
He studies her for a moment. The tension relaxes a bit from his face. Firelight teases the wisps of dark hair framing his forehead, and the tip of his narrow nose. Haf has always liked to look at him, though she never was struck by any handsomeness or beauty. He is simply pleasant, and kind, and was hesitant enough to create a bit of attraction between them. Three years ago he was twenty-three, a bit too old to run, and the sainting before that he was sixteen, but while he competed with the others, he’d been as likely a saint as sweet Per Argall. From things her mother and aunts have said, Ifan was competent, just not invested. Unusual for a boy in Three Graces to not have an intense relationship with the sainthood. Haf has always liked unusual things—she is best friends with Mairwen Grace, after all.
“You are what you are,” she whispers to him and, on a whim, kisses him.
His mouth is dry and cool, but he brings a hand up. His thumb presses just at the corner of her lips, and his fingers spread along her cheek and jaw, holding her carefully.
Faraway in the forest, a scream lifts out of the darkness.
Haf startles away, clamoring to her feet. Ifan joins her, as do a line of villagers, breath held all.
The scream dies away, and after her heart beats again, tiny black shadows dart up from the canopy, tilting like a furious flock of birds.
•••
ARTHUR SPINS, PANTING. THE MARSHglimmers with tiny lights, teasing him. He hates being alone in this forest—harder to pretend he’s not scared without Mairwen to lie to.
Visions dance before him, moonlit and wavering, all rotting faces and leering, broken grins. His mother hangs by the neck from a bent tree, eyes open and caught on his. She laughs and hisses, “To be born a boy in Three Graces is to be as good as dead.”
“Pretty girl,” cries a ghastly demon, splashing up from the wet marsh. Its face is like his father’s, its voice hot as Arthur’s own.
He knows—he absolutely knows—this is a trick. The forest wants to drive him wild, confuse him, wear him out with fear.
“You’re no saint,” the forest spirits accuse him. “We taste it in your heart.”
Bone boys giggle and the marsh lights wink in joining merriment. “No-saint, never-saint,” says the voice of the devil.
“I could be,” Arthur says, unable to resist any argument.
“Not you, not in that dress, not without even a mother to believe in you!”
