He leans in the lee of the church, disappeared in shadows, awaiting the Grace witch.
Arthur Couch, tall and mean and bright as the morning star, runs interference for him, standing between Baeddan and the rest of the village, on one cocked hip and drinking from a mug of wine. He offers some to Baeddan, who drinks it fast as water. The tartness lingers on his tongue as if the wine has a life of its own.
Baeddan cannot close his eyes, or all of this will vanish. He’ll be back in the burning heart of the forest. The Bone Tree twisting all around him, tiny threads of roots piercing his ankles and wrists, penetrating the skin over his ribs, looping and winding through his bones in a ferocious agony. The forest ate his flesh and bones, spat him out as this thing, this devil with nonsense songs and lullabies looping in his imagination, faces and names confused together, and that great need pushing him on and on. The words find themselves, and he understands them, when he listens:Find the saint, the saint, the saint. Find him.
It’s difficult, nearly impossible, for Baeddan to look at even Arthur Couch, who was not the saint, never the saint, and do anything besides strike. When Rhun Sayer arrives in the village square, dark and handsome in fresh, fitting clothes, the anointed saint, Baeddan cannot breathe for the compulsion racking his heart. He thrusts his fists into his eyes, grinding painfully until starbursts explode in the darkness, until he sees streaks and spots of white and blurred red.
The hiss and grind of the crowd talking, shifting, waiting, drinking, setting out food and dragging long tables into place, children yelling, running feet, all of it swarms together in a rush like the rush of blood in his ears, like a roaring wind blowing through the corrupted branches of the Bone Tree. It overwhelms him. He chews his own teeth, grinding, clicking, clicking, oh yes—the click of teeth and tiny branches, the click of delicate hooves,click, click, click—
“Baeddan Sayer.”
He shudders. Tendrils of forest magic tickle at his face.
“Baeddan,” she says again. Mairwen Grace. He looks wildly at her, then snatches the scarf tied across her chest, dragging her nearer, and kisses her.
There come gasps and protestations from all around, but not from Mairwen, who allows it, who holds his face, thumbs stroking his temples. She is a piece of him, his heart, and Baeddan can breathe again, can think about things other than dragging the saint to the altar so his bones can be tied down, so his bones can be made the flesh of the forest. The Bone Tree rises in his mind, growing between them, lashing their hearts together.
The voice of the forest quiets.
She jerks back. Her eyes—oh, they are so many delicate brown shades, darkening together, blackening, he is sure.
His heart pounds. Mairwen Grace tightens the scarf crossed over her chest, tucking it more firmly around her waist.
She faces the village. “I am Mairwen Grace,” she calls. “You all know my name, but so did the Devil’s Forest. It knew me. It recognized me, for I have the blood of Grace witches and the blood of Carey Morgan, the twenty-fifth saint, running through my veins.” Mairwen touches her mouth, bringing her fingers away with blood.
“Because of my blood, I was safe in the forest, and I found its secret.”
Baeddan stands abruptly, knowing she means him. He bares his teeth, hungry.
Arthur Couch appears at his right, Rhun Sayer at his left. Each young man puts a hand on his shoulder, and Baeddan shivers at the flow of binding power between them all. It itches under his skin.
Mairwen continues. “We three found the Bone Tree, where Baeddan Sayer has survived these ten years, bound to the forest, the sacrifice we sanctified and sent inside to run and die. For that is the true destiny of the Three Graces saint: to become the forest devil until his seven years are up.”
The crowd mutters and grumbles, staring at him, at Baeddan. They don’t want to believe. Some point. Some make signs against evil.
“This is Baeddan Sayer, or what’s left of him.” Mairwen’s voice is hot in his ears, and he sees flashes of who he was before: laughing, merry, dancing, a boy ready to face his destiny.
“What makes you the best, Baeddan Sayer?” the lord asks. Baeddan is the third boy to answer, and he has no idea what to say.
He shrugs and smiles his best charming smile. “I don’t know if I am, my lord, but I know I’m willing to try, and die, for Three Graces. If that’s what it takes.”
“What’s left of all of us,” Baeddan sings quietly.
The Grace witch—his witch—glances back at him, then goes to the nearest bench and lifts one side, dragging it loudly across the cobblestones. She drops it and climbs onto it. Rhun moves immediately to her so she can balance with a hand on his shoulder. Around them, the faces of villagers stare wide-eyed as skulls, blanched and eager, frightened, excited, and hungry, hungry, hungry.
“Here is what I know,” Mairwen says, putting her hands out. “We went into the forest, found Baeddan, and at the altar in the roots of the Bone Tree we made a charm to bind our bargain. I know the saints don’t die immediately: They are bound to the tree, their hearts sacrificed to the heart of the forest. I know once there was a god of the forest, but that god is gone. Dead, or vanished, or fled, I cannot say. The story isn’t the whole story.”
“How long will your charm last?” says a bearded man wearing a dull yellow jacket.
Baeddan digs his strong fingers between two stones of the square.
“I don’t know, but not long,” Mairwen answers. “The forest has no heart.”
Mairwen is a pillar of light standing over them all, the setting sun making a torch of her brambled hair. Her bare feet are streaked with dirt, and Baeddan understands why the two of them are the only people in Three Graces without footwear of any kind:the forest, the forest, the forest.
“We should let it end,” Arthur Couch says. Baeddan agrees.
“We can’t,” calls a gangly woman with sprouting black hair.
