“What if,” he said, “what if we go, and we plant the tree, and the forest is healed, and I’m still like this?”
Arthur’s heart clenched; he understood that feeling. He squeezed Ira’s hand.
“We have to try, don’t you think? You’re my friend. I’d hate to see you stuck like this forever when there was somethingwe could do about it. But I can’t make it myself. Even if the forest didn’t try to kill me—” he laughed ruefully “—I’m sure I couldn’t make it anyway. I’m useless. But together—please, Ira. I need you.”
Ira’s gaze latched on to their hands, then flickered over Arthur’s face. His right eye was dark in the dim glow of the stove. The scar over his other eye gleamed white with flowers.
Shaking Arthur off, he leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. Arthur’s heart sank, but Ira said, in clipped tones, “We don’t leave till morning.”
Arthur would have to hope his sister would be all right in the meantime. “Yes. Of course.”
“You’ll do exactly as I say.”
“Well—all right.”
“The whole way there.”
“Yes.”
Letting out a long breath, Ira sat back. Errant strands of hair fell around his face. Without thinking, Arthur tucked one behind his ear.
“We’ll leave Calyx here.” Ira’s eyes met his. “You’re sure about this?”
“Not at all.” Arthur gave a small smile. “But we have to try.”
His hand lingered on Ira’s face. Ira laid a hand clawed and gray with fur over his.
“All right. We set out at first light.”
xxii. In which Arthur crosses a bridge again, to worse results
Arthur had been eager to set out, but his body had complaints when he awoke the next morning. He was sore from his haphazard flight through the brambles; his scratches stung; his hand still throbbed where a thorn had pierced it. A purplish bruise circled his wrist like a cuff. Similar bruises, from Calyx, colored his throat and torso.
Besides, Arthur had never been an early riser. When he arose before Charlotte, it was only because she frequently slept late since her illness. Before, no matter how early he’d awoken, she’d beaten him to it. Once, some fifteen years ago, he’d spent the night in the sitting room, determined not to sleep, so he could be up first. Instead, he’d awoken in his armchair by the fire, a knitted blanket tucked around him, to the sounds of Charlotte making coffee.
Now, he shuddered with yawn after yawn as he dressed, slipped the rowan cross into his pocket, and checked his knapsack for the all-important novels. He thumbed through them, comforted by the softness of the well-read pages. Freya twisted about him, mewling for her breakfast as she did every morning though Ira always gave it to her.
(That had not improved her opinion of him.)
“All set?” Ira asked behind him.
Arthur jumped, embarrassed to be caught with three novels instead of more useful provisions. He flushed as Ira leafed through a book.
“Your books?” Ira asked, more in curiosity than judgment. “I don’t think you’ll have much time for reading.”
Arthur pinkened.
“If you must know,” he said, “they’re, er, they’re romance novels,” as if that weren’t obvious from the women swooning into the arms of shirtless, flowing-haired men on the covers. Or, in the case of the novel he’d been telling Charlotte about, into the arms of a shirtless creature with lots of fur and fangs and horns and burl but also, somehow, perfect humanoid abs. “And I know there won’t be time for reading. That’s not why I brought them out here in the first place.”
“Then why?”
Why indeed. Not merely one, but three. He’d nearly brought more when he’d set out from the cottage, though he hadn’t been going on a pleasure trip. He’d brought the books for the same reason he’d brought his watch-repairing kit and his father’s acorn: They were a comfort.
(Had he repacked the kit? He’d had it on the bedside table since fixing his father’s watch, but he couldn’t bring himself to check whether he’d added it to his bag while Ira stared at him for packing something equally silly.)
“Romance novels,” he said, still very pink, “promise happy endings no matter the dangers and difficulties. I thought if everything seemed hopeless, they might remind me it’s not. That we’ll restore the heart of the wood, and you won’t be half a beast anymore, and Lottie will be safe, and I’ll find her and make it to Port Lorne and buy Mrs. Livingston’s clock, and Mrs. Livingston’s cousin will get well, somehow, and we’llhave all this money, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Except for the romance bit, I suppose, not much hope of finding the right girl in the forest—”
Ira’s brow creased, but he didn’t interrupt.
