“The state of you! And still you’d not let your father in? I’m sure he could’ve done something for you.”
Shame burned through him. “He did. Last night.”
Arthur hunched, mussing his hair with his hands.
“I just wanted to go with him,” he mumbled.
His mother softened. “I know. One day. Here.”
She pressed something into his hand. His father’s silver acorn on its chain, which George had worn around his neck every day for as long as Arthur could remember.
“He wants you to hold on to it until he gets back. Mind you don’t lose it.” Eileen bit her lip. “Might be best to leave it home for lessons.”
She touched his cheek, too close to his bruised eye. Arthur flinched.
“It looks awful,” his mother said.
He shrugged, certain it had looked worse before his father had dotted cream onto it. He clutched the acorn so tightly it dug into his palm. A lump swelled in his throat.
“If you’re sure you’re all right—” Eileen glanced at his split lip, a wobble in her own as she stood “—you’d best get dressed. Lessons start soon.”
Arthur swallowed. He didn’t give a fig about lessons, or what might happen today when he left them. All he couldthink of was George, tending his bruised eye and split lip. Not mentioning it to Eileen because Arthur had asked him not to.
Arthur flung himself out of bed, still in his nightshirt, and dashed through his father’s workroom at the back of the cottage and outside.
“Dad!” he shrieked. “Dad!”
The garden glistened with dew. Grass dampened his feet and the hem of his nightshirt. The garden gate was swinging, but the small stretch of heather between the fence and the forest’s edge was empty. The only sign his father had been there was the narrow trail of flattened heather from the gate to the trailhead.
Arthur’s chest heaved. He barreled through the gate, but his mother gripped his shoulder.
“He’s gone, Arthur. Come, now, or you’ll be late for school.”
“I have to tell him.” Arthur clutched the acorn to his chest, eyes welling. “I didn’t mean it.”
“He knows, sweetheart. Come get breakfast, won’t you? Charlotte’s eaten so much sausage already there won’t be any left if you don’t hurry. You can tell him you’re sorry when he gets back.”
Arthur wiped his eyes. “Okay.”
A fortnight. Just a fortnight. Then George would return, and Arthur could fling himself into his father’s arms and tell him he was sorry. He’d ask George to tell him more about Port Lorne and his journey through the forest, whether he’d seen the Lord of the Wood, and the whole thing would be forgotten.
For two weeks, that was what Arthur told himself would happen.
Instead, his father never came back.
i. In which Arthur tells a bedtime story
August was a disappointment.
Arthur looked forward to it every year. In August, the world held its breath. Anticipating something—promising something. To the west, the sea glittered in the late summer sun, still and silent like an empty church, seething with expectation. The first storms rolled in, black clouds on the horizon, lightning forking out to sea. As crimson and gold limned the first autumn leaves, Arthur stood in the garden with bated breath, waiting for a storm to burst on the vacuity of his life and fill it with adventure and romance.
But every year, when August ended, his life was exactly as it had been before.
He’d voiced this to Charlotte once, but she’d said,Of courseit is. You never do anything to change it. Arthur hadn’t brought it up again.
He kept thinking it, however. August had heralded so many changes in his youth: school starting, however much he didn’t want it to; his father preparing for his annual trip to Port Lorne, taking stock of his medical supplies to see what needed replenishing; a time of plenty for the fishermen down in the village, their boats overflowing with pollack and salmon.
Now, from his place by the laundry line on the second-to-last evening of August, Arthur gazed down at Seacliff. He’d gone out to bring in the day’s washing, leaving Charlotte in her armchair; she’d had another dizzy spell.
