“Get in the bed, Mair. I’ll—”
“No! I have to go to the Bone Tree. I have to—something is very wrong!”
Mairwen uses Haf to climb to her feet, stepping on the portrait. Her heel snaps it in two and she stumbles, but Haf is there to catch her, and together they run out of the manor.
•••
ARTHUR TURNS SO FAST HEknocks back against the altar.
Emerging from the forest is a man, simply dressed in a fine tunic and trousers, his shirt collar untied around his throat and the cuffs loose at his wrists. He wears no boots or stockings, and his bare feet are strangely pale, mottled like moonlight, as is his face. His smile is wide and curved like a scythe, his hair wild and all the colors of tree bark and earth: browns and grays and blacks and reds, twisted into a riot of curls. His eyes seem to widen and narrow separately from each other, one dark and one light, and it is only that which allows Arthur to put a name to the man.
“Lord Vaughn?” he says, squinting.
The man raises his arms, and several bird women land upon his open palms. “Lord, at least,” he says warmly.
Flowers continue to rain gently down upon them, and Vaughn tilts his chin to look up at the Bone Tree.
“Ah, my heart,” he says.
Arthur’s mind is spinning. He sits on the edge of the altar.
Vaughn enters the grove, moving directly toward Arthur but staring at the Bone Tree. Two bird women clutch his arm, and another settles in his hair. In his wake, a handful of bone creatures crawl after, the raven and two foxes, wide eyes stuck on Vaughn in a way Arthur can only read as awe. All around the grove the trees shift and shiver, with no breeze to cause it, and the shadows reach inward. Arthur hears clicking teeth and the rustle of feathers, footsteps, and the creak of cold branches.
And he sees these same little purple flowers that fall from the tree growing anew where Vaughn steps. They push stems out from the cracked earth, from between the massive roots, from under flat stones; they reach up, curling, and the violet buds burst open.
Arthur presses his bottom to the altar’s edge, gripping it too, his body rigid with slow understanding and panic.
“You’re the devil,” he says as Vaughn passes close by. The lord is taller, and his gait inhuman, as if his—yes, his legs have bent wrong, with an extra joint it seems, the strong rear legs of a horse beneath his trousers, but his feet spread and grow tufts of fur, clawed almost like a wildcat.
Vaughn laughs. His voice is hollow, echoing on itself, and deep within the laugh Arthur swears he hears the ringing of bells.
Thorns push out from the lord’s forehead and temples, growing up and hooking in, until he wears a crown of them. They divide and spread like antlers, but flowers bloom, wither, and die, then bloom again, spilling down into his hair and over his cheeks.
The old god of the forest, Arthur thinks, and it’s Mairwen’s voice whispering the words to him. Then Arthur thinks,I am doomed.
If he can find a chance to light his fire, maybe he’ll get out. Vaughn seems so enchanted by the Bone Tree, by his own movements and laughter, it might be possible. Arthur slowly reaches in his pocket again for the fire steel. He’ll have one chance to catch the sparks. Thank God he’s already got the rags and dry grass. A spark and a breath and maybe—
He spins and cracks the ring of steel against the altar. Sparks fly. He bends, cupping his hands around the fodder, and gently blows.
A wide, gnarled hand presses down over the sparks. Smoke coils around the devil’s fingers. Arthur grabs his knife and spins, cutting simultaneously.
The blade slashes across Vaughn’s chest, through tunic and into flesh. Blood splashes on Arthur’s face, and Vaughn grabs him by the throat.
Vaughn lifts Arthur off the ground, holding him high by only the neck. Arthur claws at the devil’s wrist, kicks out; his boot connects hard, but it’s like kicking a giant oak. He grinds his jaw, seething breaths as best he can, holding himself up with the strength in his arms.
Vaughn contemplates Arthur’s struggle. Blood, thick and reddish and brown, drizzles slow and sticky down his chest. Like sap. His eyes are black through and through, with flecks of brown and white, and his mouth bright red, devastatingly red, his teeth sharp. As Arthur stares, eyes bulging, Vaughn’s skin continues to transform. It darkens in streaks, down from his eyes, gray and purple as if his veins have all burst and spread under his skin, or like death. He’s dying and decomposing before Arthur.
“Why,” the creature Vaughn asks, words thick, “did your mother not take you with her?”
Arthur hisses, spit flecking his lips, and stars sprinkle through his vision. Black spots pop in his eyes. Blood roars in his ears. He kicks again and again, twisting, but he can’t breathe enough to—to—
He’s flying backward, tossed easily back, over the altar. He lands in the mess of Bone Tree roots, hard. His body constricts, and he can’t catch a breath.
Then he’s sucking in air, gasping, coughing, hands on the roots, turning over to crawl up.
The Bone Tree shakes, and beneath him the earth trembles. Or Arthur is the one shaking, breathing hard.
A ringing in his ears fades to a lower pitch, and he hears giggling all around him.
