“What are you?” Grace asks.
“The devil,” he says.
Her eyes narrow. She reaches haltingly for his chest, to touch the furrows of blood there, the ropes of scabbing, the hard root-scars grown over his wounds. He reaches to touch her, too, and she snatches her hand away. “No you’re not,” she says, firm and certain.
Laughter drops from his mouth. “No I’m not!” he cries, gleeful.
“What are you? You look like my friend.”
“Is your friend the Three Graces saint? I saw the moon rise. I know the saint is here, running, running, running. I’ll find him, you know. Smell him out. They always smell like that. Like you, hmm.”
Goose bumps lift along the girl’s arms. She says, “I came in here alone.”
The devil leans nearer, nose to her temple. He draws a long breath, sliding down her neck. He’s so close his sharp antlers gently scrape her cheek. Did Grace come here alone? He doesn’t remember. Should he?
“No,” she says, though not to any real question.
“You’re Grace,” he replies, rumbling her name like a purr deep in his chest. She gasps. He can hear her heart beating off-kilter, and all around them the forest is a stage, full of eyes and hopes, making this moment into a dark spectacle.
“I’m a witch,” she whispers. “What are you?”
He touches the skin at her neck, just over her bodice sleeves. She stares with wide eyes, as if he’s as amazing a thing to her as she is to him. He skims fingers up her throat and to her jaw, and a hundred tiny shivers race down his spine and arms, tingling his palms. Her breath is cool as it breaks over him, musty and sweet, and he tilts her chin up.
“A saint,” he says, and kisses her.
It’s only a moment, lips on lips, but the devil tastes her heart.
She wrenches away. “Baeddan Sayer!” she cries.
The creature pauses. He blinks. He puts the butts of his hands to his eyes and backs away. “My name,” he whispers.
Wind hisses through the trees.
“You’re Baeddan,” she says. “You’ve been here ten years. You were the saint then.”
“No, the saint is mine,” he says, suddenly vicious, teeth bared. “I must find him and drag him to the Bone Tree! That is what I must do. Get my fingers around his bones. Not like his finger bones around my heart! Ha! Ha!”
“Baeddan Sayer, no. Listen to me.”
He digs his fingers into his chest, under the tiny bones. “Say my name again,” he pleads.
“Baeddan.”
Clawing his skin, he drags his hands down. “Baeddan,” he whispers.
Baeddan lifts his head and stares up at the sun until tears burn in his eyes. He can still cry.
He tries to recall the cadence of her heart, the rhythm of its song that was not the forest’s song. He should have followed the witch. Not Grace, but Mairwen. Another Grace. But here he is, creeping toward town carefully enough to be aware he’s trying not to be seen.
His bare feet crunch through the dry grass, unattached to the pull of the forest, the magic that used to flow through him strongly enough to plant flowers in his wake, to curl vines up around his ankles if he stood still for too long, that drew the eyes of the trees, the roots, all of it stretching toward him. His forest. His heart and his forest.
This land does not yearn for him. It is quiet, peaceful. He could stretch out and slumber as still as stone for years perhaps.
Baeddan takes a very deep breath and sighs it out.
The buildings of town are like boulders, he decides, slipping quietly around from the southeast to come upon them where there is no path. He easily climbs a yard wall, onto a side building, onto a thickly thatched roof, for he has not lost any of his unnatural strength.
People move below him, though not too many, for it is early afternoon and many still recuperate from the long vigil. He hears them stirring in their beds, murmuring quietly to one another, some walking about from home to pub or the chapel. The sounds comfort him, like long-lost lullabies. He hums along.
