Then he stopped, because his injuries throbbed and he worried he might’ve popped his stitches. He set Ira down, carefully, and touched his face.
“I won’t lie,” he said breathlessly. “I miss the antlers. And, er, well, the claws. A little.”
Ira let out a huff of laughter. “I can put them back, you know. Now and then. If you want.”
Beside them, Maud cleared her throat. They broke apart. Arthur’s ears pinkened. Ira laughed.
“If you two are quite finished,” Maud said.
Ira smiled. “For now.”
“Sorry,” Arthur said, too giddy to be sorry at all.
Elspeth raised an eyebrow. Charlotte bit back a smile. Sasha, ever disgusted by “kissing books,” looked nauseated. Jonas blushed but kept glancing between their uncle and the Lord of the Wood as if they hadn’t realized men kissing other men was an option.
Ira slipped his hand into Arthur’s. Calyx wound between his legs like a cat.
Arthur squeezed his fingers. “What now?”
“Now,” Charlotte said, “we find Elspeth’s sister.”
xliii. In which goodbyes are said (for now)
Charlotte touched Elspeth’s cheek, concerned. Elspeth’s jaw had gone tight, but at Charlotte’s touch, she let out a long, low breath. Her eyes dimmed.
“How, Lottie? This is all I saw in that basin. The stump, a tree—that’s it. I didn’t see Maggie.”
Ira untangled his fingers from Arthur’s, nudging Calyx out from underfoot. “What exactly did you see? Which tree? If something happened to her here, if you can remember exactly what you saw, I can find out.”
Elspeth seemed even more suspicious of him now that he looked human. Charlotte squeezed her hand, wishing they were alone. They’d found her brother alive, more or less in one piece, in better shape now than he’d been when they’d reached him—but no sign of Elspeth’s sister. Although Charlotte had forgotten herself before, so relieved to find Elspeth in the wood, she couldn’t comfort Elspeth much with so many people around.
“Which tree?” Ira repeated.
Elspeth bit her lip. So many trees had grown in the last few minutes. What had been a dying clearing was new-growth forest. Young trees of all kinds—birch, holly, rowan, goat willow,aspen, hawthorn—all with leaves that had budded, opened, grown, and started turning yellow or orange or red. Moss and lichens bloomed on their trunks.
“Let’s take a closer look,” Charlotte said, though she shuddered at approaching the new growth. Calyx wound around her for support.
The ooze, the veins—all of it had cleared up. The trees were healthy. Nonetheless, the forest’s magic made her shiver. Never mind that the forest no longer wanted to kill them; it had done away with the work camp. Somewhere in Port Lorne and cities like it, wealthy men who already owned more than anyone could humanly use would learn of their plight. Undoubtedly, they’d start planning their next camp, determined to remove the heart of the wood, destroy the forest, and gobble up the land for factories or grand estates.
But the men who had done the work had been working men in need of money. And likely none of their families would ever see any, now. Perhaps they’d known that. Known, like the fishermen in Seacliff, that their provider was as likely to kill them as support them.
Perhaps knowing that hadn’t mattered, because they’d had no other options.
Elspeth’s grip tightened as they moved through the trees.
“None of ’em are... I don’t recognize any of ’em.” Her breath hitched. “There are too many. There are too many trees now.”
“Here.” Charlotte turned Elspeth toward her, cradling her face in her hands. “Breathe with me a minute, hmm?”
They all did it together, even Maud, breath sighing out of her like wind in the leaves.In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Elspeth’s breathing steadied. Charlotte wiped her tears away.
“Now, close your eyes and picture what you saw.”
Elspeth let out a breath and did as instructed. “It... it wasthe tree where I found Maggie’s necklace, but it looked like it’d grown thicker. Mossier.”
“Her necklace?” Ira asked.
