Arthur turned around and dropped his knapsack.
It was snowing.
Not just snowing—fat, fluffy snowflakes drifting in the soft gray twilight—butsnowy. Snow blanketed the ground and iced branches like gingerbread. It was the second of September, but in this little woodland vale, it was firmly winter. The doing of the terrible, cold-bringing eagles, perhaps.
The vale looked lived-in. The snowy clearing had a firepit, a stone oven and well, a clothesline, and a low table with several crates jumbled beneath it. Rough-hewn stools scattered in the midst of everything else. An arched wooden door stood in the face of a bulbous wooden house to the left.
None of the trees was stained black. A blue tit hopped along the branches of a nearby fir, singing and perfectly opaque. It was almost hard to believe Arthur hadn’t imagined the skeletal animals and oozing trees.
Nonetheless, he advanced into the clearing cautiously, hugging his knapsack to his chest. “Hello?”
No one answered. Everything was well-kept, but the falling snow had obscured any recent footprints.
Arthur bit his lip. It seemed strange the forest would offer a haven after putting him through so much, but the vale seemed safe enough. Safer than where they’d been, at any rate, but whose home was it? Whoever lived here might jump out and attack, or challenge him to a series of riddles, of which he’d get the last wrong and be turned to stone, or eaten, or perhaps they’d skip the formalities and eat him right off the bat.
Well, no good standing here.
He knocked on the door of the oddly shaped house. “Hello?”
Not a house: a tree. Rather, itwasa house, but a house built into—or growing from—an oak tree with an impossibly distended belly. Instead of a roof, the crown of the tree branched up and out, extending past the surrounding evergreens in both directions. Arthur gaped, recollected himself, and knocked again.
“I don’t mean to intrude, but...”
The door creaked open. Arthur swallowed. Notwithstanding their helpfulness, he didn’t like the way things kept responding to him—as if someone were watching.
He peered into the tree-house. “Hello?”
It was unlike any house he’d ever seen, all wooden curves and smooth edges. The door and windows curved into funny, fairy-tale shapes. Greenery draped the walls and stairs, but he couldn’t tell whether it grew from them or had been hung there. The thin light of a winter evening filtered through the windows and, somehow, the ceiling. Craning his neck, Arthur found the ceiling wasn’t a ceiling so much as the dense and tangled canopy of a tree, except that no cold or snow came through. Odds and ends dangled from the branches: dried bunches of herbs, coils of rope, bags of roots and apples, and a curious silver basin.
For all its wonder, the house was tiny. By the door was a small round table with a single chair tucked under it. Beyond were a woodstove and two armchairs, one shabby, the other barely touched. A double bed with a curved headboard and a patchwork quilt squeezed into the far corner alongside a small side table and a chest of drawers. An icebox and counter were along the front wall. A short, low staircase curved around the wall behind the stove and disappeared, perhaps to a washroom. That was it.
The house was warm and dry, however, which was all Arthurcould wish for. A fire crackled within the stove; a pot of stew simmered on its surface. Arthur’s mouth watered. Someone must have been here recently, to have left the fire going, but he stepped farther into the house without thinking. His extremities stung in the sudden warmth. No longer did he wonder whether the vale was safe, what eldritch creature might live here, why the forest might have led him to safety after all the tricks it had played. His whole concern was for his immediate needs, all of which the house promised to meet.
Freya had already wandered as far as the armchairs, nosing at them as if to determine which was more comfortable.
“By all means,” Arthur said. “Make yourself at home.”
He staggered toward the woodstove, but his legs wobbled and gave way. Now that he seemed safe, his body had given up on, well, everything.
Not sure what else to do, he kicked his shoes off and dragged himself to the bed. He collapsed on the patchwork quilt, too exhausted to bother getting under it. The cat curled into a fluffy black ball at his side. Within minutes, they were both asleep.
They hadn’t been asleep long when they awoke to a figure standing over the bed.
The cat hissed and streaked across the room, darting under one of the armchairs.
Arthur’s heart hammered, but he sat up slowly. The figure was a man, mostly. Shorter than Arthur by several inches, with pallid skin, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in a long time, and dark hair in a knot. A scar ran from his left brow to his cheek, his eye milky and faded; his other eye was hazel, dark and mossy in the dim light of the woodstove. He wore old furs and a knee brace, put his weight on his left leg.
The man had antlers. Autumn leaves, crimson and gold, wound around them. A tangle of greenery curled over his shoulders and around his throat as if it had grown there.
Arthur’s breath caught. The man was like something from a fairy tale.
Or he was, until he growled, “This is too much.”
Arthur scrunched his shirt in his fists. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude, I—”
“Is it not enough for men to destroy the forest? Must you penetrate my very home?”
Gripping Arthur by the shoulder, the man dragged him from the bed. Arthur’s mouth went dry. The man’s fingers dug into him, hard and hurting.
