“You’ll understand when you think on it long enough. Listen. You’ll see you’ve always known in your heart, because of who you are. You’ve always understood the forest. It is lifeanddeath! Both. You love it, long for it. And I’ve always allowed you that, never tried to take it away, because you were preparing yourself. The only lie we perpetuate is hope, because hope is the thing that lets the saints do what they must. By destroying the hope, you’ve destroyed the entire bargain. Everyone will suffer for it.”
“But Rhun is alive,” Mair says.
Aderyn sighs. “If only I believed you love him so much and everything else so little that you would sacrifice everything else for him.”
“Have you ever loved anything at all?”
“How can you ask me that?”
“Do you know what my father’s bones feel like?” She says it through clenched teeth, growling, desperate as a monster.
Her mother folds her hands before her. “I love you. I have only ever allowed you to be free, to do what you must for yourself and the town.”
“I don’t believe you. How could you let him be the saint if you loved him and knew? If I’d known I’d never have let Rhun run.”
“You’d have let some other boy do it?”
“I...” Mairwen shakes her head, stunned, furious, and even afraid. “I don’t know. No! It’s wrong to trick them. It’s always been wrong! Everyone should know the full truth and then if they still would be a saint, or still be willing to live the way we do, they should know the real price. What our bargain is truly built on. How dare you keep this secret!”
Whirling, Mairwen makes to go, but her mother grabs her arm.
“You’ve broken it now, yourself, and you will not be thanked for revealing the truth, Mairwen. People don’t want the truth.”
Mair jerks free and stares, horrified, at Aderyn. Her mother stares back, just as angry.
The moonlight shines all around, and Mairwen feels the forest tugging at her.
She says, “Mother, do you know what happened to the old god of the forest when the first Grace died?”
Aderyn plucks the candle off the fence, leaving behind a cooling ring of wax. “You already know everything I know about the bargain, Mairwen. I’m going to stay with Hetty again tonight, but tomorrow I will take back my house.”
When Mairwen is alone in the darkness, pressed near the dozing sheep, she sinks to her knees and hugs her stomach, mouth open in a silent scream.
It hurts too much: her burning eyes, the sting of the charm at her wrist, the sharp pulse of her collarbone, and oh, her heart, her heart! Her toes press into the cold earth and she bows her head. All those ragged, short brambles of hair tickle her neck and ears, a reminder of how she’s changed, and she huddles there in the dark and silence. She snaps her jaw closed, grinding her teeth, lips back, shoulders hunched. There is such a blaze across her chest, stabbing with persistence.
Her skin splits, and she feels the birth of hooked thorns, flaring up from her bones.
Trickles of hot blood slip down her skin, running below the scarf and under the collar of her wool shirt to pool in a thin line along her breasts where her bodice presses tight.
•••
RHUN IS SURROUNDED BY SAYERS.They’ve overtaken an entire long table, with Baeddan in the middle, Arthur at his side, and Rhun at Arthur’s. Then the rest: cousins and uncles and aunts, gathered around and pressing near, sharing bowls and drinks. Brac, his most recently married cousin, shares a mug of beer with him. So encircled, Rhun almost manages to feel normal. The lying is over, and it’s peeled a few of the hardened layers away from his heart. Three Graces knows what he knows, and even though nothing’s been decided, the folk need time to accustom themselves to the revelations.
But he can’t quite relax into his great clan. He’s unsettled and keeps catching himself looking north, toward the forest. Like that’s where he belongs, not here with his family. The Bone Tree waits for him, reaching cold and white against the darkness.Saint, it whispers.
“I’m proud of you.” Rhun the Elder places a hand on his shoulder, as if sensing it’s better not to hug his son.
Rhun the Younger can’t respond. If he opens his mouth, the voice of the forest might spill out.
Elis, his little brother, carefully creeps up behind Baeddan, leaning on Arthur’s back so his short, tight curls flatten against Arthur’s borrowed shirt. Arthur shifts to make better room for Elis, but the boy won’t get closer to Baeddan.
“Elis,” Rhun says softly, and holds out a hand. His brother leaps at the chance, and climbs up onto the bench with Rhun. Half of Elis’s gangly nine-year-old body sprawls on Rhun’s lap. Grounding him here. So long as somebody sits on him, Rhun can’t get up and run back in.
It didn’t feel like this when the sun was up.
He looks to the moon in the east. It rose late, no longer quite full.
“Do you remember what you told me before the Slaughter Moon?” Elis whispers.
