The boy from the work camp.
The back of his head melded into a trunk. His hair had transformed into the thin, threadlike roots of a parasitic vine. His face was human, throat and chin and nose and foreheadskin instead of bark, but veined in black. Crystalline ice feathered across his features, clinging to his eyebrows and lashes. His lips were blue with cold, his eyes horribly open but so fogged with ice it was as if he had grown cataracts.
Arthur had saved the boy from Ira only for him to suffer this fate instead. “Oh, no.”
“Who is he, Uncle Arthur?” Jonas repeated.
“A woodsman.” Arthur drew closer. “I’d hoped he’d gotten away.”
The boy was dead. He must have been. Surely he could not have grown so cold as to turn blue and survived.
But behind their icy film, his eyes shifted minutely.
“Hello?” Arthur wished he knew the boy’s name. “Are you... Can you... Can you hear me?”
The boy’s mouth opened, barely. He let out a sound that might have been an attempt at words.
Arthur touched the acorn at his throat. Perhaps it could stop the boy’s growth as it had Ira’s. But it hadn’t reversed Ira’s growth, and the boy seemed too far gone for anything less.
Arthur unclasped the acorn’s chain nonetheless, but the boy’s lips moved. His paltry breath fogged the air. Arthur stepped closer, straining to listen.
“What?”
The boy’s lips formed a word so quietly Arthur might have imagined it.
“Run.”
Something crashed through the underbrush behind them. Its roar shook ice from the trees with a tinkling like broken glass.
Arthur stepped back, shielding the children. “Oh—”
It was a bear. Arthur had never seen one, except in books or ancient carvings. But there it was, towering over him on its hind legs, far larger than he’d imagined a bear could be. Halfits skull, its vertebrae, and one scapula were visible through its skin. Black ooze dripped from its eyes, as if it had been blinded.
If it couldn’t see them, it could smell them. It stopped, rearing to sniff the air—God Almighty, it was twelve feet tall—then lowered and shambled toward them. Freya darted away through the trees.
“Run,” Arthur said to Jonas, nudging them behind him. “Run!”
Jonas froze, unable to do anything more than cling to his hand. Arthur flung them toward Maurice. His back spasmed horribly, but he shoved Jonas onto the gelding’s back.
“Get them out of here.”
Maurice snorted and whirled around, but Sasha hurtled off of him.
“Uncle Arthur!”
Before Arthur could stop her, she’d run past, waving a stick and hollering. The bear ambled closer in utter disregard for her weapon. The boy in the tree closed his eyes exhaustedly as more bark solidified at his throat and chin.
A rock hit the bear in the face. Jonas, dismounted and trembling but already armed with another. Roaring, the bear changed direction. Sasha chased it, beating it with her stick and shouting, “Don’t! Hurt! My! Sibling!”
Desperate, Arthur hurled a stone at the bear and dodged as it came toward him. He grabbed Sasha around the waist and threw her at Jonas.
“Go, now!”
Maurice screamed but circled the children, shaking his mane as if to encourage them to grab on. Arthur broke away, throwing more rocks and silently praying he’d find the children if he lost them.
“Go!”
Then he stopped worrying about whether they were listening, because the bear reared right over him.
