For most of his seventeen years, Rhun Sayer has slept soundly, waking with the sun or just before it along with his brother and cousins and parents, joined them all in a raucous breakfast before they parted ways to hunt or plant or harvest, to chop wood or run with the dogs. As the oldest of his brothers and with his closest cousin Brac married now, and Arthur in the barn loft, Rhun sleeps alone in a narrow room just off the kitchen. It’s always warm from the rear wall of the hearth, and only a trunk of cast-off clothes and a small bed fits, though he’s hammered nails into the wall from which to hang scarves and boots laced together and a small basket for his few prized possessions. But after standing restless in Three Graces last night with the villagers after Mairwen left, wishing he could lean on Arthur, and waiting to hear that Rhos’s babe was finally born, a little girl, but weak and refusing to cry . . . after such tidings, Rhun did not sleep well at all.
He wakes before dawn, before his mother or father stirs up the fire, and can’t relax. So he pulls on boots and trousers and jerkin, only half tucks in his shirt, grabs his bow and quiver, and slips quietly out of the house. Instead of darting up the mountain to hunt, he turns on the path toward town. A starry sky bathes Three Graces in calm silver light, and the wind is still.
Rhun doesn’t allow himself to glance toward the Devil’s Forest. Even in this light, if there’s blood on the Bone Tree he’ll see it. And if there’s blood, there will be a sacrifice. Rhun will run; he’ll do it. He’s always known his sainthood would come.
But he expected more time.
He walks slowly toward the whitewashed cottages and thatched roofs gray in the predawn, letting his chest tighten as it’s wished to ever since he discovered the blighted barley. Something like pain wraps his ribs, and he feels light-headed as he goes quietly past the sleeping bakery and the pub into the center of town. He walks along the spiral of chalked blessings.
Aderyn Grace herself—and more often lately her daughter—does the chalking on Sundays as part of what’s become the weekly ritual for town since the last circuit priest abandoned them when they refused to abandon their devil, during Rhun’s grandfather’s boyhood. Now every Sunday the women bake bread to be shared in the church, and the men bring a special brew of wine from casks hidden from the sun in the dugout of the Royal Barrel. Together they sing old prayer songs while the witches do the chalking, while children play and weave charms from grass and flowers. It’s an informal spirituality the townsfolk have built together, managing to perform their own marriages and baptisms and final rites with an eye and prayer toward God, hoping he hasn’t renounced them for the pagan practice of the Slaughter Moon.
Rhun never worries, because his grandmother told him God loves and is love, and had been willing to sacrifice a son to the world because of love. Was that not the very same heart of the bargain? She said, God is with us every time we send a boy into that forest, because we do it for love. And that boy, our saint, becomes a piece of God.
It makes him smile as he crosses the town center, thinking of her. She died a few years ago, and the funeral had been here, and it had been merry. Gatherings in Three Graces tended toward merry, even wakes and funerals, for nobody is taken before their time. Until now. It is not Rhun’s time, and yet . . .
The weight of it hangs on his shoulders.
His sigh puffs in the air, though it shouldn’t be cold enough. Rhun turns a slow circle, looking at the buildings, and remembers dancing at his cousin Brac’s wedding last spring, everyone laughing and happy. Remembers the last night ten years ago, before his cousin Baeddan went into the forest, and Baeddan was glorious. It is so good here!
The pain in Rhun’s chest, he tells himself, is love.
He loves Three Graces, the people and the land, and he’ll run early to keep them safe.
A few dim stars wink directly above him as those in the east are defeated by the dawn, and Rhun knows he can’t put it off: He turns his face toward the Devil’s Forest and takes the first step just as a singsong wail slithers out of the Bowen house. Rhun immediately alters course.
The chimney of the smithy smokes thinly, and he hears no rush of bellows or hammering yet. But through the open shutters of the house trails little Genny’s cry, and he goes through the rear gate and into the house without knocking. Braith stands over his two-year-old daughter with his mouth open, eyes pinched, and his large sooty hands out like tree branches.
“All right, Braith?” Rhun asks.
“My wife is . . . sick.” The mid-aged smith drops his hands to his sides. “Head just aching, she says, and I’d just fired up the . . .”
“Oh no,” Rhun says, but puts on a smile as he bends to Genny. The little girl is half out of her smock, with the armhole knotted about her braid. Tears stick to her lashes and pink cheeks, and dark purple jam paints her mouth in wide strokes. “Come on, sunlight,” Rhun murmurs. “Let’s get ready for the day.”
Genny clings with sticky hands to Rhun’s trousers.
“You take care of Liza,” Rhun says. “I’ll keep Genny with me for the morning.”
Braith Bowen stares a moment at Rhun and his only daughter, lines cutting at his mouth. He unties his heavy smith’s apron and keeps on watching as Rhun calmly plucks Genny off the dusty floor and puts her on the table, as he washes the child and sings a song about noses and eyes and mouths and keeping them clean for the saints to kiss. He kisses Genny’s nose and eyes and mouth after each rhyme, with a delicate smack. Then he tickles her knees and ribs, wiggling the smock into its proper place.
Rhun glances at the tired face of the smith. “We’ll be all right, Braith. It’ll be good for me, too, to have Genny to look after until . . .”
“Until we know,” Braith says.
Rhun nods, eyes darting toward the north window and the lightening sky.
Braith touches his daughter’s hair, then Rhun’s shoulder, and disappears through the door toward the back bedroom of his cottage.
Rhun picks up his song again, changing it to one of the harvest tunes. He teases the child that he’ll slice off her hair with a scythe if it doesn’t get combed once a week, slice like the barley, slice like the wheat, slice like the butcher cutting his meat. And Rhun chops his teeth lightly at Genny’s chubby fingers. He gets her hair unknotted and braided in a rope, then hefts the babe onto his hip and takes her outside, where the square remains empty, but he can see more smoke lifting out of the chimneys as the folk get up and started for the day. Are others sick? Have the goats dried up or milk gone sour? What new pieces of the bargain have fallen apart today?
The two-year-old kicks, knocking her heels on Rhun’s thigh. “Let’s walk out to the pasture, shall we?” he says, snuggling her close. “See the horses?”
“Horses!” she repeats.
As he carries her out of town, he sings again, about walking and trotting and galloping a pony, varying his own gait according to the song, until Genny laughs so bright the pain around Rhun’s chest lifts away just enough.
• • •
DAWN IS NOT YET MORE than a line of silver in the eastern sky when Mairwen arrives again at the pasture hill nearest the Devil’s Forest. As expected, she hardly slept the night before, taking turns with Nona Sayer to care for Rhos and the tiny babe. They swaddled the girl and warmed her, massaged her and kept constant eye that she breathed, using what little knowledge Nona remembered from keeping puppy runts alive as a girl. Water boiled over the fire all night while Aderyn worked with Rhos to get her milk flowing, though by the time Rhos finally wept herself to sleep there’d been no success. Finally, Aderyn sent Mair up to her loft, but she’d only dozed, too focused on the tiny gasping breath of the baby to sleep, wishing she’d defied Lord Vaughn and her mother to go into the forest. Nona Sayer confided that without the bargain, Rhos’s baby would certainly die.
Finally Mairwen got up, got dressed, and creaked down the ladder to the kitchen. She stirred up the fire so it would warm the room before the other women woke, then took a boiled egg from the basket, and her mother’s old leather coat from the peg beside the door.
She crunches through the dying grass to the horse pasture, peeling her egg as she goes and scattering the shell behind, whispering tiny blessings to the grass. Stars sparkle crisply in the chilled air, and no clouds mar the diamond sky. To her right, the far horizon bends silver where in less than an hour the sun will rise. By the time she reaches the stone wall around the pasture, she’s finished her egg, and pauses to swipe a handful of wild dill to chew.
The horses huddle in the valley, opposite the forest slope. Two mares pop their long faces up to snicker at Mairwen. She shushes them, searching for the gray who was sick yesterday; he kneels alone, head low.
As she reaches the crest of the hill to gaze down at the woods, it surprises her to realize she’s not the earliest riser. Someone stands below her, at the very edge of the Devil’s Forest, near the ugly tree the children call the Witch’s Hand. Its lightning-scarred branches crawl up against the midnight green of the forest itself, streaked with white ash and decorated with a number of red blessings tied there by brave—or foolish—children. They dare each other to do it: to ready a charm against the devil and walk up to the wrecked tree and stand there long enough to tie up their blessing. No matter what they spy creeping in the deep shadows of the forest, no matter what shrieks they hear or the chill of demon breath trickling down their spines.
They’d all been eight when Dar Priddy challenged Rhun to hang a blessing, and Mair heard from Haf that the boys were sending someone out. Haf had tittered how brave it was to make such a gift, and the Parry sisters giggled nervously that it was always boys doing it; wouldn’t it be grand for one of their own to be so brave? Mairwen, just to be contrary, said it was meaningless courage because nothing came of those blessings, so why not save bravery for an act that mattered? Bryn Parry sniffed and told her sister obviously Mair was just afraid and using her awful logic to make her fear sound sensible.
Of course, Mairwen was not afraid of the forest, and so it was easy to walk up to the Witch’s Hand at the same time as Rhun Sayer and convince him there was no good cause to leave a blessing.
When she came up behind him that dawn, Rhun had been trembling and tense. At her footsteps he whirled around, ax in one hand and limp red ribbon in the other. “Mairwen Grace!” he squeaked, backing up to knock into the trunk of the tree. Its branches rattled overhead, and Mair pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, looking wide-eyed at Rhun, who was no taller than her then, but only a boy with big hair and a crooked nose too large for his face. She put her fists on her hips and said, “Better to give that blessing to me than to a cursed tree like this, Rhun Sayer!”
His mouth fell open and he laughed.
Mairwen laughed, too.
She’d never paid him much attention before, though she supposed she’d known him all her life. The cadence of his laughter had warmed her from the inside out.
But the noise of it carried well into the Devil’s Forest, and a laugh echoed back at them, high and wicked enough to prick.
They leaped together, grasping hands, and ran up the long hill to the grazing horses, where their peers waited, jeering and wide-eyed, but shaking too, for they’d heard Rhun’s laugh and the mirror of it from the forest.
The girls held out their arms to welcome Mairwen back, but skinny Arthur Couch had insisted, “It doesn’t count if you don’t tie the blessing on,” holding his hand out for the ribbon. “I’ll do it. Give it to me.”
But Rhun tied his ribbon into the thicket of Mairwen’s hair instead.
Now the young man standing before the Witch’s Hand takes a low-hanging blessing in his fingers, gently tugging. But he doesn’t untie it, only strokes it, and then lets his hand drop.
Arthur.
Mair feels a rush, both glad and annoyed to see him. It’s a common blend of reactions to Arthur Couch. He’s brash and bold, always pushing at her the way she pushes at the forest. Like a promise, and one she wants to keep. But because of Rhun, Mair refuses to love him.
She walks down the hill slowly but not too quietly. As if he knows it will be her, Arthur doesn’t turn until she’s just beside his shoulder. They look into the forest, caught in darkness before the sun rises. The shadows wait, still and black. A cold wind gusts out, slinking through the trees without touching them, without moving branches or leaves. Only the shadows shiver, rippling and expanding, reaching.
Glints of light draw Mairwen’s eyes to the forest floor, to the shuffle of fallen leaves. Something moves beyond the thick black trunks, a weight of darkness. She steps toward it, fully into the shadow of the forest.
Arthur grabs her elbow. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks.
A breeze shakes the naked branches nearest them. We are so hungry, the breath of the forest whispers.
Arthur makes a noise like a groan trapped in his chest and drags Mairwen several paces back. “Would you make it worse?” he snaps. “By going inside after some flitting shadow?”
Mair’s chest aches with cold. She tries to fire herself up by saying, “Just because you’re afraid to step inside, not all of us are.”
His nostrils flare. “I am not afraid of the forest, but for my friend who’ll be sent into it.”
“Rhun won’t die,” she says, heart aching. Then she thinks of the saints who survive and leave, never returning to the valley because of all the horrible memories. So it’s said. And John Upjohn, the only to remain, who is frail and haunted. Mairwen can’t imagine Rhun so broken he begs the Grace witches to let him sleep at their hearth, shaking from nightmares. She has to imagine he’s stronger, better—the best. He can survive and thrive. She has to believe it, even knowing every mother and lover and friend must think the same of their saint. What else can she do? What else will she be allowed to do?
“I would run for him,” Arthur insists.
“For yourself,” she whispers back.
“For all of us.”
Mairwen shakes her head, knowing the lie. Arthur doesn’t care about saving the people of Three Graces, only proving to them that he can. Be the saint to erase the little girl who dogs him in his own memory worse than in the memory of the town.
“Don’t try to be what you’re not, Arthur,” she says, knowing he’ll take it badly.
Arthur digs his hands into his choppy pale hair, pulling hard. His elbows jut out at the lightening sky. But he says nothing. Mair clenches her teeth and turns away from him. She doesn’t understand Arthur’s anger, except that it always makes her angry too. Rhun says the two of them should be better friends. You’re both so pointy and strange and beautiful, my favorite people in the world. But she won’t forgive Arthur.
“Mairwen,” he hisses, and she hears him unsheathe one of his knives.
Turning, she follows Arthur’s gaze into the forest.
A deer picks its careful way over deadfall, sides heaving. Tiny antlers fork off its skull, catching the first hints of dawn light.
Blood drips from its mouth, from unnaturally sharp teeth cutting out at terrible angles through its face. Vines wrap its delicate legs, and when it takes one more careful step, Mair can see talons—not tiny hooves.
It raises its head and looks straight at her with eyes the purple of crystal.
She steps forward, awed and excited.
The creature bellows, a low bleat of fury and pain, and charges.
Arthur leaps between it and Mairwen with no hesitation, knife out. He dodges its teeth and jams his long knife straight into its neck, hilt deep. The creature screams and bucks, clawing at Arthur as he twists. He hits the grass and rolls, coming up with a kick to its rear legs.
Mairwen has nothing but her body. She punches at it, connecting with the downy cheek, and when it whips its head furiously, nearly catching her with an antler, she scurries back, tripping up the hill. Arthur cuts again and again at its flank with his second knife.
The creature stumbles and falls onto its knees, howling. Arthur grabs his first knife and saws it free. There’s sudden silence. It’s dead.
Trembling, Mair starts forward. She grasps at Arthur’s arm to help him to his feet. Together they stare down at the creature. Its antlers look more like winter branches, not bone, and its claws are black. Tiny purple violas bloom from its wounds and vines twist around its legs and torso—vines bursting from its own flesh, like ribs come to life to choke it.
Arthur wipes blood from his forehead. He’s hurt, but not badly. A shallow cut at his hairline, and Mairwen finds a slash in his jerkin that didn’t reach flesh. His right forearm is bright red with blood. Purple blood from the deer splatters across his belly and neck and the right side of his face.
“We have to get rid of this,” Arthur says.
“What, why?” Mair would prefer to study the body, to take its wooden antlers and investigate what its bones are made of. Nothing has come out of the forest before, that she knows. The birds never fly free, only scream in their tiny human voices. The scaly mice never scurry even an inch past the border, and no snakes emerge to find sun.
Arthur whispers the worst curse he can think of and shakes his head. “There was talk last night that John Upjohn did something wrong, that if the bargain is broken, it’s because of him.”
“He is a saint!”
“If people see this monster, they’ll be even more afraid.”
Mairwen looks at Arthur’s burning pale eyes. “This isn’t John’s fault.”
“But something is very wrong. This is unnatural, even for the Devil’s Forest.”
“Poor thing,” she says, eyes dropping back to the malformed body of flesh and vines. Arthur is right: The bargain is broken, or so weakened it cannot even bind the monsters inside. “Let’s roll it back across the threshold.”
Arthur bends and grabs the neck and shoulders, grimacing at the torn mouth. Mair picks up the back end by the ankles, lifting and dragging.
It’s not nearly as heavy as it should be. Like its insides have dried out or been eaten away.
They manage to heave it to the edge of the forest, where the rising sun still can’t penetrate. On count of three they roll it fully into the shadows, then stand there panting, staring at its bulk, just hidden in the thick, rotting deadfall, less than a foot from the light.
A shuffle of tall pasture grass behind them warns them somebody’s coming. Mair darts up the hill in time to see Rhun easily hop over the stone wall even with what appears to be little Genny Bowen in his arms. All Mair’s urgency falls away at the sight of him. Rhun Sayer with a baby girl. She thinks of her father, Carey Morgan, the saint who went into the forest not knowing he had a daughter on the way. Rhun would be a wonderful father.
Mair makes some noise of sorrow as Arthur joins her. “Damn,” he whispers, sad and furious and thinking the same thoughts as Mairwen.
But Rhun smiles at them, a boyish, wide smile, and lifts Genny’s chubby hand to wave.
“Go to the creek and wash off your face,” Mairwen says.
“He, at least, should know.”
She hesitates, then nods and trudges up toward Rhun, who says, “Morning.” As if compelled by unseen forces, he steps close. Even with Genny between them, he kisses her.
It’s such a welcome thing to Mairwen, who feels her heart quiet, her bones stop their anxious vibrations, as always when Rhun kisses her. She becomes rooted to the spot, like a trembling willow tree. Genny puts a warm hand on Mairwen’s cheek.
“Kissing where the devil can see?” Arthur calls with poison in his tone.
They part, though Rhun remains intimately near. She slides Arthur a glare just as Rhun asks, “What happened?” with horror building in his tone. His brown cheeks are rough with a spotty young beard, his lips tight with strain.
“Hello, Genny,” Mairwen says calmly, taking the baby.
“Arthur?” Rhun eyes the blood on Arthur’s face.
“Mama is sick,” the little girl tells Mairwen.
“Then it’s good,” Arthur says, pointing his hand north, “there’s blood on the Bone Tree.”
They all look, and there, rising from the deepest center of the forest, the Bone Tree spreads its barren branches and a scatter of red buds catch the sunrise like a scream.
“So,” Rhun says, voice thick, and he can say no more.
Dread hardens inside Mairwen, like she swallowed old yellow bones.
It’s Arthur who puts his hand flat and solidly on Rhun’s shoulder, scowling at the bloody flowers. “Tomorrow night, then,” he says.
• • •
BY THE TIME THE FIRST of the town arrives, Arthur and Rhun have been to the creek and back, the former to wash and relate the brief morning’s adventure to the latter. Mairwen holds Genny, both of them all awkward elbows, and she sings softly to the little girl. It’s a song about the Bone Tree, about three little squirrels who try to make a nest in its branches and one by one grow wings, antlers, and fangs. Mairwen can’t recall where she learned it—from her grandmother maybe—or if she made it up on her own during long hours cleaning bones to carve for combs and needles.
Fortunately, Genny seems to like it, and as the townsfolk gather, Mairwen sings it again, louder. They stare at her, this strange saint’s daughter, including the Pugh sisters, the shepherds and bakers, the families who ask her blessing and those who think it strange she dances at the edges of shadows and boils bones despite her holy father. There’s Gethin Couch, Arthur’s father—and the town leatherworker—standing with some brewers and watching his son from the same distance as always. Lace Upjohn, who sent her son in last time. She must come closest to understanding how Mairwen feels. John himself isn’t here. Devyn Argall arrives carrying a stool for Cat Dee, the oldest woman in town, to rest upon. Mair sees her friend Haf Lewis, a pretty girl with a rosy smile, tan cheeks, and sleek black braids, who does not think Mairwen is strange, only Mairwen.
Her voice fades, and Genny wiggles to be let down. Mairwen bends to set her on her stockinged feet, and the girl stumbles and rushes to her father, who’s come with her mother cradled in his arms in order that both might see the scarlet leaves crowning the Bone Tree and know soon Liza Bowen will heal, because blood leaves are proof that the bargain can be re-formed with a new saint’s run. Mairwen wishes she believed it. Something is wrong, so maybe everything is wrong. She looks for her mother, and finds the witch standing opposite in the crowd. Aderyn’s mouth softens when she sees her daughter, and she beckons.
It’s time for the first ritual to begin, and together the two witches go into the herd of horses and choose a healthy one. He’s a dark roan, still young and strong, but with a son of his own to carry his qualities on so they won’t lose the power from the herd. Aderyn turns him over to the rest of the women, who brush him to a shine and braid his mane and tail with red ribbons, put a wreath of thistle and holly around the beast’s neck. Then the men anoint the horse’s brow with a blessed salve, and each boy who might run approaches. One by one they grip the wreath, hard enough the pricking holly and rough thistle draw blood, and whisper their name into the horse’s ear.
Mairwen gnashes her teeth. Her mother winds their hands together and murmurs, “You have a story for me, little bird. There’s blood on your sleeve and a wail in your eyes.”
“Not for here,” she replies, leaning her arm into her mother’s. The devil is an old god of the forest, her mother would whisper when she told the story only to Mairwen. That was the first line of the Grace witches’ private version. He was bold and powerful, beautiful and dangerous, but he loved the first Grace witch, and it was from that love the bargain blossomed. This valley is made on love, little bird. Find love. Seek it, always. That is where our power resides.
“Morning, Mair,” Haf whispers, coming up behind. Mair squeezes her mother’s hand, then lets go and turns to her friend.
Haf’s height barely surpasses Mairwen’s shoulder, but the braided crown of her hair gives her a few more inches. Haf is nearly a year older than Mairwen, and engaged to Ifan Pugh, but most pin her the more youthful of the two girls because of her easy smile and tendency to forget what she’s doing. But she never forgets things she’s said or promised. She loves Mairwen for being brave, and because Haf understands that Mair’s distraction and hunger for other things have nothing to do with any insufficiency of Haf’s. That simple self-assurance made Mair fall in love with her right back. It was Mair who brokered the engagement with Ifan Pugh, eight years their elder, because he’d been too nervous to approach Haf. That alone turned Mair in his favor, for who but the truly besotted would be more afraid of Haf than of her?
Mairwen puts her arm around her friend’s waist, weaving them even closer.
“Will it be Rhun?” Haf asks very quietly. Mair looks toward the boys lined up to whisper their names to the horse. There he is with Arthur, leaning against his shoulder like a comrade, like a boy with no care in the world despite the early Moon, despite the monster this morning, while Arthur seethes silently, jaw working. Beside him are Per Argall and the Parry cousins, and Bevan Heir: all boys between fifteen and twenty, offering themselves up to the town. But everyone knows who will be sent into the forest.
“He’s the best,” Mair whispers. Without even a goodbye word, she whirls away from Haf and strides south toward home.
She kicks at tall grass as she goes, taking satisfaction from the tiny golden seeds that scatter explosively. There must be a reason this happened, there must be a cause, and surely—surely—that cause is not John Upjohn. If something went wrong with his run, why did the bargain last these three years at all, and not simply collapse upon itself immediately after?
Mair grits her teeth and lines up her questions for Aderyn Grace.
Do you know what’s wrong? Mustn’t you, because you’re the Grace witch?
Why can’t I go inside, really? What is the magic in my heart or in my bones? I’m half saint!
Why did a monster try to escape?
How can I save Rhun Sayer?
Hardly noticing as she crosses the stone wall, barely checking her speed as she careens down the hill toward the Grace house, Mairwen seethes and sighs through her teeth, hating this uncertainty. Even Arthur knows what his role is today: apply to be the saint, with all the other potential runners. Haf knows, and all the villagers know: Ready the valley for a bonfire celebration tonight, with a feast and dancing and the ritual throwing of charms into the fire. Women and girls will bake and sweep. Men and young boys move tables and benches, spit a pig, carry heavy casks of beer.
Only Mairwen doesn’t know. She’s not the Grace witch yet, but more than just a girl.
The forest calls her. The Bone Tree calls her.
Why isn’t she allowed to answer? Why isn’t she allowed to run?
I would run for him, Arthur had said. Well, so would Mairwen. And she’d be sneakier and determined.
How could it possibly matter to the magic to sacrifice a boy instead of a girl?
But maybe the devil cares.
Mairwen slams through the short wooden gate into her mother’s yard, and stops when she hears a startled grunt to her left.
It’s John Upjohn, crouched inside their fence, half hidden beside the gooseberry bushes. He’s twenty-one and lean, with watery green eyes and thin blond hair he keeps braided in a tail. The impression of being no more than a ghost is so familiar to Mair it’s hard for her to believe the people who remember him lively and bold, before his run.
His left arm is tucked into a pocket specially sewn to the side of his coat to easily hold the stump of his wrist.
“Mairwen,” he says, attempting normalcy.
“Oh, John!” She flings herself down beside him, but not touching him—she always waits for him to make contact. “Are you well? You weren’t at the pasture with your mother.”
John tilts his head, which is the nearest he comes to expressing unease. “Is there blood on the Bone Tree?”
“Yes.” Mair does her best to keep her voice even, not let him hear her fury and confusion.
His wince is mighty, but lacking surprise.
“Will you tell me, finally, what happened to you in the forest?” she asks.
“I did not do this, Mairwen Grace,” he answers with more ferocity than she’s ever heard.
“Nor did I say you did,” she snaps back, leaping to her feet. “This is new, John, an early Slaughter Moon for the first time in two hundred years. You can’t be upset we want to know why, and you’re the last person to be in the forest!”
The saint shuts his eyes and drags his hand down his face. It falls off his chin, turns to a fist, and slams into the grass beside his hip. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
Carefully, Mairwen kneels. She breaks her own rule and touches his knee. “I’ve been a safe place for you for years, me and my mother. I don’t mean for that to end today. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
They pose in silence for a few breaths, both inwardly focused. She thinks of the times he’s brought his nightmares to her door, of holding tightly to his shoulders as he shakes. “Can you tell me anything, John?” Mair finally asks, soft as she can. “Did you see the devil? What is he like? How did you lose your hand? What is inside that forest? Is it beautiful?”
“Beautiful!” He frowns. “No.”
It’s a no that reverberates through all her questions. Mair wants to argue, but it’s John Upjohn, the last saint, and she won’t. Instead she turns to lean against the fence, where gooseberry brambles tangle in her hair.
“So much of it I only remember in my nightmares,” he confesses.
Without looking at him, she asks, “Why have you stayed, if it’s so hard? Not for me, surely.”
“Thinking of leaving is even worse. I don’t know how the other surviving saints left, even with the lord’s help and money. A part of me never left that forest, not just my . . . not just . . . but at least here I’m . . . close to it. I have to stay close.”
“Oh, John,” she whispers, putting her shoulder against his.
“I shouldn’t hide today. That will make things worse.”
“You be yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t let anybody hurt you.”
“I believe you,” he whispers.
“I want to go into the forest,” she whispers back. “To find out what changed. John, I feel like this is . . . an opportunity. An opening in the world that only I might fit through.”
“No.” John Upjohn pushes up onto one knee and grasps her shoulder. “Mairwen Grace,” he says firmly, making her name an invocation. “Do not go inside. For me. You asked me to stay here three years ago, and I’m asking you to do the same now.” Sweat beads at his hairline, though the morning is cold.
“I can handle it, John,” she says resentfully.
His fingers tighten on her shoulder. “But you shouldn’t have to. Nobody should have to.”
“Rhun will have to. Why should he handle it alone?”
John pauses, and his eyes lower. Mair struggles to regulate her breathing, so she seems less upset, less desperate. “I’m sorry, Mairwen.”
Frustration tightens her muscles and Mair has to dig her fingers into the grass, ripping fistfuls up by the roots.
• • •
ADERYN COMES ONCE THE MORNING ritual is done, pauses at the sight of her daughter and the last saint leaning together in the yard. Mairwen leaps up and drags Aderyn inside, to the cool shade of their kitchen. “Mother, a deer charged out of the forest this morning, monstrous and misshapen. Arthur killed it and we rolled it back into the forest.”
Lines pinch between Aderyn’s dark brows. “That has not happened before.”
“Something is wrong.”
“There is nothing to do but let the Slaughter Moon run its course.”
“Nothing! But we’re witches.”
“And we guard the bargain.”
“But shouldn’t we investigate? What if the devil is . . . is hurt? Or what if the first Grace’s heart cannot bear the weight of the bargain any longer? Their love lasted two hundred years, which is a very long time.”
“Not ever after,” Aderyn said with a dry smile. “The magic promises the bargain will last so long as we send our saint to run.”
“Every seven years,” Mairwen cries, then quickly lowers her voice, glancing to the kitchen window. “It’s only been three since John escaped.”
Aderyn holds her daughter’s shoulders, studying Mairwen for a long moment, until Mairwen licks her lips and her fingers twist into her skirt. Aderyn says, “But John is not the first saint to run back out of the forest, and this is new.”
“So it must be something else. Something has changed! Don’t we need to know what? Why can’t I go inside? I’m strong. I’m fast. I—I’m not as strong and fast as Rhun, but I’m cunning.” Mair knows she’s pleading with her mother. Aderyn draws her toward the hearth, where they kneel together on the wide, dark stone.
“You cannot go inside, little bird. Of all people. Not because you’re a girl, but because of the blood in your veins. I know you long for the forest. I know it calls you. But answering is not worth the peril. Your heart would be so much at risk.”
Mairwen sinks, putting her cheek to her mother’s thigh. She closes her eyes and listens—listens deeply—to the pitter-patter of her heart, quick and loud. Aderyn strokes the brambling curls as best one can. “Isn’t it worth the risk?” Mairwen whispers.
“You’re a Grace witch, not a saint. I’ve told you, we go inside and we do not return. Our hearts are tied to that Bone Tree, just as the heart of the youngest Grace sister was. Wait until you have lived a full life.”
“Rhun hasn’t.”
“That is part of the sacrifice.”
Making a fist in her mother’s skirt, Mairwen says, “It is hard enough to think of Rhun dying if it gives us the seven years we’re owed. But if it is only three years again? Or less? We cannot be sure his run will be enough, if we don’t know what changed.”
Her mother continues to pet Mair’s head. “Have faith, and love, little bird. In the bargain, in our traditions. One cycle out of pace with the rest does not mean it all is worthless. You are strong, Mairwen, and what you do means something to this town. Show them how to be, how you can lead them after me. Not only for Three Graces, but for Rhun Sayer. Show him you will be strong when he runs.”
“I love him. Will that be enough to save him?” Mair clutches her mother’s knees, for how can she say such a thing when her mother lost her lover to the forest seventeen years ago?
But Aderyn teases at Mair’s curls and says, “That boy loves widely and well. If love can protect anybody, it will protect Rhun Sayer.”
“Too widely?” Mairwen unbends, panicked. “Too well?”
“Little bird, I’m not sure there is any such thing.”
• • •
HAF LEWIS AND HER SISTER Bree arrive to bake for the bonfire that night, sending Aderyn on her way to check in with Rhos and the baby, back at the Priddy house. Mair is glad to take her frustration out on dough, and her bread comes out tough.
Haf and her fifteen-year-old sister keep up a dialogue between them, enough the kitchen doesn’t overwhelm with tension; they tease each other and compete to make the finest pinched pastries. Their fingers move fast, and their smiles match. The girls look everything of sisters, smooth black hair and round faces, bright eyes, though Bree’s are a surprising green and her skin a rosy tan, evidence of three generations the Lewises have lived and married in Three Graces.
When Bree’s best friend, Emma Parry, rushes in to drop off a bowl of sweet meat and grab more elderflower honey for the Pugh sisters, she knocks into Mair hard enough Mair retaliates by throwing a handful of flour and snaps, “Watch yourself!”
The powder scatters in Emma’s blond hair, and she purses her lips, putting fists on her slight hips. “You should find a chance to go by the square, Mairwen,” Emma says with false kindness. “The boys are building their bonfire, and I think Arthur Couch might be having a better time of it than Rhun Sayer.”
“Oh,” Bree says, “you should bless them, Mair, you should.”
“She’s probably blessed Rhun Sayer enough,” Emma adds with a giggle.
Bree gasps, but Mairwen ignores it, striding to the pot on the fire to slop her spoon through the reducing gooseberry sauce. Emma says, “I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean,” Mair says coldly. Truthfully, she likes being accused of such things. It’s good for Rhun’s reputation.
The girl dashes out of the cottage and Haf says, “She’s only excited.”
Mair’s hand stills the spoon in the green sauce. A few more minutes will be enough. She needs to finish rolling out the dough. Or she can leave this to burn, to turn to sticky, ruined innards, and go back out to the pasture, be alone where she can’t foul the town’s customs with her thorns. This is too important, isn’t it, to push at until it breaks?
She turns to face Haf and her sister, who stand beside the worn kitchen table with a pile of perfectly shaped pastries ready to be carried to the Priddy ovens. Bree’s chin is down, her small fingers pinching dough around a spoonful of the candied venison Emma just left. Bree looks up at Mairwen from beneath her black brows, then glances quickly down again, biting her lip.
Mairwen hefts the pot of gooseberries off the fire and sets it on the hearth to cool. The stone is old and blue-gray, a single heavy boulder carved rectangular like an old pagan standing stone tipped onto its side. Possibly that is exactly its origin. She wipes her hands on her apron. “Do you think all this preparation matters? Shouldn’t we be doing something else? Trying to find out what caused the change? What if it’s something we all did?”
Haf tilts her head to consider. Not a wisp of her braided crown slips out of place. Afternoon sunlight streams through the western windows, highlighting clusters of drying herbs that dangle from the rafters, dull green and purple and yellow, and the limewashed walls are as bright as ever. It smells of tangy gooseberries and flour, fire and hot stone. Haf finally says, “Don’t we have to go on with the bargain no matter what caused this change? I’ve never been sick in my life, nor lost a little brother or sister as a babe.”
Bree’s fingers twitch, ruining the arc of her pastry. Her braids are messy, falling to pieces, because for some unknowable younger sister’s reason, she won’t let Haf do the braiding for her. “Our grandma used to tell us stories about plague when we were bad,” she says. “That your—your skin rots off and you get boils that weep blood until you cough up your own insides. She said if we didn’t behave we’d be made to leave Three Graces and die of it.”
“Oh, Bree,” Haf says, exasperated.
Grimacing, Mairwen says, “That’s terrible.” She can’t help imagining it, how horrible the smell would be, and the fear. “But I know why we have the bargain, why we send our saint into the forest. I understand the—the sacrifice part. Or I understand how it’s supposed to work. But how can we do everything traditional, everything the same as always, when last time we did it all just like this and the bargain only lasted three years? How can our rituals matter? These pastries and our bonfire celebration matter, or tomorrow’s blessing shirt? It seems useless to me if we don’t know it will work again.”
“What else can we do but try to fix it?” Haf says.
Mairwen scoffs. “We don’t know which part is broken!”
But it’s Bree who murmurs, “My mom says John’s hand is the only different thing.”
“That we know of,” Mair says darkly, thinking of the monstrous deer. “And by the rules of the bargain, he did nothing wrong by surviving and leaving his hand behind.”
“That we know of?” Haf suggests with a wince.
Mair grits her teeth, longing for the cold shade of the forest’s edge. “Exactly. I want to know.”
“But how could you discover it without risking everything breaking?”
“There’s no rule keeping anybody from going into the forest any other night of the year. We just don’t, because we’re afraid of the devil.”
Haf’s eyes widen. “For good reason.”
“That’s what everybody says,” Mairwen cries.
“Maybe,” Haf says softly, “try to find something you can do. That won’t risk the saint, or the bargain.”
“Like make pastries and bless the saint shirt. John had all those things.”
“And John survived.”
“The bargain didn’t.”
There’s nowhere else to take the argument. Everything comes back to the same: Mairwen is not allowed to do anything useful. She’ll make her own charms for Rhun, she thinks, to protect him.
When the pastries are all pinched, full of sweet meat and gooseberries, they load them into a basket, layered carefully with linen, and carry it toward town. Windows are flung open in the houses they pass; chatter and laughing spills out into the muddy lanes. Children run freer than usual, unleashed for the afternoon to play devils and saints or mirror the older boys’ games of shooting and strength and balance. The tiniest Rees cousins have braided their hair together and gallop past, giggling and shrieking like a six-legged beast. Older boys dash after, arguing who will slay the red dragon of Grace Mount. Mair decides to shuck this dark, dour mood if she’s able, as her mother suggested. For the runners.
As they approach the square they sense a shift in the air: still celebratory, but tenser, heavier. Haf says she’ll deliver the pastries for baking and join Mair and Bree to watch the boys.
Five paces later Mairwen stops at the corner of the Royal Barrel. The bonfire is finished: dead branches piled against each other, stacked and leaning, twice times her height. Evergreen boughs decorate it like fur, and sprigs of thistle and rosemary and burdock, too. Fennel and leeks surround the base, some dried blooms and some bulbs, for prosperity and luck.
It’s magnificent, and will burn for hours.
The runners cluster in the south curve of the square. They’ve hung the wreath from the stallion upon the bonfire wood. About an arm length wide, it suits as an archery target. All the boys hold their bows and use a communal quiver, though Mairwen recognizes the leather tooling as Rhun’s. Per Argall stands at the chalk line, aiming with very decent form for the youngest of them. Just fifteen last month. It seems half the boys already shot, and though all hit the target, none are too near the center, meaning Rhun has yet to shoot.
Per looses his arrow. It flutters past an evergreen sprig at the edge of the target and disappears into the pile. Beside Mair, Bree claps. As do the rest of the spectators scattered about the square, some chuckling at the bashful way Per flops his hair over his face. He’ll never be a saint, Mair thinks.
His older brother shoots next, only marginally better, and then Rhun and Arthur Couch look to each other. Rhun shrugs one shoulder and smiles, stringing his bow in an easy motion. He takes an arrow, rubs the fletching down his cheek as he’s wont to do, and notches it, aims, looses it casually, as if merely swiping a drink of beer. His arrow flies true and buries itself three fingers off the center of the wreath.
Mairwen can’t help her prideful, tight smile.
Arthur steps up, six previous arrows waiting and only Rhun’s to beat.
He takes more time than Rhun for his turn, relaxing into his pose gracefully instead of with Rhun’s casual skill. Mairwen notes the rise of his shoulders and slow, slow fall as he sighs into the shoot.
The arrow hits true, a single finger off-center.
A loud cheer swirls around the square, led by Gethin Couch, and even Haf murmurs her amazement from beside Mairwen. Rhun grins and claps Arthur around the shoulders, saying something merry but too quiet to hear from the edge. Mairwen smiles too, as Bree applauds, joining in with the rest of the boys, and the long arc of spectating men slapping their hands to their thighs. Too bad for Arthur all these tests aren’t the real way saints are made. They’re only a show, to bring all the candidates together and keep them out of trouble. Tradition.
“It could be him,” Haf says, clutching the basket of pastries to her belly. Mairwen darts a sharp look to her friend. It sounds as though Haf means that to comfort Mair.
“Weren’t you to take those to the bakery?” Mair asks.
Haf’s mouth twitches and her fingers tighten on the basket’s handle. “I forgot! Yes, of course I’ll go.” She laughs at herself, and knocks her shoulder into Mairwen’s arm before skipping off. Bree nudges Mair too, and uses her chin to point across the square to Ifan Pugh, whose eyes track Haf’s progress.
Mair can hardly take her own gaze off the boys, especially Rhun and Arthur as they organize a race, debating obstacles and directions. Men call suggestions from the sides, for hurdles and traps. Mairwen sweeps out, offering herself and Bree and Haf as race markers, to hold ribbons the boys will have to carry from one to the next as proof they’ve gone the whole way. It’s set, and so they spend the rest of the daylight: playing games to echo the final night of the Slaughter Moon.
• • •
AS THE SUN SETS, ALL return to the square, flushed and dirty. Rhun is hot with laughing and the race, trailing behind everyone as they chatter and argue over who won. Mairwen received a kiss from every boy who ran: gentlemanly hand and cheek kisses from Bevan Heir, the Argall brothers, and the Parry cousins. Arthur kissed her on the mouth, but swiftly and with a tight sneer that mirrored the shape of Mairwen’s and left her breathless. Rhun picked her up by the ribs and kissed her long enough to make her smile again. So long it lost him the race.
Falling behind not from nerves or sorrow, but the weight of gladness for all he has, Rhun is the one to see John Upjohn walking a parallel path to town, and he angles his route to meet up with the saint.
John Upjohn is the only person in Three Graces who never smiles at Rhun, though Rhun’s been told the saint has a sweet smile, with dimples on either side of his mouth. How Rhun would like to see that smile tonight. “John,” he says, almost bashful.
“Rhun Sayer.” Deep wrinkles pull at his eyes, as if John were twice his true age, and the corners are reddish, a sign of his poor sleeping. Mairwen has told Rhun that John still has nightmares, still sometimes comes to the Grace house in the middle of the night as if its hearthstone is the only thing that soothes him enough to rest. The saint is wearing the usual costume of a hunter: wool trousers and leather jerkin over a wool shirt, though he’s without a hood tonight. His stubbed wrist is tucked into a shallow pocket in his jerkin, and in his only hand is a sprig of dried flowers for the bonfire.
They walk in silence, drawn toward the crowd in the square, to the flicker of torches already lit. Rhun worries his tongue at the back of his teeth, unsure how to make the saint smile. What to say on a night like this, to someone so haunted by it?
Two houses before they reach the square, it’s John who stops. “I remember your cousin, ten years ago. I was only eleven, but I remember him, how bright and happy he was the night of his bonfire.”
“I remember, too,” Rhun says.
“It helped me during mine. To have that memory. I’m sorry you’ve got me and memories of me in the way.”
“No!” Rhun reaches out and grips John’s arm, to reassure him. “I’m not sorry.”
The saint makes a smile that is more of a wince, no dimples anywhere. “You will be.”
A chill grips Rhun’s spine, but he shrugs it off as if fear is a choice. “It’s what I’m for,” he says.
“Is it?” John Upjohn shakes his head and pulls his stump out of its pocket. The sleeve of his shirt is tied off so there are no scars to see. “You can choose,” he says finally, echoing Rhun’s thoughts.
Rhun lets his hand slide away from the saint’s shoulder. “It’s worth it.”
Expecting John to immediately agree is a mistake Rhun knew he was making even as he made it. When John slowly, reluctantly nods, Rhun apologizes: “I’m sorry. It must be impossible for you, tonight of all nights.”
The saint smiles helplessly, and there they are: two long dimples making John’s face more handsome for a moment before the smile falls away and John says, “You’re facing your best and worst night, and apologizing to me. I’m the one who’s sorry, Rhun Sayer. You’re too good to survive it.”
Unsurprised by the sentiment, only the bluntness of someone saying so aloud, Rhun lets his mouth fall open, and for a moment he’s at a loss. His cousin was the best, and didn’t live: Rhun never expected to be better than Baeddan. “I don’t have to survive it, to fulfill the bargain. I just have to run.”
“You should want to survive it, though.” The haunted blue of John’s eyes catches the last sunlight as he steps nearer to Rhun.
“I—I do,” Rhun says, though he rarely has thought of any future past the night of his run. All his future thoughts have been of the four more years he was supposed to have between now and then. The moment the blood appeared on the Bone Tree this morning, Rhun’s future vanished. He knows in his heart, in his gut, this is his second-to-last night.
“Good,” John says sorrowfully, as if he knows Rhun doesn’t mean it but can’t bring himself to challenge it.
The saint and almost-saint pause together in the narrow cobbled alley, though Rhun is broader, with more bright tension in the way he stands, and John Upjohn holds himself as still as stone.
“I’ll be all right, John,” Rhun says, and though he hates lying nearly as much as he hates secrets, he adds, “I promise.”
“Just remember,” the saint says, moving away from Rhun, glancing back over his shoulder, “you must have something to focus on, besides the devil. Besides the run. Something outside, something . . . good. A person, or hope for yourself. Something to pull you back out.”
“What did you hope for?” Rhun calls softly.
John lowers his head and holds out his arm with the missing hand. He doesn’t answer.
Before Rhun can press, the saint hurries toward the village square.
• • •
THREE YEARS AGO, WHEN ARTHUR was nearly fifteen, his best friend, Rhun, stopped them along the narrow deer path they’d been stalking along, and kissed him. The moment before, as he leaned in, Rhun’s eyes were bright with happiness, so much so that Arthur started to smile back before he realized what was happening.
Then Rhun’s mouth was on his, warm and soft, and Arthur stumbled away, his boots tangling in the spindly autumn grasses so he had to fling his hands back against a tree to catch himself. The bark scraped his palms, burning all the way up his arms to spark like fury in his skull.
Rhun laughed and grasped Arthur’s shoulders. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just—”
“Don’t touch me,” Arthur cried hoarsely and low.
“What?” Rhun pulled his hands back, shock widening his eyes.
Arthur shoved away from the tree, turning his back to Rhun. “I’m not a girl,” he said.
“I know that?” Uncertainty put the question in Rhun’s words.
All Arthur could see were crowns of flowers and petals catching fire, hear the laughter of boys and that pitying look in the eyes of men. He was shaking. He made his hands into fists. “Don’t do that, ever. I’m not a girl.”
Rhun couldn’t help it; he reached out again. He was afraid and Arthur could see it in how his brow pulled into a solid black line. “I wanted you to know,” awkward, fourteen-year-old Rhun said. “Next time it’ll be me, and I wanted you to know.”
“Next time?” Arthur’s voice was pitched high with hysteria. “There can’t be a next time!”
“The Slaughter Moon,” Rhun whispered.
Arthur fell silent, though his chest heaved. Two days before that one, John Upjohn had charged out of the forest, so they had seven more years of bounty. He stared at Rhun, horrified still, and his lips burned. He wiped them roughly with the back of his hand, glaring at Rhun the whole time.
Rhun grimaced but didn’t look away. “I know you’re not a girl, Arthur. I only . . . want to kiss you anyway.”
A wind blew golden-brown leaves between them and shook the bare branches overhead. They were still, both shorter than they’d soon be, and slimmer, but Arthur hadn’t chopped off his hair in enough months it brushed the sharp cut of his shoulders in smoothing layers. The wind fluttered it against his neck where it tickled and itched.
“You can’t,” Arthur said, and added with vicious finality, “It’s disgusting.”
Rhun shook his head sadly, and the shape his mouth and crooked nose and dark eyes and strong jaw made all together was a shape of something Arthur couldn’t understand. “There’s nothing disgusting in our valley,” Rhun said. “There can’t be. Everything here is good and right.”
“Not me,” Arthur sneered, and tore away, stomping, then running, then racing through the cutting forest, up and up away from the valley, up to the mountain peaks, where there was nothing but rough heather and jutting chalk cliffs.
Next time is all Arthur can think of now, three years later, as in the final slash of daylight, Sy Vaughn and Aderyn Grace bring the torches to the pyre.
Together the young lord and the witch cry the names of the prospective runners, and together they light the blaze. Together they spill wine for the saints and for the devil, for God and his angels, for the king and the bishops, and for their grandmothers and grandfathers, until both bottles are splashed entirely onto the evergreen sprigs and thistle. Vaughn is like a holy saint himself, smiling and handsome, while Aderyn is dangerous and strong, her twisting curls tinged nearly red by the fire in her hand. They thrust their torches deep into the pyre. At first only the inside flames: burning hot, a pulsing heart inside the bonfire shell. Arthur knows that pulse too well.
Then evergreen boughs flash aflame, and everyone cheers. The thistles and smallest branches catch, and they cheer again.
As one by one the mothers of the potential runners walk or stride or creep to the fire and toss in their son’s charm, the town falls quiet. The mothers stand side by side to watch the charms burn. Except Arthur’s mother is gone, left a decade ago, and Nona Sayer can’t cast his charm because she cast her own son’s. Nobody thought of it, clearly, since nobody thought of Arthur Couch’s potentiality really mattering at all. He lets his lips curl, even as Rhun knocks their shoulders together enthusiastically.
Mairwen darts out of the crowd suddenly, wrinkling her nose as if irritated. She makes big eyes at Arthur and shows him the bone charm in her hand. It’s a string of teeth, all shapes and sizes, deer and rabbit and sharp mountain cat and small fox and goat and sheep. Someone says her name, and a few others say his, and Mairwen throws the teeth into the pyre with a violent thrust.
Arthur’s entire body clenches and he bites his teeth together too hard, pretending to bite her, to kiss her with the same violence. Rhun’s fingers dig into his shoulder, grounding him in just exactly the right kind of pain. Rhun knows. Rhun always knows.
Drums come out, and whistles and three fiddles. Women bring the platters of pastries, to join the roasted pig that smoked and cooked all day long in a pit. There are cakes and pies, so much dripping meat, laughter and music, and the dancing begins when the moon rises.
This moon is nearly full, fat-bottomed and perfect: a spot of silver to compete with their roaring bonfire. That fire spits up red sparks against the black sky, so bright they consume the stars. But the moon beckons everyone to dance.
Arthur eats and drinks, dances with Haf Lewis and her sister, with Hetty Pugh, who stares narrowly and with amusement the entire time. He drinks more, snatching sips from his partners’ cups, and an entire flagon from Braith Bowen the smith, and snaps morsels of food from offering fingers, for he is one of the prospective runners, even though everyone knows—knows, assumes, presumes—the saint will be Rhun. Only that scathing dick Alun Prichard asks Arthur to dance, bowing and calling him Lyn. Arthur grabs the front of the young man’s shirt and drags them together. He bashes his head into Alun’s nose, then thrusts him away.
The gasps of nearby dancers hiss into shrugs and head-shaking when they see it’s only Arthur, as usual.
There are Mairwen and Rhun, dancing too closely. They spin and Mairwen clings to Rhun, dread widening her features. She suddenly stops dancing in the middle of the square, causing him to trip gracefully. She shakes her head and Rhun turns her right into Arthur’s arms.
He catches her as she leans in. Arthur’s short pale hair spikes around his head, alight as a saint’s halo, and his lips spread over his teeth. “Mairwen Grace,” he says, unable to help himself, “rather dancing with me than Rhun Sayer.”
Mairwen shrugs and spins. She skips and turns, lets her head fall back and her hair shake loose. The world spins, too, the bonfire blazes, the people around them laugh and dance, and Arthur cups her elbows, then her waist as they turn and turn. He pulls her closer, their bodies pressed into one, at the center of all this wild dancing, and the full moon streaks her tangled hair with ghostly light.
“I’m dancing with all the runners,” she says.
“It could be me chosen,” he whispers into her ear, and Mairwen laughs. She laughs so free and loud it draws heads and gazes around them. She puts her hands to Arthur’s neck and smiles.
“I would rather it be you,” she declares, laughing still. Sparks flash off the fire, making shapes more scattered than constellations, and dangerous as goblins.
Fury burns through Arthur and he jerks her closer, as if to slam his head into hers as he did to Alun Prichard.
“You’ll have to cut your hair again,” she whispers, “violent boy.” She toys at the ragged tips with both hands, and his earlobes, too, causing him to shiver. Her touch leaves cold impressions, driving straight down to his loins. He tears away, shoving through the crowd, away from the fire and pulsing drums.
“I’m sorry,” she calls from behind him as he reaches the churchyard and stops against the short stone wall of the little cemetery. He turns to her; she’s lit from behind by the fire. Mairwen touches the wall to steady herself, and he realizes she’s drunker than him.
“Don’t be sorry,” Arthur says.
“Arthur,” she says, “I’ve never been so . . . out of sorts.”
He doesn’t move, a pale spirit against the dark cemetery beyond. Rough-cut stones marked with family names spread in uneven lines between the holy cross monument in the west and in the east the plain pillar memorial carved with the names of all the boys lost to the Devil’s Forest in two hundred years. Arthur can’t read the names from here, nor even see the shadow of them against the creamy stone, but he knows them, and knows the order. He recites them in his mind, to eradicate thoughts of her hands. The last name is Baeddan Sayer, carved ten years ago. How terrible will it feel to see Rhun’s name there? To wait at dawn for him to never come home?
So lost in the sick thought is Arthur that he doesn’t notice Mairwen until she’s just beside him. He eyes her as his anger reignites, mingled now not only with desire, but worry and sorrow. A mess of sharp, contradictory emotions. He says, “Can you imagine my name there?”
Mair sits on the wall, clutching the corner of it tight enough to mark her palms. “I refuse to. Bad enough seeing my father’s name.”
Arthur glances at the memorial pillar, where he knows Carey Morgan is carved.
“If it were you,” she whispers, and Arthur scoffs but seats himself beside her and hangs his head.
“If it were you,” Mairwen begins again, “what would make you feel better tonight?”
He looks back toward the square, firelight awaking in his eyes, reflecting the fire in his heart. “Knowing what I had to fight for.”
“You mean the town? All of this reminding you how good it is? The saint’s shirt to carry with you as a—as a talisman of Three Graces?”
“No, stupid girl.”
Her back straightens and she opens her mouth to snap and leave him, but Arthur says, “I mean who I had to fight for. Knowing she’d be there at dawn, waiting.”
All Mairwen’s breath rushes out.
“I’d survive it. I’m harder and faster than him,” Arthur says. “I don’t let anything hurt me and have no pity to slow me down. And of course I’m more expendable.”
“No one is expendable,” Mairwen answers ferociously.
Arthur kisses her. He kisses with his lips and teeth, hard and formidable, hands on her jaw and neck, dragging her closer. And Mairwen kisses him back. She flings her arms around him, shoving as much of herself against him as she can. His teeth drag at her lip. Her nails claw his scalp. These are not fresh or easy kisses.
Suddenly Mairwen pulls away with a cry, violent enough to stumble to the ground, landing on her hip.
She stares up at Arthur, who’s on his feet, jaw clenched and a hand hovering near his mouth. Moonlight brightens her eyes, and her teeth glint between open lips. “Oh, no,” she says. “Not now, not you, not tonight!”
It cuts hard into him, the abruptness and finality of her rejection. Angst twists in his stomach, leaving rope burns. But she’s also right. Tonight is the night before the Slaughter Moon. Rhun’s Slaughter Moon. He says, “Rhun told me . . . when he . . . kissed me . . .”
Mairwen scrubs at her mouth.
Arthur wants to drag her hands away, hurt her for it. He has to take deep breaths. He says in as calm a voice as he’s able, “He told me he kissed me because he wanted me to know, before next time. His time. His moon.”
“I know how Rhun feels,” she hisses. “About me and you.”
“I think everybody knows.”
“I mean, does he really understand?” Arthur grinds his teeth together, hating everything in the entire world. “You love him too, and so you should . . . make sure he knows.”
Her eyes sink to Arthur’s mouth, and he forces his body still lest it catch fire again. “You should too,” she whispers, then stands up and leaves him alone with the dead.
• • •
THE BONFIRE BLAZES UNTIL AFTER midnight, and though a handful of older women and their husbands remain to usher the embers and ashes into death, the square quiets. Mairwen strays farther and farther into the fields, tilting and a bit drunk, worried and reckless and cursing herself for kissing Arthur Couch. If love can protect Rhun, if that’s all she can do, she must not divide her heart! Finally, she collapses onto the cold grass and stares up at the stars. They blur and blink, and Mair’s mouth is still hot, her heart a mess.
She was in love with Arthur Couch for two minutes when they were children, when she found out her friend Lyn was not a girl after all, though she was still unsure how it should matter to her and their friends. Mair stared at Lyn as he became a boy, and she remembers clearly the look on his face when he chose what to do, which part of himself to cling to, which rules he’d allow to define him. But for a moment—a wild, mysterious moment—he’d been both a boy and a girl, and neither, and Mairwen had the eager idea that Lyn-Arthur could stand with her at the edge of the Devil’s Forest.
That moment passed, that between space, that shadow where possibilities lived.
Arthur never stepped into it again. He chose the worst parts of boys, thinking they were the strongest when they were only the least girl. It made him hurt Rhun, and that Mairwen has no interest in forgiving.
Next time, she thinks as she lays on the cold ground, next time, as if Arthur passed along a sickness. This is Rhun’s next time. She presses her hips back against the earth, puts her hands to her waist and slides them up along her bodice to her flattened breasts. Her eyes fall closed and she touches her lips.
Later Mairwen wakes up, chilly and light-headed. Glad her mother never bothers to worry when Mair forgets to sleep in her loft, she climbs to her feet, stretches all the way up to the sky, and turns toward the Sayer homestead. Next time.
She’s thought of something she can do.
There is plenty Mairwen Grace knows about magic (life and death and blessing between), and plenty she knows about the bargain (the devil is an old god of the forest, and a witch’s heart is the heart of the spell), and there is one way she can think to use magic and love to save Rhun Sayer.
Four hours before sunrise, the night is crisp and still, but bright as twilight thanks to the moon and stars casting silver over the rolling valley. Mairwen pauses at the vista before her: the pale stone houses of Three Graces shine like pieces of the moon itself; the spreading gray fields; thin smoke weaves up from chimneys and vanishes in the scatter of stars; their mountains wait dark and calm and strong.
It will never be the same without Rhun.
Rhun Sayer who’s kind to everybody, who stops to help carry water or mend a torn doll, who is so good at reading his competition he always knows if he can get away with letting them win. He used to lift Mair up onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowd at the spring games, until she was too old for it to be proper, and he lifted little Bree Lewis instead. Rhun never drinks too much to walk straight and endures his cousins’ teasing like an oak in an autumn storm. He forgives Arthur over and over again. Once Mairwen complained to Haf that he’s overprotective of her, and Haf replied, Not of you, of everybody.
He was born a saint, and nobody in town doubts it.
Rhun himself never has.
He is so perfect, he’s going to die.
She walks quickly at first, but shifts faster as her heartbeat picks up and she thinks of her intentions. Rhun can’t be alone tonight. He must know how much she needs him, how much they all need him, alive and real, not a name on a cold memorial. Rhun deserves to know he’s loved, more than—than Arthur, more than herself.
There are just enough moonbeams under the trees for her well-adjusted eyes to clearly see the way up the path. No light shines from the Sayer house, though a flicker of candle glow presses through the small window of their outbuilding. It’s long as a barn, where the Sayers store hunting tools and weapons, and an odd collection of deadfall branches Rhun’s grandfather used to make furniture. Mairwen sneaks toward the window and carefully widens the shutter gap to peer inside. Rhun’s small brother Patrick sleeps on a pile of deerskins with Marc and Morcant Upjohn, and one other boy she can’t recognize for how his features are blocked by sprawling hands. The four boys have feet on stomachs and heads under arms, layered like puppies. It means Rhun will be alone in the room he used to share with Arthur and Brac.
She goes to the main house, surprised to discover the front door open. But two of the Sayer deerhounds spread across the entryway like snoring furry shadows. Mair walks up slowly, and Saint Branwen lifts her bearded face.
“There, Bran,” Mairwen says softly, and hears the thump of the dog’s hairy tail. The other, Llew, stretches all four of his legs out straight, shivering with the release, but doesn’t bother standing. He trusts Branwen, Mair thinks, as she scratches the dog’s neck and behind her ears. She then steps carefully over both hounds in one large effort.
The house is dark, even the hearth banked down, and smells of ash and blessing thistle. She pauses to let her eyes adjust again. It won’t do to knock into the broad table or stumble over a stool. Nona and Rhun the Elder bed upstairs, for Nona claimed the valley view from the second floor within days of arriving in Three Graces, and wouldn’t give it up for convenience nor love.
The walls are hung with wooden saint blessings, gloriously pronged antlers, and a small painting of a grand lady Nona brought with her from the rest of the world. No bundles of drying herbs hang from this ceiling, though several heavy hooks bear pots and wooden spoons. The packed floor is covered with a few furred skins, and the furniture Rhun’s grandfather made huddles in odd proportions because he rarely cut or carved his wood into regular forms. One arm of a chair might be longer than the other, but curved so gracefully it would insult the saints to trim it. The stools are smooth to sit on, but not square in shape or even circled.
As a whole, the home always strikes Mairwen as odd and particular, but comfortable. She can imagine herself living inside it, when she imagines living inside any walls at all.
The door to Rhun’s rear room is only a rectangle arch with a heavy wool blanket tied across. Mair skims her fingers down the coarse material, scratching slightly as a warning. She lifts the blanket aside and enters. Here, with only two high, narrow windows in the outer stone wall, she can barely see.
“Mairwen?”
She hears him moving in the darkest corner. Shadows shift, and there he is, standing off his low bed. “Rhun,” she answers.
“What are you doing here?”
Mairwen takes the three steps necessary to put her against him. She peers up at his shadow-concealed face. Only the glints of eyes and teeth are visible. In reply, she lets go of her square shawl so it slithers off her shoulders and she unlaces her bodice. She takes a deep breath as her ribs are released from the gentle pressure and shrugs out of it. She unbuttons the waistband, then steps out of her skirt to stand in only her wool shirt and stockings, suddenly running hot with anticipation. Twisting her fingers together, she opens her mouth to speak, too aware of the brush of cloth against her breasts, the sharpening of her skin, the loose bramble of her hair a teasing pressure between her shoulder blades. Her belly quivers and pieces of her she usually ignores knot tight. All she’s done is take off her outer layer of clothes.
Rhun does not need to be invited any louder.
He reaches for her, taking her hips in his hands. Mair touches his chest, realizing he’s in even less than she: an old, worn pair of braies loose and threadbare and soft. She touches his skin and flattens her hands over his chest, dragging her palms over his dark nipples to his stomach. It’s smooth and soft with a layer of bounty and health, rich as the earth, and she digs her fingers to find the hard, flexed muscle beneath.
Rhun shudders and does the same to her hips, and they grip each other too tightly.
“We’re not supposed to do this,” he says.
“Whatever the best boy does is right and good,” she teases, his own frequent words, tilting her head up for a kiss. Their mouths come together lightly, touching quick. Rhun shakes his head, pushing her hips back and holding her an arm’s length away. He says nothing.
Mair touches his mouth, then his waist again, and presses the heels of her hands to his hips. Her mouth is dry; she licks her lips, staring through the darkness at the curve toward his belly and the arc of skin vanishing beneath the laces of his braies. “Let me give you this to hold on to, to remember, so you know exactly what you have to come home to.”
“Holy mother Mary,” he breathes.
Mairwen smiles for how it sounds like her own name, even as she flushes. She knows what to do. Her mother made certain Mair knew her own body as soon as she started to bleed. She slides her hands flat along Rhun’s worn waistband, but he grabs her again, pulling her against him, kissing hard. He takes her ribs, slides his hands up her back, down her arms, to her waist and hips and rear, a mess of desperate pulling. Mairwen sighs, lets her head fall back, arching against him. Rhun puts one arm full around her waist. His other hand draws up to her breast and hovers there, either unsure or reverent.
Mairwen is still, cool and calmer than she thinks she should be. “Rhun,” she whispers, and he strangles some wordless answer, hand pressing her breast flat. She grabs for his neck, tugging onto her toes, and puts her mouth against his throat, where he tastes like smoke and salt. She will make a charm of these kisses: life, death, and blessing in between.
“Stop, Mair. Wait. Stop,” he gasps, resisting her with his hands clenched in fists. “I can’t.” He pants between his words, but forces them out. “I can’t. Mair, we have to—to stop.”
She releases him and sits on the straw mattress. After a long moment, she says, “We don’t have to stop, Rhun.”
“We do, because . . . ,” he whispers. He’s a black pillar in the center of the small room, hands pressed together flatly as if in prayer.
She says, “I do love you. I’ve never said it to you, have I?”
His back is half turned away, but his shoulders slump and his head tilts to her. All his spiral hair flops down around his face. “I love you too, so much.”
“Come here, then. Come here and—and just do it.”
He crouches, one hand balanced on the packed-earth floor. “It isn’t because of you, because I don’t want to—with you.”
She slides off the bed to kneel beside him. His eyes are tight shut, his mouth in a line. She says, “Arthur. If it were him here, you’d do it.”
Rhun lifts his dark eyes and shrugs helplessly.
“Oh, Rhun.”
They bend together in silence for a long while. Frustration makes her feel brittle and sharp. Finally she says, “I’ll go.”
“No.” He catches her hand. “Stay. I want you to stay. Even if he were here I’d . . . Oh God, I’d want you to stay too. Both of you. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I’m not the best.”
The admittance of doubt freezes her heart. She blinks away sudden tears. It’s so stupid, so unfair that this has been his burden for so long. “Don’t let Arthur Couch make you question yourself, do you hear me? He’s an idiot. He has everything, and pushes it away because of fear.” She brushes springy hair back from Rhun’s face, gathering it in her hands, and together they climb onto the straw mattress. Leaning against the rough wall, Rhun pulls her against him, his arm slung around her. She plays with the tips of his fingers, calloused from a thousand times plucking his bow.
Into the darkness, he says, “After all of this, will you promise me to take care of him?”
Mairwen hisses, clutching his hand. “You’ll do it, because you’ll live.”
“Mair.” He leans his head against hers.
“Arthur can take care of himself.”
“Promise me.”
“You promise me you’ll live.”
Rhun sighs. His eyes close.
Mairwen strokes a finger down his crooked nose. “Survive, and I’ll marry Arthur to trap him here, and you can live with us, because I’m a witch and you’re a saint and we can do whatever we want, and then you can spend the rest of your life seducing him. We’ll fight all the time, but we’ll be happy.”
A laugh bubbles up Rhun’s throat, popping light and merry. “And we’ll never know who fathers your children, tying us all together even more.”
“Oh, we’ll know,” Mairwen sneers. “Yours won’t cause me any pain at all, and Arthur will only have daughters with hearts so hot they burn me the entire time they’re cooking.”
Rhun kisses her, slowly and shallowly, then kisses her nose and eyelids. “You should do that if I don’t survive too.”
Mairwen feels tears in her eyes again, angry tears for not knowing how to convince him he can’t go into that forest expecting to die. He touches his nose to her neck, breathing long and slow and thin down her collarbone. It slides under her shirt and over her breasts and she clears her throat gently. In her normal, though quiet, voice, she says, “I wish I could go in with you.”