“We’re going to keep looking. We’re going to find where he went.”
“Rowan,” he nearly yelled. “What is wrong with you? We’ve lost him. We need to go home.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and started walking in the direction she’d last seen Tom go.
“I’m not going with you,” Jude announced, and she turned to see that he meant it.
“That’s fine. I didn’t invite you. You followed me.”
“I followed Tom.”
“Then go back home, Jude,” she said, waving him off. “I don’t need you.”
“Don’t do this,” Jude said.
“Why not?” she said, more defiant than curious.
“Because whatever it is you’re searching for, I have a feeling it’s something that’s best left unseen.”
Rowan looked at Jude standing there in the moonlight, his chin lifted to the sky, and then she turned and headed deeper into the woods, determined to find Tom.
As she darted through the trees, the darkness closing in around her, she feared that Jude was right. She had lost Tom, but still she searched. He was out there somewhere, and she would find him.
The pain in her leg grew, and eventually she stopped. She chose a clearing near an ancient yew tree for her resting spot. She leaned against the tree’s massive, twisting roots and tried to steady her breath.
That was when she heard it. Tom’s voice somewhere far below the earth. Slowly she backed away from the tree, taking in its full breadth for the first time. She knew this tree. When she was a child, it had frightened her. Tom’s grandmother had called it a fairy tree. She said it was a poison thing, thousands of years old. Erupting from the ground in a gnarled tangle of knots and eyes, it shot up, only to spring forth like a terrible insect in a multitude of twisted twigs and branches. The farther Rowan moved away from it, the more distant Tom’s voice seemed to grow, and the tree itself seemed to whisper to her:
Death … death … death …
And then she heard it again, coming closer, moving through the trees. She was in its path. She could feel it—feel her insides begin to change, altered in the very presence of the beast. Darting to her left, she scrambled up a large rock and lay flat, her cheek pressed against its surface. She could hear it now, approaching fast. She willed herself to keep her head down, not to look, but she found that she couldn’t. It was right below her now. She had to know. She had to see. She poked her head up and opened her eyes. What she saw was so vile, the sight of it made her feel foul, dirty.
It walked upright, clicking along on legs made of splintered bone. It had teeth like great needles and eyes like the blackest of pits. It moved in a jagged way, lurching forward unexpectedly, and then suddenly standing stiller than still, so still, in fact, that Rowan could not tell the beast from the forest around it. Just when Rowan was certain it had disappeared, it would spring forth again, chattering its monstrous teeth, arms spindly as branches searching before it like spiders closing in on their prey.
The monster paused, rising to its full height, and exhaled, clouds of gray vapor issuing from between its slivered teeth. Guiding its rotten head from left to right, it appeared to be looking for something. And then in a flash, it fell down on all fours like a grossly elongated and skeletal wolf, and with a horrifying noise like the grinding of saw against bone, it pushed off and disappeared deep into the woods.
Rowan’s whole body shook. It was gone. It was gone, she kept telling herself, and she had to get home, get indoors. As she climbed down from the rock, her limbs were like rubber, and she nearly lost her grasp more than once.
When her feet touched the ground, her legs were shaking so badly that they nearly gave way. And then she was running, her ankle no longer a nuisance. It was only when she’d made it home and was safe inside that she really understood that whatever that thing out there in those woods was, it was something much more terrifying than she’d ever considered.
Tom tried to tell himself that his life hadn’t gotten wildly out of control. He tried to tell himself that any man would make the same choices he was making. He tried to tell himself that he was somehow special, that he had been chosen for his exceptional nature, and that he was therefore uniquely capable of dealing with what was clearly an exceptional situation.
Since their first encounter, he had been spending every night with Fiona, and what nights they were. In the morning, there were always parts he couldn’t remember, parts that seemed to run together, flashes of her red lips, her creamy thighs, the slope of her neck, and words that didn’t match, words from another time. And always his memory of the previous night was disjointed, as if it existed outside of time. At home in his bed, lying in the light, begging the Goddess for sleep that refused to come, his mind would run over it all, and he would see Fiona laughing in the woods, spinning around, then suddenly howling and beautiful, and then he would be totally alone somewhere he didn’t recognize, only to be back with her greeting him in the ghostly moonlight as he arrived, and then laughing while she showed him some new trick she had taught herself since their last meeting. And all the while, inside him, something seemed to be changing, twisting him, sucking the anger out of his cells and pulling it ever closer to the surface so that at any moment, he feared he might snap.
He was in the middle of the woods, near her tree, when he heard the whistle. It seemed to come from above, so he looked up. Ribbons of moonlight slipped between the trees, and he delighted in the way the snow seemed to dance through the beams. And then he felt her hands slide over his eyes from behind.
He always knew it was her because of the heat and because of her scent, that rich earthy scent she’d had since coming to him that first night. Sometimes he wondered if it had something to do with the way her feet and shins never seemed to come clean. Even when she washed, they always seemed to remain dirty.
“Guess who?” she purred into his ear, and he smiled wide, his heart nearly bursting with joy. She spun him around and there her face was, more radiant, more beautiful than ever. And then he was somewhere else—inside her tree hollow, warm and drunk on her beauty. With each passing day, she seemed to grow more exquisite. She smiled at him, and instantly, his body was on fire. He was suddenly awake, out of his daze, everything crisp and clear like it never was back home. He kissed her, and she pressed herself against him.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
“It hasn’t been all that long.”
“It’s too much for me,” she said, smiling up at him with those limpid eyes. “I don’t know what to do with myself when you’re gone.”
“Then come with me,” he whispered, burying his face in her neck, her hair.
“You know I can’t do that, Tom. This is my home now. But maybe, somehow it could be yours too.”
He held her face in his hands, and in that instant there was nothing more precious to him in the world. And then she paused and held a finger to her lips. “Quiet,” she whispered, pointing to the forest above them. “Someone’s up above.”
He moved to ask what she meant, but Fiona held her hand to his mouth. And then he heard it as well—the beast, Fiona’s beast—that thing he could never completely see, and yet which always seemed to be nearby. Sometimes it looked like the snow through the trees, sometimes like jagged bones, and sometimes it looked like death itself.
“It’s safe now,” she said, removing her hand from his mouth and kissing him. “The girl is gone. Come on.” She pulled him to his feet. “There’s something I want to show you, but first you must close your eyes.”