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The uncanny feeling of the Chalon Forest fell away as the five of them walked south, or what they believed must be south based on the disposition of the constellations.
Though Emrys was confident he knew his starmaps, Sian’s laughter and Rhosyn’s simple question asking if he was certain made him itch.
An itch beneath his skin. If he had read the stars wrong, they would wander forever through the forest. The beasts would gnaw on their bones and they’d become nothing but dust and rot, mushrooms sprouting from their remains, turning them into the dirt of the forest itself, the bits that constitute their bodies sucked up and consumed by the trees.
So many trees and no markers of the land. But the canopy thinned as they walked, allowing moonlight to paint the grey and silver trees in a soft light allowing them to see.
Cerys walked beside him. An easy companionship blossomed between them in the forest and Emrys clung to it, though he didn’t know how. Didn’t know what to say and feared looking at her in case she saw him looking, staring. He sought words to say that would make her speak to him. About anything. About nothing. He wanted her voice, her attention, and he wanted her to want him.
Alwyn flanked his otherside carrying Rhian like a child curled against his chest, his thick arms holding her tight. So peaceful. Her knees to her chest and her lips slightly parted, her hair cascading down from her head.
So different from her sisters, from her cousin. Even her skin was pale. Different parents, he assumed. A foster child made whole.
A smile broke over his face. She was his inverse. He had a father who would not claim him and she had none yet was claimed and given a name, a house.
Cerys said, “Something funny?”
Emrys swallowed. “Nothing.”
Cerys raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes away from him.
“It’s just, she looks so different from her sisters.”
“Does,” Cerys said.
He waited but she didn’t elaborate and he looked over his shoulder to Sian and Rhosyn walking with their heads down, watching the ground, their feet. He said to Cerys, “Anything look familiar?”
“We crawled here in the dark, little bird.”
“Did,” Emrys sighed. “Just trying to—”
“Why’d he call you Birdie?”
Awlyn grunted. “Cause of his singing. You should hear him. Has a voice that would make statues weep or raise the dead for love.”
“Oh? Sing something for us, little bird.”
Emrys looked all around. Rather than weaving between trees like before, they walked a path. The trees grew tightly together but forming a perimeter to send them along the narrow dirt trail beaten through the grass and bramble. “We’re on a path.”
Alwyn said, “Good.”
“Is it?”
Cerys slowed and looked around. “You think the forest is leading us somewhere?”
Sian swallowed. “Leading us home.” A tremble of fear in her voice. “Come on,” she pushed past them. “The sooner we’re out of here, the sooner we’re safe.”
Rhosyn sniffed and followed her sister and the rest followed the two of them walking abreast between glowering trees, their claw like branches bereft of leaves swung closer and closer to them though no wind blew.
“It wants us,” Rhosyn muttered. “Wants to keep us. To own us. Consume us.”
“Shut up,” Sian said the words quietly, afraid to be overheard.
The silence of the forest chilled Emrys and the rising fog filled him with terror. “Al,” he placed a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Don’t lose me.”
“Won’t,” Alwyn said. “Keep hold of me.”
Cerys took Emrys’ other hand and he tried not to squeeze it fiercely, afraid the mist would separate them all and they’d wander forever lost between the silvery trees clawing at them.
Sian and Rhosyn slowed and then stopped, tendrils of fog reaching for them, pooling around their legs. Sian raised her voice and shouted. “Great lords of the forest, hear me!” She dropped to her knees, the fog now lapping at her face. Rhosyn joined her and they both raised their hands to the sky and Sian called out, “We came only for my sister. I beg you to let us take her home. We do not belong here and we do not mean to stay. We meant no harm and will disturb you no more.” She reached into the fog and drew her sword, placing the bare blade in her left hand. The blade sliced and blood poured from her hand to the fog, to the earth below. She held her fist in the air, blood trickling down her wrist and forearm. “I will never step foot in your lands again if only you’ll let me take my sister home!”
Rhosyn took the blade from her sister and sliced her own hand and held it up. “Please, great gods of the forest.” Her words ended in a whisper and she bowed her head.
Emrys watched and waited but the fog remained and their bloody hands remained in the air.
Cerys dragged him forward and placed a hand on Rhosyn’s shoulder. “Was a good try.”
Sian sniffed and coughed and got back to her feet. Her eyes glassy and full of tears but her jaw set, she stared at Emrys. “Your brother said you can sing.”
“Cousin,” Alwyn said.
“Sing for us,” Sian said, wiping at her face. “Sing.”
Emrys snorted. Like his father. Like all the Matauc. Shaking his head, he turned to Alwyn for support.
“Go on, Birdie.” His deep voice held a kind of reverence. “Can’t hurt.”
“Won’t clear the fog,” Emrys said.
Though Alwyn held Rhian in his arms, he still managed a shrug. “Might.”
He turned to Cerys but she watched him, waiting.
Shaking his head, he said, “Only fog,” and stepped past them and into the fog. Not nearly as dense as he feared, he still saw his companions and beckoned them to follow. Because of the fog, he had not noticed the way the trees opened before them. The path they walked led to a wide clearing. He turned back to his companions to ask them what they thought but they stood back at the mouth of the clearing. “It’s a clearing. Come on.”
They exchanged looks and slowly entered. Emrys walked deeper into the clearing where the dead and desiccated trees of long ago crossed. The pale moonlight and the fog cast the clearing in an ominous haze.
But the clearing was not a clearing like he thought. He walked back and forth through it, finding fallen trees and rotting logs split by fungi and insect and time to form new earth for new trees to grow, yet no trees grew. “It’s like something killed everything within this space.”
“Manmade,” Alwyn said.
Cerys said, “Gods made it.”
“No one made it,” Rhosyn said. “Trees die.”
“But like this?” Sian gestured to the clearing’s circular shape. “Pack of foxes just attempted to murder Rhian.”
“So?”
Sian’s mouth hung open and Cerys said, “You serious?”
Alwyn said, “She’s scared.” His voice sympathetic and gentle.
“No,” Rhosyn snapped. “Not a fool is all.”
“Right,” Alwyn said. He turned to Emrys. “Won’t you sing for us?”
Emrys sighed. “You sing.”
Cerys said, “Will you?” And Emrys felt a pang of jealousy for a moment. That her attention should shift to his large, imposing cousin, built to be a warrior though he was gentle as a lamb.
Alwyn took a deep breath through his nose and closed his eyes.
In the valley past the sun I took my man for his final run, And though the weeds tangl’d o’er his tomb, His last words laid sons to bloom.
His rich baritone filled the clearing and resonated in Emrys’ own chest. So deep, the texture of his voice wrapped round and sank into Emrys, the way it always did. The way, he hoped, it always would. And though Emrys refused to sing, he found himself joining Alwyn for the song that followed, leading Ifor through death’s gates to the underworld.
But when they began the third verse, when Ifor broke the hearts of the dwarves who barred his way, a different voice took hold of the song, singing strange new words in a melody twisted macabrely away from the song they knew.
Ifyor sayng and so the dwayrfs, In their carven caverns of bone, Danc’d dandylegg’d to their deaths. Bloody eyed and unwelcome, The lord of bone in his throne Rais’d Hyom to strike and atone, A cleansing cleave to rive Ifyor. Collect his crackling bones, boy. Snap and sunder and drunk the marrow.
While singing, a small man draped in a mossy cloak with tangled hair billowing out and down from his greenish scalp approached leaning on a stave as he walked. The fog parted for him and the silver bark of the trees glistened in the darkness, in the moonlight. He raised his face to them, revealing an open mouth of yellowed teeth surrounded by a beard thick as a bush the color of moss. He waved his wooden stave in a circle and the fog retreated from him, pushed past Emrys and his companions.
Emrys took a deep breath trying to settle his racing heart. This endless night of monsters and fay, lost in the uncanny forest. He thought, for a moment, how far along the road to the University he could have been had he left, had Alwyn not found him, had Alwyn not come with him.
“Ho, ho,” the green man called. “Ye look afeared as I’d say ever did I see from the seed of Myrddin, but ye need nay be so with me here to protect ye.”
Cerys took a step back, hand on her hilt.
The green man cackled, the high piercing laugh of the mad. “No need for that, so says I, oh says I. Ye’re to come with me if ye wish to see the light of the syun come morn.” He raised his face to the open sky above. “Ah, a gyood night for one and a gyood night for all, so says I, oh says I.” Then he slammed his stave into the ground and the earth trembled beneath their feet.
Alwyn said, “Who’re you?”
“Oh, ho ho ho, oh, time will tell, so says I, oh says I. The lord of bone has got yer scent, me bairns. Stay if ye must see death but come along right quick if ye long for the lick of syun on yer faces, children of Myrddin.”
And as if forced along by the strange horror of the night, they followed the green man out of the clearing and through the trees while he sang a nonsense song without ending.