The plant creature turned fronds in his direction.
“Calyx is... different.” Ira grasped at the creature, but it leaped from his shoulders to his antlers. He grimaced but let it be. “Come on.”
He reached for Arthur’s shoulder, but Arthur recoiled. Ira’s hand dropped back to his side. He nodded Arthur toward the tree-house, avoiding his gaze, and left distance between them as they trudged through the snow. Calyx stretched between his antlers.
“I’m sorry,” Ira said quietly.
“What for?”
“Frightening you.”
They paused at the door. Ira’s gaze lingered on the brambles.
“The forest shouldn’t do anything to you, if I don’t let it. But it doesn’t listen to me anymore.”
Freya squirmed to be let down. Arthur tried to set her in the snow, but she sprang from his grasp clear through the tree-house door. Undoubtedly, her least favorite part of being stuck here was the eternal snow.
“I don’t see why it worries you,” Arthur said. “I’ve only been here a couple of days. I’m nothing. To you, I mean. You could’ve been well rid of me.”
Ira’s eyes flickered over his face. “You’re not...”
He stood aside so Arthur could go in. Slipping from his antlers, Calyx balled up in its spot by the stove.
“Your father saved my life,” Ira said. “Letting you die seems a poor way to repay him.”
Arthur watched him stump around the room, befuddled. He’d thought Ira was angry he’d tried to leave again; maybe he’d been wrong.
He still felt the trees and brambles grasping at him. With a shudder, he sat at the table with his tool kit and his father’s pocket watch. Repairing the watch would provide a welcome distraction from the memories and his repeated failure to escape the vale. Freya jumped up beside him, loafing on the table.
To his surprise, he was able to wind the watch. The winding mechanism and mainspring were likely fine, then. Hearing the watch tick, after days without hearing a single clock, cheered him.
The ticking stopped. Arthur sighed, but it wasn’t unexpected. He’d open the watch up, clean all its parts, and see which ones weren’t working.
Ira pulled up his armchair and sat, a basket of clothing and a sewing kit at his feet. Arthur had only two sets of clothes, including the ones he wore now, and kept tearing them in his repeated escape attempts. Ira had repaired them and offered to let out some of his own clothes so Arthur would have spares. Freya glared at him, evidently unimpressed.
For a while, they worked in silence. Arthur disassembled the watch, laying each part out as he removed and cleaned it. Freya cocked her head, gazing at the doodads around her, perfect for batting off a table.
“Don’t you dare,” Arthur said.
She continued gazing at the watch’s parts but didn’t touch them. In a moment, Arthur had forgotten her.
“I am sorry,” Ira said, “that there isn’t a way out of here.”
Preoccupied with his work, Arthur said nothing.
Ira cleared his throat. “I know I’m not the pleasantest company. But if it’s any consolation, I like having you around.”
Hopefully the jewels weren’t cracked, Arthur was thinking, because he couldn’t replace them with the things in his travel kit. But a watch might stop shortly after being wound for any number of reasons.
Vaguely, he registered that Ira had spoken, but his mind was on the watch. He glanced at Ira, frowning faintly, and returned to his work without response.
Biting his lip, Ira started removing seams from the shirt in his lap. Freya hopped off the table to curl up in the other armchair, sparing him a disdainful glance.
“Ha,” Arthur said under his breath. The hairspring was bent. Some other parts would need realigning when he put the watch back together, but they seemed intact. In need of oiling, was all.
It took a great deal of time and no little amount of swearing, but at last he worked the kinks out of the hairspring. He put the watch back together, realized he didn’t know what time it was, decided he didn’t care, and wound and set the watch to the time he thought it most likely to be.
The watch started ticking. This time, it didn’t stop.
