Page 91 of Strange Grace
•••
ARTHUR RUNS.
He’s surrounded not only by bone creatures and bird women, wolves and trees, but two devils. Baeddan leaps gleefully toward him, punching Arthur in the chest. Something cracks as he falls back and into the massive arms of the old god.
Arthur struggles, but his legs and arms are held in grips stronger than steel, and he’s carried to the altar. He gasps, and he cannot believe this is the end—bound to the forest, changed like Baeddan, his heart broken and his mind in tatters, without Mairwen and Rhun.My God, he thinks, what will Rhun do when he finds out? “No, please,” he whispers, then lashes with his entire body; his spine bends, he flails, but he cannot get even an inch of freedom.
The devil and the old god of the forest press him onto the altar, scattering the remains of his fire. Vaughn flattens his wide hand over Arthur’s chest and vines explode from the earth, crawling up the altar stone like snakes, winding around and around Arthur’s arms, around his bruised throat, too. They pierce his skin, sewing his wrists down.
Arthur screams. Flowers and vines make a web, and the old god leans down to put his bright red lips against Arthur’s forehead.
“Will they come for you, Arthur Couch?” the old god whispers.
•••
THE FOREST REFUSES TO ALLOWRhun and his company easily inside.
He and his father lead the way at the head of an arrow of folk. They shove aside angry branches, sometimes chopping through vines that snake across their feet, and everyone winces against a constant, freezing wind. They progress, but slowly. Some give up, their courage spent out over the flash of teeth from the hollow of a tree, or a scream that nobody else seems to hear.
Bird women dart about, slashing at eyes, giggling and chanting Rhun’s name, and “Too late! Too late!” and “The god is home!” and “There is a saint on the altar already, Rhun Sayer, Rhun-Rhun-Rhun! What will you do?”
“Cut him free!” Rhun growls at them, imagining John Upjohn tied down, his blood staining the altar. “You’ll not have his heart!”
And the bird women laugh, flitting at Bree Lewis and Per Argall, who swipe with a knife and ax respectively.
High in the trees, rodents chitter and sneer, winking red eyes at them, dripping putrescence, and Rhun hears the scurry of spiders, the flap of rotting wings. His heart pounds and he prays there will be no wolves.
There are, of course.
One leaps at Braith Bowen, who grunts in pain, and his cousin Dirk hacks at it with his ax. Three more attack, and Rhun does his best to direct the defense, but it is a melee of blades and screams, until finally all four wolves lie wholly dead. Bevan Heir has his thigh sliced up and can’t go on. Many are bleeding from less desperate wounds. They lose three to helping Bevan limp home.
Rhun is tired, more so than he was after only an hour in the forest before. He can’t imagine why this resistance is so terrible, when the Bone Tree has Upjohn, when Baeddan must be lost there too, trapped by the heart of the forest.
A woman in a veil appears, flanked by two more, and they shake their heads, holding out hands to stop Rhun’s progress.
“We’re going to the Bone Tree,” Rhun says. “To end this.”
The women let him pass, but they reach out to slide chilling touches to the cheeks and hands of every single person who follows him.
•••
WHEN MAIRWEN GRACE WAS TENyears old, she created a charm to wake up her father’s ghost. Made of a tin whistle his sister lent her and braids of her own hair and grass she plucked from the shadows of the Devil’s Forest, knotted together with the slender red ribbon Rhun Sayer meant for the Witch’s Hand tree, but tied into Mairwen’s hair instead.
She chewed her bottom lip as she dragged Haf Lewis with her down the pasture hill toward the Devil’s Forest, wondering if the charm was hearty enough, or if she should put a few drops of her blood onto the blessing ribbon. It was already life, death, and blessing in between, but this was big magic she wanted, perhaps too much for a little witch’s charm.
“This is so near,” Haf breathed, fingers cold with terror and clutched tightly around Mair’s.
“Of course it is.” Mairwen wrinkled her tiny nose at her friend. “He died inside, so I have to be as close as I can get.”
Haf stopped and dug her feet into the dirt and green grass at the base of the pasture hill. “Maybe this is near enough.”
“It isn’t. But stay here if you must. I’m only going a bit farther.”
The tall black trees of the Devil’s Forest swayed gently in the pleasant summer wind. Mairwen knelt along the line between sunlight and shadow, placing the charm in her lap.
Haf dashed the rest of the way and knelt behind Mair, so that her knobby brown knees fit onto the soles of Mair’s tucked-under feet and pressed against her bottom. Twisting, Mair smiled her thanks. It felt better and right to have her friend’s connection to the valley and the sun—Haf was always bright, after all, and full of life. Mairwen decided maybe she herself could be the charm: the Devil’s Forest was death, Haf was life, and Mair the thread between them.
But she didn’t say so out loud to Haf.
