“The forest came to me. It did not have to call,” Aderyn says simply. Her voice is too low, too weak.
“No!” Tears fall from Mairwen’s eyes and plop onto her mother’s collarbone, and another hits a dark heart-shaped leaf. The vine trembles, tightens, and her mother cries out.
Mairwen grabs one of the vines and says, “Wither,” with all the insistence in her heart. The vine twists and withdraws, but Aderyn whimpers.
“Stop, stop, little bird, and listen: He is back at the heart of the forest.”
“What? Who?” She wipes her tears and clenches her jaw. In her veins, her blood throbs. She needs to do something, to rage or run or find the Bone Tree and demand it obey her.
“Vaughn. Your . . .” Her mother’s voice fades; she winces as if confused.
“What? Lord Vaughn? He wasn’t at his manor. He was gone? Did he do this to you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” she shrieks.
“I remember him. I remember him when you were small, and before you were born. I’ve been dreaming of him the past three nights, strange dreams . . . like memories, and I—I remember him.”
“So do I. Everyone does,” Mairwen whispers. “I remember his—his father, too, because he liked me.”
“Not his father. Vaughn has no father. He is no man, little—little bird. He is forest and flowers . . . stones and clay . . . all beasts.”
The roaring in Mairwen’s ears is suspicion, is a wild guess, a terrible thrill of truth that she does not want. “The old god,” she whispers.
“Your father.”
“No.” Mairwen scuttles away from her mother. “No, no. My father was a saint! Carey Morgan, and his bones are on the—on the Bone Tree. I touched my finger to his moon-white cheekbone and looked into his empty eyes!”
She remembers it with perfect clarity.
“I am the daughter of a witch and a saint!”
Mairwen faces the girl in the long white veil, and the girl lifts her hand, points at Mair, and says—
“No,” Mairwen whispers.
the girl lifts her hand, points at Mair, and says, “You are not one of us.”
• • •
EVERYTHING IS SILENT.
Silver trees surround her, laced with white vines and moonlight. Her feet brush rocky earth, with no sign of grass or deadfall, and through the branches stars twinkle against the impossible blackness of the night sky. She cannot see the moon. It must be low. Only two hours until dawn.
She leans into Baeddan’s shoulder as they shift and slowly spin, dancing beneath bobbing little lights.
“They’re waking,” Baeddan whispers. He lets go of her hand, and lets go of her waist.
“Who?” Mairwen glances all around. She is so weary, and so at peace, she could close her eyes and sleep against that nearest tree, with Baeddan’s arms around her, and listen to his erratic heartbeat and strange songs. Maybe in her dreams the words would make sense.
He backs away awkwardly, as if he does not know where to look. “Watch, Mairwen Grace. They are so beautiful.”
Standing in the center of the grove, Mairwen waits alone.
Filaments of light drip down from the stars, setting aglow the cracks in the tree bark, and all the vines shiver, bursting with violet flowers that turn silver and white and then gray as ash before falling quietly to the earth.
The trees shake, and all the light coalesces into figures and faces, pushing free of the trees, gathering light into sheer veils. Nine women, with flowers growing out of their chests. They remain before their trees, all but one, who walks toward Mairwen.
She holds her breath but does not flee.
The girl drifts nearer, and through the long, white veil Mairwen sees dark eyes, white-violet skin, parted lips, and dark hair falling in fat curls around her face and shoulders.
“Hello,” Mairwen says, heart and stomach aflutter because she knows who these women are. Grace witches. Her grandmother, and her grandmother’s mother, on and on back to the original Grace witches, and this, here, the youngest, first Grace.
The girl, Grace, lifts her hand beneath the veil to point at Mairwen. Her lips move, and from all around the wind carries her voice, a whisper of wind. “You’re not one of us.”
Mairwen shakes her head in denial. “I’m a Grace witch. My mother is Aderyn Grace, daughter of Cloua.”
“Grace witches do not come into the forest until they are here to remain.”
“I came in because my father was Carey Morgan, a saint, and his bones are here.”
The other veiled women murmur, asking each other: A saint?
Is that all?
Could that be the answer?
Why her breath bends the trees and her blood gathers wind?
But the first Grace shakes her head; her veil trembles with the movement. “No. The saints are all on the Bone Tree, but your heart is not here for sacrifice. Daughter of the forest.”
“My—my blood does not gather the wind,” Mairwen says.
“The devil obeys you,” says the first Grace, glancing outside their grove to where Baeddan Sayer crouches, clutching his head, rocking himself like a baby.
“But . . .” Mairwen’s mouth is dry. “My mother is a witch and my father a saint.”
The first Grace presses her lips together. She appears no older than Mairwen, sixteen if not younger. Mair wants to ask about the devil, the old god of the forest. Did she love him? Why did she find him beautiful? Mairwen has always thought the worst things were full of beauty, and perhaps this first Grace knows why. But when she opens her mouth, the first Grace says, “Stop.”
Mairwen listens, because she chooses to, not because she is compelled.
Wind gusts, and the trees shiver, and the long veils of light flutter. Baeddan groans.
Before Mairwen realizes what’s happening, Baeddan is behind her, holding her shoulders. He bends over and shoves her head to the side with his face, then bites into the flesh at the base of her neck.
She cries out in surprise, then at the flash of pain. “Baeddan!”
“I’m sorry, so, so sorry,” he whispers, touching his sharp teeth to her skin again. “Oh, Mairwen Grace, look!”
The first Grace’s eyes are locked to the wound and Mairwen tries to see, craning her neck. Warm blood leaks down her collarbone.
“Grow for me,” the first Grace whispers.
The little star lights floating in the air begin to drop like rain.
Discomfort blooms in Mairwen’s chest, slithering like a worm toward the wound on her shoulder. She struggles again, gasping. Her eyes are so wide, but all she can see is dark blood, nearly black in the moonlight.
The worm reaches the bite, and it grabs the edges of broken skin. Mairwen closes her eyes and feels a surge of energy, a spark.
Baeddan laughs. “Look!”
She does, in time to watch the little purple flower lifting itself out of her flesh, twining up her neck to her cheek. Her eye aches from the effort of focusing on it, and then the flower seems to kiss her cheek and break away, drifting and tumbling down to the ground, where it blackens and dies.
“Look!” Baeddan cries again, releasing her to dance around. He gouges his chest, and with the spurt of purple blood flowers bloom, curling around themselves and winking bright violet. Then they too break off, die, and land like ashes on the ground.
“The forest is inside you,” says the first Grace.
Mairwen touches the smear of blood and looks at it. Red, as blood should be, but so dark.
“You can break it all, or remake it.”
“What?” breathes Mairwen, still staring at the glint of blood on her fingers.
“You are a witch and a god, Mairwen Grace. Both a girl and a forest. Or you could be, if you let yourself.”
Arms circle her from behind; Baeddan, leaning around her as if he needs comfort. He nuzzles the bite mark, kisses it gently, and licks away some of the blood. Mairwen shudders, but feels stronger with his arms around her than alon
e with the first Grace.
“Tell me what happened,” Mairwen says. “Tell me the truth.”
The first Grace smiles grimly. “I fell in love with the forest. And the forest loved me back. And so we traded hearts. Mine is here, larger and stronger than it could have been in the small cavern of my body, and I am only death. His heart is outside, free. And he is only life. The saints bind us together, keeping the charm alive, keeping the forest itself half alive without its god. Because the saint lives and also dies, the saints are always alive and always dead.”
Baeddan laughs.
“What happened to the old god of the forest?” Mairwen asks.
“He lives. He walks among you. He ventures far from his tree. But he always returns for the slaughter.”
Mairwen clutches at Baeddan’s wrists, digging her nails in. He hisses his pleasure and tightens his embrace. But Mairwen looks for the moon, then remembers it’s so low, so very, very low. “The old god of the forest left the forest.”
“I think, pretty Mairwen,” the first Grace says, “he must also be your father.”
She’s panicking, breath too thin and fast, scratching at Baeddan the way he scratches at himself. It’s impossible. Her mother would have told her, or at least would not have lied. “My mother . . .”
“Forgot.” Grace shrugs. Her veil hardly trembles. “Or forgot some. Our charm makes sure of it, that the old god is forgotten.”
“And I can change it? I can change the bargain? Break it or unmake it, because of who . . . what . . . I am?”
“If you let it change you first. But you won’t remember I told you so. We’ve spoken too much of him.”
Mairwen backs away from the first Grace, pushing at Baeddan so he steps back too. Eyes bright and on Grace, Mairwen says, “Baeddan, take me to the Bone Tree.”
• • •
WHEN SHE OPENS HER EYES, Mairwen remembers.
Every step inside the Devil’s Forest, every cut and every tree she climbed. She remembers the bird women and bargaining with them to be led to Arthur. She remembers Baeddan finding her instead and kissing her and the moment she recognized him. She remembers the rowan doll, and she remembers fighting with him, screaming at him; she remembers his eagerness, his wild singing, his willingness to take her through the marsh. She remembers the brilliant red apples he fed her and trees grown faces and claws, the ferocious half-dead wolves and rotting bone creatures and tracks in the mud, and when she saw Rhun was in the forest too, and Baeddan was desperate to eat him. She remembers Arthur and Rhun fighting over who would die, who should run. Their misery at how much they wanted the other to live.
She remembers dancing with Baeddan in the perfect grove, his sorrow, his distress, and when the Grace witches woke from their graves.
She remembers what the first Grace said, and leaving the grove to find the Bone Tree, where she was confident she could change the bargain and hold it inside her. She remembers counting the skulls on the tree, and finding Carey Morgan’s. When she touched his cheekbone, she was saying goodbye, because she did not share his blood after all.
Mairwen remembers climbing onto the altar with Rhun and Arthur, swearing it would free Baeddan, too, and all of them would go home. I can change it! she said. They clasped hands, tied woven charms to their wrists, and cried, “We are the saints of Three Graces,” just as the sun rose.
She remembers Sy Vaughn laughing and helping her gather yarrow when she was a little girl. Two dark-brown eyes.
And one is different now, but only since John Upjohn’s Slaughter Moon. It went gray as the bargain broke. As he lost hold of himself.
All the memories huddle in her mind, dull and dreadful.
Her mother is barely breathing, and so Mairwen leans over to breathe for her, then kisses her lips and stands.
Her knees shake and Mairwen catches herself against the kitchen table. Her insides squeeze and twist. She coughs; it becomes a gag, and she’s retching, her body bent and shaking. Mairwen spits another flower out of her mouth, and pieces of tree bark, chunky and wet. Another spasm catches her and she can’t breathe through the strength of the retching this time.
She spits out the small, pebble-like wrist bone that had been part of her binding charm.
Her head spins and sweat breaks out all over her body. She is flushed in the face and cold in the hands.
Mairwen sits.
It’s over. Her magic is gone. The charm, the pieces of the forest she bound to her: gone.
• • •
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 ALLOW Rhun 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 TEN years 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.
Lifting the charm in her cupped hands, Mair put her lips to the mouth of the whistle and blew gently.
It sang a sweet song, only one note.
Mairwen blew harder, all her breath, and again and again, in an even rhythm. Between the notes she whispered her father’s name: “Carey Morgan. Carey Morgan. Carey Morgan.”
There was no sensation of warmth or change, nothing to signify the charm worked, but that was the way of magic, her mother always said. It either succeeded or it did not. A witch needed to trust her power and her charm.