The woods. Arien has gone into the woods.
The Vair Woods stretch from Greymere all the way to our cottage. I know these woods. I see them every day. But I’ve never liked to go inside. Not far from here is where Mother found us all those years ago.
When I step past the border of the forest, my boots sink into the dense undergrowth. Air drifts through the leaves like a whispered voice.
“Arien?” I look ahead but there are only trees, then more trees, then dark. The afternoon sun is blocked out by thickly woven branches. “Arien, are you here?”
Finally my eyes adjust, and I see him—pale skin, flame-bright hair—in the distance, past a line of close-set cedar trees. He’s wide eyed and white, stilled by a wordless terror.
The shadows have already begun to curl at his palms.
I run toward him. Branches snag my skirts and scratch my cheeks. Darkness creeps across his eyes, and his pupils widen. His gaze turns to solid black.
“Leta?”
I grasp his hands. They’re already so cold. I don’t understand. Never before have the shadows come like this. It’s always at night. Not at the center of the village in the Summerbloom daylight, all brightness and green leaves. Not like this.
Terror sweeps over me. Not now, not here. He can’t, he can’t. It doesn’t take much to picture what would happen if someone saw us right now. His blank, dark eyes. The shadows. They would think he’s a monster.
I take hold of his wrist, and he flinches. I’ve gripped him too hard, in the same place where Mother bruised him last night. I quickly loosen my fingers but don’t let go.
I thought I’d mapped the limits of this thing that haunts my brother. It had borders of time and space: only at night, only in our room. But now everything has changed. This is all new. This is all wrong.
The shadows rise and wrap around us. The darkened forest turns darker still. I try to think of warm things. Sunlight. Bees in the wisteria vines. How it feels to make observance, when we put our hands into the earth and feel the golden light that weaves through the whole world. But it’s too cold, too dark.
It’s only a dream—but it’s not, it’s not. We’re in the woods, in the day, and the shadows are all around us.
“Arien!” I dig my fingers into his arm. He makes a sharp, hurt sound. “Arien, call them back, you have to call them back.”
It’s the first time I’ve spoken this terrible thought aloud: that the shadows might be something he can control. I’ve kept it locked away and pushed far down for such a long time. But now it’s spilled out.
I feel the tendons in his wrist go taut. The shadows wash across my face and into my mouth. My throat burns with the taste of them. I’m so cold it aches; I’m lost in the darkness. There’s only the sound of our breathing. The steady throb of pain from my cut knees. A damp heat where fresh blood has seeped through the bandages.
Slowly, I uncurl my fingers from Arien’s wrists. I take his face in my hands. I try to think of something to say to reassure him, but I can’t. So I just hold him. I picture the sunlight in the clearing. I breathe in the baked-earth scent that drifts from the overgrown grass beside the forest. Smooth my thumbs across his cheeks.
“Call them back, Arien,” I whisper. “Make them stop.”
He goes very still. After a long while the shadows soften; he flexes his hands as the last wisps dissolve. The darkness fades from his eyes, and they turn gray again. We step apart. He tips his head back and lets out a shaky breath.
Everything feels wrong and fractured. Like the ground is about to crack apart beneath me. “What was that? Arien, why did it happen now?”
“I don’t know.” He kicks at the ground, scattering leaves. Then he pushes past me, headed for the path. “Come on. It will be our turn for the tithe soon.”
We walk back to the village in silence. When we reach the square, the line of people has cleared away. Everyone else has given their tithes. I take our basket from the ground where I left it and go quickly toward the table. The silver-haired woman has gone. Arien and I are here alone.
The pines that flank the table are dark, with burnished light behind them. Then a shadow peels away from beneath the trees. It takes on the shape of a man. Stripes of variegated shade cut him—gray, black, gray, black—as he crosses the distance between us. I recognize him instantly.
Monster. My mouth shapes the word, but I don’t make a sound. He’s not a woods wolf. Not one of the fierce and terrible creatures from my stories, with claws and fangs and too many eyes.