Mairwen meets his angry brown eyes, and a tremor of matching anger raises bumps along her forearms. Her mother, her mother, her mother. Except— “Maybe they’ve forgotten too. The Grace witches. My mother. We’re forgetting. Maybe...” She only wants her mother not to be a villain.
“Tell us your memories now, Arthur,” Rhun says.
“Baeddan choking me. Ghosts like my family, taunting me. I remember a marsh, too, and—drowning. Running, but it’s a blur, like a dream. And an altar, I think at the base of the Bone Tree.”
“Yes!” cries Baeddan, “like this one.” He smooths a hand along the hearthstone where he’s sitting.
As if he’d not been interrupted, Arthur says, “And I remember Mairwen asking me why I ran into the forest at all, but I didn’t until she touched me this morning. I remember hiding with you in that dry creek bed, since I grabbed your knee in the loft. We might remember more if we... do it again.”
The look on Rhun’s face is too easy to read.Now you want to touch me, he says without saying anything at all. Even Mairwen knows.
She says, “I remember Baeddan. And running—Arthur, you climbed a tree. Not the Bone Tree. I remember... birds. Tiny little bites. ‘What happened to the old god of the forest?’ I said that. I also said, ‘We are the saints of Three Graces.’?”
“I remember saying that, too!” Arthur stands suddenly, too excited to be calm. “We are the saints.We said it when we made the charm, I think.”
Baeddan whispers, “It tasted so good.”
They all stare at him for a moment of stunned silence.
“What did?” Mairwen asks carefully.
He touches his chest, and the three wounds beneath those other tiny bones sewn into his flesh.
the tip of the tiny blade pressed at the edge of the bone. “Are you ready?” she asked Baeddan, and the devil bared his teeth. She took a deep breath, and cut
Mairwen turns over her arm and stares at the knobby white bone tied to the bracelet. “It’s a bone from John Upjohn’s hand. And the rest are there...” She looks at Baeddan’s mottled, scarred chest.
“Holy Mary,” Arthur says, and Mairwen thinks she’s never heard such reverence in his voice.
Rhun shoves the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Haf gasps. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Mairwen says with a frown. Her breathing shifts as something near panic takes hold of her. She stares at the bracelet, narrowing her eyes.Remember, she orders herself. She is a Grace witch! She should remember.
“Why did we forget?” Rhun demands. “Why is that part of the bargain? Nobody ever told us that, did they! John should have. If he forgot too. Or is it—is it different for us?”
Mair thinks of John Upjohn and his haunted eyes, his nightmares. He remembers something, but maybe not all.
“We forget to keep the ones who run back out from telling us the truth,” Arthur says as if it is obvious. “The four who survived, and John, if they’d told us they saw the previous saint, the story would have fallen apart.”
“That’s giving Three Graces plenty of credit. Assuming anyone would care,” Rhun says. The bitterness turns Mair’s stomach. It falls too hard and ugly from Rhun Sayer’s lips.
Arthur glances at her, clearly just as worried about Rhun.
“It’s also assuming,” Mair says, “this is always what happens: A saint goes in, is bound to the forest, and becomes like Baeddan. Then they stalk the next saint, and that saint replaces the oldasthe devil? Unless they run out again.”
Baeddan moans softly.
“The magic... works,” Mair says, thinking,Life, death, and blessing in between.
“What do you remember, Baeddan?” Haf asks, then bites her lips as she watches him.
He touches a line of scarring that slides down his chest, ropy and purple. His head shakes in tiny fast motions. “The devil who chased me was the last saint, horned and vicious,” he whispers. “I ran and ran, and then I was—chasing. I chased John Upjohn because he smelled right. His breath tasted like sacrifice. So did yours, Rhun Sayer.” His claws cut into his flesh, and new violet blood blossoms. With the dull white of the bones sewn over his heart, his chest is like a meadow scattered with spring flowers.
Mairwen puts her hand on his.
Baeddan bares his sharp teeth and rolls up onto his feet quick enough Mairwen barely scrambles out of the way. He says, “The forest sang to me, lullabies and soothing hymns, and we made things together, creatures and—and new flowers. I tried. I tried to be what the forest needed, but I’m not good enough. I’m not—I don’t remember, except! If I bound Rhun Sayer onto the altar slab, I would be free! My head on the Bone Tree with the rest of them, to make Rhun Sayer the devil in my place.”
