Darting toward them from branch to branch is a drab sparrow woman. She flits and leaps in a stunted arc of flight. “Is that you, Mairwen Grace?”
“Hello, lovely,” Mair calls, holding out a hand palm-up. The bird alights upon it, hands grasping at Mairwen’s wrist.
Haf covers her mouth with her hands. “How wonderful and terrifying,” she says through pressed fingers.
“This is my friend Haf Lewis,” Mairwen says.
The bird woman grins, displaying all her needle teeth. “Though she broke our forest, any friend of the Grace witch is a friend of mine.” Then she stands, her bare feet tickling Mair’s palm, and puts her hands to her waist, where a braid of red-brown hair circles her like a belt.
“It is an honor to meet you, Lady Sparrow.” Haf even goes so far as to curtsy neatly.
The bird woman adores it. She whistles happily. “I like you. Do you sing?”
“Later,” Mairwen says. “What do you mean, I broke your forest?”
“You stole our god and gave us none new!” the bird woman accuses.
“Your god?”
“The witches call him a devil!” She stretches her wings to their full expanse: near a foot, perhaps, if one is measuring generously.
“What happened to the old god of the forest?” Mairwen cries out.
The memory remains an echo of her voice, just the question, again and again.
Mairwen strokes the bird woman’s long feathers, puzzling through what she knows. “Baeddan. The twenty-sixth saint, he stayed in the forest and... became the god. That’s what we call the devil.”
“It is uncomfortable in the forest today. Our heart needs a heart.”
“My mother always said he was a god, not a devil,” Mair says, glancing to Haf.
“Yes, yes, you understand, pretty girl, Grace witch. Oh, you are wise as you are beautiful.” The bird woman offers a flirtatious, sneaky smile.
Mair draws the bird woman nearer to her breast. “How long has there been a devil in your forest, do you know?”
“The devil changes, again and again, new boys, new hearts, new songs.”
“And before the devil, what then?”
The bird woman cocks her head, very like a bird. “There has always been a devil.”
“Did... did the devil always change?” she asks carefully. “The first one, the old god?”
“No,” the bird woman trills. “The old god left the heart tree, the tree at the heart of our forest, and everything was different.”
Breathless, Mairwen holds the bird woman close, recalling Baeddan’s taste for them, and strokes her long primary feathers. The rhythm of her petting meets the rhythm of her heartbeat, the rhythm of her breath and the itch across her chest. She feels it, too, in her fingers, and along her spine, and flushing over every inch of her skin. Changing her. Mair tosses the bird woman lightly up, and as the creature takes to flight, she crouches. Though Haf hums in confusion, Mairwen unlaces and knocks off her boots, then places her bare feet against the earth of the forest. It’s so cool and comforting her shoulders relax and she lets her head fall back.
The old god of the forest broke free of the Bone Tree. Mairwen would risk all their lives to wager that moment was the start of this bargain. The old god and the youngest Grace witch. The story says they loved each other, but can the story be trusted at all?
Mairwen Grace stands there, toes dug into the Devil’s Forest, eyes shut, and the wind shakes her hair even as it shakes the canopy of autumn leaves. She is terrified, suddenly, and trying to bury the fear.
“Mairwen, I don’t know what’s happening,” Haf murmurs.
Mair snaps her head up, looks down at her feet. Spring-green tendrils curl out of the dirt to tease at her toes and ankles, blooming even smaller star-shaped purple flowers.
•••
SUNSET IS AN ELABORATE TRICKtonight. Wispy clouds tumble along a horizon scratched with vibrant pink, and the sky is the rich purple that used to put Baeddan Sayer in mind of violas but now only reminds him of his blood.
