“You are not enough for me to stay. And I cannot—cannot!—remain while the devil that haunts my every moment lives and walks in this valley.”
“Tell me what else you remember, John, and maybe I can put all the pieces together.”
“Mairwen,” he says. That’s all.
She holds his gaze, memorizing the feathered lines at the corners of his eyes, the wisps of pale-blond hair falling out of the tail to frame his temples and tickle his jaw.
“I don’t want to always be alone,” he finally adds. “I have to go.”
Lifting her wrist, she puts the bracelet between them, the delicate underside of her arm lifted to the sky. “John,” she whispers. “Do you see this strange bone?”
It is shaped like a pebble, with five rounded corners, and white as the moon.
“I see it,” he breathes.
“It is a bone from your hand.”
John reels back, stumbling.
She reaches out, grabs at him, but he shies away.
“John, listen!” Mairwen speaks fast. “Baeddan has all of them, all the bones from your hand, sewn into the flesh of his chest, over his heart, binding you to him and to the forest—it was the most power from you he could take without keeping you, and why the bargain only lasted this long! Because your hand was powerful, but not powerful enough a sacrifice to burn for the whole seven years. Now the bargain is only held by my willpower, my little charm! It won’t last even a season. Tell me what you remember, so we can understand what the bargain needs. So we can keep everyone safe. Even you.”
He shakes his head, backing away, heels knocking pebbles and tufts of grass so he seems to trip and move like a gangly scarecrow brought to life. “I thought my hand would be on the tree.”
“The Bone Tree?”
“Yes. It was covered in bones. Don’t you remember that at least? It was the center of all my dreams, that wretched tree. Strung with skulls, rib cages, femurs, and vertebrae knotted together like a baby’s mobile. And the altar among the huge white roots, embedded there snug and sound.”
Mairwen nods slowly, remembering the skulls.
“The devil laughed as he tried to drag me to it, Mairwen. Baeddan Sayer laughing and singing a song I knew. My mother used to... and I—I thought to sing with him. He was so delighted I knew his song that he dropped me and I ran for the light.”
“I won’t let him near you,” Mairwen says. She must convince him to stay. Whatever John thinks, Mairwen is the only thing keeping him out of the forest now. “I swear, John Upjohn, Baeddan Sayer will not bother you. I’m going to drag his memories out of him, too, and figure this out. Please stay. At least for a few days.”
John is terrified; it’s obvious in his tight eyes, the pull of his mouth. The tension in the leather pocket where he’s shoved his stumped arm too hard. “A few days,” he whispers.
“I swear I will find you answers,” she says, leaning near enough to touch her forehead to his shoulder, and her mouth is near his collar, where on her own chest the thorns press up, hooking through her skin like sickles.
•••
THE CREATURE WHO WAS ANDoccasionally still is Baeddan Sayer hears the Grace witch leave her cottage. Like a puppy after a favorite ball, he pushes up and follows her outside, but instead of heading behind her to the shambles, his gaze turns southwest, toward Three Graces.
The whisper of the forest is a chittering in his ears, or in his mind, or both. He crushes his eyes closed, thumps his fists against his temples. “Baeddan Sayer,” he says to himself, as clearly as she would. The name fills his chest, makes his tongue more human, and he takes a few halting steps toward town. “Baeddan Sayer,” he says again, straightening his spine.
Along the sloping, grassy path he goes, called by the glinting white of cottages and smoke rising, rising, rising, against the too-bright sky. He can’t remember his mother’s face, though he knows he saw her, only a few hours ago. What was her name? Baeddan claws his chest, the pain sharpening his mind: Alis Sayer. Will she be in town, or up the mountain at the Sayer homestead? She spent most days with her sisters in town. Ha! Yes, he remembers that!
Also, Baeddan is hungry. His teeth cut against his lips, and he tastes his own blood, just a trickle. The sun is so warm across his back, through the ripped leather of his jacket.
And the Grace witch brought him out into it. Into the sun.
He smiles, oh, he smiles, broad and terrifying, thinking of her wildness, the taste of her mouth and her blood, the hot press of her fingers on his face, on his wrists, her warmth in the circle of his arms as they danced among the bobbing lights of merry ignis fatuus.
“You are no ghost or green girl,” he says wonderingly, leaping forward to grasp her face. To peer at her crackling brown eyes, the shattered curls about her ears, the bloody scratches crusting along her jaw. At her lips, narrow and pink, wanting to eat her, to bury his face in her neck and discover her tenderest flesh. She looks as delicious as Grace.
“Release me!” she commands, and he does.
Just like that, no struggle, no anger. He obeys her as the forest obeys him.
