Page 4 of The Light Between Worlds

“Please, Phil,” I whisper. “Couldn’t we stay? Just for a little while?”

“Evie!” Philippa sounds scandalized, and it makes me feel so small. “What about Mum and Dad?”

It’s the stag who saves me. He moves to my side once more and I twist my fingers into the thick fur around his shoulders.

“You may stay as long as you like, and when you are ready to return, I will send you back to the very moment you were called,” he offers, lowering his head. “It will be as if you never left. But don’t look to escape trouble in the Woodlands—your world may have a war already being fought, but here we live under the shadow of a war that’s sure to come.”

For a moment, Philippa is silent. Then she speaks. “Swear it. Swear that Mum and Dad will be alright—that they won’t miss us, and that all of us will find our way home.”

The stag bows his head. “On my name and my honor. I, Cervus, Guardian of the Great Wood, born at midnight to Afara the milk-white hind, keeper of the Woodlands’ sacred heart, possessed of the power to call between worlds, swear this to you.”

“Swear what?” Philippa presses.

“That your family will be safe. That you won’t be missed.”

“And that we will find our way home.”

Cervus lowers his head further in assent. “And that you will find your way home.”

“All of us,” Philippa says sharply. “That we will all find our way home.”

The stag paws at the forest floor, and I’m not sure if it’s a gesture of annoyance or amusement or perhaps both. “I swear by my power and pride that you will all find your way home.”

But Philippa still looks uncertain, until I cross the clearing and slip my hand into hers.

“Phil, everything’s going to be alright. I believe him.”

When she turns to me I smile, more brightly than I have in years. My sister pulls me close and I can feel her nod to the stag, though her hand on my shoulders trembles.

Cervus turns to Jamie, who stands watching us.

“What about you? Will you stay in the Woodlands for now? Or should I send you back?”

Jamie’s wearing his serious, ever-so-responsible-eldest-brother look, but excitement lurks behind his eyes. “Well, I think Phil’s covered any objections I’d have. So if you’ve got a war effort and you’re on the right side, point me at it. I’ve been waiting to help out with ours long enough.”

“And you, little one?” the stag asks me. “Will you stay in the Great Wood now you’ve seen it? Now you know what we wait for?”

I hesitate. “Can I speak to you, sir? Alone?”

In answer, Cervus leaves the clearing, slipping between the overarching trees.

“Not too far, Ev,” Philippa warns, and I raise a hand in acknowledgment as I follow after the stag. He waits patiently, just far enoughfrom my brother and sister that if I pitch my voice low, we won’t be heard.

Biting my lip, I stare down at my bare feet, still grimed with mud from our back garden in London. “How did this happen? How could I possibly have called to you when we’ve never met? When I never knew there was such a place as this wood?”

Cervus watches me unblinkingly, and I look up to meet his gaze.

“Child, in the Great Wood we have a saying—a Woodlands heart always finds its way home. We speak it over our newborn. We speak it over our dead. We speak it to one another as we live. I may be the forest’s Guardian, but it’s not for me to question into which bodies Woodlands hearts are placed, or when they call out for home.

“And I wish I could offer you a world without war, but here are the Woodlands, such as they are. We are not at peace in the Great Wood, but there is still a measure of it to be found under these trees for those who are willing to look. Will you search for it with me?”

“I was afraid of our war,” I confess. “And I expect I’ll be afraid of another, but being here—it’s like everything’s turned right-side up when I never knew I’d been living upside down. I think—I know—I’d follow you anywhere, and into anything.”

“Then step lightly, and tread where I tread,” Cervus says, loud enough so Philippa and Jamie will hear. “I have an appointment to keep, and we have far to go.”

3

A BOY JOINS ME AT THE MAGAZINE STAND ON THErailway platform. It’s a relief to have someone to take my mind off things—off the fact that not only am I out of place, in the absence of Jamie and Philippa, I’m also alone. The boy is ginger-haired and freckled, with big hands and too-long, awkward limbs. I like him before he even speaks. I like his honest smile and his ears that stick out a bit. Despite his height, he reminds me of a Woodlands people called stonewardens. When he speaks, it’s in a Yorkshire accent, and my toes curl in my school shoes. He even sounds like a stonewarden.