Page 16 of Strange Grace
“Nor did I say you did,” she snaps back, leaping to her feet. “This is new, John, an early Slaughter Moon for the first time in two hundred years. You can’t be upset we want to know why, and you’re the last person to be in the forest!”
The saint shuts his eyes and drags his hand down his face. It falls off his chin, turns to a fist, and slams into the grass beside his hip. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
Carefully, Mairwen kneels. She breaks her own rule and touches his knee. “I’ve been a safe place for you for years, me and my mother. I don’t mean for that to end today. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
They pose in silence for a few breaths, both inwardly focused. She thinks of the times he’s brought his nightmares to her door, of holding tightly to his shoulders as he shakes. “Can you tell me anything, John?” Mair finally asks, soft as she can. “Did you see the devil? What is he like? How did you lose your hand? What is inside that forest? Is it beautiful?”
“Beautiful!” He frowns. “No.”
It’s a no that reverberates through all her questions. Mair wants to argue, but it’s John Upjohn, the last saint, and she won’t. Instead she turns to lean against the fence, where gooseberry brambles tangle in her hair.
“So much of it I only remember in my nightmares,” he confesses.
Without looking at him, she asks, “Why have you stayed, if it’s so hard? Not for me, surely.”
“Thinking of leaving is even worse. I don’t know how the other surviving saints left, even with the lord’s help and money. A part of me never left that forest, not just my... not just... but at least here I’m... close to it. I have to stay close.”
“Oh, John,” she whispers, putting her shoulder against his.
“I shouldn’t hide today. That will make things worse.”
“You be yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t let anybody hurt you.”
“I believe you,” he whispers.
“I want to go into the forest,” she whispers back. “To find out what changed. John, I feel like this is... an opportunity. An opening in the world that only I might fit through.”
“No.” John Upjohn pushes up onto one knee and grasps her shoulder. “Mairwen Grace,” he says firmly, making her name an invocation. “Do not go inside. For me. You asked me to stay here three years ago, and I’m asking you to do the same now.” Sweat beads at his hairline, though the morning is cold.
“I can handle it, John,” she says resentfully.
His fingers tighten on her shoulder. “But you shouldn’t have to. Nobody should have to.”
“Rhun will have to. Why should he handle it alone?”
John pauses, and his eyes lower. Mair struggles to regulate her breathing, so she seems less upset, less desperate. “I’m sorry, Mairwen.”
Frustration tightens her muscles and Mair has to dig her fingers into the grass, ripping fistfuls up by the roots.
•••
ADERYN COMES ONCE THE MORNINGritual is done, pauses at the sight of her daughter and the last saint leaning together in the yard. Mairwen leaps up and drags Aderyn inside, to the cool shade of their kitchen. “Mother, a deer charged out of the forest this morning, monstrous and misshapen. Arthur killed it and we rolled it back into the forest.”
Lines pinch between Aderyn’s dark brows. “That has not happened before.”
“Something iswrong.”
“There is nothing to do but let the Slaughter Moon run its course.”
“Nothing! But we’re witches.”
“And we guard the bargain.”
“But shouldn’t we investigate? What if the devil is... is hurt? Or what if the first Grace’s heart cannot bear the weight of the bargain any longer? Their love lasted two hundred years, which is a very long time.”
“Not ever after,” Aderyn said with a dry smile. “The magic promises the bargain will last so long as we send our saint to run.”
“Every seven years,” Mairwen cries, then quickly lowers her voice, glancing to the kitchen window. “It’s only been three since John escaped.”
