Page 4 of Into the Heartless Wood
Father steps through the door just as I am spooning cawl into three bowls, and Awela launches herself at him, searching his pockets for the chocolates she knows he’s tucked away for her there. She finds half a dozen, which I confiscate from her, promising she can eat them after dinner. Father pulls off his boots, hangs his cap on its wall peg, and stretches, his skin weathered and tanned from his long days of work in full view of the sun. He perches his spectacles onto his nose—he never wears them in the fields, for fear of breaking them—then washes up and comes to sit at the table.
We eat, and afterward Awela plays on the floor by Father’s feet while he reads his newspaper, glancing down at her affectionately every minute or so. I step outside for more coal, shoveling it into the coal scuttle from the bin outside the kitchen. The bin is running low—I’ll have to walk into the village soon to buy more. Long ago, the people of Tarian burned wood in their fireplaces, just like Saeth and Gwaed across the mountains. Some people still do, if they can’t afford coal, collecting loose twigs or branches the wind has broken off. Only the greatest of fools would dare cut down a whole tree.
King Elynion tried to burn the Gwydden’s Wood, once, in the early days of his reign. He scorched miles of trees, and she retaliated by slaughtering an entire village of people. He thwarts her in different ways, now. With the train. With the telegraph wires running for miles under the ground to make communication with Saeth and Gwaed swift and cost effective. But if the king’s man is to be believed, she is finding her own ways to fight back.
I return to the house, lugging the coal.
The mantel clock chimes eight, and I scoop up the protesting Awela for bed. She gives Father four slimy kisses and then I take her into her room, changing her back into her little nightgown, tucking the covers up to her chin.
“Story, Wen,” she says in her high squeaky voice. “Story.”
I tell her the story I do most nights, about the man who watches the stars, about his wife who goes away on a long journey and can’t find her way back to him. She makes herself into a star so he can always see her, so that, in a way, she can always be with him.
Awela doesn’t understand, but she likes the sound of my voice, the familiar rhythm of the story. I turn down her lamp and kiss her forehead and shut her door.
Out in the main part of the house, Father has already gone, his newspaper and spectacles absent from their place on the little end table by the stove. I don’t know how late he stays up reading every night before falling asleep in the room that must feel empty without my mother. But I do know it’s up to me to fulfill his contract with King Elynion, as it has been every night since my mother was lost.
I set our stewpot to soak in the sink, and climb up to the observatory.
I light the lamp on the worn wooden desk that waits beside the telescope, and absently spin the rings of the brass armillary sphere my father brought back from his university days. I put the kettle on the stove that hugs the back wall and make a pot of cinnamon tea; its potent sweet scent fills the whole room. Then there’s the dome to open and the telescope to adjust, this evening’s empty star charts to take from their drawer and lay out on the desk.
I settle into the chair in front of the telescope and peer into the eyepiece. Thankfully the storm has broken apart, so I have a clear view as the sky grows dark. The planet Cariad is the first to rise, bright near the horizon. I mark its position on the first of tonight’s charts with a scratch of my pen. I wait for more planets to appear, watching for red Rhyfel and the paler Negesydd, and of course the first of the stars.
There are millions of stars in the sky, and scientists speculate there are millions more we can’t see, even with the aid of telescopes. What I do every night—what my father used to do, before my mother was lost—is mark down the positions of all the stars we possibly can: the ones that make up the constellations, the ones between and around the constellations. The planets. The phases of the moon. I have an empty chart for each position of the telescope, with curved lines marking the path of the ecliptic. There’s one whole chart to mark the Arch of the Wind, the spray of stars that look like handfuls of snow strewn across the sky.
The stars are predictable—that’s what I like best about them. I’ve been charting them by myself for a whole year now, watching them move in their set patterns across the celestial sphere. I reallydon’tknow why the king hired my father to do this, why he demands secrecy. When I was younger, I used to pore over the charts, looking for patterns and predictions. There are stories about the constellations, about the movements of planets and their proximity to each other predicting the future, plotting out the events of your life. But I’ve only seen order. Wonder. Besides Awela and my parents, the stars are what I love best in the world.
Slowly, methodically, I begin the process of charting the stars, shifting the telescope to a new part of the sky when each chart is full.
I’ve marked only three charts when the observatory door creaks open, and I look back to find my father there, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose. His presence surprises me. He looks exhausted, as he has ever since my mother was lost, but there’s a determination in his eyes that’s been gone so long, I forgot it was ever there.
“May I join you?” he asks, hesitant, as though he fears I’ll turn him away.
I grin. “Of course, Father. I’ve only been keeping up the work in your absence.”
“I’m not chasing you away,” he clarifies.
A knot I didn’t know had formed in my chest loosens again. I pop up from the desk and drag a second chair over. Father pours himself some tea, and we settle in together, taking turns at the telescope, trading off marking the stars on the charts.
Contentment fills me. I’ve missed my father—he’s been here and yet not here, gone in a different way than my mother. This is how it used to be: my father teaching me how to chart the stars, the two of us staying awake long into the night drinking cinnamon tea.
The work goes faster with him there, and when the charts have all been filled and bound safely in their folder to be given to the king’s man at the end of the month, Father and I linger in the observatory. I get the feeling that he has missed this, perhaps even more than I have.
“Owen,” he says, as the lamp burns low and we drain the dregs of our tea, “can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Father.”
His brow furrows, and he puts his hand on my shoulder. “We would have been lost, if not for you. The king’s coin. The house. Little Awela. Without you holding us all together, I don’t know what would have become of us. I shouldn’t have left you to fend for yourself.”
My throat hurts; the subject is perilously close to Mother’s absence, which I’m not sure either of us have the courage to discuss just now. “I’ve been all right. Really. God gave me strength enough.”
Father smiles at me, setting down his tea mug to place his hands on my shoulders. “I am blessed to have such a son. But I have too long neglected you, Awela as well. It’s time for you to start thinking about learning a trade, apprenticing with someone in the village. You’re old enough now.”
I stare at him, entirely blindsided. “I don’t want to learn another trade—I’m going to be an astronomer like you. Besides, you need me to keep the house and watch Awela. Help chart the stars.”
Father shakes his head. “Let me worry about Awela. I need to get both of you away from here before the wood—” The word chokes him. He takes a breath. “Before the wood winds itself into your souls. It’s something I should have done long ago. I can’t lose either of you. I won’t.”
I want to point out that we’ve been perfectly safe for the last year, but I think of the music, oozing more often than not from the trees, of Awela stretching up her tiny hand to reach the branch hanging over the wall, of myself hanging out the observatory window.
