Archive of Our Own ^beta

It begins, as these things often do, with the fury of a witch slighted.

She is a petty thing, her cruelty and spite unmatched. Stories of her spread across the land, and all who hear them learn to avoid her. Not all witches know each other, but they do know of her. Before long, only those who are truly desperate, or nearly as ruthless, will dare to approach her.

But she is not feared.

She is shunned, yes. She is hated. But the only ones who fear her are the mindless rabble who only fear what they cannot comprehend.

Like all those who crave the terror of others, this is not good enough.

(Unbeknownst to her, nothing ever will be.)

Against all odds, she is loved. Her beauty is every bit as sharp and cold as her cruelty, and her power is sublimity itself. The man who falls in love with her is not a stupid one, but he is not very wise, either. He feels adoration and terror in equal measure, and she feeds them just as eagerly as she drinks them in.

Still it is not enough for her. (It will never be enough.) He loves her too much to give her the fear she craves. He fears what he might become, should his love twist him into a shape of her desire. He fears for their child—enough to strike a deal in the dark, one night when wisdom creeps in to take hold.

But he does not fear for himself. He does not fear her.

Even as the knife slides in, he feels no fear. In fact, in his last moments, he cannot even muster surprise.

(He thinks of his son instead, and the deal he struck. Perhaps, if it could not save him in the end, his single moment of wisdom was enough to save his child.)

His name is Gerard. When his mother looks at him, she sees only a mirror, her own beauty and cleverness reflected back in his face. His eyes are the color of the late-afternoon sky, his hair the same red-gold as the sinking sun, like hers.

It blinds her just as thoroughly as real gold and real sunlight. She sees exactly what she wishes to see, and will accept nothing else as the truth.

Here are the facts about Gerard, the witch’s son:

He is beautiful.

He is alone.

He is very, very afraid.

His mother all but coddles him. He never goes hungry nor thirsty at her table, and his bed is soft and warm. He wants for nothing. She has raised a hand to him once, and never again.

(Perhaps it would be better if she would. It is easier to see cruelty that leaves scars.)

Instead, she loves and admires him as she loves and admires her own reflection in the mirror, scrutinizing and shaping him into the image she most desires. She pours as much of herself into him as she can—all her knowledge and ambition is his for the taking. He may not feel her cruelty on his own skin, but he sees it play out before his eyes, day after day. He falls asleep to the sound of muffled screams, except for the nights that he lies awake long enough to hear her come into his room and sing to him, to feel her caress his head with bloodstained fingertips.

He folds himself into the shape she wants, makes himself small and quiet to escape her notice, until even when her attention is elsewhere, he can no longer remember what it means to walk as himself.

And then, on his fourteenth birthday, he finds the book.

His mother has many books, each more grim and gruesome than the last. But the one bound in human skin is her favorite. She guards it jealously, and until today it is the only book that he has never been able to touch. She learned her lesson from the first and last time she ever struck him. He was eight, and cast the book she gave him to study into the fire. The witch is cruel and arrogant, not stupid.

But on this day, she has guests for tea. Within an hour of their arrival the parlor smells of fresh blood and grave dirt, and Gerard flees from both the guests and the sounds of his mother’s hospitality. Her library may not be a pleasant place to pass the time, but the walls are thick and charmed to keep out unwanted sounds.

It is here that he finds the book, so unprotected and inviting that Gerard did not find it at all, so much as it found him.

Written across the open page, in his mother’s neat hand, is his father’s name. Gerard reads the passage beneath it, half a story and half a spell. When he is finished, his father’s voice answers.

“You’ve grown,” Eric tells him, in a distant echoing whisper. “I’ve missed you.”

“I didn’t know you were still here,” Gerard replies. “Mum’s careful about giving me books, ever since I burned one.”

“Clever boy.” The ghost is colder than a corpse, colder than mist, but his voice is warm. “I can’t imagine she was happy about that.”

The bruises faded within days, but the lesson has remained. “I didn’t do it again,” he says. “Why did she put you in the book?”

“Because I loved you too much to love her the way I used to,” Eric replies. “She wanted me dead, but she didn’t want me gone, not when it would mean letting me go. So she murdered me in our bed, sewed me into the book, and claimed us both for her own.” He looks around. “Where is she now?”

“She has guests,” Gerard says, and the look on his father’s face tells him that no further explanation is necessary.

His father tries to touch him, but his hand is made of mist and memory, not flesh. “Gerry,” he says. “My son. Are you happy?”

“No,” Gerard replies. It might not be true; he has no idea what happiness feels like, so who’s to say that he isn’t? But he is alone, and he is afraid, and there is no room for anything else besides.

“What would make you happy?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard replies. “I don’t know anything but what Mum taught me.”

“Would you like to?”

There’s a larger world beyond the walls of his mother’s house. It is vast and unknown and terrifying, and Gerard wants nothing more than to reach out and touch it.

“Yes.”

“Then go out and find it,” his father says.

“Alone?” Such a silly question. Of course he will be alone. He has always been alone.

“Find Gertrude Robinson,” Eric tells him. “She’ll help you.”

“Against Mum?” Gerard asks skeptically. “How do you know?”

His father’s ghost smiles. “Because I made her promise.”

Gerard knows all about creatures that cannot break their promises. Their word binds them in invisible thread, and to break it would strangle the life from them. “Is she a spider?” he asks.

“No. She grew up tangled in their webs, and she hates them for it. But she still learned from them, and she won’t break her word. Find her, and she’ll help you.”

“Alright.” Gerard nods. “But what about Mum? She’s never let me leave before.”

“Do you want me to tell you how?”

“Yes,” he answers, as easily as breathing.

“Burn the book you found me in,” Eric tells him. “She’ll be angry, but she won’t hurt you. She’ll want something of equal value to replace it, and she’ll send you out to get it for her.”

Gerard thinks about this carefully. “Do you know what she’ll ask for?”

“No. But it’ll be valuable and dangerous, and that’s always been enough for her.”

Gerard is quiet for a while, still thinking. The book is heavy in his hands, wretched and reeking of death. He hates it. If he burns it, then the world will be better for its absence.

But.

“Do I have to burn it?” he asks his father, who the book gave back to him. “Isn’t there another way?”

The ghost smiles sadly. “Probably. But I hoped that, this way, we could both be free of her.”

Gerard thinks about this for a while. “It must not be nice, being a book,” he says softly.

“It hurts,” his father replies. He is quiet now, too. “I was hoping that—”

It isn’t easy. No parent wants to ask this of their child.

“I’m tired,” Eric tells his son, who he loves, who he thinks of whenever his existence allows it. “I’d like to sleep.”

His mother’s get-together continues. The sound of tearing flesh drowns out the crackle of flame. The copper sweetness of blood coats the back of her throat, and when she finally smells fire and smoke and burning skin, it is far too late.

Gerard lives in lonely terror for many long days and nights, until his mother’s anger softens enough to present a solution.

At dusk, all but one of the lamps are out. The parlor is dark, and all Gerard can see is his mother’s face. With her sharp fingers digging into his chin, he cannot look away. “Why, Gerard?” she asks. “It wasn’t yours. You know that. So why did you take it?”

Looking into her eyes, Gerard can only be truthful. “He asked. He didn’t want to be in the book anymore, so I set him free.”

She laughs, as rough and dry as the bones that fall from the pages of her favorite books. “Is that what you did?”

“It wasn’t right,” he says, uselessly. Nothing she does is right. Sometimes he thinks it might kill her to do what is right. “He loved you. You were hurting him.”

Her nails dig into his skin. “You think he didn’t feel the fire?” she asks. “You think it didn’t hurt him to burn? No, my Gerard. You murdered him more thoroughly then I ever did.”

“I—”

“It’s all gone now. His thoughts and memories. His voice. Nothing of him will ever return.” The sharp squeeze becomes a caress. “You destroyed him, my Gerard. I could burst with pride, if only I wasn’t so angry.”

“He asked,” Gerard whispers.

She sighs, pitying and indulgent. “You still don’t understand,” she says fretfully. “And you still stole from me, and destroyed something of mine. I wish you didn’t make me punish you like this. But don’t worry.” She strokes his hair. “But I know how you can repay your debt.”

Behind her, the shadows move. They seem to part for the man who steps into view, spreading across the scant light behind him in long, shifting shapes. His face is in the shape of a faint smile, swallowed up by his shining black eyes.

Spider’s eyes.

“You remember Mr. Fielding,” the witch says, hands settling firmly on Gerard’s shoulders. “Do behave, now. He’s agreed to do us a wonderful favor.”

A hand takes hold of his wrist, lifting it from his side. His sleeve is slid back, exposing his arm. Gerard’s breath quickens, but he does not pull away. He knows better than to fight.

“I’m sending you off,” his mother says proudly. “Out into the great big world. And I want to make sure you find your way back.”

The needle glints in the spider’s hand, lamplight shimmering on the gossamer thread. Gerard forgets himself and begins to pull away, and the grip on his shoulders turns painful.

“Remember what I’ve taught you, Gerard.”

He remembers it well. When the needle goes in, he does not make a sound. He watches, dry-eyed and still as stone while silk is stitched into his flesh, until the spider finishes one arm and reaches for the other.

When it is done, his mother kisses his forehead. “Very good!” She tucks a lock of red-gold hair behind his ear, letting the soft strands trail through her fingers. “You’re ready now, my Gerard.”

He lets her wipe the blood away. He cannot see or feel the threads anymore, but he knows that they are there. “What do you want me to do?”

“In the lair of the Harvest-woman, there is a phoenix,” his mother tells him. “Bring me a portion of its fire, and I will forgive you.”

It is a harsh price to pay for the chance to leave, as slim as that chance is, now. The Harvest-woman’s web stretches far and wide beyond her lair, and she is said to strangle any and all who fall into it, for no reason but to see what they look like as they die. If Mr. Fielding thinks anything of her asking him to steal from a fellow spider, he says nothing.

His mother holds his face again, forcing him to listen. “This is as much a lesson for you as payment for me, my Gerard,” she says. “Do not forget. A phoenix does not tolerate evil. It will smell my blood in your veins, and your father’s ashes on your hands, and it will suffer neither.”

Her nails dig in, until he feels blood trickle down to his throat.

“Do not forget what you are,” his mother tells him tenderly. “Or the phoenix will remind you, when it burns the heart from you.”

The world beyond his mother’s walls is as strange as it is vast. Still, there are spaces here and there that feel familiar. It is a bright place, and bright places have plenty of shadows to hide in.

It is an ignorant place, as well. Villages and towns built against the edge of the forest have no idea what lurks between the trees, beneath the earth, waiting for night to fall or backs to turn. Gerard watches people smile and laugh, heedless of the jaws poised to close around their throats. Dire warnings sit festering at the back of his tongue, but how is he to spit them out? How does one explain such horrors to the contented lot that live their lives blind and happy?

But in the end, this knowledge was forced upon him. He warns those that will listen, when his choices come down to breaking his silence and watching innocent people die. But he cannot stay long before he is pulled along by the silken strands sewn into his flesh.

Perhaps it is for the best. After all, to those who already live their lives free of danger, safe in their ignorance… Who is he to spread his mother’s crime, and rob these strangers of their peace?

There is no consequence to silence but loneliness, and that is no great price to pay when Gerard has always been alone.

And then, one day, he isn’t.

When he first notices the woman, he is resting by a well. He does not see her approach. When he turns his head, there she is, sitting on the cobblestone wall with an unlit lantern by her side, her head just tilted back as if enjoying the breeze.

“Where do you think you’re going, Gerard?” she asks.

Gerard knows the pale face of his father’s ghost. He knows his mother’s face, and the faces of her visitors. He tries to remember the faces of the people she kills, because someone ought to remember them.

He does not know this woman’s face. And yet, when she asks him, the truth is drawn from him like blood.

“South, to the Harvest-woman,” he says. “My mother wants her phoenix fire.”

In the moments before he answers, her eyes are curious. There is a question in them that she has not asked, but he must answer it anyway, because the curiosity goes away as soon as he’s finished speaking. “I see.”

“Are you Gertrude?” he asks.

The woman smiles. “Has your mother mentioned me?”

“No. My father.” Gerard hesitates. “He said you could help.”

Gertrude chuckles quietly, as dry as bare earth. “I suppose that depends on what you need help with.”

It occurs to Gerard in that moment, that he’s not entirely sure what to do now. He burned the book, and his mother sent him away as punishment. He’s out in the world now, lost and alone among the blind an ignorant. If he doesn’t return of his own accord, then the spider-silk will drag him back eventually. And if he does, then she will have a powerful weapon, and the knowledge that he will willingly bring her what she asks.

The only way, for now, is forward.

“How do I find the Harvest-woman?” He thought, at first, that the threads might be leading him there, but he knows now that they are not. Their only purpose is to keep him from stopping, and to pull him back home when he is done.

“Her home lies in the deepest wood to the south,” Gertrude replies. “But that is an easy question. What do you really want to know, Gerard?”

“What will I find there?”

“Hmmm.” She stares at him, considering. He stares back and measure her in turn.

Gertrude Robinson is not a young woman, though she is not yet elderly either. Her face is lined and weather-beaten, her hair the color of steel wire. Her eyes are not spider’s eyes—Gerard has met spiders in his mother’s acquaintance, and he knows their black eyes and sharpened smiles well. Gertrude’s eyes are sharp and dark, but they are human brown, and lit from within by something that he cannot name.

They are not hungry, though, not like his mother’s eyes. Gertrude lacks that hollowness that can never be filled. She reminds him more of a cat perched atop an empty birdcage, patient and satisfied.

“The Harvest-woman’s house is full of tricks,” Gertrude tells him. “You’ll have to be careful and quick, unless you want to fall for the first one.”

“What tricks?” Gerard asks.

“A stone wall surrounds her home,” she replies. “It cannot be climbed, nor burrowed under. The only way in is a single yellow door—and that door only opens to either side of the wall twice a day. At the first light of dawn and the silver of dusk, it will behave as any door should. At any other time, it will swallow you instead, and you will never find your way out of its belly.”

Gerard isn’t sure how doors have bellies, but he lets it lie. “What else will I find?”

“Within the gate, you’ll find her empty garden,” Gertrude replies. “As soon as you step inside, the earth itself will try to pull you under, so be quick and light on your feet, or you will drown forever beneath the soil.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Gerard says.

“And lastly, when you first enter her house, you will find her hearth,” Gertrude says. “Keep your eyes shut and shielded as you pass, or it will throw hot ash and cinders into them and blind you.”

Gerard nods, committing it all to memory. “What about the Harvest-woman herself? How do I steal from her and escape, if she’s so powerful?”

Gertrude spends a moment considering him again. “There’s a witch, not far from here,” she finally answers. “She’ll know. She might even tell you, if you ask. And if you pay her a visit and stay for tea, you might still reach the Harvest-woman’s door by nightfall.”

“What sort of witch is she?” In all his life, he has only ever known one.

“The sort that despises your mother,” Gertrude replies, and that is all that Gerard needs to know.

Under her direction, he passes through another town, one with rambunctious children and quiet, stern adults, and ventures deep into the thickest forest beyond. The threads don’t protest, and he takes it as a good sign that his mother is not controlling his path like a puppeteer. She hates other witches for shunning her without having the decency to fear her as well; she would never allow him to go to one of them for help.

The cottage in the woods is easy enough to find, if you know how to look, and Gerard knows better than to forget his lessons. At some point he follows the sound of wind chimes, and comes upon a neat little cottage with a thatched roof and window boxes. The air smells of herbs.

When he knocks at the door, he finds it already ajar. The hinges need oil, and creak enormously when his knock sends the door swinging gently open.

“Hello?”

No answer. But an open door is its own invitation, so Gerard ventures inside.

Neatness wars with clutter within. The bookshelves are nearly empty except for the odd jar or flask or ball of twine. Odds and ends left lying on various surfaces are lined up and squared away. A spinning wheel sits in the little nook by to the kitchen, next to a basket piled high with spools and bobbins. Throughout the cottage, Gerard finds messes stubbornly made and just as stubbornly tidied.

He steps into the sitting room, and the sight of this particular mess nearly bowls him over.

In the center of the rug that covers most of the floor, the books missing from the shelves are stacked in a massive pile. It stands taller than Gerard, though whoever stacked them did so with enough care to keep them from tipping over and spilling over each other into an even worse mess. The pile doesn’t even sway.

The cottage is so silent that the sound of a turning page makes him jump. Cautiously, Gerard edges around the pile of books, searching for where it came from. He misses the other person in the room twice before he spots them, half-hidden amid the stacks.

“Hello?” he calls out.

There’s a high-pitched yelp, and one of the stacks sways precariously before a pair of small, slender hands reach out and steady it. A moment later, the stranger peers cautiously out from behind the stack, with a book tucked under one arm.. “Who’s there?”

“I’m here to see the witch,” Gerard replies, now uncertain. He can only see half of the other’s face—even less, with his dark hair falling over it—but he sounds years younger than Gerard. “I need her help.”

“Oh.” Slowly, the child steps out into view and carefully makes his way out of the pile and onto the clear floor. He keeps his head turned down, so that his hair falls into his face and hides his eyes. He hugs the book against his chest, keeping it between them like a shield.

He is afraid, and Gerard doesn’t wonder why for long. This is, he realizes, the first time he has ever had to look down to see someone’s face.

“Gran’s not here right now,” the child says, more to the floor than to Gerard.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

The child’s face scrunches up. “Don’t know. She said she’d be a while, and I can’t remember how long it’s been.”

“I could wait,” Gerard offers, and the threads tug at him again, as if to say, No you couldn’t. He moves his arm behind his back, wiping away the drop of blood as it rolls down to his wrist. “Unless you’ve heard of the Harvest-woman.”

The child gasps aloud, and for the first time he stands straight and looks back into Gerard’s eyes. “Yes! I know about her!”

But Gerard doesn’t need to hear that, now. He could have guessed the moment he looked into the child’s eyes. They glint in the warm light of the cottage, like polished black river pebbles set in his face. They’re the very same eyes that tracked the needles through Gerard’s flesh.

Gerard’s back hits the wall before he realizes he moved at all.

Before him, the spiderling shuts its eyes and turns its head away. It curls in on itself, more like a beetle than a spider, and shrinks back toward the pile of books.

“Sorry. I-I forgot—You can wait for my gran if you want.” It scurries back into the pile, hidden once more behind the stacks.

Gerard waits, still as stone, but there is only silence from the pile. Not even the turning of pages breaks it.

He does not want to ask the spiderling for help. But if its grandmother is a spider as well, then he does not want to wait for her, either.

There’s movement in the pile. Tiny hands set a book aside, then reach up and take one from the top of another stack. Pages flip, and that book is set aside as well.

Gerard watches, mystified, as it repeats throughout the pile. He circles around the rug, following the spiderling as it picks through the books, searching, sorting.

And then the hands reach for a book, set it aside, and pick up the one beneath it. This one is different, Gerard knows. Most of the books in the pile—in fact, most books in general—are not burdened with desires. But the book that now sits in the spiderling’s hands is a book that wants things. The cover wants to be opened. The pages whisper to be turned. The words on the pages are hungry.

Gerard moves before he can properly think, shoves a stack out of the way, and wrenches it out of the spiderling’s hands. “Are you stupid?” he demands, dropping the book before it can convince him to open it. “Don’t you know what that is?”

The spiderling shrinks back, any escape blocked by the books that surround it. It holds very, very still, as if it hopes that Gerard will get bored or forget that it’s there.

Gerard is about to speak again when the threads drag at him, urging him onward. He grits his teeth against the pain, yanking back until the stitching bleeds and the threads slacken again.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

The spiderling’s eyes are fixed on his arms, as if it can see the invisible threads binding him. Perhaps it can.

Gerard glares at it. “You’d know.”

The spiderling looks away again. “I’ve never done that to anyone.” A pause. “That looks like a cruel thing to do to someone.”

A spider was cruel to him. Gerard doesn’t need another spider to tell him that. “What are you doing with all these books, anyway?” he asks instead.

“Gran told me to sort them while she was gone,” the spiderling replies in a small voice. “Some of them don’t belong. Gran says they sneak in while no one’s looking, sometimes. She said to pick out the bad ones before she got back. But I got distracted, reading.”

Gerard wonders if the task was a ploy to keep the spiderling out of trouble in the witch’s absence. If it is, then that’s one irresponsible witch. Gerard can sense at least three books in the pile that aren’t right.

“Can you tell the difference?” the spiderling asks.

“So what if I can?”

The spiderling flinches. “I just thought—you want to know about the Harvest-woman, don’t you? I know about her. I’ve read about her, in one of these books. Only, I can’t remember which one, and I keep getting mixed up with the wrong books.” A pause for breath. “If you help me, I can find it and tell you about her.”

It’s a risk. Spiders are dangerous creatures, and Gerard can’t tell if a young spider is more or less dangerous. But if the witch is also a spider, then she’s definitely dangerous. Gertrude is spider-raised and bound by her word; she would not have sent him here without a reason.

“Fine,” he says, nudging the book he dropped. “First, that one’s bad. You should burn it.”

“Gran’s going to do that,” the spiderling says, scampering back into the book pile. “How do I see them like you?”

“It’s not hard to find the bad books,” Gerard replies, stepping into the stacks. “You just have to know the difference between the ones you read and the ones that read you back.”

The spiderling is skittish as they sort the books together, though it’s not so much sorting as picking the bad ones out of the rest. It took Gerard years to learn all the ways to find the rotten ones—to listen to the whispers, to feel for the wrongness crawling under his skin on too many legs. It takes the spiderling all of an afternoon to learn the same from him, and only that long because the rest of the books are so distracting.

“Are you reading again?” Gerard asks, when he hears a page turn and looks up to find the spiderling deep in another safe book.

The spiderling twitches and hides behind the open book. “I just wanted a quick look! Just to see if it was the one with the Harvest-woman in it. It’s not, but it’s about stars, and I like stars.”

“My mum had a book about stars,” Gerard answers. “Someone read it and got lost in it.”

The spiderling nods. “Sometimes it feels like I get lost, too.”

“Not like this,” Gerard replies. “He got lost in the blackness between them, and he forgot the way back to himself. He forgot there was a him to go back to.”

The spiderling watches him with wide eyes. Gerard tries not to look at them. “What happened to him?”

Gerard shrugs. “The night swallowed him.” He tugs another book free of its stack and tosses it onto the rest of the rotten ones.

Eventually, the spiderling looks away again. “I don’t know if Gran likes it or not. That I read the way I do. She hates when I don’t listen. But she likes when I sit still and don’t wander.”

The threads yank in Gerard’s flesh again, and he drops the book in his hands. It hurts, but it’s bearable. He’s not even bleeding that much. He can stay a little longer, just long enough to get what he needs. When he looks up, the spiderling is staring again, looking troubled.

“It’s nothing,” Gerard says, turning away. “Why aren’t you supposed to wander?”

“It’s not safe,” the spiderling answers. “The Mother wants me back. But she’s not my mother, so I don’t want to go.”

Gerard almost hates him for having a choice. Whether or not he completes his task, the threads will drag him home.

He catches the spiderling looking at his arms again—and he’s sure a spider’s eyes can see the threads as clear as day—before it turns and dives back into the pile with renewed determination. Another hour passes silently, and the sun begins to sink. Three more books are found between them, all of them leaking malice from their bindings. The threads drag in Gerard’s flesh, urging him onward and away, before the spiderling finally emerges with a fourth and final book.

“I found it,” the spiderling says. It’s not one of the bad ones; it looks like a simple handwritten journal. “You want to know about the Harvest-woman, don’t you?”

“Tell me,” Gerard says, and the book opens.

“Her web extends across the deepest forest to the south,” the spiderling tells him. “If you reach the edge, the threads will guide you the rest of the way. She will not stop you, only watch from afar as you find your way. She likes to watch, more than anything else in the world. She wants to see what you will do.

“If you amuse her, she might decide to keep you. If you do not, then she will amuse herself watching you die.”

Gerard nods. The Harvest-woman is a curious creature, and more importantly, a bored one. To survive and remain free is to find the narrow path between her interest and her indifference.

It will hardly be any different from home.

“I’ve heard stories of the ones she decides to keep,” the spiderling tells him. “They become parts of her house. The black soil in her garden. The ashes in her fireplace. Even her front gate. They were all people once. Maybe you can convince them to help you.”

It’s a nice thought. It might even be true, if he weren’t his mother’s son.

“I’m sorry,” the spiderling says quietly.

“What for?”

The child’s dark eyes are fixed on the threads that even Gerard’s sharp eyes can’t see. “I don’t know how to fix that.”

Gerard has never seen a spider’s eyes look sad before. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“I should.” The threads tug, and the spiderling scowls, reaches out, and tugs back until the stinging stops, just for a moment. “I’m a spider, too. I should know how.”

“You’ve already helped,” Gerard tells him. He looks to the stacked books, and then to the smaller pile set aside for burning. “And all your books are sorted. It’s time for me to go.”

“You could stay,” the spiderling offers. “It’s getting dark, and my gran won’t mind. Maybe she can get the threads out for you. She always helps people.”

Gerard smiles bitterly. “Not people like me.”

“Then wait just for a moment.” The spiderling scampers from the sitting-room, and returns with a bobbin of thread. “You can take this, if you want.”

Gerard hesitates. The silken thread is undyed, the same pale gray as the streak of cobweb-silk that grows with the spiderling’s dark hair. It’s spider-silk, just like the threads sewn into his flesh to drag him home.

And yet, it’s not the same.

“You don’t have to,” the spiderling tells him. “But if you’re going into a spider’s lair, then it might help to have some thread of your own, just in case.”

Gerard takes the bobbin. The silk is impossibly soft beneath his fingertips, so soft that he can hardly feel it at all. It’s nothing at all like the razor-wire that tears through him whenever he stays too long in one place.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Thank you.” The spiderling sees him to the door. “And I hope you win.”

Outside, the sun is setting. He might make it to the Harvest-woman’s web by nightfall. He thinks about the Harvest-woman who will kill him or keep him, about the phoenix that will burn him when it recognizes him as his mother’s son and his father’s murderer, about the threads in his arms that will drag him home like manacles no matter what happens in the end. “I don’t think this is something I can win,” he says.

“I can hope if I want to,” the spiderling replies. His smile trembles, but it still reaches his jewel-bright eyes. “I hope I see you again someday.”

It only takes a few minutes of walking for the forest to swallow up the cottage behind him. When Gerard looks back for the last time, he finds Gertrude walking beside him once more, lantern swinging at her side.

“I made a promise to your father, once,” she answers the question he doesn’t ask. “Who knows if I’ll have the chance to fulfill it again? Those close to Mary Keay don’t tend to last long.” She smiles, grimly amused. “So I may as well see this through.”

There’s little point in arguing. “Does this make you my fairy godmother?” Gerard asks.

She smiles thinly. “If you like.”

“Am I almost there?”

“You’ll reach her door by nightfall.”

After that, she vanishes from his side again, but Gerard knows that she will not stray far.

(The spiderling opens the door when Gertrude knocks, though he doesn’t let her in.

“Is your grandmother home?” she asks.

“No.”

“Then why did you send him on his way instead of waiting for her?” The child blinks up at her, confused as well as wary. “Surely she’s warned you of Mary Keay by now. You know very well what any self-respecting witch would have done if her son paid a visit.”

What you ought to have done, she doesn’t say.

“Do you actually want to know, or are you just scolding me?” he asks.

Little brat, she thinks. Proper spiders aren’t so careless with their words. “Why help him?” she asks again.

The child nods decisively. “Because he was kind to me, even though he was scared,” he answers, and shuts the door in her face.)

Gerard knows when he first sets foot in the Harvest-woman’s web. His steps become smoother. The roots and undergrowth seem to clear away. He does not know where he is going, but his feet walk with purpose.

He could, perhaps, stop and turn around if he wanted to. He even wants to want it. But he doesn’t. Each step feels as inevitable as water running downhill.

“Am I nearly there?” he asks Gertrude.

“Yes,” she replies. “You’ll reach her door by nightfall.”

Sure enough, as the last drop of sunlight slips below the horizon, the trees part and he finds the Harvest-woman’s house sitting against the side of a hill. It’s bigger than the witch’s cottage where he met the spiderling, with two floors and a roof of tiles instead of thatch. Over the top of the stone wall surrounding it, he can see the dark earth of a tilled garden with nothing planted. The only way through the wall is a single yellow door.

Already, dusk is darkening to night. If he does not enter now, then he will have to wait until the following dawn.

The door opens, and a tall man with golden hair smiles down at him. “Welcome,” it says. “You look quite tired. Are you sure you won’t rest a while before you come in?”

“I’d rather come in now,” Gerard replies, and the tall man reluctantly allows him through. When Gerard turns back, he is alone again.

Immediately the black soil shifts beneath his feet, and he sinks nearly to his ankles before he pulls free and hurries toward the house.

“Don’t go,” the soil begs. “I’ve been empty for so long. Wouldn’t you rather rest a while, down here where it’s warm? Perhaps something wonderful will grow from you.”

Gerard runs the rest of the way to the door. Finding it unlocked, he enters the house and covers his eyes as he passes the hearth, just in time to shield his face from the hot cinders that burst forth from the coals and ashes.

“Stop!” the embers cry out as he hurries past. “Come back and let me out!”

Gerard stops, and almost looks closer. He’s here to find a phoenix’s fire, and coals that speak are a sure sign of strange magic, but he remembers Gertrude’s warning right before the fireplace hurls more cinders at him. Once he’s safely past the blackened hearth, the coals settle beneath the ashes once more.

“I don’t think I can let you out,” he says. “This house of made of wood, and you’re a fire.”

“I’m tired of being trapped here,” the coals answer, scattering a cloud of ash across the hearthstone. “My whole world is gray stones all around me, and ash on my head.”

The spiderling’s words come back to him. “Were you a person once?”

“A long time ago,” the coals reluctantly reply. “Before the Harvest-woman did this to me. I thought the spell might break when she died, but here I sit, burned down to embers.”

“When she—?” Gerard’s heart quickens. “Do you mean the Harvest-woman is dead?”

“That depends entirely on what you mean,” Gertrude replies.

She stands by the hearth, still smiling thinly and carrying her lantern. She reaches up and plucks a silken thread from her hair, looks at it with distaste before throwing it to the half-buried embers. “Emma was called the Harvest-woman before I saw her killed. I didn’t realize that her house needed looking after, so here I stay, and people far and wide call me the Harvest-woman now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Gerard asks. She stands between him and the door, and the fireplace still has plenty of cinders to throw.

“I had to be sure you’d come,” Gertrude replies.

“Well, here I am,” Gerard says warily.

“Here you are, and here you’ll stay.”

Gerard bristles. He has almost nothing to his name, only a bobbin of spider thread, and it is well past dusk. “You can’t keep me here.”

“I wanted very much to give you a chance, Gerard,” Gertrude says regretfully. “Especially with my promise to your father. But then I found you setting off on an errand for Mary—to deliver her the fire of a phoenix, no less. I can’t risk allowing you to continue—one task is where it starts. The world doesn’t need another like Mary Keay.”

“You promised my father—”

“That I would keep you safe from your mother,” Gertrude reminds him. “There is no safer place than here.”

The threads sewn beneath his skin itch. “She won’t let me stay here forever.”

Gertrude smiles. “She won’t have a choice.”

He is not treated poorly.

That is to say, he hardly treated in any way at all. After the first evening, he does not see Gertrude Robinson again. He can wander as he pleases and sleep in any open room. Thrice a day, he finds food set out for him on plates too hot to touch. He never sees who brings them.

Gerard explores the house and finds no way out but the front door. The windows are covered in layers of silk, thin enough to let the light through. When Gerard tries to rip them away, his hands get caught in the sticky thread, and he can barely tear himself free, much less open the window. Some of the rooms are sealed the same way, as is the attic door in the ceiling of the second floor.

It’s not all bad. The threads that bind him tangle with the Harvest-woman’s web, so hopelessly snarled that they can no longer drag him one way or another, no matter how many days pass. Whether this will change when he goes back outside, he does not know. Whenever he tries to reach the front door, the fireplace coals stop him again.

He asks why one day, as he sits at a safe distance and brushes ash from his clothes. Pale gray clouds still drift through the air over the hearth, warm air wafting from within like a sigh.

“I miss the sky,” the fireplace coals says wistfully. “The door hardly ever opens, and even if it does, I can never reach it in time. I’d forgotten the color of it, but your eyes reminded me. If you go, then I might forget again.”

Gerard scowls. “My eyes aren’t the sky. Isn’t there any other way for you to see it?”

“Perhaps,” the embers reply. “If just single wisp of smoke reached the door, I could have a glimpse of it. But it wouldn’t last.”

Gerard thinks about this for a moment. “Why do you need the door?” he asks. “You’re in a fireplace. You must have a chimney.”

“I’ve tried,” the embers replies. “But the Harvest-woman blocked the chimney long ago. It’s why I can never be more than coals—if I were a proper fire, I would fill the house with smoke.”

“What if I unblocked the chimney?” Gerard asks. “Would you stop burning me every time I try to reach the door?”

“Yes,” the embers say hopefully. “I promise. Oh, would you? It’s been so long since I last saw the sky.”

Gerard checks all over the hearth, looking for a lever of chain to open the flue, but the stones are smooth and gray and unadorned.

“You won’t find anything,” the embers tell him. “There’s something in the way—whenever my smoke rises high enough, it gets caught in something soft and thick and sticky.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Gerard replies, and ventures up to the second floor.

The attic is the next place to look. In one room, Gerard finds a chest of drawers that looks promisingly tall, and drags it over to the trapdoor. Standing on the chest, he can reach the ceiling, but his fingers get caught in the sticky threads that seal it shut.

When he finally gets his hands free, he remembers the weight in his pocket, and the spiderling’s words. The spooled silk is soft to the touch, sliding easily between his fingers as he wraps his hands in the thread. This time, when he reaches up to the Harvest-woman’s threads, his fingers do not catch.

It takes an hour to free the door of silk. When it is done, he winds the spiderling’s silk back onto the spool, then moves the chest of drawers out of the way and pulls the trapdoor open. A ladder falls to the floor with a thud, and Gerard climbs up to the attic.

The attic smells of stale smoke and burning dust, and it is plain to see why. All around him, the floor and walls and ceiling are black with soot. The only light in this room comes from a single window of warped, melted glass and metal. But the air is cool; whatever fire raged in here is long gone.

It’s more than that. With each step he takes, he crushes something underfoot. The attic is coated in more than just soot. When Gerard reaches out to touch it, he almost feels familiar sticky softness before it crumbles to black dust. From floor to ceiling, the attic is covered in the charred remains of spiderwebs.

The window latch is melted away, but the window itself still opens. Gerard peers outside, and almost tumbles out in shock.

The ground is far, far below. Much farther than the attic of a two-story building ought to be.

After a moment, Gerard tears his eyes from the dizzying drop, and instead turns them upward. The roof is within reach; there are handholds that he can grasp, if he only summons the nerve.

What else can he do, but climb?

The roof is at a slant, but still less precarious than the brief ascent from the window. He catches his breath and tries not to think of how far it is to the ground. The chimney is within reach and wide enough to fit him. After a minute’s rest, Gerard wraps his hands in spider-silk and climbs in.

It only takes a minute of careful climbing to find the mass of gray-black silk that seals the chimney shut. The spiderling’s thread protects him from getting caught in it as he clings to the inside of the chimney, reaches down, and pulls with all his might. But no matter how he pulls, the Harvest-woman’s silk will not give way.

Finally, he climbs back onto the roof to rest. From here he can see far and wide over the surrounding forest, with the infinite sky above. It’s the sort of sky one could get lost looking at. This late in the afternoon, it is the same shade of blue as his eyes; no wonder the coals got them confused.

When Gerard lowers his eyes again, he finds that he is no longer alone. There, perched at the highest point of the roof, a scarlet bird watches the sky and forest beyond. Even from a distance, he can feel the heat from its feathered body, as steady and strong as sunlight.

Carefully, he creeps further away. His foot scrapes on the roof, and the bird turns to look at him with eyes of flame.

In the next moment the bird is gone, and a woman sits in its place. Her hair is long and unbound, the brightest red that he has ever seen, outmatched in brilliance only by her cloak of scarlet feathers. Her eyes are unchanged, flickering like embers in her face.

“Be careful,” the phoenix warns. “If you fall, I might not be able to catch you.”

“Would you try?” Gerard asks warily.

“Yes,” she replies. “It’s a terrible height to fall from.”

“You’re the Harvest-woman’s phoenix,” Gerard says.

She makes a face. “I was. I think—” She stops, looking out at the sky again. “I think I own myself, now. It’s been so long, but it’s still a strange thought.”

“The burned webs in the attic,” Gerard says. “Did you do that?”

“It was my cage,” she says, matter-of-fact. “The Harvest-woman stripped my wings away and put me there, so that she could watch as what little fire remained within me withered away.” She wraps her cloak around herself warmly, feathers shimmering against the blue.

“How did you escape?” Gerard asks.

The phoenix looks at him, her ember-eyes thoughtful. She shifts closer, and her warmth falls upon him like a sunbeam.

“Gertrude came,” she says. “She returned my cloak, and watched me burn the Harvest-woman to ashes.”

Something tugs in Gerard’s chest, wistful and longing. Envy has its own way of burning. “My mother says phoenixes don’t tolerate evil,” he says carefully.

The phoenix tilts her head. “I suppose we don’t, though I’ve never met another, so I haven’t asked.”

“Then why haven’t you burned me yet?”

She considers him for a moment, her eyes thoughtful. “I don’t think I want to,” she says. “And… I don’t do things that I don’t want to do. Not anymore.” She tilts her head again. “What about you? What are you doing, all the way up here?”

“There are webs in the chimney,” Gerard replies, still cautious. “I can’t get them out.” He looks at the sky as he speaks. The phoenix’s eyes hurt to look at, as if they can burn away all his wariness and caution until only raw truth remains.

A flash of scarlet draws his eyes again, and he finds her bird-shaped once more. She arches her neck gracefully, plucks a down feather from her chest, and tucks it between the roof tiles. Then, with another look look at him, she takes to the air.

The feather is warm to the touch when Gerard picks it up. As soon as he holds it in his hand, he knows what to do.

It glows softly, lighting his way down into the chimney. The dark, shapeless mass of web awaits below him. Gerard drops the feather into it, and it catches fire and burns as easily as dry straw.

After climbing back down from the roof, Gerard returns to the hearth. His hands roughen as he sweeps away the ashes and adds another log. The dry wood catches, and before long the fireplace is properly lit, and the smoke rises from the chimney top.

“Thank you,” the fire whispers. “I can see the sky again. I forgot how beautiful it was.”

“Much nicer than my eyes, I hope,” Gerard replies.

“I’ll see stars tonight,” the fire says. “How big is the moon?”

Gerard thinks back, adding up the days that he has spent trapped here. “I think it’s a new moon tonight. But it’ll be round again soon.”

“I missed it.” It sounds, more than anything, terribly lonely. Perhaps if a fire could weep, it would.

“Did you have a name, before?” Gerard asks. He’s not sure why, but it feels important.

“Sarah. I was Sarah, once.”

“It was nice to meet you, Sarah,” Gerard tells her. “Even if you did throw ashes at me.”

“I won’t,” Sarah promises. “You should go, when you can. Gertrude will be back soon, when she sees the smoke rising.”

“I can’t yet,” Gerard says. “Not until dusk, at least. And not without what I came for.”

“Good luck,” she tells him. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

A knock comes at his bedroom door, at the hour when dinner is usually left for him to find. He opens it, and instead he finds the phoenix standing in the doorway, still wrapped in her brilliant red cloak.

“I don’t have food this time, I’m afraid,” she tells him.

For a moment he can only stare. “It was you? This whole time?”

“I had to see for myself, what sort of person Mary Keay’s child would be,” she says. “And when I found my answer, I thought I might convince Gertrude to change her mind. But she’s too much like a spider herself, sometimes. She tries to spin her own webs, but it all gets tangled for her. I hope, one day, you might forgive her.”

She reaches into the lining of her cloak, and plucks out a single long red feather.

“This is what you came here for, isn’t it?” she asks, offering him the precious thing. Where the down feather had glowed, this one blazes. Here is a flame won’t burn out, a proper phoenix firebrand.

No wonder his mother wants it, enough to risk letting him out.

“I don’t understand,” he says, his voice hushed. “Why are you giving this to me?”

Her hand is warm against his cheek. “Because I want to,” she replies. “And I think you know what that means, for those like us.” She smiles as Gerard fights back tears. “You have your own cage to break.”

Gerard’s hand trembles as she presses the feather into it.

“Agnes?”

Gertrude stands in the hallway behind her, staring at her back with alarm and seeping anger.

The phoenix sighs, a little fond and a little more exasperated, and gently clasps Gerard’s hand around her flame. She leans in, close enough to whisper in his ear.

“You’ll have to leave now,” she tells him. “Don’t worry about waiting for dusk. You already have everything you need.” She releases him, and turns to stand in Gertrude’s way as he runs.

He runs past the hearth—past Sarah—and reaches the door unhindered. Throwing it open reveals the red sun as it sinks toward the treetops, and without a moment’s hesitation he steps out into the garden.

The earth pulls him down, faster than it had when he first arrived. “Please don’t leave, little one,” the dark soil begs. “It’s so dark and empty here. Nothing grows, not even a weed. I don’t want to be empty anymore.”

He’s up to his ankles already. “Wait! You were a person once, weren’t you? Like Sarah?”

“I didn’t know Sarah,” the soil replies. “I’m alone. I’ve been alone for so long.”

The soil is almost to his knees. How much more time can the phoenix buy him? “What about the man in the door?”

“He spends so much time on the other side, and I hardly see him.” The soil drags him further down. “I’m sorry. I just want something that will grow. Something beautiful. Something that sings with life and color.”

Gerard sinks to his knees and digs his hands into the crumbling soil. His red-gold hair tumbles over his face; tears spring to his blue eyes. “You want beauty and colors?” he asks. “Take mine. I didn’t ask for them and I don’t want them.”

For a moment, he stops sinking. “Do you mean that?” the earth asks.

“Yes,” Gerard says desperately. “And if you don’t like the dark anymore, then you can give me that instead.”

At first, the earth seems to tighten around him. Then the soil loosens, and as he pulls himself free, the bright colors bleed out of his hair and eyes and fall into the soil with his tears. When he finally crawls free of the earth, his eyes are the color of soil, and his hair is as black as the darkness beneath.

Flowers sprout in his wake, petals bearing all the colors he left behind.

“Fiona,” the garden whispers to him.

“What?”

“That was my name, before I was this.” The earth moves beneath him again, not to trap him, but to push him forward. “Go. Don’t let her catch you.”

Gerard reaches the door at a dead run. He hesitates, keenly aware of the sun that still sits in the sky. Then he hears Gertrude call out from behind him, and he opens it and hurries through.

The thick forest on the other side of the wall is nowhere to be seen. Instead, he stands in a long, empty hallway that stretches on and on before finally curving to the right in the distance.

It will swallow you, Gertrude had said, and you will never find your way out of its belly.

You already have everything you need, the phoenix had told him.

Gerard draws out his bobbin of spider silk and ties one end to the door handle. Then, with the thread unspooling behind him, he sets off into the labyrinth.

The hallways try to trick him. They curve and curve and curve in the same direction, without once crossing over themselves. Corridors twist and turn every which way, hoping to confuse him. More than once they turn him around, or try to trick him into thinking he has already walked a certain path before.

But always, the spiderlin’s thread shows the way. He knows which halls he has already seen and which are new, no matter how they try to deceive him. The thread shows him the way, twisting and turning through the corridors without once looping back on itself. He finds his way to the hallway’s end, and then, with the nearly-empty bobbin in hand, he turns and retraces his steps.

The tall man is waiting for him when he reaches the door, its long-fingered hands twisted together. “How?” it asks. “Not even I can walk these halls without losing myself. I only ever find the door when it wants to be found.”

Gerard hesitates. He grips the bobbin of thread in both hands, loathe to give it up. The spiderling might be hurt, if he found out Gerard gave away his gift.

But…

“I think you might need this more than me,” he says reluctantly. “If you let me out, then I’ll give it to you, and you’ll never lose your way again.”

The tall man stares at him, then at the thread in his hands, still tied to the door handle. “I accept,” it says, and its smile still looks a bit wrong, but far more real than it was before. “If you can bear to part with it.”

“It was a present,” Gerard tells him, as the tall man takes the bobbin. “Take good care of it.”

The tall man bows. When it opens the door, Gerard sees nothing but open forest beyond. “Good luck, and try to avoid this part of the woods for a while. Gertrude will be quite upset.” It sounds pleased.

“Did you have a name before?” Gerard asks.

“Probably,” it says blithely. “I lost it long ago in these halls. Silly me—I’ll forget my own head next.” It smiles again, fingers closing around the silk thread. “But perhaps I can find it again, now.”

“Good luck,” Gerard says.

“Thank you,” it replies. “I don’t think you’ll need it for much longer.”

The door shuts behind him before he can ask what it means. Gerard stands in the forest beyond the stone wall around the Harvest-woman’s house.

For the first time in weeks, the threads sewn into his arms tug at him, drawing him back to his mother like a fish on a line.

(“Why did you let him go?” Gertrude asks the hearth, and the fire that now burns merrily in its depths.

“Why should I help you instead of him?” Sarah asks. “You turned a blind eye when Emma did this to me. He gave me the sky again.”

“Why did you let him go?” Gertrude asks the garden, where flowers now bloom in red-gold and sky-blue.

“Why should I help you instead of him?” Fiona asks. “When Emma took me, you didn't even notice I was gone. He gave me life again.”

“Why did you let him go?” Gertrude asks the man in the doorway.

“Why should I help you instead of him?” the man who will soon be Michael again asks. “You fed me to these hallways yourself. He gave me a way out.”

“Why did you let him go?” Gertrude asks the phoenix, as she grows wings to fly away again. “Why did you give him your fire?”

“Because you are wrong, my dear,” Agnes replies gently. “Because he is kind. And because you could not have stopped me if you tried.”)

Gerard follows the pull, never stopping for more than a brief rest. The phoenix’s fire sits in his pocket where the spool of spider silk had once been, warming his tired body every step of the way.

Home looks much the same as it did when he left it. It’s a bigger house than the cottage where he found the spiderling, but smaller than the Harvest-woman’s—Gertrude’s home. It looks dark and ominous, with strange plants and dried bones hanging in the windows and shadows spilling from its sides like dark ink. It will be worse within; already Gerard can smell the stale copper tang of old blood, and that sweet burning pungency that always lingers whenever his mother follows a grim shortcut to power.

The feather in his pocket is another one of her shortcuts. Once Gerard delivers it to her, he will have to get used to the smell of burning flesh. The knowledge sits heavy within him, that he will help her spread her suffering further. That he is proving Gertrude right and the phoenix wrong.

I don’t do things that I don’t want to do, the phoenix said. He doesn’t think she would want to feed Mary Keay’s power, so why, then, would she give him her fire?

You know what that means for those like us.

You have your own cage to break.

And as he stands outside of the house where he grew up, where he learned a thousand dark and terrible things at his mother’s knee, he understands at last what the phoenix wanted.

What he might want, if he were to let himself.

The door is never locked for him. He finds her in the sitting room, cleaning up—or trying, at least. She was never very good at tidying up.

But that’s all right.

Gerard has far too much practice in cleaning up the messes his mother makes.

She smiles when she sees him, eyes glittering in her blood-flecked face. “My Gerard,” she says, warm with pride. Her voice turns mournful as she touches his hair and runs her finger along the side of his face. “Oh, you’ve given up so much. But you’re home now. Have you brought it for me?”

He draws the feather from his pocket, admiring the way the vane shimmers. His mother gasps with hushed wonder and longing at the sight, and holds out her hand to take it.

“Give it to me, Gerard,” she says. “Now.”

He does not.

Whatever his mother wants with phoenix fire, it is not what the phoenix herself wants. And Gerard knows what that means, for those like them.

“Gerard,” his mother warns.

He has a cage to burn, and a jailer along with it.

“Gerard—what are you doing. Stop—stop! Gerard!”

She catches just as easily as his father’s page, as the books she so loves, as the wood panels of her house. She screams, more from rage than pain, as phoenix fire pours from his hand and devours everything she has made.

Everything but him.

She seizes him even as the flesh peels hot and steaming from her bones. She has so much power within her, stolen and ripped bloody from the world, and the fire cannot consume it faster than it pours out of her.

“Everything you learned, you learned from me,” she says. “All the horror you have witnessed, all the choking knowledge you have gained, every terrifying truth you have ever learned, you will carry with you always. And no one will ever believe you.” Her power twists her words into truth, and her curse settles like a noose around his throat even as the fire turns her tongue to ash. Gerard flees as the flames consume the house and everything within it.

Phoenixes do not suffer evil. When the fire burns down, there is nothing left of Mary Keay but what little of her blood still runs in Gerard’s veins.

Eventually, when the last of the smoke has risen from the smoldering pile of ash before him, when the smell of fire and death is beginning to fade, when the twisted knots in Gerard’s heart have just begun to loosen—only then does he feel the silken threads in his flesh tighten.

“Such a shame,” Mr. Fielding the spider remarks, gossamer threads trailing from his fingertips. He jerks at the lines, and Gerard bites back a cry as they draw blood. “Delightful woman, your mother. Still, I suppose you’ll do.”

It is the first and last thing Gerard ever hears him say. The fire descends from above, and Mr. Fielding has not time to even scream as the phoenix’s talons close around him. She lands in a plume of fire, beautiful and radiant even as she kills.

At last the threads go slack, but the trailing ends still carry the risk of being taken up again. Gerard holds his hands out to the phoenix. “Please,” he asks.

“It will hurt,” she replies.

“I don’t care.”

She burns the silk out of him until there is nothing left, and at long last Gerard can scream and cry with pain, and fear no punishment for it.

Gertrude finds him on the outskirts of the town, bruised and shaking.

“Well I for one don’t know why you’d want to help them after that,” she remarks as he wipes blood from his face.

“It’s not their fault,” he says.

They’re scared, after all. They’ve lost so much livestock already, and last night they lost a child for the first time. Gerard saw all the familiar signs and tried to warn them that the thing that stole a baby girl from a woodsman’s hut was not a wolf.

“They’d listen, if Mum hadn’t—” His voices catches in his throat. “The curse won’t let them. If they knew what was in the woods, if they knew how to kill it…” His voice trails off.

Gertrude stares down at him—a pitiful little thing, scarred and hungry and desperate to help the people who just left him bruised and bleeding.

“Why should they need to?” she asks.

He raises his eyes—dark brown, like the soil in her garden—and listens. Her voice carries weight to it, not a curse but simple truth in its own right.

“You have the knowledge already,” she tells him bluntly. “What more should anyone need?”

She sits with him awhile, as he catches his breath and waits for the ache to fade. At some point he looks up again, and she is gone.

The sun is sinking. The thing in the woods will take someone else tonight.

Gerard rises to his feet, and goes hunting.