Page 95 of Strange Grace
“The forest, dear lady. I’m the forest god, and also your lord, whom you’ve known all your life.”
“I remember,” Lace murmurs. She blinks at him, seeming unafraid.
Rhun says, “We’re here to make a new bargain, or end it forever, Vaughn. All of us.”
The devil glances at him, standing up on tall legs. Bree Lewis and Ginny Argall crouch with Lace, helping her hold on to John.
“Well, Rhun Sayer, what makes you think you’re in any position to bargain?”
“We won’t give you more saints. We’re all here to decide what to do together.”
The devil smiles, and laughs, a sound like thunder and bells, both. Rhun clenches his jaw.
“Arthur is already on the altar,” Mairwen says quietly; the words travel, though, and Rhun jerks his head up.
Thereisa body on the altar, wound in vines and bleeding, too. “No,” he says, and runs.
But Baeddan knocks him back with a hard arm. Rhun hits the ground, breath whooshing out of him, and gets up as quickly as he can. His cousin steps near, gripping Rhun’s upper arms. He sings, “You can’t pass me, saint-saint-saint. This is the only way I’ll be free-free-free.”
“Baeddan, let me go. You know it’s wrong. Arthur isn’t a saint. He isn’t one of us.” Rhun doesn’t believe it. He believes Arthur’s heart is so very worthy, but he pleads anyway, whatever he needs to say to move to the altar.
His cousin’s eyes are blacker than river muck again, dull and quiet. Baeddan’s skin is sunken to his skull; his breath comes fast, dry, and smelling of mold.
Distantly, he hears Mairwen say something, and the devil reply, but Rhun puts his hands on Baeddan’s chest. He shoves, leaning all his weight against Baeddan. “Let me by.”
“I cannot, cousin. Brother.” Baeddan shakes his head and begins pushing Rhun back and back, with the strength of a mountain. He bares teeth of hard, pointed granite. Black thorns break through the thin, cracking skin along his jawbone, as if the effort is changing him again.
“I love him,” Rhun says.
“I know. It doesn’t—I can’t fight—the forest. It is inside me. I’m inside it. I am a flame in a lantern and the glass trapping my own heat, saint. I am—I am roots and earthworms. They crawl inside my stomach and it tickles, Rhun Sayer. It tickles.” Baeddan giggles, fingers tightening on Rhun’s arms, bruising. “My lungs are dry leaves. My heart—my heart is flower petals.”
At the edges of the grove appear spirits—white-veiled ghosts. Screams erupt as a hundred bird women dart about the grove, flapping and chattering curses, followed by running bone creatures who cut at the villagers with hard fingers and yelling maniacally. Decaying wolves howl, teeth falling from their mouths, and everyone from Three Graces crowds together, kicking and reaching out with axes and brooms, defending themselves.
“Stop!” roars Sy Vaughn, arms out, flowers catching fire in his hair.
The tiny monsters and little devils flee, and Rhun ignores it all, breathing hard and evenly, staring at his cousin.
Rhun stops struggling. He relaxes. “All right, Baeddan. I understand.” And he does. He knows what he must do to save Arthur.
Baeddan’s shoulders slump. “Good, good. I’m sorry about Arthur. His heart will last. It will last, and he’ll remember you for—for a while. I’ll be in the Bone Tree, watching with empty eyes and smiling a bare-boned smile.” Baeddan laughs sharply at his own terrible joke. Then he lets go of Rhun.
Rhun grabs the handle of the knife in his boot. Nothing else matters around him except holding his cousin’s churning black gaze as he snaps up again and slides the blade deep and fast across Baeddan’s neck.
•••
“SEE,” THE OLD GOD SAYSafter Mairwen tells everyone Arthur is on the altar and Rhun is stopped by Baeddan. “See, everyone, there already is a saint sacrificed, and I will tend the transformation. You have seven more years, and all you need do is return to your lives.”
“I won’t leave without Arthur,” Mairwen says to Vaughn, then turns her gaze onto all the people of Three Graces brave enough to come with Rhun. She is proud of them. “We can’t leave him to die, to become what Baeddan became.”
“It is the only way to put life back into the forest, Mairwen. See all these poor creatures, neither alive nor dead, like Baeddan. Would you have the forest fester and perish?”
Haf bursts out of the trees. “Mair! There...” She bends over, panting, and leans her hands on her knees. “I saw your mother! I saw Hetty.”
Mairwen clenches her jaw.
“You cannot stop the sacrifice, Mairwen,” Vaughn says. Somehow he’s slowed his constant cycle of changing, fixed himself as the summery Vaughn, with only hints of wildness: thorns, antlers, flowers. Mairwen understands he doesn’t wish to frighten the people. He looks like a god from a story: beautiful and strange, but not monstrous.
“I’ll stop you.”
