Before she can dash to him, she sees John Upjohn sprawled just in front of her, obviously dead. Tears burn, but she refuses to allow them to spill. No.
“Arthur,” she says, stepping over John. “Arthur, can you hear me?”
Baeddan’s head jerks up. “Go back, go back, Grace witch!” he hisses.
Too late.
“Mairwen!” calls a warm, delighted voice. “You came!”
He is there: walking around the base of the Bone Tree. Sy Vaughn, his russet hair curled around his face, bright and summery. He smiles, and his skin glows as if suntanned, his eyes bright. His coat is brown and green, leather and rich velvet, and fur at the collar. His black boots are polished. He is the picture of a man in perfect health and prosperity.
But as he walks down a long, curved root toward her, he changes. His eyes blacken and thorns sprout from his cheeks. His teeth lengthen and his lips turn bloodred. His shoulders widen, his legs grow longer and his clothes hug him, transforming into leathery wings, strips of fur, and thick green moss trailing down his hip and thigh. Antlers rise from his head, forking again and again, then cracking and falling away into scarlet autumn leaves. His hair flowers and his hands turn to claws. Feathers appear down his hard stomach, soft and downy as a young owl’s.
Mairwen stares, amazed.
He clomps around the altar on heavy hooves, rounded like a horse’s, and he stretches his arms out; feathers sprout and fall away. His nose lengthens to a snout, tusks press out of his mouth, curling and curling before turning into vines that snake back over his shoulders. Lichen grows down his forehead, dark orange.
Then he’s bloating and turning ugly purple. Pale blood falls from his nose, and his eyes turn white. His skin shucks away, but instead of meat and bone, there he is perfect again: Sy Vaughn with russet hair and butter-pale skin.
“See, my love?” he says.
It begins again, but this time his skin hardens into gray granite exactly like the altar stone, paling to the white, fissured bark of the Bone Tree. His eyes are perfect purple like the violas.
“You’re the god of the forest,” she whispers.
“You’re my daughter.”
She ignores it, pushing it away, under the throbbing of her frightened heart. “Why did you come back into the forest now? Why did you hurt my mother?”
“The magic has been tugging at me for years. It was time to come home and reset the bargain myself. Aderyn...” He sighs, making a grating sound like stone on stone. “My darling Aderyn was remembering me finally, because all the charms were fading, and I wish I could let her—I miss her, my witch—but I needed her blood.”
“For what?”
Vaughn sweeps his arm toward the altar, and Arthur. “To anoint a new saint.”
Mairwen shifts nearer to Arthur, clutching her hands together against her sternum. “Is it too late?”
“For him? He’ll take Baeddan’s place, and you’ll speak with him again.”
“That isn’t... Don’t do that.” She looks at Vaughn’s eyes, black and brown now, and intentionally holds his gaze while she says, “Please.”
He laughs: a dark, pleasant rumble that vibrates the ground beneath her bare feet. From all around the laughter echoes in giggles and shrieks. Mairwen’s spine stiffens, for she’d not realized they were surrounded by denizens of the forest. “That worked once, to save the life of a saint, but I cannot let it work again.”
She frowns, suddenly realizes something that tumbles out of her mouth. “You knew leaving John alive would break the bargain. That it would weaken the magic, and—and yourself.”
“It was the only thing you ever asked of me.” His voice is tender, awkward around the fangs pressing against pink lips. He never stops shifting, transforming, dying, living again.
Mairwen only stares, stunned.
The old god of the forest adds, “It was worth it, for you.”
She blinks, and tears fall down her cheeks in straight lines.
“I didn’t know I wanted you until you were here,” he says. “I never had a child before you. Yet when you were born, I went to Addie and I held you. It was the first time since I left the forest that I had made life, that I had sown life again. I used to. Here in the forest, I was part of it all. Life and death, stars and rot—”
“Heartbeat and roots,” Mairwen whispers with him, shivering.
Her father smiles. “I looked at you and longed for the day you’d be old enough to understand, toseeme.”
