Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  He glances at the flowerpots again. They are fairly large, and there are no lamps burning in the hall. The shadows should conceal him.

  He grabs my hand, squeezes once, then crouches between two of the pots at the far end of the corridor. I would not know he was there if I had not seen him hide.

  I step up to the door. Knock.

  The woman creaks the door open and scowls at me. “Don’t tell me you got lost again, girl. What do you really want? I’ve just got the child to sleep.”

  “Heledd sent me to relieve you.” The lie slides out easily. “She said you are to have a few hours off.”

  The woman’s face lights up. “It’s about time! I’m lucky anyone remembers to send food up, let alone give me a moment away. I’ll be back by morning, but not before.” She pushes past me without another word, mumbling something about finding a proper drink.

  Her footsteps clatter on the stairs, and fade slowly away.

  Owen appears at my side. “Thank you,” he says seriously.

  He goes in alone. I sink to a seat by one of the violet pots to wait for him.

  Chapter Forty-One

  OWEN

  MY SISTER IS SLEEPING IN A LITTLE BED UNDER A WINDOW, hugging a stuffed bear tight to her chest, a blanket pulled up to her shoulders. It’s a charming room, filled with books and toys, a child’s tea set, a mock sword. But it still angers me—has she been kept here since my father’s arrest, never allowed out of doors?

  I hate to wake her, but I do, sinking down onto the bed beside her, gathering her into my arms.

  She opens her eyes and squints up at me. “Wen?” she mumbles.

  “I’m here, Awela.”

  She hugs me tight and cries into my neck. My own tears drip into her hair. “Are they treating you well, little darling?”

  She doesn’t understand the question enough to answer it, just bunches my shirt in her little hand and asks for Father.

  “We can’t see him just yet, dearest.”

  “PAPA!” she screeches.

  When she’s screamed herself out, she wiggles from my arms and goes to show me her toys: blocks and dolls and wooden beads on brightly colored strings. I admire them all, wishing I could scoop her up and take her home and all would be as it was before.

  “Why is the king keeping you here, little one?” I wonder aloud. “Just to punish my father for some imagined slight?”

  Awela bursts into tears.

  “Awela, what’s wrong?”

  “King!” she sobs, shaking her head. “No king, no king, no king.”

  My stomach drops. “The king has been to see you? Why?”

  But of course she can’t tell me. I hold her until she’s grown calm again, yawning against my chest.

  I try to think—I should have planned better. I should have found a way to break my father out of prison so the three of us could flee the palace tonight. Leave Tarian forever. I can’t take Awela and leave my father behind. But how can I leave her here?

  I tell myself it’s enough that I’ve found her, for now. It has to be. I have nowhere to take her. Nowhere to hide. I have to leave her here.

  She’s nearly fallen asleep on me, and I tuck her back into bed. I tell her the story about the woman who becomes a star, sing her her favorite lullabies. Her eyes shut tight. Her chest rises and falls beneath her blanket. She’s grown, I realize, and it makes me angry. The king has no right to shut her up in here. No right to keep her from her family. I don’t know what he wants with her—I don’t know what he’s done to her—but I’m going to find out. And I’m going to find a way to get both her and my father to safety, as soon as possible.

  I sit with Awela for longer than I mean to, nodding off in the chair beside her bed.

  Bedwyn wakes me, a gentle touch on my shoulder. “It is nearly dawn,” she says softly. “The woman is coming back.”

  I swallow a curse. I don’t know what Taliesin will do to me if he finds out I’ve been up here all night.

  “Go down the stair, quickly,” Bedwyn tells me. “Hide behind one of the birch trees, and wait for her to pass you. Then you should be able to get down the rest of the servants’ stairs, out through the kitchen courtyard, and back to your room before sunrise.”

  I nod. It’s as good a plan as any. “Thank you,” I tell her again.

  She flashes a smile at me.

  I’m shocked I make it back to the dormitory without being seen. There’s no time for sleep. The morning trumpet sounds just as I’m crawling into my bunk, so I make it seem like I’m crawling out of it instead. I dress with the other soldiers, and drag myself to the training grounds.

  Days pass. Weeks pass. My back heals and my body grows stronger and stronger, until it’s nothing to me to run ten miles in the full glare of the sun, to perform hours of sword drills, to load and fire my musket again and again, and hit the target almost every time.

  I learn the names of my bunkmates, and even befriend two of them. Baines immigrated from Saeth with his family when he was a baby. He has a bunch of older brothers and is determined to distinguish himself in the army—get his parents to notice him for the first time in his life. Baines has dark brown skin, and is built like a bear, ridiculously strong from a lifetime working his parents’ farm. I’m certain he’s never fainted in his life.

  Rheinallt, on the other hand, hails from northern Tarian, and he’s trying to get away from his parents. He’s the exact opposite of Baines, tall and thin and so pale he must have some Gwaed blood in him somewhere. When he gets old, he’ll look exactly the same as he does now—his hair is already white. Although Rheinallt joined the army to be a field physician, he’s required to have the same military training as the rest of us. He doesn’t have to be either a soldier or a doctor, really—he’s the heir to his family’s lucrative inn, but he didn’t want to inherit, and enlisted instead. Baines and I tease him about it relentlessly, especially at mealtimes.

  “I bet you had roast pork and bara brith for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day—and you traded it for this,” Baines will say. The “this” he refers to is always some sort of sloppy thing it’s best not to look at while you’re eating.

  “And my whole life plotted out for me,” Rheinallt grumbles.

  “Plus if we ever go to war, you could die!” Baines adds. “Couldn’t have that excitement at the inn.”

  “Hey, one of the patrons might have murdered him,” I put in. “It really is safer here.”

  Rheinallt punches Baines in the arm and flicks slop in my face, and then we’re all friends again.

  I never tell them where I’m from or why I’m here, but they must have found out from someone—maybe Captain Taliesin—because one evening in the mess tent, it’s me being teased instead of Rheinallt.

  “Ran away from the wood, did you?” says Baines. “Afraid of the witch and her daughters? They’re not even real.” He stabs a piece of questionable-looking meat with his table knife, and eats it off the point, chewing slowly.

  “Afraid of a fairy-tale monster,” Rheinallt adds, waggling his pale eyebrows. “Is that why you’re here, Merrick? To learn how to fight so you can go back and kill her?”

  I jerk up from my seat and leave the tent without a word, pacing out to one of the training fields and climbing onto the fence. The sun is already down, the last red glow of it faint in the sky.

  They come after me.

  Baines pokes my arm. “We’re just having a bit of fun.”

  “Lighten up, will you?” Rheinallt pushes me off the fence and into the dirt.

  I lunge at him, my fist connecting with his jaw.

  Rheinallt curses. He wipes blood off his chin. “God, Merrick. What’s wrong with you?”

  Baines just stares at me, clearly shocked at my outburst.

  I flex my fingers. I shouldn’t have done that—brawling’s against the rules, and if Baines or Rheinallt rat me out, I’ll be assigned to stable duty or spend another night in the medical tent nursing fresh lash marks. “I lost my mother
to the wood,” I tell them. “I saw a tree siren wreck a whole train and slaughter all of the passengers. Don’t tell me they’re not real.”

  Rheinallt touches his jaw with gingerly fingers. “You never told us that.”

  I shrug.

  There’s a respect in Baines’s eyes that wasn’t there before. “What was she like? The tree siren?”

  I blink and see Seren laughing on the hill, dancing with me to the phonograph, four minutes at a time. “She’s a monster,” I say. “That’s all I remember.”

  They don’t press me.

  In the morning, when the three of us have reported to drills in one of the training fields, something’s changed between us. Rheinallt is sporting a deep purple bruise on his jaw, but somehow, I haven’t gotten in trouble for it. They clearly haven’t said anything.

  “Clumsy idiot,” says Baines, clapping Rheinallt on the back with his huge bear hand. “Ran his face into the bunk in the middle of the night.”

  Rheinallt winks at me, and I can’t help but quirk a smile in return. It seems that slamming my fist into his jaw has firmly cemented our friendship.

  We run through sword drills, then practice with our muskets, loading and tamping and firing at targets halfway across the field. I’m getting to be a pretty fair shot. Baines is all right, too, but Rheinallt might be the best marksman in the army.

  Luned, the young female guard who runs most of our drills, is certainly impressed with him. And I think it’s mutual—Rheinallt can hardly keep his eyes off her. She’s quick, strong, smart. I suppose she’s pretty, too, her shorn hair whipping about her ears in the wind—I can understand why Rheinallt might admire her. But for whatever reason, Luned holds no charm for me.

  In the afternoon, we do a new sort of drill—one with swords and unlit torches. It’s unusual and annoying, and I don’t see the point of it. Luned makes us do it again and again, two lines of soldiers facing off against each other with swords in our dominant hands, whilst wielding the unlit torches against rows of flour sack dummies in the other. After a few hours of this, I’m sweaty and sore and cross. Luned gives the order for the torches to be lit, and makes us run through the drill one last time.

  The dummies flare up the instant heat touches them, and suddenly I’m choking and blinded as I fight, pushing through the line, panic clawing up my throat. Rheinallt is my last opponent, his pale form wreathed in smoke. We collapse in the dirt when he’s bested me. Luned shouts at us to get up and help put out the fire.

  When at last we’re dismissed for the day, Rheinallt and Baines and I drag ourselves to the bathhouse, where we have a luxurious soak in heated water. Scented steam curls up to the peak of the roof. My aching body relaxes as the tension melts from my muscles.

  “Drills are getting stranger,” says Baines, leaning his bulking form back against the tiled edge of the bath. “And weirdly specific.”

  Rheinallt shuts his eyes. His pale hair floats around him in the water.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “The king is preparing for something,” says Rheinallt, eyes still closed. “Preparing his army for something.”

  I stir the water with one finger, watching it ripple out. “War against Gwaed?”

  Rheinallt shakes his head. “Gwaed isn’t a threat.”

  “What then?”

  “Why do you think we’re practicing with fire?” says Baines.

  In that moment, I know. “He means to face the wood. He means to weaponize his army and—”

  “And burn the wood to the ground,” Baines finishes.

  Rheinallt nods in agreement. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense. He’s been recruiting more and more soldiers. And the training is, as Baines said—”

  “Weirdly specific,” I repeat. “But the king can’t face the wood. No one can. The last time he tried fire—”

  “We all know Tarian’s history,” says Rheinallt, referring to the village the Gwydden slaughtered in retaliation for the king scorching her trees. “He must have a plan.”

  I think of the potted trees inside the palace, the patterns of leaves and stars on the gates. “Maybe he just wants to be ready. In case the wood grows all the way to Breindal City. So he can defend against her.” Whatever my grievance with the king, I’d rather be on his side than the Gwydden’s. At least he hasn’t tried to murder me.

  “Maybe,” says Baines doubtfully. “But it feels like more than that. It feels bigger.”

  I think of my father, locked in a cell somewhere down in the prison. Of the meteor shower and the impossibly altered sky.

  I never want to see the wood again. But if it’s coming here—

  If it’s coming here, I won’t be able to escape it.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  SEREN

  I AM UNEASY IN THE SOUL EATER’S PALACE. I HAVE BEEN HERE SOME weeks now, and he has yet to discover my presence, but I can feel him. His fading soul, his brittle power.

  What would he do, if he found me here? If he discovered what I am?

  I am not sure. But every time I pass the rows of potted birch trees, I fear to be frozen there with them: my feet caught in soil, bound in clay. My body stiff. My heart still.

  I try not to look at them.

  My human body grows strong, day by day. I am busy from morning till night. I ache when I sleep in my narrow bed in the servants’ dormitory. I dream of my mother, breaking me into pieces and throwing me on the fire. I dream of the Soul Eater, binding me with iron. I dream of Owen, plunging a knife into my heart.

  In this form, I do not like to dream.

  The days are filled with work and walls, shut inside away from the sky. The evenings are mine. I spend them in the kitchen courtyard, soaking in the wind and the stars, remembering a time when I did not need food and rest. When I did not crave company. But for all that, I do not miss my siren form.

  Because Owen is here. Alive and safe and well and with me. And the Soul Eater has not yet harmed him.

  The evening after I brought Owen to see his sister, he appeared in the kitchen courtyard to thank me. He’s come nearly every evening after, too, and I have learned to busy myself with outdoor tasks as the sun sets, so I’ll be in the courtyard when he arrives.

  Tonight, he comes through the gate with his hands plunged deep into his pockets. I am supposed to be shelling peas for Heledd, but the bowls lie abandoned on the bench by the door. I am crouched in the rose beds instead, complimenting the plants on their blossoms. They are white and blush-pink, as different as can be from the blood-red roses in my sister’s hair.

  “Bedwyn?”

  I jerk upright, my skin warming in that way human skin does when I realize I have done something foolish. Ordinary humans do not talk to plants.

  He smiles at me, tilting his head sideways. “How’s Awela today?”

  I brush dirt from my fingers and smile back. I have been checking on his sister for him, as often as I can—I am afraid Owen will get caught if he goes to see her again. “She is doing quite well. I smuggled her up an extra biscuit.”

  “I’m glad.” He steps to the courtyard wall and climbs up, perching on top of it, as is his habit.

  I climb up beside him. I am still unused to this human form, to the cool touch of the evening air on my neck, to the quickening of my pulse at his nearness. “What’s wrong?” I ask, for clearly something is.

  “I think the king means to face the Gwydden. Fight the wood.”

  Ice shivers through my veins. “When?”

  He glances sideways at me—perhaps not what he expected me to say. “Perhaps soon. The army is drilling with fire.”

  I try to suppress my shudder.

  “Have you ever seen the wood?” he asks.

  I cannot answer this truly. I just nod.

  “The king will need more than fire. More than blades and musket rounds.” His jaw is tense as he stares out over the army encampment.

  Owen is right. But I know enough of the Eater to fear that he has more than weapons and blad
es. Or that he will soon.

  “Will you fight the wood?” I ask. “If the king truly marches against it?”

  A hardness comes into his face. “I have no love for the wood.”

  I scrape my finger across the top of the stone wall. Every time I see him, I want to tell him the truth. But I cannot. If he knew what I was, he would not sit so close to me, would not speak with me as if I were his friend. It makes the whole of me ache. I try to be content with this. It is all I can ever have.

  But it is not all that I want.

  Stars appear, in the black expanse of the sky. I want to move closer to Owen, but I do not dare.

  He relaxes, as he sits there. He points at one of the brightest stars. “That’s the planet Bugail, Shepherd,” he says. “The stories say it keeps watch over the stars.”

  I smile. This is the sort of thing he would say on our hill in the wood. I imagine that he knows I am me. That he doesn’t mind. Or that I am human in truth and what I used to be no longer matters. That I have a soul, deep within my being, that it burns just as brightly as his. “Tell me more about the stars,” I say.

  He looks over at me with a smile.

  He tells me.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  OWEN

  EVERY EVENING AFTER DINNER, I CLIMB THE HILL TO THE IRON gate of the prison courtyard, and try to see my father. The prison is on the opposite side of the hill from the kitchen, but despite the imposing gate and the numerous guards, the courtyards are strikingly similar to each other. The first night I attempt to see him, the guard actually lets me into the courtyard, tells me to wait while he checks the prison records to see if my father is allowed visitors. He’s not.

  “Do you even have permission from your commanding officer to be up here, soldier?” he asks suspiciously.

  “Of course,” I lie. “He knows all about it.”

  But by the next evening, he’s checked with Taliesin and found I do not have permission—that in fact I’ve been specifically forbidden to see my father—and orders me away with an oath. That doesn’t keep me from coming back every night, hoping he’ll change his mind, or that there will be a different guard in place of him who’ll make an exception for me. It never happens. I strike up an odd sort of camaraderie with the guard—after a week or two, he jokes he could set his watch by me, and reprimands me if I’m late. But he doesn’t let me past the gate again.