Page 7 of Strange Grace
Nona frowns at him, then at her actual son, measuring them up. “Rhos Priddy went into labor early, and Mairwen Grace claims a horse in the pasture is sick.”
A thrill shoots through Arthur, but for Rhun the news sinks slow and firm into his guts. “Is it the devil? Did we do something wrong?” Rhun asks.How can I fix it, Mama?is the clear subtext.
She shakes her head. “Not you, Rhun, that’s for certain. Go into town and keep folks calm. I’m going to Aderyn to help with the birthing, and we’ll send word when we can. Mairwen’s off to fetch Lord Vaughn.”
“What about me?” Arthur says. “I’m not good at keeping anyone calm.”
“Try harder,” Nona says, and that is that, for she swings her basket back into the crook of her elbow and hurries off to the north valley where the Grace house squats just a hill away from the Devil’s Forest.
“Well, damn,” Rhun murmurs.
“Try harder,” Arthur spits.
Rhun lets the barley fall from his hand. It scatters over the green grass of the yard like a blight itself.
•••
MAIRWEN GRACE HURRIES UP THEsteepest path to Lord Vaughn’s manor, for it’s also the quickest.
She knows the way, like everyone knows the way, though few have reason to visit. The Lords Vaughn often travel away from the valley, always returning for the Slaughter Moon, and sometimes for a regular winter, with trunks of books and expensive odds from the outside world. The current lord, Sy, is near thirty and unmarried. Mair has heard gossip he has a lover in the nearest city, but she is uninterested in a wedding that would force her out of her finery and into this primitive valley. Vaughn should find another, Mair thinks, or marry someone from Three Graces. The previous lord died just before John Upjohn’s run, and so Sy has presided only over that one, and Mairwen isn’t sure he has the experience to help if something is wrong with the bargain.
Mairwen clutches at roots and jutting boulders to keep her balance. Her palms are raw now, her arms ache, and her breath is harsh and cold in her throat. Mair heaves up around an uprooted tree that leans over the steep path. She’s reached the level ground upon which the manor is built into the mountain—or from it, seemingly, for the gray stone bricks were carved from the cliff peak above them.
Mair rubs her hands down her skirt to clean them and taps her heel to her toe to knock excess dirt from her boot soles. Making her way to the wide front door with its iron gate, Mair thinks of three years ago, that night she sat with John Upjohn while he sweated through nightmares and, before the sun rose, Sy Vaughn came calling.
John was only eighteen, and she thirteen, gangly and passionate and thrilled to hold his head and arm while her mother worked to stanch the slowly bleeding wrist. They tied a tourniquet above his elbow and whispered together a song of healing that was fast and encouraging, but no more than a charm. Aderyn cleaned and bound the stump, then bound the entire arm to John’s shivering chest, so the missing hand would’ve been higher than his pounding heart. All day they remained with him, dripping water and broth onto his lips, singing to him softly, drawing blessing triskeles on his arm. He slept the afternoon away, and into the night. Mairwen held him against her for hours, curled together on a nest of blankets near the wide hearthstone, staring as if she might see the impression of memories in his drawn skin, hear the devil’s laughter in his harsh breathing, feel the chill of fear and exhilaration in the echoes of pain cut into his wince. She was desperate to know what he’d seen—had he seen her father’s bones? Did he understand things about the forest she could not? Did he have answers for her? She longed to whisper her thoughts into his ear and wait for the response however it might come.
His strong body shook with nightmares; he cried hot, sticky tears; he held on to her with his remaining hand, clutching her ribs or twining his fingers in her tangled hair. She’d dozed, finally, cheek on John’s shoulder. Her sleeping had been dreamless, a sleep of sweet exhaustion, but John’s had been terrible. His feet twitched as if he’d never stopped running, and he panted hard.
The Grace door slammed opened and a dark figure strode in. John Upjohn woke with a cry, and Mairwen threw herself across him, between the saint and this new danger.
The figure wore a trailing black cloak with the cowl pulled around his face—if he had a face—and he stood leaning sideways, one gloved hand pressed to the blackened end of a walking stick that shone in the moonlight like a knife.
Mairwen said, “You will not take the rest of him, too, devil!”
Silence swept through the house, and the silvery moonlight cast everything gray but for the blood seeping through the bandage of John Upjohn’s raw wrist.
The figure pushed back his cowl to reveal a square, pale face and curling brown hair. He said, “It is only Sy Vaughn, brave girl.”
She relaxed slightly, but kept herself before John like a guardian spirit. “You can’t have him either,” she said.
And Sy Vaughn smiled, amusement tucked into the corners. He studied Mairwen Grace, thirteen and weedy and small, bent around the injured saint, staring at him with her mother’s brown eyes. He stepped nearer, then crouched beside her. He tugged off his glove to touch her freckled cheek with a bare finger, and lowered his eyes to the saint.
John Upjohn lifted his chin with the last thread of his courage and said, “I survived.”
“So you did, John. And I want you to know: My family has offered money to all the survivors, if you wish to leave the valley, if you find it too rough surviving still, this near the forest.”
Mairwen knew this. She’d heard it from her mother, and knew all four survivors in the past two hundred years had taken the offer and left Three Graces forever, as if once a boy ran through the Devil’s Forest, he could not be contained by the valley.
“No. You can’t leave,” she whispered.
And John agreed. “I’d drag the forest with me wherever I went. I feel it... too strongly.”
“Here,” Aderyn Grace said gently from her bedroom door, “you might never be happy. The memories, the nightmares...”
“I know,” John said.
“That’s not true.” Mair turned and put her hands on his face. “There are cures for nightmares, and you’re the best, John.”
