Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  There was a time when the wood was significantly smaller than it is now, but it grows year by year. More rapidly, according to the king’s man’s report, than I realized. I wonder if by the time Awela is as old as I am it will have swallowed all the world the way it swallowed my mother.

  For a moment more I stare into the trees, listening to the song of the Gwydden’s daughters. The music rakes through me with jagged claws, and I find myself leaning out of the observatory, stretching my hands to the trees. Awareness slams through me. I jerk my head back inside and crank the window shut again.

  Chapter Two

  OWEN

  IT MAY BE SPRING, BUT THE CHILL OF WINTER LINGERS WHEN THE evenings come, so I shovel coal into the downstairs stove before I start cooking supper.

  I’m a fair cook, which is not generally thought dignified for a boy, but I enjoy it: the rhythm of chopping vegetables, the satisfaction of stirring flour and butter and sugar together to make Awela’s favorite little cakes. I’m proud I’ve kept all three of us alive since the day Mother was lost to the wood, even though it meant leaving school a year early.

  Tonight I stir cawl in a pot bubbling on the kitchen stove, and mix tea-soaked dried currants into my bara brith dough. I shape the dough into loaves and leave them to rise overnight—they’ll go straight into the oven in the morning. Awela wakes up from her nap and comes darting out into the kitchen, wrapping herself around my legs and giggling as I walk with her attached to me.

  “Wen, Wen!” she cries, pleased.

  Father steps through the door just as I am spooning cawl into three bowls, and Awela launches herself at him, searching his pockets for the chocolates she knows he’s tucked away for her there. She finds half a dozen, which I confiscate from her, promising she can eat them after dinner. Father pulls off his boots, hangs his cap on its wall peg, and stretches, his skin weathered and tanned from his long days of work in full view of the sun. He perches his spectacles onto his nose—he never wears them in the fields, for fear of breaking them—then washes up and comes to sit at the table.

  We eat, and afterward Awela plays on the floor by Father’s feet while he reads his newspaper, glancing down at her affectionately every minute or so. I step outside for more coal, shoveling it into the coal scuttle from the bin outside the kitchen. The bin is running low—I’ll have to walk into the village soon to buy more. Long ago, the people of Tarian burned wood in their fireplaces, just like Saeth and Gwaed across the mountains. Some people still do, if they can’t afford coal, collecting loose twigs or branches the wind has broken off. Only the greatest of fools would dare cut down a whole tree.

  King Elynion tried to burn the Gwydden’s Wood, once, in the early days of his reign. He scorched miles of trees, and she retaliated by slaughtering an entire village of people. He thwarts her in different ways, now. With the train. With the telegraph wires running for miles under the ground to make communication with Saeth and Gwaed swift and cost effective. But if the king’s man is to be believed, she is finding her own ways to fight back.

  I return to the house, lugging the coal.

  The mantel clock chimes eight, and I scoop up the protesting Awela for bed. She gives Father four slimy kisses and then I take her into her room, changing her back into her little nightgown, tucking the covers up to her chin.

  “Story, Wen,” she says in her high squeaky voice. “Story.”

  I tell her the story I do most nights, about the man who watches the stars, about his wife who goes away on a long journey and can’t find her way back to him. She makes herself into a star so he can always see her, so that, in a way, she can always be with him.

  Awela doesn’t understand, but she likes the sound of my voice, the familiar rhythm of the story. I turn down her lamp and kiss her forehead and shut her door.

  Out in the main part of the house, Father has already gone, his newspaper and spectacles absent from their place on the little end table by the stove. I don’t know how late he stays up reading every night before falling asleep in the room that must feel empty without my mother. But I do know it’s up to me to fulfill his contract with King Elynion, as it has been every night since my mother was lost.

  I set our stewpot to soak in the sink, and climb up to the observatory.

  I light the lamp on the worn wooden desk that waits beside the telescope, and absently spin the rings of the brass armillary sphere my father brought back from his university days. I put the kettle on the stove that hugs the back wall and make a pot of cinnamon tea; its potent sweet scent fills the whole room. Then there’s the dome to open and the telescope to adjust, this evening’s empty star charts to take from their drawer and lay out on the desk.

  I settle into the chair in front of the telescope and peer into the eyepiece. Thankfully the storm has broken apart, so I have a clear view as the sky grows dark. The planet Cariad is the first to rise, bright near the horizon. I mark its position on the first of tonight’s charts with a scratch of my pen. I wait for more planets to appear, watching for red Rhyfel and the paler Negesydd, and of course the first of the stars.

  There are millions of stars in the sky, and scientists speculate there are millions more we can’t see, even with the aid of telescopes. What I do every night—what my father used to do, before my mother was lost—is mark down the positions of all the stars we possibly can: the ones that make up the constellations, the ones between and around the constellations. The planets. The phases of the moon. I have an empty chart for each position of the telescope, with curved lines marking the path of the ecliptic. There’s one whole chart to mark the Arch of the Wind, the spray of stars that look like handfuls of snow strewn across the sky.

  The stars are predictable—that’s what I like best about them. I’ve been charting them by myself for a whole year now, watching them move in their set patterns across the celestial sphere. I really don’t know why the king hired my father to do this, why he demands secrecy. When I was younger, I used to pore over the charts, looking for patterns and predictions. There are stories about the constellations, about the movements of planets and their proximity to each other predicting the future, plotting out the events of your life. But I’ve only seen order. Wonder. Besides Awela and my parents, the stars are what I love best in the world.

  Slowly, methodically, I begin the process of charting the stars, shifting the telescope to a new part of the sky when each chart is full.

  I’ve marked only three charts when the observatory door creaks open, and I look back to find my father there, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose. His presence surprises me. He looks exhausted, as he has ever since my mother was lost, but there’s a determination in his eyes that’s been gone so long, I forgot it was ever there.

  “May I join you?” he asks, hesitant, as though he fears I’ll turn him away.

  I grin. “Of course, Father. I’ve only been keeping up the work in your absence.”

  “I’m not chasing you away,” he clarifies.

  A knot I didn’t know had formed in my chest loosens again. I pop up from the desk and drag a second chair over. Father pours himself some tea, and we settle in together, taking turns at the telescope, trading off marking the stars on the charts.

  Contentment fills me. I’ve missed my father—he’s been here and yet not here, gone in a different way than my mother. This is how it used to be: my father teaching me how to chart the stars, the two of us staying awake long into the night drinking cinnamon tea.

  The work goes faster with him there, and when the charts have all been filled and bound safely in their folder to be given to the king’s man at the end of the month, Father and I linger in the observatory. I get the feeling that he has missed this, perhaps even more than I have.

  “Owen,” he says, as the lamp burns low and we drain the dregs of our tea, “can you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Father.”

  His brow furrows, and he puts his hand on my shoulder. “We would have been lost, if no
t for you. The king’s coin. The house. Little Awela. Without you holding us all together, I don’t know what would have become of us. I shouldn’t have left you to fend for yourself.”

  My throat hurts; the subject is perilously close to Mother’s absence, which I’m not sure either of us have the courage to discuss just now. “I’ve been all right. Really. God gave me strength enough.”

  Father smiles at me, setting down his tea mug to place his hands on my shoulders. “I am blessed to have such a son. But I have too long neglected you, Awela as well. It’s time for you to start thinking about learning a trade, apprenticing with someone in the village. You’re old enough now.”

  I stare at him, entirely blindsided. “I don’t want to learn another trade—I’m going to be an astronomer like you. Besides, you need me to keep the house and watch Awela. Help chart the stars.”

  Father shakes his head. “Let me worry about Awela. I need to get both of you away from here before the wood—” The word chokes him. He takes a breath. “Before the wood winds itself into your souls. It’s something I should have done long ago. I can’t lose either of you. I won’t.”

  I want to point out that we’ve been perfectly safe for the last year, but I think of the music, oozing more often than not from the trees, of Awela stretching up her tiny hand to reach the branch hanging over the wall, of myself hanging out the observatory window.

  “If you would rather, you can attend Saeth University in the fall,” Father continues. “I’ve put money aside for it.” His forehead creases, and I know he’s thinking of my mother—they met at the university. She was a cellist, and he an astronomer, and they used to tease each other that they would have to live on love, since their professions would take them nowhere.

  My throat tightens. “Father, I’m not going to leave you.”

  He claps his hand on my shoulder as he rises. “You are young yet. There is plenty of time to think beyond the confines of this house and the sky. Just promise me you’ll consider it—you don’t have to make a decision immediately.”

  I get up too, dousing the lamp and following him from the observatory.

  “I’ll consider it,” I tell him. I don’t mean it. I may only be seventeen, but all I’ve ever wanted is the sky.

  Chapter Three

  OWEN

  IT’S ONLY WHEN I CRAWL INTO BED THAT I REALIZE I FORGOT TO tell Father about my errand—his unexpected plans for my future drove it right out of my mind. I wake early enough to catch him before he leaves for Brennan’s Farm, trying not to see his red eyes, the grief that hangs on him like a physical thing. I didn’t sleep more than a handful of hours after leaving the observatory; he looks like he might not have slept at all.

  “I’m going to Saeth University today.”

  Surprise sparks in his face. “That time of year already?”

  I nod. Every year, my father files an abbreviated record of his annual star charts in the university library. Astronomers all across the continent do the same, scientists pooling our knowledge, collecting it for future generations. I went by myself last year, by train, and the three years before that, my mother went with merchants traveling along the old road across the plains.

  “I’m to take the nine o’ clock train from the village.” I think about what the king’s man told me yesterday, and wonder if Father knows the wood has grown around the tracks. “It will be perfectly safe,” I lie. “I’ll spend the night in Saeth and be back tomorrow evening. I’ve arranged for Awela to stay with Efa till then. I’m taking her the moment she wakes up.”

  Father scratches at the stubble on his jaw. “Perhaps we don’t need to file the charts this year.”

  “I’ll only be gone a day, Father.”

  He frowns. “I’ve heard the wood has—”

  “The train is perfectly safe,” I repeat hastily. “And fast. I promise I’ll be all right—I’ll send you a telegram the moment I arrive, so you won’t have to worry.”

  “Very well.” He sighs. “But I’ll worry anyway. Don’t open the window on the train. And take my knife.” He nods at the decorative box on the shelf above the stove in the living room, where his hunting knife has resided for as long as I can remember. I don’t think he’s ever used it.

  Then he’s out the door in a rush and I put my bara brith in the oven and brew tea, obediently adding the hunting knife to my pack. The star charts I’m taking to the library are ready, bundled together in a waterproof cylinder and fitted with a leather strap to make it easy to carry.

  Awela toddles into the kitchen just as I’m about to go and wake her. She gobbles down a thick slice of bara brith, and gulps milk and porridge as if I never actually feed her. Then I’m bundling her into my arms and slinging my pack and the star chart case over my shoulder. We start on the path to Blodyn Village.

  It would be vastly easier if we had a horse, or even a donkey—Awela grows enormously heavy after only a short walk. But animals don’t like being so close to the Gwydden’s Wood. We had a goat for a while, when Awela was a baby—her milk dried up, and she jumped the fence and was never seen again. Even chickens don’t last at our house; they stop laying after a week or two, then molt all their feathers and die off one by one. We gave up keeping animals altogether, and get our milk and eggs and meat from Brennan’s Farm now.

  At least the garden grows, so we’re never short on fruits and vegetables. Sometimes I swear plants grow faster in our garden than they really ought to, as though they pull some kind of invigorating magic from the soil that feeds the Gwydden’s trees.

  What I really want is a bicycle. I don’t travel long distances often enough to really need one, and I couldn’t ride one with Awela, but I want one all the same. The newfangled contraptions are all the rage in Breindal City, according to Father’s newspapers, and there are a few in our village now, too.

  It’s faster to carry Awela than to let her walk, even if my arm muscles are screaming by the time Brennan’s Farm comes into view. I leave her with Efa, Brennan’s wife, and then trudge into the village alone, waving at my father, who’s hard at work in the fields and probably doesn’t even see me.

  The air smells fresher and the sun burns hotter the farther I trudge away from the wood. Dust swirls beneath my feet, and I’ve grown quite hot by the time I arrive at the village train station. It really doesn’t warrant the word station, being more of a small wooden platform sandwiched between the telegraph relay station and the inn, which is where you purchase your ticket.

  I step inside the squat stone building. It’s dim and cool, a welcome relief from the sun. I wait for my eyes to adjust before stepping up to the counter. A dark-eyed girl stands behind it, polishing glasses with a rag, her long hair tied back at the nape of her neck with a bright ribbon. Her cream blouse has puffy sleeves with cuffs tight at her wrists, and her high-waisted skirt has buttons running all down the front of it. The sight of her makes my face warm. There aren’t many young women in Blodyn Village, but Mairwen Griffith is by far the prettiest. Smartest, too. She’s a poet, and has had several pieces published in the Breindal City newspaper. Someday I’m going to work up the nerve to talk to her. Properly. About astronomy or music or books. Maybe marry her—I haven’t quite figured out all the details yet.

  “Morning, Owen. What can I do for you?” She smiles at me, and for a moment I lose the power of speech.

  “Uh … ticket,” I remember. “For the nine o’ clock train to Saeth.”

  “Barely made it,” says Mairwen, glancing at the small clock on the wall behind her. She pulls out a paper ticket from the till and writes in my name.

  I hand over the fare. For a moment I don’t move, just stand there awkwardly, trying to think of something clever to say.

  She smiles at me again, her eyes bright and laughing. “Better hurry, Owen Merrick. You’ll miss your train.”

  I stammer something nonsensical in reply and step outside and onto the train platform, upbraiding myself for being such a coward.

  But there wouldn’t h
ave been time to properly speak with her anyway, because she’s right—the train rattles up that moment and I climb aboard, handing over my ticket to the dark-skinned steward in the blue and gray cap. I slide into a seat by the window.

  The car is at the very end of the train right before the caboose, and it’s mostly empty, the only other passenger a pale-skinned old man in a tailed coat reading a newspaper. The headline says something about King Elynion drafting soldiers into his army. The old man’s top hat sits in the vacant seat beside him, and I realize I’ve forgotten my own in my hurry to make the train. I’m not in the habit of wearing it—it’s still stuffed in the coat closet somewhere. At least I put on my one and only suit, although it’s rather too small for me now—I’ll have to ask Father about getting a new one. Mostly I just wear Father’s castoff shirts and trousers—I haven’t been to school in a year, and Awela doesn’t care how I’m dressed.

  I settle deeper into my seat and take a book out of my satchel. The train lurches into motion, the village and farms passing in a blur. It’s not long before we plunge into the wood, the leafy green swallowing us whole; I push away my uneasiness, try to lose myself in the book.

  The old man across from me momentarily lays down his newspaper to pull his window shut.

  I wonder how many passengers are riding in the cars ahead of us. I wonder if the engineer has wax stuffed into his ears. I try to comfort myself with the thought that perhaps the noise of the train is loud enough to block out the song of the Gwydden’s daughters.