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When he’s young, his aunt catches him staring out into the trees. The shadows between them shift and twist like moths fluttering past a fire, sunlight playing in the leaves. He wonders how they would feel caught between his hands, if they’d be friendly and soft or granite-hard.
On this particular day Colton and ‘Belle have argued all morning, daring each other past the graveyard gates. They’re through the innermost one, each taunting the other a step further and further out among the older stones. He’d stopped before the creaky iron, too caught up in knowing this isn’t allowed to follow behind, but scrambled his way up a stone to get a better view of them.
It turned out to be the right call; Corrin comes by after an hour and rebukes them both, sends his brother and sister off to weed the Casala plot. It’s one of the most undesirable chores, considering the size of the Casala family, and making it a punishment means it never gets too overgrown.
And she catches him looking past the inner gate, beyond the less-maintained graves with their crumbling markers, towards the tall, tall trees and the play of the sunlight.
“Careful, now,” she warns him, ushering him down from his perch on Elias Jagentoth’s headstone. “No need to fear the world out there, but have a care if you ever need to venture into it. Your brother and sister will learn in time, but I know you can be careful.”
She’s worried, he knows, because she always scrunches her nose up when she’s worried and because she doesn’t let him out of her sight for the rest of the day. But she’s right; he can be careful.
“She’s lying,” Colton scoffs later, scrubbing mud off his hands, looking out over the plot and scornful in the way that older brothers always are. “If it was enough to be careful, nobody would ever end up here.”
‘Belle punches him for it, tells him not to scare their little brother. Caduceus doesn’t see the big deal about it—he’s not afraid. Everybody dies, everybody knows that.
In the years to come, that fact will get more complicated and less comforting. It will remain true.
---
Mother and Father both leave when Calliope’s still young. Not when she’s a baby or anything, but she’s young and bright-eyed and still getting into everything. Calliope’s full-up with questions in a way Caduceus doesn’t remember being; why has been her favorite word for years and it doesn’t seem like it’ll change anytime soon.
So Calliope’s young, but she’s the baby. The rest of them are responsible enough to tend to the graveyard, to not need to be warned away from the gate and the tall trees that groan in the wind at night; it feels like they grow taller by the year, reaching up to blot out the sky. There’s less sunlight in the forest, Caduceus thinks. Less than there used to be.
The path is cool and shadowed, on the day his parents leave. Caduceus accompanies them all the way to the outermost gate, and a cold breeze makes him shiver.
The rest of the family is busy—a cart from Shadycreek brought the Trebain boy in last night, eyes glassy and face slack, head crumpled on one side from some kind of impact. Corrin is with the body now, murmuring prayers; Colton’s caught in an argument with Calliope in the middle ring of graves while ‘Belle handles the trickle of Shadycreek notables coming to pay their respects.
He doesn’t usually come this far out, all the way to the edge of the third fence. They’re barely a step from the forest proper and he can feel it pressing all around him, under his fingernails like dirt, grit in his teeth. Discomfort, caught somewhere in the deep parts of the shade and the lingering chill in the air.
“My steady boy,” his mother says, as his parents both pull him in for one last hug. “You’ll be alright. Whatever happens next, you’re all in Melora’s hands; she’ll guide you as she guides us.”
All the way back to the house, though he passes through the three gates unhindered, he feels watched. The wind follows him back out of the forest and it is not welcoming at all—he hasn’t wondered about the feel of the shadows for years, has grown up past imagining them, but he can’t shake the idea of something sharp hidden in the space between the trees.
Steady, he thinks he hears it mock, steady, steady.
It’s like a dam breaking, when his parents leave. Within three years, everyone’s gone.
“You’re the steady one,” Clarabelle reminds him, when they’re both standing at the outer gate, looking into the corrupted dark.
No, he hasn’t wondered if the shadows are friendly in a very long time.
His sister leaves at dusk, fierce and daring, a last sachet of tea tucked into her pack when she wasn’t looking. “Be the steady one—Shadycreek needs someone. You know what to do when people come. You don’t need me.”
The forest swallows her up, like it swallowed Calliope and Colton before her, like it swallowed their parents and Corrin, like it wants to swallow the whole of the Blooming Grove. He can feel it in the wind, in the dirt under his feet, in the rasp of the branches against each other.
They could all be dead a mile up the road and he’d never know it. He packs a bag that night, walks all the way to the farthest gate.
He doesn’t go.
Steady, steady, something croons in his ears; he can hear underneath it, to sickness, to rot—to hunger.
That night he dreams of the forest shadows and they’re nightmare creatures, each with a full set of teeth.
---
And then it’s just him, and no one reminds him of the chores or decides what they should make for dinner, no one cracks a joke or plays a prank, no one talks to him at all.
He’s fine. He’s steady, even-keeled and every other word for it. This is all the Wildmother’s will, after all, and he’s never been one to question the divine. Wouldn’t mind if the divine felt like being a little more vocal, but no one can have everything.
Caduceus isn’t alone, not really, because he’s surrounded by plots that need tending and because that summer, birds start coming out of the forest to greet him.
They’re ravens, he’s pretty sure. They show up and hop around between the headstones, have little croaking arguments that border on speech. When he talks they answer, which feels like the thing that should happen. The Clays were the Raven Queen’s first, and it is something like a story to be reminded of it. The Clays were the Raven Queen’s, before she gave them away.
They bring him things sometimes, bits of bone and bloodstained fabric, a copper coin and a tarnished monocle. A daring few do aerial tricks, and one performs dances on the roof of his home.
Caduceus is in no position to speculate on the motivations of the gods, but it feels like a response to the birds when he finds himself in the vegetable garden. He wakes up already there, with soil under his nails and the smell of growing things everywhere. There’s no panic; he can feel her hand in the air around him, in the creep of cucumber vines and the warm breeze. He is a gift for her, after all, and his heart is easy with it.
A raven croaks a laughing sound, and Caduceus laughs too. It is a fine thing to be of service, and finer still to be so valued in return.
In the innermost ring of stones, the plants flourish like a declaration.
---
Summer passes; first with strawberries, then tomatoes. The days grow longer and warmer and Caduceus remains content.
Well, at the very least Caduceus remains.
He conducts two funerals that season, less than a month apart. The ravens watch from half a dozen spots in the graveyard, and the mourners overstay their welcome.
Maybe it’s a little rude to say that the mourners overstay their welcome. They’re grieving, it’s understandable. He keeps his voice steady and his ears open, brews enough tea so everyone eventually gets something warm to drink, and tries not to think of the way these people are wrecking his routine.
Once the last of them clear out, the second time, he exhales relief and goes to the garden. There’s a bit of groundskeeping to do in the inner ring and more in the middle and the most in the outermost space, but he focuses on the food first. The food first, the ground still flush with the sharp scent of the Wildmother’s blessing, and the rest will come in time. He doesn’t need to go past any of the gates today.
He tends the plants, humming something like a hymn, when he finds the first overripe cucumber.
“That’s no good,” he tells the nearest bird.
It coughs, hopping a little closer. Tilts its head to the side in a way that catches his gaze, lets him see a smattering of them through the rest of the plants, and a tomato that’s too squashed to be any good, and a squash that’s got too thick a skin. Once he sees them he can’t stop seeing them, and once he sees them he realizes, all over again—
There will be no one to help with canning this year, no one to argue with about the pickling spices. He looks over the pantry stores, depleted as they are from a year of eating, and goes back to the garden to survey it with a bewildered sort of alone-feeling.
Some of the pumpkin plants are sick, he realizes, and he’s in such a hurry to save at least a few that he forgets gloves, ends up with itchy hands and arms. Then he has to dig the sick plants up, not knowing if there’s something in them that could hurt the soil—and there is no one there to help him through it, only a bird watching him toil.
He finds, in his digging, the jawbone of some unrecognizable creature twisting up their shallow roots. His hands itch, shake, and the empty feeling in his chest rolls over into anger.
“You couldn’t tell me about this?” he asks the raven, full up with bitterness and the realization that things are rotting on the vine. The question feels, it feels—Caduceus is in no position to question the gods, it is not what he is meant to do, not what he is for— the question feels a little like heresy in his mouth.
The bird flies away and he gives an angry shout in its wake. That’s probably why the storm comes.
---
The sky is gray and green and boiling overhead; hailstones fall as big as a fist, cracking against the graves. He can hear the stones breaking outside like bones, knows the fury is destroying the garden.
Caduceus sits in his house and breathes, brewing a pot of tea. He doesn’t pray like other people do—he’s a Clay, the Wildmother’s instrument entirely. The extension of his spine is a prayer. The movement of his hands is devotion, even just to stir a teacup. There is nothing in him that is not a result of Melora’s grace, he is a gift and that is a fine thing to be. It is.
Thunder crashes through the sky, and even his flinch is holy.
No, he doesn’t pray like other people do, but he doesn’t have to. The scent of the tea is bright in his nose; he falls asleep anyway.
He dreams of the goddess holding him, arms like branches. Her hair is made of whispering vines and her dress is soft as clover; she gathers him close like he’s a child. No one has held him in ages, not since his sister left, and he shudders with it. If she speaks he doesn’t remember the words, but his sleep is deep and untouched by nightmares.
He wakes to find glass on the floor all around him, every window broken in the storm. He gets the broom.
The real casualty is clear when he steps outside to dispose of the shards—a tree has fallen in the night. It stretches from the forest all the way to the inner fence, dark trunk warped and bent at odd angles. It’s huge, a mess of branches and burls. He can see the roots, out past the farthest gate, still in the morning light.
It feels... wrong. Like an itch between his shoulder blades, eyes on his back. Storms happen. Trees fall. But he looks at it and, and. And he can’t shake the thought that it moved.
---
The comfort of his dreams doesn’t follow into waking.
The tree outside is an unwanted guest, even more than the people of Shadycreek Run. It might be an omen, might be a punishment; he shouldn’t have gotten angry at the bird, he knows. He knows that already. He doesn’t need the reminder.
The Wildmother provides; he doesn’t need the reminder, but it’s not like he can refuse it.
When the wind blows through the temple it doesn’t smell of greenery and life; it carries the smell of dirt, innocuous as it is, but under the surface there’s a trace of rot. A sickness in it, like his pumpkin plants. A sickness in his house and he is alone to repair things and everyone has left him and no one has returned, a sickness in the land and the roots of that tree as they interrupt the air, a sickness in everything past the fences.
And now it has come in.
---
Caduceus is a man of faith; he picks up the axe and gets to work the next morning. He strips the branches of their twigs and hacks away at the thicker boughs, splits them for firewood. All day he toils, He rises earlier, makes sure he devotes time to it every day. His hands blister and he mixes herbs to speed their healing.
In one of the highest, sturdiest branches, a bird builds a nest.
He warns it several times. This is no place to build and linger, and he can’t protect it—his days are split between harvesting and working to clear the tree, which becomes a little more daunting each day. Caduceus is no logger, and even less a carpenter. He knows there must be a better way to deal with it, must be a better use for the wood than just burning, but he doesn’t know what those things are. It’s frustrating.
The massive log looms. He does warn the bird.
It watches him, beak dripping with blood, the tufts of squirrel fur scattered among the boughs.
Sometimes the fallen tree seems large enough to blot out the sky. It’s as if the forest has gained a foothold in his home, trespassing in creeping tendrils of lichen and endless, endless twigs he sweeps out the door. Caduceus doesn’t wonder about friendly shadows anymore. The forest is not a friend. The forest is more than a barrier. It is... hungry. It is profane, it is coming through the graves and the soil and every fence his family ever built, and he doesn’t know how to stop it.
Faith, he reminds himself. Steady hands, steady swings of the axe, steady faith.
He does warn the bird; in spring something will come and kill it, will devour the eggs whole.
If Caduceus dies alone here, what will eat him?
---
He doesn’t get the windows replaced.
He tells himself that it would be difficult to get the glazier out into the Grove, which is true. He tells himself that it’s closer to nature, which is true. He tells himself that it’s all the will of the Wildmother, which is never in question.
He wonders, once, if he’s afraid of them being broken again. That thought is dismissed entirely. He is a Clay—what in the world is there to be afraid of?
All that winter he dreams strange dreams: himself decomposing, mushrooms sprouting from his veins; piecing together shattered skulls of unrecognizable creatures that won't stop talking to him in their rasping bone voices, saying things he can’t understand; the cold and himself standing before the tree, the branches yawning open into a toothy void.
It’s a long season to be alone. It feels darker than any that have come before, though he knows it’s just the shorter days. He wakes early, and each time it feels as if his home is holding its breath, as if Pelor might abandon the world and forget the sunrise.
Maybe that thought is a little... it’s not one he can imagine his parents ever voicing. It’s not one he can imagine anyone in his family even thinking, for all that they follow Melora first and foremost. The sun is part of the cycle of nature, and there’s no reason to question the cycle of nature. It’s not done; the Clay family didn’t tell stories about questions, about doubt. There was no need for things like that.
In the winterdark, Caduceus does not worry at all for the state of his soul. He’s a Clay. He is clay, to be molded. His most comforting dream is that his hands have turned to clay, that it crawls up his arms and legs and becomes him—the only feeling it inspires is relief.
His body is not betraying him, when his breath catches after a nightmare or holds in desperate hope for the sun. It is not his to begin with.
He is clay. He is a gift, and it is a fine thing to be. It is.
---
It takes nearly a year to clear the tree away, and all that year the forest presses close.
He dreams more dreams of clay and hears the thock of the axe in his ears at night, and what comfort there is in sleeping surrender doesn’t do anything for him most days. There are mourners and funerals, always, and there are odd shadows and strange tricks of the light, cries of animals he’s never heard before.
Sometimes things shimmer at the edges of his vision—once, a sunbeam hit his eyes right as he was bringing the axe down. The branch he’d been hacking at had broken and he’d had so scramble back because the blade kept moving.
He made an undignified picture that day, but he kept all his toes.
The day after he threw the last of the trunk into the woodstove was worse, though.
People started walking out of the forest.
---
The first one is a human girl, not much older than himself. When he sees her he thinks she’s sick—she has a shawl pulled tightly around herself, and she breathes with a raspy sound.
Caduceus is steady, he offers her tea.
She accepts, and they sit in the light of the waning day.
It’s a beautiful evening, just the beginning of summer. The breeze is gentle in the Grove and the flowers are perfuming the air. Caduceus is in a good mood—no mourners came today, and the tree is gone. Things are simple.
When the girl picks up her teacup, she drops one side of the shawl. It falls open, baring the place where her throat should be.
There’s—Caduceus has seen many corpses. He’s assisted in preparing bodies since he was old enough to carry buckets for washing. He’s seen death wounds and scars of all kinds, has burned pyres and dug graves. He knows dead bodies.
He’s never seen one drinking tea and talking.
Where her throat should be is a gaping wound, made more terrible by its bloodlessness. He can see tendons and tubes, as though something reached out and, and ripped the front of her neck out. Beyond the lack of blood there’s no signs of decay, which somehow makes it worse.
She takes a sip. Tea dribbles down her chest, soaking into the rusty brown fabric of her shirt.
Caduceus is afraid. He sets his cup down.
The girl blinks glassy eyes. “Is everything alright?” she asks.
“No.”
Her mouth pulls into a smile that’s more pity than anything. He might throw up.
“When is it?” she laughs. Everything about her is horrible.
She finishes her cup of tea in his silence. The sun goes all the way down, but the moons are bright in the sky and throw the graveyard into odd light. There’s a slight red tinge over every shadow; Ruidis has come to fullness, a terrible omen to anyone that knows it.
“I’m very tired,” she tells him in her awful, raspy voice, and he nods in understanding.
“You can rest here,” he promises, and once she curls up—like sleeping, or some imitation—he goes and gets the axe.
That night he says a few words to a hastily-erected pyre in the back garden.
She’s not the last of them. Ghosts sometimes wander between gravestones. There are a few animals, too, who move with too-stiff limbs and scrabble among the leaves. He tries to push them out. He tries so hard, says every prayer he knows despite not needing to speak them aloud. There is a sickness in his house, in this land, in the trees and the water and the sky. A corruption.
He dreams of her laugh for the rest of his life, dry and dead and wrong. Around the corner in every nightmare, he thinks, there will be himself and a corpse and two cups of tea, and the look of pity on her face.
---
He wishes the mourners would stop coming.
It’s not very compassionate, but he wishes they would stay away.
The forest is deep and dangerous and it takes so much of him to push it back, to reclaim inches. Half the nights there’s a new intruder to be banished, and his temper frays at the lack of sleep. But Caduceus is steady, steady, steady.
He’s good at meeting people. He’s good at the worst days of their lives. He makes tea. He says blessings—he shouldn’t have to, they should know he’s a Clay, that his shoulders are a blessing when he strains to keep swinging the axe, that his body is a tool for the divine. But it helps people and it’s good to help people. People need him to say the words at gravesites so they can leave feeling content, so they can go back to not-existing the way unseen things do. And Caduceus is better at their grief than they are.
Life continues in this way for what feels like a very long time. Too long, too long, but he can grow used to loneliness. He can grow used to the forest, creeping ever closer. He can grow so used to fear that it fades into the background, only to be called up at the next shambling step up towards the inner gate.
There is a kind of loneliness that devours. Caduceus is not inclined towards it.
(At least, he’s never been before.)
---
The Trebain boy wanders between the stones one night, pale and transparent with that same slackjawed expression he’d had on the day Caduceus’ parents left. The recognition is the tipping point; he has never known any of the wandering dead.
“Leave,” he snarls, a taste of spring in the back of his throat despite the oncoming chill of autumn.
The forest presses as close as it can, tastes his desperation, tells him without words: this will be you, this will be you. You will die and you will have no grave and you will wander like the girl with no throat, like the ghosts do, like the puppet-animals, and no one will know where to bring you home to. You are small and you are flesh and you will have no place to moulder.
“Leave,” he says again, and he is a Clay. The Wildmother hears him.
The Trebain boy wavers, vanishes.
He is a Clay, he is clay, he is her clay—when he speaks, is it him? If his inhale is prayer, what is his exhale, what are his words, what is he, what could he become— who does this body belong to—
The trees shake in the distance, drying leaves skittering against each other. There’s a cold drip of water down the back of his neck, the first rain of the season. His breath catches in his throat, wild, holy, hungry. He can feel the goddess pulsing through his veins, spiderwebbing under his skin.
My Clay, Melora whispers, her voice the pattering of raindrops, the beginning of a flood. My vessel, my will in the world. You call to me.
She rises in him like the tide and his mind goes bright and green and sharp, the smell of new leaves in his nose, the sound of a bird screaming in his ears. She does not have to ask—he is her clay. His doors are already open to her, and he has no windows.
The handle of the axe comes alive in his grip.
---
He comes back to himself at sunrise, blinking away birdsong. Exhausted—he feels wrung-out, like even breathing is an ordeal. It is horrifically, blatantly vulnerable; like his entire body is a bared throat, like he’s been turned inside out and reconfigured.
The axe is gone. The inner gate is repaired, and there are smudges of... something, on the stone of it.
He dreams of things he can’t see, snatches of memory that fade away as the days pass. Tall and shadowed and malevolent, close and familiar and to be feared.
There is the forest. There is a sickness in the forest. It is starving.
It will not be kept at bay, even by his goddess who is the world.
Caduceus packs a bag.
There are no more ghosts. There are no more walking corpses.
Autumn comes, and with it a patch of pumpkins he doesn’t remember planting. They grow magnificently large—he would never ask the Wildmother to apologize. That is not what she does, and that is not who he is. It just... it feels like an acknowledgement. Like a sign. She hasn't forgotten him.
Any day now, he tells himself. Any day now, he’ll know what to do.
---
Too many days later to count, the Mighty Nein arrive.