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Maud was -- well, she was not her mother’s daughter. Where Mother might have been reliably seen to be sewing in her room, or practicing at the piano, or any number of other activities that a good woman might partake of, Maud was liable to be doing any number of undesirable activities. At ten, she summoned a small demon -- not a big one, just a little demonlet, which had asked her if she minded if it ran around the house and made mischief, because it had never been in the human world before.
She’d shrugged.
That summer, her parents thought that they had mice, or possibly a poltergeist. The little yellow demon she’d summoned liked to sample the pantry and draw facial hair on all the paintings, even the ladies, and Maud had found it so funny, right up until the demon’s mother had come to fetch him, and then it had just been lonely.
She played, most nights, up near the churchyard. She wasn’t afraid of anything, not even when the demon’s mother looked down at her from her huge demonic height, and then brushed Maud’s cheek.
“Wee sweet thing,” she said. “Don’t you summon no more demons. And stay away from the church, you hear? There’s bad things in there.”
At the time, she didn’t think very much of it, because of course a demon would think there were bad things in there. It was a church, wasn’t it?
Besides, the watchy-man only ever watched; he didn’t come near her. She carried a set of rosary beads, just in case, but she rather thought he wasn’t interested in a little chit of a girl like Maud.
_____
Henry had twisted his ankle chasing a spectral hound across a bog, and it hurt as he hobbled along behind his mother. She barely looked back at him, but slowed her pace to meet his. He was already at a disadvantage, being a child, and he wondered if he angered her when he was slow. The air was crisp and damp-smelling, the stars bright pinpricks against the velvet blanket of night.
“The names of the six river spirits found in this area,” she said.
“Jenny Greenteeth,” he said, as a spike of pain lanced up his shin. “Kelpie. Selkie, but only in river mouths that meet the sea.” He thought. “Old Tom.”
“And…?”
He didn’t know, which meant he’d need to spend more time with his father’s diaries and his mother’s library. He gritted his teeth.
“Morgans.” Another excruciating step. “Nyx.”
“Well done,” she said, looking at him critically. “The names of the three herbs that will cause a vampire to sneeze.”
“Mother,” he said, feeling his throat tighten, his eyes start to burn. “I--”
She stopped, and turned back to him. “Come along,” she said. “Having to think hard is a good distraction from pain.”
She’d noticed. He supposed it would have been stranger if she hadn’t.
“Garlic,” he said. “Onions, for some.” He tried only walking on his toe. Didn’t work. “Pepper?”
“Pepper will make anyone sneeze,” she said. “Although if you throw peppercorns, a vampire will often stop to pick them up. Nearly there. Good thing, too; this damned thing is awkward to carry.”
Hot relief flooded him as they rounded the hill to a waiting coach, their nervous client sitting on the box, spooked enough to almost spur the horses.
“The lad’s hurt his ankle,” said Mother, hefting the stunned, enormous, decidedly-not-spectral hound off her shoulders and into the back of the coach. It wuffled in its sleep and drooled phosphorescent drool. She reached out for him, then, and helped him up -- he was achingly grateful, and when they got into the little coach, she took his sore ankle in her hands and checked it thoroughly, rubbing the pain away. He supposed she wasn’t so mean as all that. Not always.
“Come, Henry,” she said. “Let’s get you home.”
_____
Tobias hadn’t seen a fairy in a long time, but the Wood was calling to him, and he thought it might have had Bramble’s voice. It didn’t make him feel any better about the fairy -- it was a sad creature, bringing its gloom into the sunlit groves of the Wood, through pine needles and moss, fungus and flower.
He’d known the girl was there, too, but when he realised what he was actually feeling, he stepped up his pace. Branches parted for him, roots laying flat to the soil so he wouldn’t trip. A vine brushed against his shoulder and budded, burst into brilliant flower as he went.
He was too late. The fairy took fright at him, perhaps, or was intimidated by the wild man of the woods, but it left a lingering sense of sadness, and a white ring of toadstools, circling around a little girl like pale dancers in the shadow of the underbrush.
“Ah, child,” he said, gently.
“Why did you make my fairy go away?” she asked.
He reached to pick her up, comfort her, break the spell of the fairy ring, but she screamed -- a high, thin cry that echoed in his ears, and she tore free of the ring, trampling the toadstools underfoot as she bolted from him and ran pell-mell into the Wood.
The path opened for her. He couldn’t bear otherwise. The path opened, taking her back to the village without scratching at her arms, without catching her hair, leading her over tussock and past the little stream that wound through the heart of everything. She ran without pattern or reason, likely half-blind with tears.
He knelt, and whispered to the toadstools. Back to sleep, he told them. The ground isn’t wet enough yet. It’s not warm enough for you to wake. They grumblingly obeyed, laying spores and crumbling back to soil, only a faint track in the dirt any evidence that they’d been there at all.
“Why did you let her go?” asked a voice behind him. The man who had once been his, Tobias’s. No longer. Tobias gently stroked his fingers over the soil, letting the “Perhaps--”
“No,” said Tobias. “Don’t you start.” He turned to Fay. “Don’t you start, you old skeleton.”
He let the Summer embrace him, though, and the flowering nasturtium that ringed the clearing in fiery gold and red climbed up his legs. They were invaders in the wood, but so was he, he supposed -- so was the child, the fairy, all of it. Even summer’s lord.
The child left the Wood, wild little creature returning to the village. She’d curl up by the fire tonight, and he hoped she’d forget.
Somehow, he suspected she wouldn’t.
_______
The saw cut at the Oak, and the Wood held its breath in agony; the Oak wasn’t the eldest of them, but it had anchored time in place in one small grove, and as the pieces of its heart were cut away, time spiralled. Bluebells bloomed in the tiny clearing up by the stones, and then the Wood shifted, and a rabbit ran through the seed-heads where there’d once been flowers, then through gorse, then over a tiny hillock that had sprung out of time and into the now.
But the Oak would not leave the Wood. Yes, it would fall, and yes, the stump would be pulled out, exposing the secrets underground, exposing the damp and the rot, the skeletons and the earth’s sinews, but it would not leave the Wood. It would fall, and the cottage would be crushed to ground, and its roots would not reach to the heart of the earth, but instead see the sky for the first time in its life. Squirrels would leap between its branches, and as the heartwood rotted away, they’d form nests in its broad shelter. Small paws hid acorns in its hollows and as the Wood let time roll over it like the great waves that had swallowed its foothills, it knew that the Oak would be reborn, a phoenix-tree, a giant even to the world of Men. All of nature knows this story; as the old withers, it offers life to the new. Power never sits in the hands of one creature for too long, because that’s how everything ceases. The fairies learned this, didn’t they? The Wood knows. Where there are many trees, there will always be a Wood.
Silver awakened from death at midwinter, as the year turned and the snow was crisp on the ground. The light would grow longer; like candle-shadows grown yellow and near. Soon enough the flowers would bloom, and the people of the village would dance in empathy with the land, which will wake in glory, the brightest point of the year.
The Wood cradled its newest branch, blessed him with pollen and honey, stroked his cheeks with soft new leaves and gave him the gentlest moss to sleep on.
“Thank you,” he said, when a blackberry parted its thorns and raised its flowers, sweet with nectar, spooling out time to offer him fruit. It curled its canes, shyly, and he coaxed it back out, letting a thorn prick his thumb and then sucking away the blood in what felt like surprise.
Ah. Perhaps being transplanted would take a human a little longer to accept.
The deciduous trees were almost budding when Tobias returned, and took someone who was the Wood’s face in his broad hands and kissed him. Leaves rippled from their coiled up homes, shivered in the still air as all around, joy making the flowers bloom. In their nest, two blackbirds nestled close, feathers on happy feathers, as in the clearing, two near-lovers kissed, and Silver learned to walk in time.
_______
Maud’s mother had taken to looking in her room for her notes and her books, and she’d decided it wasn’t safe to have cards for divination, so she’d taken up a little collection of nice rocks instead. There was one with a little sea-creature, all curled in a ball. She’d wondered, briefly, if it were the ancestor of some great pelagic monster, the leviathan of legend, but none of her books had the right information if that were the case.
If only she wasn’t always being watched, she thought. She’d get so much done if it weren’t for wild men, ancient abbots, parents, and concerned citizens making it their duty to watch her and watch out for her. She hadn’t even been thinking of using that crossroads to try to call upon a fairy -- well, that was mainly because she was always damn well being watched, and then father caught wind of it and that was that.
They kept on taking things.
She encouraged it, to a point, because if they took some wonderfully dramatic items, then they’d forget all about the less dramatic and subtle. So she’d written up a manuscript all in weird words, and drawn pictures in the margins, and she’d let them find it and worry over it while Maud read what looked in the light of that weird artefact to be a very sensible paper about the woods of England and the Green Man. Under cover of charity work, she bought clothing to escape in, whilst also adjusting her least favourite dress to have a simply scandalous neckline, which took a lot of the attention off what was in her wardrobe as her mother sought to ensure that the offending dress wasn’t in her wardrobe.
It was easy to sneak out of the window, bag packed, rocks in the bottom of it and books in the top, and her tools and instruments in the middle where if she had to swing the bag at a vampire that mistook her for a young man, they hopefully wouldn’t get too crushed. It was just as easy to walk up the road to the old Abbey. Maud wasn’t fearful, and she couldn’t abide squeamishness, and she had both a revolver and the kitchen’s largest cleaver, and she’d practiced at home, first on chickens meant for the stewpot, then on ox tails meant for soup, because she’d figured that an ox tail was probably a better analogue for a spine, even if it was a dusty old vampire spine.
As it had turned out, a shot from a revolver and a hard whack to the throat from a cleaver had been enough to fell a vampire. It was almost a disappointment. Still, at least the catacombs under the old abbey were relatively soundproof, and definitely proof against her parents, who were squeamish, superstitious and fearful. She’d get some experiments done here, and then she’d make it to Fairyland.
Maud picked up the cleaver. Should she try for a finger, or the whole hand? She’d be experimenting a bit, she supposed. Best not to waste anything.
_________
Bramble had thought that the boy would grow; would bury strong roots into the earth, a great taproot that might hold him safe through any storm. He had not. He had girdled round the old manor like a fortress made of thorn and briar, and it let her in, parting for her as gently as if she were walking through soft grasses. She brushed her fingers over the thorns, absently, and felt no pain.
Snow blew in through the holes in the roof, little flurries that fell powdery and melted on contact.
He was asleep on the floor again. The lichen had rather charmingly tried to cover him, keep him warm against the chill of the waning year. The crab-tree still bloomed, and when she spoke to it, it told her of its fear that the young green heart at the centre of the wood would harden, wither, die back as if in drought.
Perhaps it might. Tomorrow she would chide him, draw him out of this stupor. Tonight, she listened to the house creak and groan, as a soft blanket of leaves pattered down upon his body, the thorn bushes and trees that had made their way into the heart of the manor reaching to soothe, to warm, to keep the heart of the wood beating.
“I could bring Him back,” she told it. “Or at least turn you to fruit and not flower, let you lose your leaves for once.”
But then who will look after Henry? the crab-tree asked. No. Best to leave human things to humans.
She hummed like the creak of a branch in the wind. “This one needs a good kick in the pants,” she said.
His heart is still young, said the crab-tree. They are not like us.
Whip-thin saplings knew how to flex in the wind, how to hold on with their roots and bow to the grass; as trees grew older, so did their strength, but even the oldest would hold fast with its trunk and let its branches move. The Wood could weather any storm. Humans -- this one in particular, come to think of it -- could not. The Wood remembered seeing him through Tobias’s eyes; Bramble remembered it, as if it were she who had stood and watched him, wet and dripping like a dog, all the more beautiful for it.
“We will have to do something,” Bramble said, and the crab bowed its branches in agreement.
________
Fairyland was cold and lonely; a picture of a country inundated and abandoned, of a heart walled off, of someone who thought that they could survive alone, but they couldn’t, not really, not at all.
________
Henry looked up at his (old) new home -- the sun had risen enough that one could tell it would be a hot August day. It had a bite that promised his shirt sticking to his back, unless he could convince Mother that he wouldn’t die if he were to go swimming.
He wondered if Tobias would go with him. Hmmm.
“You’re here,” said Mother, when she let them in. “He’s spent the entire night arranging and rearranging your books, you know. He’s as stupidly gone for you as you are for him.”
Henry sighed, but he kissed her cheek. “How are you, Mother?” he asked.
“It’s wonderful to have you all home,” she said, and he thought that perhaps this wouldn’t be the most terrible thing to have happened to him. “Go and tell him to stop fussing.”
He couldn’t really imagine Tobias fussing. It seemed a distinctly un-Tobiasish thing to do. He went upstairs anyway, and there was Tobias, looking at the arrangement of books on the bookshelf as if they had personally spited him.
“Why is the third in this series of monographs in a completely different binding?” he asked, without turning around.
“Because there was an unfortunate accident with a candle and an unaccountable gust of wind, and I had to buy a new copy.”
“You could have put more effort into it,” said Tobias, turning, and Henry practically leapt onto him.
“You wanted everything to be perfect,” he said, as Tobias’s broad palms framed Henry’s cheeks, his thumbs running over Henry’s skin. “It is.”
Tobias kissed him, like sunlight through the leaves, like a warm summer stone, like the thrum of dragonfly wings and the beat of a rabbit’s heart. He kissed back, wondering if the Wood had somehow wound its way into his thoughts, even if the furniture didn’t suddenly bloom whenever he was having a bad day.
“Ugh, you took your time,” said a voice from the doorway. Maud. She turned. “Are you coming? There’s things to be done.”
“All…all right,” said Silver, with a quick glance to Tobias, who offered him a slight, wry smile.
“I have thirteen letters you need to read before we go to the Continent. And a monograph on the nature of spirits, and you really should brush up on your understanding of genius loci.”
“I was a genius loci,” said Henry, somewhat puzzled.
“I’ve read your paper on the Wood. I repeat: you need to brush up on your understanding of genius loci,” said Maud. Was this what it was like to have a sister? “Are you going to be sleeping in here, then? I shan’t give up my room.”
Henry smiled. “I shan’t ask you to,” he said, Tobias’s hands heavy and gentle on his waist.
“Good,” she said, understanding passing between them.
Henry leaned back into Tobias’s warmth. “Can I bring Tobias?”
Under his feet, the floorboards remembered being a tree, and the earth remembered when the Wood was there. Once upon a time, they could have walked across Doggerland and the Wood would have held them in its arms the whole way. Now, it was a memory in the planks of the houses and boats, the wool and fur of clothes and gloves, the paper of books and the stones that built walls. Henry could feel it all, momentarily, and he forgot himself, as if becoming human again was just as hard as becoming inhuman had been -- but then Tobias touched him, and he remembered.
“Bring whomever you like, just hurry up,” said Maud, as if passage to the Continent wouldn’t take days -- as if whatever was happening with the ghosts hadn’t been happening forever. “I want to theorise and you’re woefully underprepared.”
Henry might have bristled, six or eight months ago.
Now, he just laughed, and followed Maud, Tobias a warm presence at his heels, and ghosts in his future.