Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  Every evening after my attempt to see my father, I hike around the hill to the kitchen courtyard. Bedwyn is almost always there, dumping out scraps or sweeping up the feathers left over from plucking chickens. Sometimes she’s just leaning against the wall, not doing anything. She always smiles when she sees me. I always smile back. And then I ask her how Awela is.

  Somehow we’ve reached an understanding that she would check on my sister, as often as she can, because sneaking me back into the palace is too risky.

  “I have befriended the nurse,” she tells me, some weeks after my reunion with Awela. “She isn’t quite as awful as she appears.”

  I grimace. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true.” Bedwyn clambers up onto the courtyard wall and sits facing the army encampment. Her legs dangle in open air.

  I join her, the stones still warm from the afternoon sun. “But is Awela being taken care of? Is she happy?”

  “The nurse loves her,” Bedwyn says. “She is doing the best she can for your sister.”

  I sigh, rubbing my fingers along the stone. It reminds me of the wall my father built too late to keep the wood from stealing my mother. I push away the image of her clawing out her own heart.

  “What is it?”

  I glance at her. Tendrils of pale gold hair have escaped from her maid’s cap, and the wind teases them about her face. Her freckles stand out starkly against her pale skin, and her eyes are the green of deep summer. The sunset traces her with yellow light. Suddenly I’m staring at her lips, wanting very badly to kiss her.

  “Owen?”

  I flush and look away again, out over the plains. I will my heart to stop its mad pounding. “I don’t know how to help Awela or how to free my father—I can’t even get in to see him.”

  “You will think of something,” she says, with a quiet confidence I’ve grown to expect from her.

  A few nights later, I tell her about my mother—not everything, just that she was lost to the witch in the wood.

  Bedwyn grows quiet and pale. “I have no love for my own mother,” she says. “I am sorry about yours.” Her eyes lock onto mine. “Will you tell me about her?”

  So I do—about her university days and her cello, about her infectious laughter and the sweet sound of her singing. Of the happiness we had when she was with us.

  Tears drip down Bedwyn’s cheeks. “You should not have had to lose her. Not like that. I am so sorry.”

  I take Bedwyn’s hand. Her skin is rough with work, and there are freckles on her fingers. I try not to think of another hand, smooth and sharp at once. “It isn’t your fault,” I say.

  A few nights after that, I ask her to tell me about herself, something I realize with embarrassment I should have asked a long time ago.

  She’s quiet for a while. We’re up on the wall again, watching the twilight fade to black. It seems we’re always up on the wall now.

  “I am the youngest of eleven children,” she says. “I never had a father and my mother is … unkind.”

  “Did you run away from home?”

  She nods. “This is my first job. My first …” She spreads her hands out. “My first everything.”

  “Do you think you’ll stay here, working in the palace?”

  “No. I am only here until I understand what to do. Or until my time runs out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her eyes peer into the growing darkness. “I am afraid that one day my mother will come looking for me. Take me home.”

  “Can’t you just run away again?”

  She shakes her head. “This is the only chance I will ever have.”

  Every evening I stay with Bedwyn on the wall a little longer than I should, and am always scrambling down to my bunk late into the night.

  It’s these meetings I look forward to every day, through the grueling hours of training and awful meals in the mess tent. It’s because of her I haven’t stormed the prison, or nabbed Awela from her nurse, and damn the consequences.

  It’s because of her I have a measure of contentment in this strange new life. That I almost don’t want it to ever end.

  Our drills grow more and more taxing. There is no longer any question that they are meant to prepare us to face the wood. We fight with fire and swords. We’re made to trudge through mud blindfolded with wax sealing our ears, to put axes into dummies, musket rounds into potted trees. It seemed almost like a game, at first. It doesn’t now.

  Baines and Rheinallt are grim and despairing in turns.

  “I just wish Captain Taliesin or Commander Carys would tell us when we’re meant to be sent against the wood,” groans Rheinallt one evening, lounging in his chair in the mess hall. His pale skin is red and cracked with sunburn, his eyes bleary with smoke from our afternoon drills. Baines’s eyes look just the same, and I suspect mine do too. They’re certainly hot and itchy and give me a slightly blurred view of my dinner, which, as usual, is not necessarily a bad thing.

  “Bad for morale,” Baines grumbles. “Want your soldiers to think they’ve got a fighting chance, after all. None of us would train so hard if we were explicitly told we’re being prepared for slaughter.”

  Rheinallt shrugs. He seems increasingly restless these days. I wonder if he’ll ever get up the guts to tell Luned he admires her. I want to be there if he does—I’m sure she’d reject him, and then Baines and I would have further fuel for mockery. “Merrick’s the only one who’s ever been in the wood.”

  “That’s right!” Baines wraps his huge hands around his beer tankard. “Tell us what we’re up against, Merrick.”

  I don’t know why, but I do tell them. About the attack on the train. The blood and the bodies. About a tree siren with violets in her hair. I tell them more than I should, more than I mean to: that she saved me, again and again, even though she was a monster. I even tell them, haltingly, of our meetings in the wood night after night. I don’t tell them about the meteor shower or the shifting constellations. I don’t tell them about my mother clawing out her own heart. Both feel too personal, though the former was spread across the world for all to see.

  “It sounds to me,” says Rheinallt, when I’ve lapsed into silence, “that your tree siren is something new. Not a monster anymore, not quite a woman.”

  Baines waggles his eyebrows and makes a rude gesture.

  “Something new,” Rheinallt repeats firmly, ignoring him. “But she clearly cares for you.” His eyes go of their own accord to Luned, eating with the other officers a few tables away.

  “She sounds human enough,” says Baines. “No reason you can’t bed her and be done with it.”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  Baines laughs.

  Rheinallt snorts. “Like hell it isn’t.”

  Heat floods my body, and I kick at the table leg. The memory of kissing her in the wood overwhelms my senses—her chest against mine, her hands pressed over my ears, blocking out her sisters’ music. I push it away with an effort. “It doesn’t matter. I’m never going to see her again. And anyway my point is, the wood is dangerous. No one can step into the trees and live, unless the trees themselves will it. No one can stand against the Gwydden and her daughters. We can train all we want—it’s useless.”

  Rheinallt has sobered again. His eyes fix on mine. “What will you do if the king’s war leads us to your siren? Will you fight her?”

  “My duty is to Tarian.”

  Baines shakes his head. “I’m not sure you know where your duties lie.”

  Thinking about Seren doesn’t trouble me like it used to. I ponder that as I make another useless attempt to see my father, and as I climb around the hill to the kitchen courtyard.

  The moment I see Bedwyn’s face, the reason becomes clear. Bedwyn is so much more than Seren ever could be. There is a kinship with her I could never have had with Seren.

  She is human. She is kind.

  She is not a monster.

  I forget all about the tree siren as I perch on the wall w
ith Bedwyn, imagining what it might be like to kiss her as we laugh and talk under the stars.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  SEREN

  THE SOUL EATER IS HAVING A PARTY. MUSIC DRIFTS DOWN from open balcony windows, swelling as the sun sets, not limited to only four minutes at a time. I wait for Owen to come, sweeping at nothing with my broom so I will look busy if Heledd peeks her head out.

  I have been two months in the Soul Eater’s palace, two months in my human form. Still I have escaped the Eater’s notice. Still I fear to find him around every corner. I take what precautions I may, but I know it is not enough. If the Eater wants to find me, he will find me.

  For now I wait, and watch, and listen. For now I pretend that nothing will ever go amiss, that I am truly just a girl, waiting for a boy to come and find her in the twilight.

  It grows hard to remember that this form will fade. I begin to wonder if my brothers were wrong. But sometimes, if I put my hands to the earth, I can feel the distant heartbeat of the forest. I can sense every soul in the palace now, even the dim ones. My power seeps back, bit by bit. I wonder how long it will take for my monstrous skin to swallow this frail human form. To bury it forever.

  “Bedwyn?”

  I jump at his voice, turn to find him just coming through the gate, his lips tugging up.

  “Hi,” he says.

  I smile, his presence banishing the last of my dark thoughts. I lean the broom against the wall. “Good evening.”

  He glances up at the looming palace and seems to recognize the music. His face falls a little. “My mother loved that piece.”

  Guilt slices through me, as it does each time he mentions his mother. Every night I am on the brink of telling him who I am, and every night I remember that I as good as slaughtered her, as I slaughtered so many others. How can I wish, even for a moment, for Owen to look at me as anything but a monster? In this form, I can be his friend. But when it fades … When it fades, I will return to the wood and lose myself in the depths of it. I will build a life for myself there, as my brothers have. I will forget my mother and sisters. I will forget Owen. And when my body grows weary of living, I will go to the hill where we danced together. I will sink my roots deep into the earth, and reach my branches up to the stars, and I will die as I was born, and become once more a tree.

  He paces up to me, takes both my hands in his. “Hey,” he says gently. “What’s wrong?”

  I fight the press of tears, hot behind my eyes.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asks.

  Those words—uttered to me on the hill, said to me again, here, in this moment. I nod. I do not trust myself to speak without telling him everything.

  He steps closer to me, slips one hand onto my waist. He’s a breath away from me, the barest of heartbeats. I could count his eyelashes. I could kiss him. I was taller than him, in my tree form. I am eye level with him now.

  We dance in the courtyard to the music spilling out from above. We move easily together, as we did on the hill. I wonder if he remembers that night with anything other than revulsion.

  The music comes to an end—the orchestra taking a break between pieces, perhaps—but we keep dancing over the stones, between the slop bin and the wall. The stars come out, dimmer here than on our hill in the wood.

  He pulls me closer still, until his chest is pressed up against mine. His heart beats wild and quick. I look into his face and he looks into mine, and in the moment before he leans his head to kiss me, I break away from him.

  If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.

  I stare at him in the dark of the courtyard.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I thought—”

  “Don’t be sorry.” There’s a lump in my throat. A pressure between my ribs. At my feet, a seedling grows up between a crack in the stone, and I know it’s because of me. This cannot be it. I cannot shed my human form in front of him when he was about to—

  “Owen.” I go and take his hand again. “Please don’t be sorry.”

  He quirks a smile at me, raises his free hand to smooth his fingers across my cheek. I lean into him.

  We start dancing again, without really meaning to. And as we spin about the little courtyard, more seedlings spring up between the cracks in the stone. I hope he does not notice. I hope he does.

  He makes no further attempt to kiss me.

  It is very late when Owen goes down to his bed. Music lingers on in the palace as I leave our courtyard and come inside.

  In the corridor, a hand closes around my arm and tugs me through a doorway.

  Light flares around us, illuminating a small sitting room, though no one is here to strike a match. Electricity buzzes through my skin.

  The scent of decay chokes me.

  I turn to face the Soul Eater. I cannot feel the beat of my heart.

  He looms above me, tall, thin. His soul is fading, it’s true, there’s barely any spark to it. But his power is ancient and strong. Stronger than mine. Maybe even stronger than my mother’s.

  I forgot he was once human. But though we both of us now wear human forms, these bodies are not our own.

  He lets go of my arm. I can feel every place his fingers touched me, like patches of rot on a fallen branch.

  He frowns. “I don’t understand. You’re just a scrawny girl. Why did my instruments lead me to you?”

  I stand frozen, terror flooding my veins. Every instinct urges me to turn, to run. But if I do, he will know what I am. If I do, he will destroy me.

  “Answer me, girl!”

  I jump at the sharpness in his voice. “I do not know.”

  He eyes me with distrust. With disdain. “Something of hers has crept into my palace. Past my defenses. Past my wards. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet—”

  He circles me, studying every piece of me with his muddy green eyes. “My instruments are never wrong.” He taps the medallion hanging about his neck. Its components are incomprehensible to me: some dark magic of metal and gears. It hums against his breastbone. “You are of the wood,” he says. “Aren’t you?”

  “I am a humble servant, Your Majesty.” I bow.

  He catches my wrist, jerks me up again. “You stink of her, you know that? Of the wood. Of her devilish magic. What are you?”

  I force myself not to tremble before him. “I am my own being. I am none of hers.”

  He shakes his head. He tugs the medallion from his neck with his free hand. For one brief, agonizing moment, he presses the medallion against my chest. There is a flash of white pain. A sear of heat.

  He lets go of me and I fall back from him, landing in a tangle of limbs on a moss-green rug.

  The Soul Eater consults his device. He shakes his head in amazement. Amusement? I do not know which. “You haven’t any soul! How do you manage that? No soul at all. Not even a trace.”

  I push myself to my feet. I dart toward the door.

  Once more, he seizes my wrist. He holds me back from my escape. I look down the corridor, where small ash trees grow in clay pots, prisoners to his will.

  “Are you a spy? An assassin?”

  My heart screams inside of me.

  “Rather ineffective, if you are.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  I turn my head. A servant bows in the corridor. He straightens again, his eyes traveling uneasily from the Soul Eater’s hand on my wrist to the Soul Eater himself.

  “What is it?” snaps the Eater.

  “Your pardon, Majesty, but your guests await you to lead the evening’s last dance.”

  I am aware, belatedly, of the Soul Eater’s rich clothing: deep velvet embroidered in gold, studded with flashing jewels. He left his party to come find me. If he had come any sooner, if he had come into the courtyard looking for me, he would have found Owen, too.

  The Soul Eater lets go of my wrist.

  I don’t wait for him to notice the tiny seedling that has pushed its way up through the carpet at my feet, and realize what I am.

  I bolt
down the hall like a deer with a wolf at my heels.

  No soul at all. Not even a trace.

  His words pierce me, thorns in my heart.

  I had hoped.

  Despite my brothers’ words, I had hoped that this form was something more. Something deeper.

  But I am what I always have been. What I will always be.

  No soul at all.

  I can feel him, now: the Eater, in the palace somewhere below me. I can sense his power, his soul. I wonder why he has waited so long to act, when my mother spelled out the truth of his death in the stars so many weeks ago.

  He will not forget about me. I cannot dwell in the palace any longer in safety—I have to get out. But I will not go alone.

  Not even a trace.

  I climb to Awela’s rooms. Her nurse greets me at the door, her face creased with worry.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m to be let go.” Her voice cracks. “I was told to pack my things, that someone will come for the child tonight.”

  Dread sprouts inside of me. Whatever he was waiting for, the Eater is acting now. “Has the king been to see her?”

  The nurse nods. “How did you know? He came last night, banished me out into the hall. When at last he left and I went back in, the poor child was inconsolable. There was no mark on her—the king did not hurt her, of course.” She says this last bit in a rush, anxious that I not think her to be saying anything ill of the Soul Eater.

  “Can I see her?”

  “Of course. Come in.”

  I step into the nursery. Awela sits on her bed, looking blankly out into the room. She doesn’t seem to have any interest in the books and toys spread about her. I kneel by the bed, take her little hands in mine, and reach, gently, for her soul. It’s still there, bright and intact. The Soul Eater hasn’t swallowed it yet. But he’s prodded it and examined it to assess how he might best go about it. And if he’s banishing the nurse, he’s found it. I reach for his soul, making sure he is still far away from this room. Far away from Awela and the nurse and me.