by Emily Tesh
Tobias shook his head. “She does as she pleases. Never mind it.”
“Tobias—Mr Finch, that is,” said Silver, and then he smiled an irrepressible, dimpled smile and said, “In fact, no, Tobias. It’s so good to see you. I missed you. The wood missed you.”
“I don’t belong here now,” Tobias said.
“You belong at least as much as the Hall and the village and the woodsmen. Didn’t you tell me that people were a piece of Greenhollow as well?” Silver frowned. “Unless—it might have been the wood which told me that. Sometimes it seems to me that it speaks with your voice still. Four hundred years, you know, is a decent length of time even for a tree. Yes, we missed you. Where did you go? Where have you been?”
Tobias told him.
He told him about the nixie, and the ghoul pack, and the spectral hound he’d shot on a moor a hundred miles north. He told him about the town, and the children who’d followed him through the streets, and the rattling stinking speed of the steam trains all over the country. Silver listened smiling, cross-legged on the moss now at Tobias’s feet, and Tobias talked himself hoarse, talking of the year he’d had while Silver slept beneath the wood.
“And you’d better come to see your mother,” he concluded after all was said, “and beg her pardon.”
Silver shuddered theatrically. “Must I?”
“None of that,” said Tobias sharply. “She’s a nice lady and you’ve given her a nasty scare.”
There was a pause.
“My God,” said Silver, “you like my mother.”
Tobias frowned at him.
“But of course you like my mother; she’s nearly as prickly as Bramble. Does she like you?” Silver peered at him. “She does! Heaven help me, I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“What do you mean?” said Tobias.
“Only that I never attempt to make myself charming to men my mother likes,” said Silver. “She knows my habits and she’s always run my life for me. The Greenhollow investigation was the first thing I’d ever done without her peering over my shoulder the whole time.” He grinned. “And—don’t say it—I got myself captured by some revenant perversion of the old gods and buried alive by a gang of dryads and now I’m bound to a wood. Really I think it went quite well, don’t you? But my point is—I forget what my point was.”
“That you don’t get friendly with men your mother likes,” said Tobias.
“Well,” said Silver, smiling up at him, “not as a general rule. For you, my dear fellow, I think I can make an exception.”
“You’re a damned flirt as well as a rat,” Tobias said bluntly.
Silver laughed, a bright peal in the quiet air. Dappled dawn light was drawing pictures in the leafy shadows that fell across him from above. “You’ve changed,” he said. “It suits you.”
Tobias shrugged.
“At this rate maybe I really will manage to charm you someday. I’ve been trying for so long. Since we first met in that rainstorm, do you recall? You helped me take my coat off, and I had cold water dripping down the back of my neck, and I was sure the moment I saw you that I’d found the Wild Man of Greenhollow. It seemed like the luckiest stroke of my life.”
Tobias stood up. He reached down a hand and pulled Silver to his feet. Silver wasn’t expecting it and stumbled a little. He felt heavier to Tobias than he should have been; there was a weight and solidness to him now that went beyond the physical, that had deep roots. Tobias paid it no mind. He put his big hand round the back of Silver’s head, into his mud-coloured curls, and kissed him.
Silver’s lips parted in surprise underneath his. It only lasted an instant, and then Tobias let him go.
“I’m charmed,” he said gruffly. “Come beg your mother’s pardon.”
Silver followed him, looking rather shocked. He started to speak a time or two but trailed off. “I’m not sure I can leave the wood,” he said, when the trees were thinning and the Hall was in sight.
“Walk in time,” said Tobias. “Think of your map.” He could see it in his head, Silver’s Hallow Wood, the primaeval forest spilling off the edges of the paper. There was a time three thousand years gone you could have walked from one end of the country to the other never leaving the shadow of the trees. “The Green Man walks the wood,” he tried explaining. “But the wood remembers.”
Silver paused with an arrested expression. For a moment he stared pale-eyed into dawn-dim air, seeing something Tobias never would—maybe never had. Then he smiled faintly and nodded, just once.
But his expression as he glanced up to the Hall was still pained. “Mr Finch,” he said.
“I thought it was Tobias now?”
“Mr Finch, I—”
“I know you picked a fight. But she’s no ogress,” said Tobias. “She had me cut down the old oak for you, and I’d never have had the strength to do it else. If not for her, Fabian would have swallowed you whole long since.”
Silver opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped, frowning, and came closer to Tobias instead. He put his hand on Tobias’s arm, and then his other hand on Tobias’s shoulder, and then he went up on his toes and kissed Tobias’s lips.
He had a sweet, soft mouth. Nothing Tobias was used to. Fabian had been very different.
Ah, but Fabian had been very long ago.
He pushed Silver gently back after a moment. “What?” Silver said.
Tobias tilted his head towards the long green expanse of the lawn, and the small stiff figure waiting on the steps of the Hall. Silver turned and looked. He tried to hold on to Tobias’s hand.
“No,” said Tobias. “I’ll come after.”
“What is the point of all this if I can’t at least hide behind you?” said Silver.
“Go,” said Tobias.
Silver didn’t try to wheedle, though he plainly wanted to. His fingers untangled from Tobias’s reluctantly. Tobias watched him set off across the grass towards his waiting mother. He stayed where he was, leaning against the young tree that was the old walking stick. It was strong enough to take his full weight now. Not bad for a couple of seasons’ growth.
He wasn’t surprised when Bramble stepped out of nowhere and walked towards him. Small white flowers sprung up in her wake. She looked newly strange to Tobias’s eyes, which had grown used to a year of ordinary people in their ordinary houses. Her eyes were a clear shining gold.
“He is not like the other one,” she said.
“No,” said Tobias. “Suppose not.”
He only half meant it. Silver was like Fabian, a little; beautiful and clever, just as Fabian had been. Those things didn’t mean much to Bramble, of course. She looked at the world with different eyes.
“He will be a good thing, here,” she said. “He has planted himself.”
“Like I did?” said Tobias.
“You were never planted here,” said Bramble. “You were only stuck, like a rabbit in a—” She stopped. After a moment she made a face.
“A snare,” Tobias supplied. “People thing, my dear.”
“You loved us and we loved you,” Bramble said. “But you never chose the wood. He did.”
“Now then,” said Tobias, who didn’t remember it that way.
“He did,” she insisted, and it seemed to make sense to her. Tobias looked away.
“You were a good thing also,” said Bramble. “Go now and do people things. Then come back and do people things. Build and hunt. Set snares, cut paths. Plant more trees.”
“And you, my dear?” Tobias said after a moment. “You should choose yourself a tree, you know. Plant yourself. Else you’ll get peculiar.”
“I am peculiar,” said Bramble. “I chose already.”
“Tell me where to visit you, then,” said Tobias.
“Everywhere,” she said simply. “Every tree. They’re all mine.” She held out her hand to Tobias and he saw it contained a sprig of mistletoe. “For hunting wickedness,” Bramble said. “Wickedness is a people thing, but your friend told me a stor
y and made me understand. There was wickedness in the wood before, but now it is gone, and I am glad. You were unhappy, but now you will not be, and I am glad.” That was a lot of words at once for a dryad and Bramble looked rather shocked at herself. “Go,” she managed. “Grow.”
“I’ll come back,” Tobias said after a moment, “and do people things.” He took the mistletoe and tucked it through his belt.
“Good,” said Bramble. “He’ll need you.”
“You won’t, though.”
“No,” she said patiently, “because I’m not a people. But I will still love you.”
“You as well, my dear,” Tobias said, after a moment when his throat felt too thick to speak. “You as well.”
He knew the dryad was watching him go as he walked back to the Hall and the white room there. He felt the wood behind him, four hundred years of the wood behind him. And as Silver waved him over and Mrs Silver bestowed a thin smile on him he felt himself for a moment as the stump of a rotten old tree, putting up thin green shoots at strange new angles.
Acknowledgments
With enormous thanks to:
My agent, Kurestin Armada, who encouraged me at every turn.
My editor, Ruoxi Chen, who understands tree jail.
The Tor.com Publishing team: production editor Lauren Hougen, copy editor Richard Shealy, proofreader Shveta Thakrar; David Curtis, who did the fantastic cover art, and Christine Foltzer, the art director; Irene Gallo, publisher and creative director; and Mordicai Knode, Caroline Perny, and Amanda Melfi, for their hard work on marketing, publicity, and social media.
Everina Maxwell, for years of writing chat.
Jennifer Mace, a staunch arboreal ally.
The Armada slack, a bastion of kindness and good sense.
The readers of the AO3 who read, kudosed, and commented on an earlier version of this story; it wouldn’t exist without you!
The writers of the S2B2 archive, who have given me many good things to read over the years.
Mum, Dad, Paddy, and Oli, for everything.
Luke, for your love.
About the Author
EMILY TESH grew up in London and studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, followed by a master’s degree in humanities at the University of Chicago. She now lives in Hertfordshire, where she passes her time teaching Latin and Ancient Greek to schoolchildren who have done nothing to deserve it. She has a husband and a cat. Neither of them knows any Latin yet, but it is not for lack of trying. Silver in the Wood is her first book.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
I
II
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SILVER IN THE WOOD
Copyright © 2019 by Emily Tesh
All rights reserved.
Cover art and design by David Curtis
Edited by Ruoxi Chen
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-22978-6 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-22979-3 (trade paperback)
First Edition: June 2019
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