THEGODDENWOOD.
Surprise jolted down her spine. Ezra had told her Jude’s home wasn’t far from the fabled town, hadn’t he? Maeve had been excited at the potential, at the very nearness of the sanctuary. Somewhere the Abbey’s favoured saints spent their days – a reward for piety and devotion. A place so perfect that even the paintings of it had hurt to look at.
Strange that Siobhan had managed to visit. Why hadn’t she stayed?
Once more, the sense of unrelenting peace stole over her as she gazed down at the jewelled town. Even the colours were brighter, the ridges of the roofs sharp against the cerulean sky. Just like the depictions of it hanging in the Abbey, down to the last shining window and reaching spire.
Distantly, she registered a low thumping, like the thrum of a heart or waves hitting the shore.
Maeve drifted towards it.
Her steps came effortlessly as she moved through the wood. Reaching the clear river bordering the neat wall of pastel houses, she knelt to rinse her hands clean of mud, only to spring back with a choked gasp at the acidic-green sludge coating her fingers. The water still looked crystalline and perfect, but when she reached out to touch it again, only cold slime met her fingers.
Slowly, Maeve got to her feet.
Gold stained the backs of her lids with every blink.
The town was too perfect. Too silent, as she picked her way through its immaculate streets. Every door was closed, every window covered. The town was empty, not a saint to be seen. She could’ve been inside a dollhouse, or some exhibit in a travelling circus.
The thought gave her pause.
Maeve lifted a hand. Shutting her eyes, she traced the contour of a lamppost. It was rough and curved under her fingers, the jagged edges of what felt like a gouged hole pricking her skin.When she opened her eyes, it was back to smooth and crisp black iron.
Odd. Very, very odd.
She continued feeling around with her eyes closed. Each wall and window, even the cobbles beneath her feet felt dilapidated and filthy. Maeve brushed against a bench tucked under the shady cover of another too-perfect tree. Her fingers skimmed over its rugged armrest when, suddenly, her hand sank through something soft and mealy. She pulled back in disgust, opening her eyes to find her hand wrist-deep in a basket of rotten apples.
Then, in a horrifying unfurling, the town’s perfect veneer peeled back into something else entirely.
Thick layers of dirt blanketed every surface, from the sagging rooftops to the uneven streets. Weeds burst through every crack in the earth. A sickly yellow-grey haze hung heavy in the air, smelling sweet and sulphurous. For a moment, she thought the sky itself had decayed.
Surely,surely, this couldn’t be the Goddenwood.
As if hearing her thoughts, the town began to reform back into its visage of false tranquillity, like a fresh blanket tucked over wrinkled and stained bedclothes, hiding the horrors beneath. Disbelief, maybe closer to denial, washed over her. The Abbey had told her this was a perfect town, a reward for the most loyal of saints.
But yet.But yet.
Bending, she peered closer at a slender chain wrapped around the basket handle. An icon swung from it, shining pure gold against the greyed rot of the town. Maeve cradled it in her palm. A woman’s face cast in metal stared back at her. A face she knew. A face she had prayed to, hours and hours of praying, knees to stone, head bent as she begged, as she wept, as she cried out for someone tohear her—
Siobhan.
The woman in the pub was a saint. A saint whose icon hungin the Abbey, whose mind was fading day by day, leaving her to live in fear, in wretched paranoia. And the Goddenwood—
Siobhan’s memories revealed a town far from the idyllic haven the Abbey promised. The Goddenwood wasn’t a reward, Maeve realized. It was a punishment.
She came back into her body with a sickening jolt.
20
Maeve
The walk back to the house passed in a blur. Maeve was vaguely aware of Jude pulling Siobhan’s scarf off her arm, of guiding her from the pub and onto the muddied streets of Oakmoor. She remembered checking her hands almost compulsively, scraping them up and down her sides until Jude trapped her wrists together in one of his hands.
The ghost of his soft reassurances was like a lost melody, like something sweet she’d once tasted – the product of a half-formed dream, where the rest was a nightmare.
It came in flashes and starts, disappearing just as quickly.
A verdant forest made rotten. A town left to crumble.
