Page 114 of Into the Heartless Wood
EVERY EVENING AFTER DINNER, ICLIMB THE HILL TO THE IRONgate of the prison courtyard, and try to see my father. The prison is on the opposite side of the hill from the kitchen, but despite the imposing gate and the numerous guards, the courtyards are strikingly similar to each other. The first night I attempt to see him, the guard actually lets me into the courtyard, tells me to wait while he checks the prison records to see if my father is allowed visitors. He’s not.
“Do you even have permission from your commanding officer to be up here, soldier?” he asks suspiciously.
“Of course,” I lie. “He knows all about it.”
But by the next evening, he’s checked with Taliesin and found I donothave permission—that in fact I’ve been specifically forbidden to see my father—and orders me away with an oath. That doesn’t keep me from coming back every night, hoping he’ll change his mind, or that there will be a different guard in place of him who’ll make an exception for me. It never happens. I strike up an odd sort of camaraderie with the guard—after a week or two, he jokes he could set his watch by me, and reprimands me if I’m late. But he doesn’t let me past the gate again.
Every evening after my attempt to see my father, I hike around the hill to the kitchen courtyard. Bedwyn is almost always there, dumping out scraps or sweeping up the feathers left over from plucking chickens. Sometimes she’s just leaning against the wall, not doing anything. She always smiles when she sees me. I always smile back. And then I ask her how Awela is.
Somehow we’ve reached an understanding that she would check on my sister, as often as she can, because sneaking me back into the palace is too risky.
“I have befriended the nurse,” she tells me, some weeks after my reunion with Awela. “She isn’t quite as awful as she appears.”
I grimace. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.” Bedwyn clambers up onto the courtyard wall and sits facing the army encampment. Her legs dangle in open air.
I join her, the stones still warm from the afternoon sun. “But is Awela being taken care of? Is she happy?”
“The nurse loves her,” Bedwyn says. “She is doing the best she can for your sister.”
I sigh, rubbing my fingers along the stone. It reminds me of the wall my father built too late to keep the wood from stealing my mother. I push away the image of her clawing out her own heart.
“What is it?”
I glance at her. Tendrils of pale gold hair have escaped from her maid’s cap, and the wind teases them about her face. Her freckles stand out starkly against her pale skin, and her eyes are the green of deep summer. The sunset traces her with yellow light. Suddenly I’m staring at her lips, wanting very badly to kiss her.
“Owen?”
I flush and look away again, out over the plains. I will my heart to stop its mad pounding. “I don’t know how to help Awela or how to free my father—I can’t even get in to see him.”
“You will think of something,” she says, with a quiet confidence I’ve grown to expect from her.
A few nights later, I tell her about my mother—not everything, just that she was lost to the witch in the wood.
Bedwyn grows quiet and pale. “I have no love for my own mother,” she says. “I am sorry about yours.” Her eyes lock onto mine. “Will you tell me about her?”
So I do—about her university days and her cello, about her infectious laughter and the sweet sound of her singing. Of the happiness we had when she was with us.
Tears drip down Bedwyn’s cheeks. “You should not have had to lose her. Not like that. I am so sorry.”
I take Bedwyn’s hand. Her skin is rough with work, and there are freckles on her fingers. I try not to think of another hand, smooth and sharp at once. “It isn’t your fault,” I say.
A few nights after that, I ask her to tell me about herself, something I realize with embarrassment I should have asked a long time ago.
She’s quiet for a while. We’re up on the wall again, watching the twilight fade to black. It seems we’re always up on the wall now.
“I am the youngest of eleven children,” she says. “I never had a father and my mother is … unkind.”
“Did you run away from home?”
She nods. “This is my first job. My first …” She spreads her hands out. “My first everything.”
“Do you think you’ll stay here, working in the palace?”
“No. I am only here until I understand what to do. Or until my time runs out.”
“What do you mean?”
