Page 12 of A Serpent in the Garden

“I hope you haven’t prepared a bunch of sermons for our journey,” I said lightly.

We walked in silence for a minute. I didn’t know Serich anymore, not really. I couldn’t tell if I’d hurt his feelings or if he was simply lost in his own thoughts.

Then I veered suddenly, right into Serich, to avoid a colony of fat, pallid mushrooms with throbbing gills the color of an open wound. I found most fungi disgusting, but these were unsettling in a way I had never seen before. The thick, fleshy caps, speckled with rusty freckles, pulsated as though with a heartbeat. I wanted to stamp out the lot of them, but who knew what might come gushing out if I did.

Serich’s arm slid around my waist to steady me, managing a small smile. “If that’s the worst we’ll find in here, I’d be a happy man.”

And off again we went.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as we wove through trees one after the other, picking our way over another cluster of mushrooms, “about your father.” I had stood at the back during the burial, the farthest I could get from the little cemetery near the church, my skin burning as if I stood beneath an angry sun. I’d never seen Serich look so solemn as he tossed that first handful of wet earth into the grave.

Serich bit back his bottom lip, let it slide out slowly from between his teeth. “Thank you. The fever took its time. He refused to see a healer for weeks. I should have forced him.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said gently.

“Everyone has been a little too quick to assure me of that, and I don’t believe a word of it.” His smile was shallow. “I knew he needed a healer early on. I should have called one when he wouldn’t.”

I could have told him that a healer wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing. My mother had been good friends with one when she had taken ill with the very same fever, and nothing she had learned from Hélène had helped in the end. It took her strength and then her voice and then her mind. In its crescendo it finally leached her of her life, boiled it right out of her. All the cold compresses and fever-teas hadn’t made her any cooler. The moment it has you in its teeth, you’re gone, I could have told Serich. Would that have made him feel better or worse? I couldn’t decide, so I said nothing.

Another long silence. I wasn’t sure how to fill it, unwilling to prod at the fresh wound of his father’s death.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked eventually. My mother and I had moved to the parish when I was twelve. We’d had not two coins to rub together and she’d heard Lord Fletcher needed help in his Monde’s End manor in exchange for room and board. I’d known Serich two years before my wicked roommate moved in, and even then, not well.

“My whole life.” He said it simply, no bitterness, no ragged edge of melancholy. “I plan to die here. I never want to leave.”

I shot him a surprised look. “You can’t possibly like it here.” Nobody liked it here, we just got on with it as best we could and made a concerted effort not to think too hard about the futility of it all.

The rest of the world wasn’t like this, from what I remembered of it. I’d left France too soon for it to be much but misty memories, but I’d seen enough of England. There were lords and ladies, lesser nobles, common people who worked the land and paid tithes. Some cities were large, bustling with trade and craftsmen, and some were rural. The church had a heavy influence everywhere, but Hell’s wood was a bit of a tall tale to the world at large, though the rumblings and suspicions grew thicker the closer to the village you traveled. Our closest neighbor, Darensdale, knew well of it. Oldsten, too, but I hadn’t been through there since my mother and I had made our way down to Monde’s End.

A laugh clotted in Serich’s throat. “Well, it’s not as if I think everything is ideal. But life isn’t meant to be easy. There’s a lot of good I can do in Monde’s End, a lot of good I plan to do. The people here need spiritual care more than in other villages. My life will have meaning here, a purpose.”

“I suppose that’s more than a lot of people can say,” I said limply, for lack of anything better. What if his purpose turned out to be dying an agonizing death in this cursed wood? “Still, your father never wanted out when things turned bad?”

“Things weren’t always bad,” he said. I already knew the story but I held my tongue. “The farmlands were rich enough to make it worth the risk. We didn’t have all these fogs back then, and everyone knew to give the woods a wide berth. The creatures mostly kept to themselves unless you went wandering in their territory or didn’t plug your ears at night. It’s just one of those things you get used to, like living next to a dairy farm. Eventually you grow used to the smell of manure. The cost of living was far less, given our neighbors, the tithes the Fletchers required not nearly so much as in other villages. They’d always been gentle lords, and that sort of kindness inspires loyalty to some degree.”

And when the fogs rolled in a few years ago and many residents of our parish wanted to leave, none of the lords in the closest villages would have us. When they’d realized what had befallen Monde’s End, they wanted nothing to do with its occupants. We were cursed. Hadn’t we brought it on ourselves, somehow? You get what you pay for. It was our bed to lie in. We had chosen to live there, after all. Perhaps we had been drawn to such an address because our natures were inherently wicked; the mists had merely lifted the veil.

I suppose it never occurred to them that poverty required some sacrifices in creature comforts, that not everyone could afford a pretty place to live. They have no qualms taking our money when we visit their markets, however. They avoid our eyes and pluck the coins from our hands with precise fingers, unwilling to brush their pure skin against our sinful flesh, but our money spends the same as anyone else’s.

I’ve realized some pious people can be terribly judgmental.

“Did Livvy’s parents want to leave when the fogs began?” he asked, adjusting his grip on the falchion. I liked his hands; brown as chestnuts on the backs and a soft pink on the palms, as though he’d dipped them in paint.

“They considered it. Margaret and Robert tried finding work elsewhere but Darensdale and Oldsten wouldn’t house us. They would have had to travel every day to get there.” Not so easily done, on foot. Only Lord Fletcher could afford a few horses.

I hadn’t seen Serich up close in years. I’d forgotten how white his eyes and teeth glowed against the darkness of his skin, how his gaze had a way of grabbing yours. A few girls in the village had been very upset when he accepted the acolyte robes. I was pretty sure some had tried to tempt him out of them, though I wasn’t sure if they had been successful.

“Would your mother have wanted to leave?” he asked.

“Yes. She wouldn’t even let me within fifty feet of the wood.” We had only landed here because we’d had no other choice. She hadn’t believed in any demonic wood until that first night we stayed here, when we listened to it come alive. After Madame Perenelle had died and we’d had to leave her manor in France, my mother thought we would do well in England, that perhaps she might find support and work among my father’s family, who we had never met. By the time we got off the ship and made it to my grandfather’s modest London home, he had died, and his second wife had no interest in taking on a Frenchwoman and her daughter. From there we’d moved around a lot until we finally found the parish of Monde’s End in Norfolk. She’d been excited when she learned a few other French immigrants had settled here. She’d not taken to English as well as I had. Not that it mattered much, in the end. She was dead within a year.

“It’s cruel that you had so little time with her.” Serich held up a low branch so I could duck beneath it first. “But sometimes cruelness can be a good teacher. You grew strong.”

“If I’d grown strong, a demon wouldn’t have taken me,” I called over my shoulder. The trees were so close together here we had to zigzag through them one after the other.

“Maybe it just liked the look of you,” he said from behind me. “Thought you might make a nice home.”

I felt the faintest stirring of wings in the deep dark back of my mind, but It didn’t so much as whisper an unpleasant one-liner, and retreated even further to sulk.