Page 76 of Strange Grace
Framed in the cottage doorway is Mairwen’s father.
•••
ARTHUR COUCH STANDS AT THEedge of the Devil’s Forest.
Daylight streams through the canopy, despite the thinly overcast sky, reflecting motes of dust and forest rot hanging in the air. A few remaining brown and gold leaves shiver in the tiny breeze, like the trees are waving to him.
“Arthur Couch!” sings a bird woman, swooping toward him. “Did you miss us?”
“Hello, little thing; no, I did not.”
She snaps at him and darts away—past him, out into the gray sunlight.
Arthur spins to watch her. In her wake, two more bird women fly out. They giggle and spin, one lifting high to soar like a hawk. Right out in the open, far beyond where he stands at the forest boundary.
Fear makes his heartbeat flicker.
If they’re able to fly free, what else? Next could be a thing like that deer that stumbled out when the bargain was weak before. There are so many worse things hiding deep in the forest, and worser still that he might not even remember.
This must be done, and now, before their binding breaks. Before Rhun or Mairwen answers the Bone Tree’s call.
Arthur hefts the ax in his left hand, and fingers the fire steel in the pocket of his coat.
When he was a child, he swore he’d run in and offer his heart to the devil, to prove he was the best. It turns out the devil never wanted him, but not because there’s anything wrong with Arthur. All the wrongness in their valley was born in the original bargain itself. Those rules for the sacrifice somebody decided mattered—only a boy and only the best—passed down as traditions, creating a tight web of what it means to be the best boy, and barriers dividing people. That way of life, that system, nearly strangled Arthur and would have murdered Rhun Sayer, the only person in Three Graces who definitely didn’t deserve it. Born from the lie that you can be both a saint and a survivor.
If the only way to keep it from happening again, to unravel the story back to the beginning, is to burn it all down, then that’s what Arthur will do.
He walks back into the Devil’s Forest.
•••
BAEDDAN CROUCHES BETWEEN TWO TALL,happy trees just beyond the Sayer homestead, and listens to the call of songbirds. There are no words in their singing, no longing, no danger. Just two birds. He glances up at the canopy, trying to spy them. Leaves fall gently, drifting in the windless forest air, and beyond them the branches splay against a gray sky, with only hints of the sun. It’s quiet, peaceful. Baeddan can hear his own calm breathing, and none of his heartbeat.
He covers his ears to make certain, eyes locked above, slowly crossing the sky for the birds.
There! A flit of a wing, too purposeful to be a fluttering leaf. A flash of rusty brown.
Humming, Baeddan walks on, following the bird. He feels free. Someone or something else has drawn away his burden.
Perhaps he is finally dead, he thinks, except the birdsong is too lovely, too much like home.
He woke this morning in a pile of boys and dogs, surrounded by hay and discarded furniture, wrapped in musty wool and his face pressed to a fur blanket. Little boys and cousins younger than him but seeming older all snored together, mouths open, some sprawled, others curled, and it reminded Baeddan of the roots of the Bone Tree, and all their teeth were flowers and their skulls would soon show through withered, dead skin, their hair twisted into vines.
He pushed free and stumbled down the ladder from the barn loft, out the back, where he knew without thinking a rear door opened to a path leading higher up the mountain before it curved around southwest to join with the Upjohn homestead.
It seemed a good path.
His humming mars the birdsong, but a crow joins in, and Baeddan laughs as loud as it calls. He smells smoke and he’s hungry for it, for something—anything. Reaching for a nearby tree, he slips his fingers under a fan of pale-orange lichen. He stops. No. He does not eat such things, not out here. Not...
Baeddan squeezes his eyes shut. His hunger fades, replaced by discomfort where his bare feet are growing cold. “Baeddan,” he says aloud. Will the name ever stick?
Where is the Grace witch? he wonders, glancing around for a flash of white—no. She has brambled brown hair and dark eyes and—
The heart of the forest suddenly beats in his chest.
Thunderous and abrupt.
Saint.
