Page 1 of Strange Grace
TEN YEARS AGO
Branches scrape his cheek, hungry for his blood. Eyes wide, the boy pushes harder, shoving at the sharp, dry leaves, stomping through undergrowth and deadfall. The trees are an old-growth tangle of trip wire, a web of limbs and fingers and claws to snare him.
Behind the boy, the devil clicks his teeth.
•••
IN THE VALLEY BEYOND THEforest, a bonfire burns on a hill: an orange beacon to oppose the silver moon, its flames flick and tremble like a pulse. It is the heart of the valley now, surrounded by weary folk who keep vigil until dawn. Men and women and children, too: They hold hands, they wander in sunwise circles, they pray, and they whisper the names of all the saints to come before this boy.Bran Argall. Alun Crewe. Powell Ellis. John Heir. Col Sayer. Ian Pugh. Marc Argall. Mac Priddy. Stefan Argall. Marc Howell. John Couch. Tom Ellis. Trevor Pugh. Yale Sayer. Arthur Bowen. Owen Heir. Bran Upjohn. Evan Priddy. Griffin Sayer. Powell Parry. Taffy Sayer. Rhun Ellis. Ny Howell. Rhys Jones. Carey Morgan.And now this boy’s name, again and again and again, an invocation:Baeddan Sayer. Baeddan Sayer. Baeddan Sayer.
Because of him, and all the saints before him, no illness plagues the valley; the sun and rain share the sky in perfect consideration for each other and for the growing land; death comes peacefully in old age; childbirth is only as dangerous and hard as pulling teeth, but no one has to pull teeth here. They made this bargain with the devil: Every seven years their best boy is sent into the forest from sundown to sunrise, on the night of the Slaughter Moon. He will live or die on his own mettle, and for his sacrifice the devil blesses Three Graces.
•••
MAIRWEN GRACE IS SIX YEARSold. She stands with her mother, the witch, weaving thin rowan branches into a doll for her friend Haf, who was too afraid to hold vigil with the grown-ups. But Mairwen is also the daughter of a saint, a young man who died in the forest before she was born, and so Mairwen is not afraid. She keeps her dark sparrow eyes upon it, on that wall of darkness she knows so well. Her favorite game is to dash to the very edge, to stand where her bare toes brush against the first shadow. There she waits, at the line between valley and darkness, while the shadows shift and tremble, and she can hear the delicate clicking of teeth, the whispers of ghosts, and sometimes—sometimes!—the devil’s laughter.
She imagines calling out to them, but her mother makes her swear not to, that she must never say her name where the forest can hear.A Grace witch began this bargain with her heart, her mother says,and your heart could end it. So Mairwen stands silent, listening—listening, a witch’s first skill—to the voices of the dead and discarded.
Someday, she thinks as she crafts her doll. Someday she’ll step inside and hunt down her father’s bones.
•••
ARTHUR COUCH IS SEVEN YEARSold, and rage he doesn’t understand keeps him hot and awake and staring while the boy beside him slumps in sleepy reverie. For the first six years of his life his mother raised Arthur as a girl, called him Lyn, put him in dresses, braided his long blond hair, to save him from this devil’s fate, to hide him away. He knew no better—none did—until an early summer day playing in the creek near the boneyard. All the little girls stripped and splashed, laughing until one girl screamed he was different.
Nobody blamed Arthur, who went to live with the Sayer clan and chose a name from the list of saints. His mother fled the valley, crying she hated the Devil’s Forest and the devil’s bargain and to have a son in Three Graces was to live in terrible fear. “You might as well already be dead,” she told Arthur before leaving forever.
When Arthur glares at the forest, it’s because he can’t turn his glare at the men of Three Graces, who laughed yesterday when this small boy presented himself as a candidate for sainthood. “I’m small and fast and I can win,” he insisted. “I’m not a coward.” And the men kindly told him to wait another seven years, or perhaps fourteen. But the lord who comes down from his manor for the Slaughter Moon put a hand on Arthur’s bony shoulder and said, “If you want to be a saint, Arthur Couch, learn to be the best. The best does not throw his life away for another’s shame, or for anger or to prove anything.”
Someday, Arthur thinks as he stares with burning blue eyes at the forest. Someday he’ll run inside that forest and offer his heart to the devil.
•••
RHUN SAYER IS THE NEWsaint’s youngest cousin, yawning as he leans his brown arm atop Arthur Couch’s shoulder. He’s not worried, for this vigil is the same as all the vigils his mother and father and uncles and aunts and second cousins and the lord Sy Vaughn and the Pugh sisters and Braith Bowen the smith and every other person has ever told him about. Besides, his cousin Baeddan Sayer is thebest. He’s the fourth Sayer to be made a saint, more than in any other family since the beginning. They’ve got it in their bones. Two Sayer saints before now crawled out in the morning, two of only four survivors in more than two hundred years.
It bothers Arthur, and his friend Mairwen, too, but Rhun knows the forest and the sacrifice and the seven years of health and wealth are just the way life is. This night is terrible, but noothernight is terrible.
And all those other nights the moon and stars light their valley with silver and boys can run and race and play and hunt with no fear. Broken fingers heal in days, blood never pours, infections burn out by sunrise, and you never lose your parents or baby cousins or even any of the fluffy puppies. Rhun understands that all the goodness in the valley is what makes the sacrifice worthwhile. He remembers Baeddan laughing yesterday, blotches of red in his cheeks from beer and wild dancing, petals falling through his thick dark hair as they fell from the saint’s crown. Baeddan leaned down, clasped his hands on Rhun’s cheeks, and said, “Look at everything I have! It is so good here.”
Rhun’s eyes droop, though he knows he should keep watching, keep waiting for the pink sunrise, for the first flash of his cousin’s triumphant laughter. Arthur shrugs Rhun away, and so Rhun throws his whole arm around his burning friend. He smiles and smacks a kiss to Arthur’s pale brow.
Someday, he thinks. Someday he’ll be the fifth Sayer saint, not in seven years but maybe in fourteen, and until then he will love everything he has.
•••
THE MOON SPREADS OVER THEsky, stars tilting like a slow-spinning skirt. It arcs from east to west, counting the hours. The people feed their bonfire.
Wind churns the black leaves of the forest. It hisses and whispers in the way of all forests, until a shriek breaks itself free. This is hours past midnight, the worst time, and the scream peels up the spine of every adult and freezes the blood of the children. They move nearer their fire, their prayers lifting stronger, edged with desperation.
Another scream, inhuman, and another.
Followed by cold laughter trembling up from the roots of the forest, frosting the dry winter grass.
•••
ATOP THE HILL, MAIRWEN HOLDSher rowan doll so tightly a tiny arm snaps. Her mother sings a quiet song, a lullaby, and Mairwen wonders if her mother is thinking of that last vigil seven years ago, when Carey Morgan ran into the forest not knowing he was soon to be a father, and never came out again.
•••
AT THE BONFIRE, ARTHUR’S CHESTrises and falls hard, as if he were the runner. He steps away from the heat, away from his friends and cousins, and nearer to the dark, panting forest.
