“HERE. SEE?”
The nurse’s white sneakers squeaked against the clean floors of the hall. Emeline followed, glancing down at the woman’s shadow. Checking its shape. A ridiculous habit instilled in her by Poor Mad Tom when she was a kid. You can always tell a shiftling by their shadow. Emeline forced her gaze away.
“It’s exactly as he left it.”
Emeline—who’d driven through the night and arrived late this morning—halted as she stepped into the room.
It smelled like him.
Like home.
Pa’s bed was made, his forest-green comforter turned neatly down. Its fernlike pattern was so familiar, it filled her with a belly-deep longing for the simple comforts of her childhood.
Beside the bed sat a pair of brown slippers, waiting for him to step into. On the dresser, old picture frames stood in a wobbly row, their glass recently dusted. The photos within all bore Emeline’s image—chubby and rosy cheeked at two, gangly and awkward at eleven, lithe and tall at sixteen while she strummed a guitar up onstage.
Emeline wanted to pinch the bridge of her nose. But that would draw the nurse’s sympathy. Instead, she blinked and swallowed, staving off the memories.
“Can I have a minute alone?”
The nurse’s round face crinkled as she smiled sweetly. “Of course.” She tucked a strand of curly brown hair into her messy bun, then turned to leave. “I’ll be down the hall if you need me.”
In her absence, Emeline’s hands shook—mainly from the extra-large coffee she’d gulped down this morning. The last time she caught a glimpse of her reflection, her eyes were dark and sunken and her black hair hung limp around her washed-out face.
But there was no time to rest.
The sooner she found Pa, the sooner she could return to her life. She’d already emailed her manager, asking him to cancel her gigs this week. She hated leaving people in a lurch. She needed to get back as soon as possible.
It was why she stood here, in Pa’s room, searching for clues the staff and police had overlooked. Looking for hints of what Pa was thinking the night he wandered off.
Beside the bed, a calendar hung on the wall. Emeline stepped towards it. A black x had been drawn with Sharpie through each day of September. The x’s stopped the day before Pa went missing. September 22 was the first box without one.
It read: Autumn Equinox.
The season’s turn.
When the Wood King collects his tithes.
Before she could reject that thought, the room around her shifted. She stopped looking through the lens of a girl from a big city and started looking through the eyes of a girl who’d grown up in Edgewood.
Things she’d missed at first glance now stood out like tacky cottage signs.
First were the gnarled branches hanging over Pa’s door, tied together with twine, their boughs clustered with bright red berries and dark green leaves. Judging by the fresh, sweet smell, they’d been recently cut.
In Edgewood, people hung hawthorn branches over their doors on the night of the Hunt, which happened in early autumn. The magic in the hawthorn’s sap prevented the Hunt from entering their homes—or so they believed.
Her grandfather used to make a game of it. When Emeline was little, on the eve of the Hunt they timed themselves, trying to beat last year’s record as they ran through the house, bolting windows and doors, hanging hawthorn branches from the nails above the lintels. Afterwards, they inspected each other’s work, docking points for sloppiness, giving points for the snuggest lock or most creative hawthorn arrangement. Then Pa made extra-buttery popcorn and together they watched movies with the volume turned way up.
One such evening, a rattling from the other end of the house drew Emeline’s attention away. Getting up from the couch where Pa sat engrossed by the film they were watching, his buttery fingers sinking into the popcorn bowl, Emeline sought out the sound.
She followed it all the way to the mudroom, where the door was shaking on its hinges, the handle turning frantically back and forth. As if someone—or something—was trying to get in. Emeline had stood frozen, heart pounding, staring at the knob as a terrible smell seeped under the door. Like rotting wood and old bones. She must have screamed, because suddenly Pa appeared, picking her up and carrying her back to the couch, telling her it was nothing. Just the wind.
Emeline shook off the memory, prickling with unease. It was just the wind. Pa himself had said so. Either that, or Poor Mad Tom playing a prank on them.
The second thing she spotted in Pa’s room was the empty copper bowl, half hidden beneath the bed. Getting down on her hands and knees, she pulled it out. The bowl’s cold, heavy curve—twice the size of her cupped hands—sparked memories. As a child, she often begged to leave a tithe of her own in this bowl. Her favorite dress, or her most beloved doll. Wanting to feel grown-up.
Pa always gave the same answer.
No, duckie. It’s my job to protect you. One day, you’ll understand.
Emeline ran her fingers over the copper, feeling the rough marks from Poor Mad Tom’s hammer. Tom cold-forged all of Edgewood’s tithing bowls in his garage-turned-forge. She touched the inscription around the rim. Words she’d traced over and over with much tinier fingers, so long ago.
The steepest sacrifices make the strongest tithes.
Emeline shivered.
The hawthorn branches, the tithing bowl … they were like fingerprints at a crime scene. The marks of Edgewood—a place where people believed the forest took things from them.
Like last winter, when Cornelius Henrik was convinced it stole one of his horses. It was dusk when Corny saw the shadow skin—a thing of nightmares—come out of the woods and sink its glistening teeth into the horse’s throat. By the time Corny ran outside, the monster had dragged its meal into the bare black trees, leaving the snow stained red.
The next morning, Corny found a pearl-like orb sitting in the horse’s stall: proof of a tithe paid.
But that wasn’t what really happened.
Monsters didn’t come out of the woods to eat horses. Starving wolves did. Growing up, Emeline had fallen asleep to the sounds of them howling, killing things in the dark.
The forest takes what it likes and never apologizes, Pa used to say.
Why has it never taken from us?
Because we always pay our tithes.
The summer before Corny’s horse disappeared, the forest supposedly took Grace Abel, a girl Emeline’s age. It was Labor Day weekend, and Grace’s parents had invited all the neighbors over for dinner. It was dusk when Grace’s mother, Eshe, saw the flash of black among the forest’s green-gold leaves, making her look up from scrubbing the dishes.
While the voices of her tipsy dinner guests wafted through the house, Eshe saw Grace—her thick black curls undone, haloing her head and shoulders—walk into the woods hand in hand with something else.
Eshe grabbed her blue knit shawl, flung it over her shoulders, and ran after the girl. By the time she reached the tree line, there was no hint of Grace. Just the trees chattering their warnings … and a pearl-sized orb left behind on a stack of Grace’s textbooks.
But this, too, was a lie.
The real story was much more mundane.
Grace Abel spent high school getting straight A’s. She was accepted into every university she applied to, most offering her full scholarships. Her parents were the proudest people in Edgewood.
And then, a few months before classes started, Grace got cold feet.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to go. Not yet. She’d spent four years of high school holed up in her room, studying. She’d had no social life, resulting in very few friends, and now she was about to enter university and do it all over again.
Grace wanted to take a year off. Wanted to make up for lost time.
Wanted to breathe.
Her parents were livid. They feared if she didn’t go to school that fall, she wouldn’t go to school ever. They couldn’t allow such a thing. Their daughter had worked too hard to let it go to waste.
Emeline heard through the Edgewood grapevine (aka Maisie’s gossip) that Grace and her parents fought viciously that summer, and that those fights ended in an ultimatum: if Grace didn’t go to school that September, she couldn’t stay in Edgewood.
So, the night of her parents’ dinner party, Grace angrily packed her things and did exactly what her parents told her to do. No shadowy creatures stole her away. The forest didn’t take her. Grace left and didn’t come back. Apparently, she hadn’t spoken to her parents since.
The forest didn’t take things—not intentionally. Yes, accidents happened. Sometimes cows went missing or whole flocks of hens didn’t lay eggs or entire cornfields came up rotten. But these were just misfortunes. There wasn’t anything malicious behind them.
Emeline didn’t begrudge her old neighbors their fairy tales, though. She understood why they lied to themselves. Believing in monsters and cruel, fey kings made things easier. It gave them something to blame when senseless disasters struck.
The stories and rituals of Edgewood were touchstones. Ways of dealing with deep losses.
It didn’t make her angry, that the neighbors brought Pa superstitious objects. It only made her sad. The hawthorn branches, the tithing basin … they were comforts and coping mechanisms. Ways of processing grief. Because Ewan Lark, their neighbor and friend, was slowly losing his mind. And in losing his mind, they were losing him.
She understood it.
She simply coped in a different way.
Emeline wrenched herself back to the present. To the sterile room and the task at hand: finding her grandfather.
Something glinted on his pillow then, catching her attention.
Emeline stepped towards the bed. A tiny orb rested in the center of the pale green pillowcase. She picked it up.
The orb was smaller than a marble, but bigger than a pearl, and it was unnaturally cold to the touch. Opal-like colors swirled beneath the surface: pale blues and greens and creamy whites.
Emeline stared for several seconds, unable to catch her breath. Knowing what this was despite every part of her that screamed it wasn’t true.
The mark of a tithe paid.