Page 113 of Into the Heartless Wood
In this form, I do not like to dream.
The days are filled with work and walls, shut inside away from the sky. The evenings are mine. I spend them in the kitchen courtyard, soaking in the wind and the stars, remembering a time when I did not need food and rest. When I did not crave company. But for all that, I do not miss my siren form.
Because Owen is here. Alive and safe and well andwith me.And the Soul Eater has not yet harmed him.
The evening after I brought Owen to see his sister, he appeared in the kitchen courtyard to thank me. He’s come nearly every evening after, too, and I have learned to busy myself with outdoor tasks as the sun sets, so I’ll be in the courtyard when he arrives.
Tonight, he comes through the gate with his hands plunged deep into his pockets. I am supposed to be shelling peas for Heledd, but the bowls lie abandoned on the bench by the door. I am crouched in the rose beds instead, complimenting the plants on their blossoms. They are white and blush-pink, as different as can be from the blood-red roses in my sister’s hair.
“Bedwyn?”
I jerk upright, my skin warming in that way human skin does when I realize I have done something foolish. Ordinary humans do not talk to plants.
He smiles at me, tilting his head sideways. “How’s Awela today?”
I brush dirt from my fingers and smile back. I have been checking on his sister for him, as often as I can—I am afraid Owen will get caught if he goes to see her again. “She is doing quite well. I smuggled her up an extra biscuit.”
“I’m glad.” He steps to the courtyard wall and climbs up, perching on top of it, as is his habit.
I climb up beside him. I am still unused to this human form, to the cool touch of the evening air on my neck, to the quickening of my pulse at his nearness. “What’s wrong?” I ask, for clearly something is.
“I think the king means to face the Gwydden. Fight the wood.”
Ice shivers through my veins. “When?”
He glances sideways at me—perhaps not what he expected me to say. “Perhaps soon. The army is drilling with fire.”
I try to suppress my shudder.
“Have you ever seen the wood?” he asks.
I cannot answer this truly. I just nod.
“The king will need more than fire. More than blades and musket rounds.” His jaw is tense as he stares out over the army encampment.
Owen is right. But I know enough of the Eater to fear that he has more than weapons and blades. Or that he will soon.
“Will you fight the wood?” I ask. “If the king truly marches against it?”
A hardness comes into his face. “I have no love for the wood.”
I scrape my finger across the top of the stone wall. Every time I see him, I want to tell him the truth. But I cannot. If he knew what I was, he would not sit so close to me, would not speak with me as if I were his friend. It makes the whole of me ache. I try to be content with this. It is all I can ever have.
But it is not all that I want.
Stars appear, in the black expanse of the sky. I want to move closer to Owen, but I do not dare.
He relaxes, as he sits there. He points at one of the brightest stars. “That’s the planet Bugail, Shepherd,” he says. “The stories say it keeps watch over the stars.”
I smile. This is the sort of thing he would say on our hill in the wood. I imagine that he knows I am me. That he doesn’t mind. Or that I am human in truth and what I used to be no longer matters. That I have a soul, deep within my being, that it burns just as brightly as his. “Tell me more about the stars,” I say.
He looks over at me with a smile.
He tells me.
Chapter Forty-Three
OWEN
