Arthur crawled beneath the patchwork quilt, turned toward the wall, and buried his face in the cat’s fur, thinking of home.
xiv. In which Arthur visits a grave
The cottage was bright and clean. Arthur sat in his faded floral armchair, reading a romance novel with earplugs in because Charlotte, in her armchair and embroidering a handkerchief, was listening to her favorite radio program. A fire crackled in the grate. The children played war on the rug at their mother’s and uncle’s feet. Sasha was winning, of course; Jonas was losing with good grace, which Sasha hadn’t learned to do yet.
Then Sasha asked Arthur if he’d read his book aloud. That should’ve been his first clue things were amiss, because Sasha never asked him to read his books aloud, lest she hear a kissing scene. But Arthur, delighted, obliged. It seemed a perfectly sensible thing to do.
Waking was a slow business. The images faded, but the ease and comfort of an evening spent by the fire with his family remained. Arthur was exceptionally warm, the cat purring on his chest. The window wasn’t even rattling. Any moment, Charlotte would call him down for breakfast, if she was up. Since her illness, she sometimes slept late.
With that thought, Arthur decided to get up. If she was asleep, he could make her breakfast in bed. Or, well, he could ask Jonasto help him make her breakfast, since Arthur needed supervision in the kitchen for anything other than baking. Even toast eluded him: It either burned or turned out closer to stale bread.
He opened his eyes, squinting. How odd. The attic was never so bright, no matter the time of day; the window over his bed was small, and the attic was all unwhitewashed beams and planks. He felt around the windowsill for his glasses, but the sill wasn’t wide enough and his glasses weren’t there.
Arthur found them on a bedside table on his other side. He frowned. He didn’t have a bedside table.
When he put his glasses on, his heart sank. The bed was not his own.
He let out a long breath. The Lord of the Wood. He was in the Lord of the Wood’s house—in his bed—in a wintry vale in the middle of the forest. By the looks of it, Ira had tucked him into extra blankets while he’d slept. Good thing, too. As Arthur shoved them aside and swung his legs over the bed, he shivered. The frigid floorboards stung his feet.
A dream. Arthur had dreamed he was home. It had felt so real—
He turned over and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing hewerehome. If the Lord of the Wood was to be believed, Arthur would never go home again.
He should’ve known. Stumbling into the relative safety of the vale had seemed too good to be true, but he’d been too exhausted to worry about it.
What would Charlotte think? The children? He’d promised to return. He’d thought he’d bring back the clock, and Agnes would give him the rest of the money, and they’d all be better off.
Instead, he’d spend the rest of his life in this eternal winter. His family would never know what had happened to him, the same as when his father had vanished.
He wished George had found his way to the vale. If he had, surely he’d be here now. Older, grayer, likely less cheerful, after three decades in a sunless, snowy vale far from his wife and children, but alive and well. It would almost have been worth being trapped here.
Arthur sat up slowly. “Ira?”
A movement overhead caught his gaze. Calyx dropped to the floor and swayed over him. Gasping, Arthur scrambled farther back onto the bed.
Freya darted between them. Her ears flattened, but she made no noise as she glared at the plant creature.
Arthur’s voice quivered. “It’s all right.”
He hardly knew which of them he was talking to. Fronds shifted in his direction. Anything further he might’ve said died in his throat.
Calyx turned away and slid across the floor, its leaves and vines and branches and flowers shifting and weaving until it was dog-shaped. It pushed the door open and vanished outside.
Letting out a breath, Arthur patted Freya’s side. “I don’t like that thing, either.”
A pair of lumpy woolen socks had been left on the bedside table. Like the extra blankets, they had not been there when Arthur had gone to bed. He softened at the sight. Ira had left them out for him.
He pulled the socks on and braved the frigid floorboards to stir up the coals in the woodstove. No spare logs to be found, but stirring the coals did something, at any rate. Arthur warmed his hands. He found his shoes, shrugged on his coat, and crept outside. Following him to the door, Freya put one delicate paw in the snow and sat in the doorway with a disgruntled meow.
The Lord of the Wood was nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, neither was his plantish guardian.
Arthur’s breath fogged before him. His coat was inadequate for this kind of cold, but he snuck toward the brambles. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting Ira or Calyx to pop up and stop him.
The brambles were thicker and pricklier than he remembered. He thought they would part before him as they had yesterday, but they didn’t.
“Open up, please.”
Nothing happened. Arthur’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
