The black-eyed girl stands at the edge of the forest, watching for Peter’s approach. He has not seen her. He navigates, he thinks, by the angle of the light, though in truth he is wandering blindly, the black-eyed girl guiding him to where the women wait for him, the black-eyed girl preparing to open the wood.
“I told you he would come,” hisses Mary, standing back in the group of seven women who flank their new leader. “A fool, like all the rest of them, deserving of his lot.”
“Don’t say such things,” says Imogen.
The black-eyed girl ignores them; she’ll be finished with them soon. She hums a low note, and raises one arm. Peter’s gaze follows, neck stretching back. He sees the swirl of sky, amassing clouds that smell of rain. He rubs two fingers under his glasses. He sees the women. Sees the black-eyed girl. He stills himself, breathes deep.
“I’ve done it,” Peter whispers, filled more with awe than fear. “I was right! I knew . . . I knew it! Maisie, my darling! How long have you been in here? More importantly, do you know where here is? What you’re caught in . . .” He pauses, sensing that something is different. These are not his child’s eyes. “My daughter . . . Could you . . . Could you be?”
“The girl you’ve raised to be so docile?” The black-eyed girl’s tone has no inflection; her voice is low and harsh. “The girl you’ve gelded? The child whose purpose you’ve concealed?”
“You’re not . . .” Peter’s voice quavers. He coughs. He is not prepared for animosity. He expected to be lauded as rescuer, the lost women to bow or praise him, to cry ghostly tears of joy. He expected his child to blink up at him, her green eyes his own, whispering Father, you have saved me, I forgive you all your faults. “I will not let you harm my daughter.”
“No. It’s too late for that,” says the black-eyed girl. “You’ve done the harm yourself.”
“She is a child,” Peter says. “Give her back to me at once. I don’t know what you are, what you’ve become here in this forest, but its remedy is surely not the conquest of my daughter, her corruption, the betrayal of her free will. All those things that will—” He pauses, because the black-eyed girl has stepped forward. She has inhaled the stink of the Blakely women and exhaled a low, guttural note. It stops Peter cold. He should feel excited, having completed the ritual, yet he only feels unease.
“You are too late,” the black-eyed girl tells him. “I have you.”
“Well, I think that’s quite a stretch to say that you—” Peter cannot resist the belaboring of semantics. Finally, something familiar. He has not been had, this plan has been his all along: to trace the spirals, find the passage, help his daughter to escape. He did not think to find her kidnapped, transformed so fully, surrounded by such foul-smelling women in such fascinating attire. If they simply set the child free, he will help them. Peter will do all in his power to join their cause. The girl will be left out of it, and all will soon be well. His rhetorical powers, his evidence . . .
“You see here, I found you. I completed the rites, followed the ley lines. I opened the wood.”
He is interrupted by the black-eyed girl’s humorless laugh. “You? You’ve done nothing. And there is nothing you can do.”
Peter frowns. “Well, if there’s nothing to be done, I don’t see why we should keep arguing.” He means this as belittling, but it comes across as sullen. The women sense him teetering, peering over the edge at the distance he might fall.
Alys steps forward. The others try to mask their surprise.
“The child’s power is growing,” says Alys, looking only at Peter, ignoring the tittering behind her, the black-eyed girl’s stare. “The door will be unlocked.”
“I’ve already unlocked the door,” Peter says, frowning.
“No.” Alys is stone-faced. “You have not.”
Peter, lost in thought: The door, he thinks, the borders. Rules made to be followed, lines drawn not to be crossed. He must remind the child, the real child, once he has found her. He must reiterate the lessons he’s conveyed throughout the years. Must reinforce the boundaries. Much to be done. He turns to take his child and go, certain that once free from this wood she’ll return to her previous form.
But the black-eyed girl is not obedient. She is not Peter’s daughter. She knows nothing of human morality, nothing of empathy or ethics, nothing of borders. The black-eyed girl knows only the unflinching path of nature, the electricity of hunger. She cocks her head, she licks her lips, she takes a slow step forward.
But before she can act, Alys raises a dirt-blackened hand. A vine spirals up from the ground and arrests Peter mid-step, curling around his ankle, yanking, so that he plunges forward to the ground. His top teeth hit the lower with a satisfying crack. The vine lengthens, continues to coil, snaking across Peter’s torso and noosing his wrists. It rolls him onto his back, so that his head hangs crooked. Wide leaves grow up around him like a cloak.
The black-eyed girl nods at Alys, saying nothing. The others hold their breath until the girl has fully left the clearing, until all sound and all scent of her is gone. Relieved, they erupt into a boil of nervous laughter, and disperse without talk of when they all will meet again.
Their world is changing, and they cannot yet predict it. The wood shifts shape before their eyes. The tree that now holds Peter will grow tall.