Around them, the wood quieted. The white snow glittered on the banks of the pond between them. From his perch, the king stroked the glossy feathers of his raven companion, waiting for her question.
“It … hasn’t changed back,” she continued.
“Hmm,” said the king. “And you’re wondering why.”
Emeline nodded. Her next words caught strangely in her throat and when she tried to force them out, a sound bubbled up instead. Like a sob she’d imprisoned for months now, trying to make a break for it. She swallowed it down.
The Wood King lifted the raven to one of the saplings growing from his back. As the bird scrambled up into the thin branches, perching there to stare at Emeline, the king leaned forward. “Come here.”
The king pointed to the pond between them and Emeline watched in wonder as a layer of pale blue ice crept across its calm surface, crackling and solidifying until it was thick enough to bear her weight.
She stepped onto it, crossing towards him.
“Once,” the king began, “there grew a tree on the border of two worlds. It was an unremarkable tree, and if it had been planted anywhere else, it might have lived an unremarkable life.
“But there is power at the edges: that sliver between night and day, the place where winter touches spring, the boundary where forest meets field. Wild magic grows between the cracks in all things.
“On this same border lived a girl with an enchanted voice. She loved to climb into the tree’s branches, telling it her secrets and singing it her songs. She did this so often, her voice woke the tree up.”
Me?thought Emeline.
“Awakened, her spirit made him long to be human,” the king continued. “I heard his pleas echo through the woods, begging me to transform him. So we made a deal: In exchange for my help, he would collect my tithes once a season. For as long as he collected the tithes he could remain human, but to forsake his duty was to forsake his humanity.”
I’m bound to the woods,Hawthorne had told Emeline two years ago, when he refused to come with her to Montreal.
This was why.
Emeline’s heartbeat quickened. “If you changed him then, couldn’t you change him again?”
The king studied her with those strange black eyes. The white pupils were waxing crescents today. “The hawthorn was awake the first time. He asked me to change him.”
She frowned. “And now?”
That dark gaze fixed on her sadly, almost piteously. “I can’t change a thing that doesn’t want to be changed.”
Emeline frowned. But that meant …
He doesn’t want to come back?
“Maybe it’s time to move on,” the king said kindly.
Emeline turned her face away, trying to hide what those words did to her.
“Moving on doesn’t have to mean forgetting, Song Mage.”
MUCH LATER, EMELINE SATin the silence of Hawthorne’s empty house. She spent most nights here, despite the row house the king gave her in the heart of the city. At first, she stayed because Hawthorne’s smell was on the pillows. When the smell of him left, she stayed to keep it warm for him.
And if I’m keeping it warm for someone who’s never coming home?
Emeline sat cross-legged on the white rug before the small, crackling fire. An oil lamp burned beside her, illuminating the book in her lap: a compilation of poems by Christina Rossetti.
His books, these poems—they were a link to him. Her fingers touching pages he had touched, her eyes reading words his had read.
Emeline promised to be at Pa’s for dinner tonight, and the sun was already going down. But she couldn’t stop thinking of the Wood King’s story.
Maybe the king was right. Maybe it was time to stop waiting. To put out the fire and turn out the lights and move on.
But why would Hawthorne not want to come back?
