Arthur returned to packing the wagon in silence, pausing when his back spasmed. His throat and cheek throbbed, too. Despite the magical healing, after all these weeks, they pained him periodically. He still couldn’t lift too much, with thewounds healing on his torso. Charlotte had caught him filling each box to bursting and immediately repacked them lighter.
When they’d spent several days with Elspeth’s family in Port Lorne to recuperate back in September, Arthur had hardly enjoyed it. Everyone else had seemed happy. Maggie, grateful to be home, and Elspeth, grateful to have her there. The children, especially Sasha, who had found the city so new and exciting that it had been difficult to keep them from running off to explore. Agnes, when they’d wired her; she’d wired back to say Gracie’s sickness had cleared up—though it had left her with fatigue, pain, and dizzy spells, whether because she was an old woman or because she’d had it for so long—and to ask that they please bring the clock back with them. Charlotte, who had gotten on with Elspeth’s grandfather in particular, though he and Elspeth’s grandmother both delicately referred to her as “Elspeth’s friend.”
Granddad McIntire was a skinny, balding little man with medium brown skin and a magnificent beard, a loud laugh for someone his size, and an interest in the medicinal qualities of plants. He’d been fascinated by Calyx, who’d been disguised as a houseplant in the room Elspeth shared with Maggie until now.
While Charlotte and Granddad McIntire had pored over the plants in Maggie’s garden together, Arthur had kept Granny McIntire company in the kitchen, reading romance to her. She’d gotten into it herself in the last decade, but her fading eyesight made it hard for her to read. He’d stumbled over the sex scenes, not entirely sure it was appropriate to read them to an old woman, until she’d told him peevishly that she had six children and knew perfectly well what sex was, so he might as well let her enjoy herself.
(He’d almost stumbled worse after that, but she was so strong-willed that he didn’t dare skip such scenes lest she catch him at it.)
Despite the embarrassment, sharing the novels had been a comfort. So had fixing Granny McIntire’s old clock, which she’d asked him about upon learning of his affinity for timepieces. It was the first timepiece he’d seen, apart from his father’s watch, since leaving home.
Otherwise, Port Lorne had held no charms for him. The McIntires’ house was loud and crowded, overwhelming. The city was a noisy labyrinth whose factories belched out such smoke that Arthur could hardly believe he’d ever minded the smell of the cannery. Elspeth’s cousins teased him without him realizing that was what they were doing—until Elspeth overheard and sounded them out for it. And he couldn’t stop thinking of Ira alone in the forest, unable to leave it, without even Calyx for company. Now, he longed to see Ira so badly that he was sick with it.
At last the wagon was loaded. Arthur, the children, the goat, the chickens, Calyx (in its pot), and the cat were safely ensconced in back. Charlotte was beside Elspeth in the driver’s seat. Elspeth flapped the driving lines, and they were off.
Arthur twisted around for one last look at the cottage in which he’d grown up. Already he missed Seacliff a little, despite the years of loneliness, the lack of friends, the constant feeling of inadequacy. He missed the cottage with its memories of his parents far more.
If the cottage shared his pang of regret, however, it gave no sign. Its white clapboard sides receded and vanished in the thick foliage of Shiftleaf.
With the heart of the wood restored, the forest was at the height of its autumnal glory, girt all in reds and golds. The paths shifted, more as if the trees were going about their tree business than as if they wanted to lure one into their depths and prevent one’s escape. Rabbits and squirrels scurried through the undergrowth, opaque and unveined. Birds sang in the canopy or flewpast on their way south. The air was chill, but no unseasonable ice or snow coated the ground.
When they reached the swinging bridge, Ira was waiting for them.
Arthur gave a wordless cry, leaped from the wagon, and scurried across the bridge to fall into his arms. Ira held him and kissed him and only pulled away, laughing, when Elspeth called out, “Oy! Some of us would like to cross!”
Ira pulled Arthur off the bridge, holding his hand. The wagon crossed, the children jumped out (Sasha flung herself at Ira), and Elspeth and Charlotte dismounted and loosed Maurice from his traces. The horse moseyed over to the nearest patch of sunlight and set about grazing. The goat and chickens joined him. Calyx clambered from its pot and slithered about the vale, curious about the changes to its old home.
The snow had melted. It had swelled the stream and left behind a soft green carpet of clover and moss. Like elsewhere in the forest, the trees were red and gold instead of barren as they’d been before. Ira’s clothes were autumn leaves and flowers. Arthur wondered idly whether they’d be more difficult to remove now.
They unloaded enough of their belongings to stay a couple nights. Sasha darted back outside to explore. Jonas followed to make sure she stayed in the vale. Elspeth and Charlotte made small talk with Ira for a while, then wandered into the forest alone for reasons Arthur pretended not to understand.
He and Ira sat in companionable silence on matching stools outside. The children chased each other, Calyx, the cat, the goat, the chickens, and sometimes Maurice around the vale. Ira filled a page sketching them. He kept glancing over as if he meant to say something, but he kept not saying anything.
Arthur couldn’t stand it. “How have you been?”
Ira gazed around, smiling. Arthur had thought him beautiful before, but with that soft smile, he was more beautiful than ever.
“Good. The forest is whole again.” His smile faded. “It won’t last. They’re scouting new areas to fell.”
“We won’t let them,” Arthur said at once, but Ira shook his head.
“We probably can’t stop them. But perhaps we can stall them. Prevent them from felling so much.”
“If we can’t—” Arthur turned out his pockets “—we’ll replant the tree. No matter how many times they cut it down.”
In his pockets was a bounty of silver acorns. Ira’s lips twitched. He turned out his own pockets; they were full of silver acorns, too. Charlotte had given most of hers to Kitty Tierney for safekeeping, in case the sickness ever returned, and told her how to use them to cure it. The rest she’d bring to Port Lorne for the same reason.
Arthur edged his stool closer to Ira’s. Giving a small smile, Ira reached for his hand.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
Arthur kissed his fingers. He’d missed Ira so much it made him ache constantly. He didn’t know how he’d bear leaving him.
This was precisely why he never pursued anything. Why he let his dreams remain just that: shining bubbles of fantasy, never to be popped by the ugly realities of life. He could’ve dreamed of romance and happily-ever-afters forever. They would’ve been perfect and beautiful and free of all sorrow and difficult decisions.
They didn’t speak of what would happen when the family left for Port Lorne. It hung over them like a cloud, but they talked of other things. What the children had been doing. (Jonas had been shadowing their mother at her work more consistently; Sasha had become determined to know the name of every plantthat grew on the edge of the wood.) What the McIntires’ house in Port Lorne was like and how Calyx liked it. What romance novels Arthur had been reading. He’d found himself returning to the one with the monstrous love interest over and over but couldn’t quite bring himself to admit it.
When Charlotte and Elspeth returned from their walk, Arthur brought his sister to see their father’s grave.
