Coldfall Wood

by Steven Savile

  With a scornful gesture, Arawn plucked him up off the ground, lifting him to his feet and then up a few inches more so that his toes kicked uselessly against nothing but empty air as he hung there, flailing impotently against the invisible bonds restraining him.

  “Any last words?” the ancient one mocked. “A message for the woman you love?” Julie screamed as first one wrist snapped, the sound of the bone breaking like a gunshot, then the other snapped. “I’ll take that as a no,” Arawn said as Julie’s shoulders dislocated, the blades parting like butterfly wings. His body bucked forward as the joints were wrenched out of place. His world was reduced to a single sensation: agony. He ceased to exist outside of it. There was pain, nothing else. And still his body continued to contort, bones bending beyond the point of breaking as Arawn concentrated on breaking him one bone at a time. Ankles and knees were next, and then the staccato rattle of each rib shearing apart one after the other, like firecrackers.

  The skin tore, unable to contain the spreading bones as they opened up.

  And Julie stopped screaming. His cries went beyond agony into the afterlife as his head fell limply forward, lolling on his chest as the vertebrae in his neck snapped one after another. Arawn drew Julie’s arms up at his sides until he hung spread-eagled in the air, dead, and turned his attention on Damiola and his diminished soul.

  “You thought you could win? How truly pitiful you are, you creatures of the modern age. This was your desperate plan?” He wasn’t talking to them. He was talking to the man whose body he had stolen. “I expected … more. For just a second you were a god, and this was the best you could do?”

  Arawn let Julie fall.

  58

  Alex picked up the fallen sword.

  No one was looking at her.

  She saw Ellie Taylor running to Julie’s side. She couldn’t look at him. If she let herself see what had happened to him, to see the ruin of his body, she’d break every bit as brutally as any one of his bones. She looked down at the sword in her hands. It was so much lighter than she’d expected. She looked up at her brother. And that was who she saw.

  Josh.

  The same Josh she’d played Eggyman with when she was little more than a baby and couldn’t really say Superman as he flew her on his knees; the same Josh who used to pin her down and pretend to fart on her chest and would tickle her until she was on the point of peeing and begging him to stop; the same Josh who convinced her the birds that had nested in the attic were really the ghost of an old woman and had her believing that their little council house in London was actually built on an ancient Indian burial ground despite the completely illogical notion that the Native Americans would sail over to England to bury their dead; the same Josh who stood on the sidelines as she cheated in the egg and spoon race at school, running with her thumb over the top of the boiled egg so it wouldn’t fall as she raced to victory; the same Josh who used to play nerdy role-playing games on a Sunday and whose best mate she’d totally crushed on, baking brownies to try and win his heart; the same Josh who had taken her out to her first nightclub and warned her years after the brownies against losing her virginity to another “best” mate. There were a billion memories, large and small, that tied them together. They were brother and sister, and they were all each other had now.

  Her hands shook violently.

  The sword’s tip dipped, scraping across the ground.

  She felt a tingle—a thrill—chase up her arm.

  The world around her reduced to the two of them, out on this green outside the pub where they’d played a thousand times growing up together.

  Family.

  The bonds of blood, the ties of shared grief, the weight of most painful memories of all, the memories of the future not shared.

  She took one step. Two.

  “Oy! Cuz! Over here, you ugly bastard, come on, you and me. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it. Family. So, come on, fucking face me,” Seth roared from somewhere over by the pub. She’d just assumed he’d run when he had the chance. He had nothing to keep him here. So his challenge, a modern, crass war cry, had surprised her as much as it had surprised the monster inside her brother’s body.

  Josh turned to face the more imminent threat, leveling the bulbous end of the staff at Seth. She expected thunderbolts and lightning to shoot out of the tip, or a flamethrower-type venting of fire to scorch the earth between them, something spectacular. For a moment, it looked as though nothing was happening. Then she saw the roots that had grown up from out of the ground to tangle around Seth’s ankles, rooting him to the spot, literally.

  Josh was already fighting on two fronts, deflecting Damiola’s illusions and pinning Seth down, when Ellie yelled her own challenge, but hers was different in so many ways. She shrieked like a banshee as she ran from Julie’s broken body, stumbling on traitorous legs, straight at Josh. She held her hand out in front of her. She held a gun. No, not a gun, Alex realized, as twin wires fired out of the end of the device, arcing across the distance between her and Josh, the probes slamming into Josh’s wounded chest. The barbs bit deep, a huge current surging through the high-voltage wires that jerked and twisted his body regardless of any divinity.

  Josh’s entire body bucked, his head thrown back, arms pinned to his sides, as the charge ripped through him.

  Alex couldn’t think about what she was doing.

  She strode across the intervening distance, raising Freagarthach, both hands wrapped around the hilt. The outside of her forefinger pressed up against the cross guard. Her brother’s blood dripped down across her hand.

  She raised her arms, bringing her hands up level with her cheek, the sword’s blade stretched out long in front of her, and swung.

  Freagarthach’s edge parted the skin and muscle where Josh’s neck met his body, cutting the thick artery as his head lolled, unsupported by the bone the blade had bitten deep into. Blood gouted in an explosive arterial spray, spattering across Alex’s face and arms.

  It took a second swing to sheer through Josh’s spinal cord and a third swing to hack his head off his shoulders.

  She gasped from the exertion. It wasn’t clean.

  Staring down at her brother’s face at her feet, she started to laugh hysterically, and couldn’t stop laughing because of the image that bubbled up in her mind. Suddenly, she was confronted by memories of Josh and their grandfather, Boone, playing kickabout on the green with a battered old leather football; Josh pretending to be whoever Orient’s latest greatest striker was at the time, running around, arms windmilling, as he scored a goal between their jumpers that had been laid down as goalposts.

  Behind her, Alex heard an anguished wail.

  She looked up to see a beautiful young woman racing toward them through the tangle of trees, her hair streaming out behind her, skirts—no not skirts, she realized, it was a medical gown—flapping around her bare legs.

  Wordlessly, the woman threw herself to her knees at the feet of the decapitated Josh. His body still hadn’t fallen. The Taser wires sagged as their charge was finally spent.

  Alex looked down into eyes as deep and old as time itself, and knew them even if they didn’t belong with this young beauty: Emmaline Barnes. The connection between them burned bright in that moment and those shared memories.

  The sword felt suddenly heavy in her hands, and all Alex could think was: What have I done?

  59

  It wasn’t over, even if the god was dead.

  He wouldn’t fall.

  He stood there, headless, swaying, but not going down.

  The Speaker for the Dead dropped the Taser and went back to Julie Gennaro’s body.

  She knelt with her hand on Julie’s broken chest.

  She could see his shade standing over Alex protectively as the young woman curled her arms around Josh’s legs and lowered him to the ground. He was talking, but she couldn’t hear him. Again and again, his lips moved trying to deliver the same message, until she finally managed to read them: the bone.


  The bone.

  Josh’s finger.

  Ellie looked back to Julie’s corpse with all of its broken bones and wondered how the hell she was supposed to tell one fragment of bone from another. It wasn’t like he had it clutched in his hand when he went into battle. She rifled through his pockets, ignoring the blood, as the sound of sirens grew louder. They couldn’t be more than a minute away, if that. They were going to have a lot of explaining to do. There were bodies everywhere. Jamshid Kirmani, Danny Ash, Tommy Summers, Julie, Josh, and beside him a naked boy she didn’t know.

  She had no idea how she could even begin to explain what had happened here.

  She rooted around in Julie’s pockets, rummaging for anything that felt even remotely bonelike amid the collection of coins, keys, and lint. It wasn’t in either of his front pockets, which meant she was going to have to turn him over. She felt sick as she rolled him. Without the bones to hold his body shape, he rolled like a sack of potatoes. She found the half-inch of bone in Julie’s back pocket, wedged in alongside his wallet. She palmed it and stood up.

  Standing, Ellie broke contact with Julie’s body, causing his shade to fade, leaving the two women and the headless corpse the last ones standing beneath the limbs of the lightning-struck tree.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. There was something else there, too. She saw it in the blood that spilled into the ground from the gaping wounds in Josh’s corpse, thickening in the soil. She could see the trails drawn back up into the tree itself as Arawn’s blood nurtured the soil, replenishing it with the dead god’s magic. And in that way, he was right, there would be magic in the soil, put there through sacrifice, before the Bain Shee came. If they ever came. She watched a few seconds, seeing the threads drawn up through the roots into the ancient tree, the grand old oak that had once been at the heart of the wildwood, and in the creases and shadows of its thick bark imagined she saw a face take shape; the true face of Arawn, the portrait in bark of a young man who had died not once but twice for the land he loved.

  Perhaps there could finally be peace for him now? If anyone deserved that soft eternity, it was the young man who had been denied it for a thousand years and counting. It was never black and white. There were no villains, not even Seth was the enemy here, despite everything that had gone before. It was too easy to write someone off as evil. Even Arawn, the threat he had posed, had been acting out of love for the land. From his aspect, he was the hero of this futile fight, and those that stood in his way an enemy far worse than they could ever consider themselves.

  Ellie knew what had to be done, even if she had no idea how it would—or could—work, not now that Josh’s head had been separated from his shoulders.

  She crouched down beside his head, taking it in both of her hands, and heard him gasp.

  Only of course, he wasn’t inside his body; he was standing over her, very much whole.

  She pried the head’s mouth open, and forced the bone inside, reuniting it with at least part of its body.

  Nothing happened.

  She looked up at the ghostly Joshua, shaking her head. “What do I do? What do I have to do?”

  “I don’t know,” he told her.

  “You promised Julie. You said that if we got the bone back, if we killed Arawn, we’d save you.”

  “I didn’t have a plan. I only wanted to keep my sister safe. To save those kids if I could. You. Julie. Even the old man. Buy you time. It was never about me. And we did it. We won. The cost doesn’t matter. We won. Now I can go. I’m done here.”

  “You can’t leave like this. You can’t do it to Alex. She just lost her lover and best friend and all the futures they should have had together; she can’t lose her brother, too; not at her own hand. That’s just cruel.”

  “And he won’t,” the May Queen finally looked up at the ghost, still cradling his body. “To kill the king, you must become the king,” she said. “Now you must become the king.”

  “I let him in,” the ghost said. “I gave him my life. I became the king. That’s the trade I made.”

  “No, you became a shell, like the cap of an acorn to the seed itself. Now you must become my king. That was always the Summer King’s destiny, to stand at my side at the fall of Albion, the last hope of the land, and you robbed Arawn of it. So now you must become the Summer King. The May Queen needs her sword arm. Come to me, Ghost, you must live again in this ruined body of yours.”

  The woman laid her hands on the open cavity of Josh’s chest, and with tender words the weeds of the land slowly crept across the torn flesh, drawing the ragged edges together and knitting them. A chain of daisies stitched the wound; the yellow centers of their beautiful flowers were like a smile across his pain.

  Alex stood behind them, the sword at her feet.

  Her brother’s blood was on her hands.

  She couldn’t see what was going on; she couldn’t see the ghost of her brother or the face in the tree, and she only heard half of the conversation, but she understood that something miraculous was happening with the land healing Josh’s wounds.

  “Do you want to live, my king?” the May Queen asked, seemingly talking to the headless body in her arms. “Do you promise to stand at my side against the ancient enemy as my king? Do you swear to give your life time and again in service of your queen, and thus promise to love her with all of your body and soul?”

  Ellie Taylor looked from the ghost to the beautiful young woman with flowers in her hair, and back, trying to understand what was happening here. Everything about the moment was so tender and yet so macabre as well.

  “I do,” the ghost pledged his troth with two simple words, two simple syllables that meant more than death. This here, now, this was his sacrifice. And it was the kind of selfless surrender that might, just might, save a land.

  She took the floral crown from her head and placed it like a ruff at Josh’s neck.

  There was a solemnity to the ritual.

  The blood stained the petals.

  “With this kiss, we are wed,” the May Queen told the ghost, before she took the dead man’s head from Ellie, holding it in both of her hands and planting a tender kiss on those bloodless lips. “Now you must come back to me, my king.” She nestled the head into place, and traced a gentle finger along the wound where Freagarthach had claimed its second god, urging the flowers to grow, to knit, and weave: the bean, broom, burdock, chestnut, hawthorn, meadowsweet, nettle, oak, and primrose fusing with the skin, a black line of root and thorn stitching the dead man’s head back onto his shoulders, and continuing to grow and flourish as long as the May Queen breathed life into her blooms. “Come with me into the Kingdom of Summer, my king,” she whispered.

  And Joshua Raines opened his eyes.

  He had become the Summer King, consort of the May Queen.

  “What have you done?” he said, the first words of his second life. “I … I am empty. I … there’s nothing inside me. I am a hollow man.”

  “I have done what you wanted, my king,” the May Queen said. She helped him sit up, cradling him tenderly. It was almost possible to mistake that tenderness for love, not ownership. “Only that. Nothing more. The old king is dead, long live my Summer King.”

  Josh suddenly cried out, doubled over in pain. He clutched at his temples, screaming.

  Alex saw the shadow on the ground stretch out on either side of his head. At first, they were finger thin, but they thickened, spreading until they looked more like two hands, fingers spread wide from his temples, and continued to grow, stretching out from his head as the eighteen-point antlers grew.

  She barely recognized Josh as he turned to look at her.

  The antlered man looked bereft.

  Haunted.

  Josh had inherited his kingdom.

  “I will always be here. If you find yourself lonely, look for me in the rich soil of the forest, in the wild grasses and the vibrant flowers of summer. Look for my face in the veins of every leaf and tree,” he said softly. He was staring
at his sister. The words were for her. Alex nodded. “Listen to my voice on the soft summer breeze and hear that I love you, that I would do it all again for you, to keep you safe. See my spirit in the ripples of the river and the crystal blue surface of the lakes. Feel my love for you in every sunrise. Feel my sorrow that I cannot sit beside you and tell Boone stories or remember Mum every sunset. But know that I will be everywhere you need me to be.” A single track of tears ran down her cheek as she still nodded. “I must go. This is not my place anymore.” He turned to the old man, Damiola, and said simply, “I understand. Finally. It all makes sense. I know who you are. I know your nature; I know your sacrifice. I could help you remember. Just say the word and your past shall be my gift to you.”

  Damiola shook his head.

  “As you wish. I would not force memory upon anyone, especially not a soul as old as yours. It will come back to you, given time.”

  “I hope not,” the old man said.

  And with that, the Summer King stood and took his queen’s hand.

  Together they walked away in the direction of Coldfall Wood.

  60

  “Fuck me, that was intense,” Seth Lockwood said. “Who’d have thought Cuz could be all noble like that? Not me. I always thought he was a bit wet. Goes to show what I know. Funny though, in an ironic sort of way, that I’m free and he’s the one in a metaphorical prison now … Well, I’d like to say it’s been emotional, but with the law rolling up, I’m out of here. Try not to miss me. After everything, I can’t quite believe I’ve finally got my life back.”

  Alex ignored him.

  She watched her brother leave her for the last time. Finally, the two of them, Josh and the rejuvenated Emmaline Barnes, were gone. Lost to the wildwood.

  The sirens were on top of them now. Ellie could see Mel Banks and Sara Sykes leading the line of cops running into the common ground; Tenaka in their wake.

  She walked up beside Alex, the last two women standing, and put her arm around her. “I’ve got no idea what you’re going through,” she said softly.