FIVE MONTHS LATER
AS THE RED SUN rose over the winter wood, the Song Mage trod the quiet halls of the Wood King’s palace, cutting through sleeping gardens and courtyards and promenades, her boots ringing on the tiled floors. Below, the King’s City lay like a patchwork quilt, all rust-red rooftops and gray-cobbled streets covered in snow. Beyond the wall, the trees were stripped bare.
Every once in a while, Emeline caught a faint whiff of spring in the air—the smell of buds on the cusp of unfurling, of green things poking up through the snow. Spring was coming.
Perhaps it could thaw her frozen heart.
Five months had passed since she’d sung to the Heartwood and tithed everything that once mattered most to the woods. Since then, the forest had reclaimed itself. The Wood King sat upon his white throne once more, his eyes clear, his spirit uncorrupted. The shiftling court had slowly resumed their human forms, coming back to themselves one by one over the last several months.
Emeline’s life here had fallen into an easy rhythm. With her memories returned to her, her friendships with Sable and Rooke were restored, and she spent most evenings with them and Grace. When she wasn’t in the King’s City, she visited her grandfather—who lived in his own house again, cared for by shiftling nurses sent by the king and visited regularly by his friends. She spent time at Tom’s, where her mother lived, safe from the things in the woods.
Her music career was over before it had even really begun: there were no more stage lights, no more late-night gigs, no more tours. But for the first time in a long time, Emeline was writing and singing her own songs—at The Acorn, for the king.
For herself.
For the first time in a long time, the woods no longer came to claim her; she had claimed the woods.
And though she frequently missed the things she’d lost, more and more Emeline felt that she was where she was supposed to be.
She only wished Hawthorne was where he was supposed to be.
She slowed as she passed the crystal room, reminded of long-ago lessons with the king’s stoic henchman. Thinking of a starlit dance beneath that sparkling dome.
The memory pricked her with sadness.
Emeline moved quickly on. There was something she needed to do before she rode Lament to Edgewood today.
Finally, she arrived at an arching palace door bordered by thick green ivy. Painted across its surface was the king’s crest: a crowned white willow sprouting from a seed. The hedgemen standing guard opened the door and let her pass unimpeded.
Emeline stepped through the door and into a small forest clearing.
Her boots left prints in the snow as the white birches gleamed around her. In the distance she heard the soft whooo of an owl, and across the pond ahead, a man perched on a small gray boulder. Three black ravens hopped through the snow at his feet, leaving tracks. He hunched over, murmuring to them, and from his back sprouted half a dozen green saplings growing towards the sky.
“Song Mage.”
His voice was still that of a wild, ancient thing. But in the wake of the broken curse, the Wood King seemed … tamed. As if the curse had taken him out of himself and he was slowly returning.
“Forgive my intrusion, sire.”
At the sound of her voice, all but one of the ravens scattered, taking to the air. The last hopped onto the boulder next to the king.
The king scooped the raven in his hands, cradling it. “You’re no intruder here.”
She felt like one. Emeline glanced down at her wet boots and torn jeans. She should have changed before coming—this was not the proper attire in which to address a king.
“I came to ask about the hawthorn,” she said.
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 and I’ll tell you a story.”
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 when she stood before him, “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 SAT in 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?
She glanced upwards, to the painting over the fireplace. Fixing her gaze on the artist’s depiction of Daphne transforming into a laurel, Emeline remembered the conversation they had last fall.
At least she’s safe, Emeline had argued. As a tree, nothing can hurt her.
As a tree, her life is forfeit, he’d rebutted. She’ll never be human again. She’ll never laugh or sing, ponder or love, again.
If Hawthorne didn’t want this fate for Daphne, how could he want it for himself?
She thought of the note he’d written her, tucked between the pages of Pablo Neruda’s poems.
… if there were some way to atone, some price I could pay to begin to heal the harm I’ve caused, trust me: I would pay it.
She sucked in a breath. Was that his reasoning? Was he choosing this because, as a tree, he couldn’t ever hurt her again?
The more she considered it, the more sense it made. A sudden anger poured through her. Yes, Hawthorne had hurt her. Yes, he never should have stolen her memories, even if his intentions had been good. But he’d acknowledged the wrong he’d done and apologized for it. This refusal to come back to the world—to come back to her—wasn’t honorable. It was cowardly.
The thought made her rise from the rug. Angrily, she extinguished the lamplight and made for the door, stepping outside and nearly forgetting to shut it behind her.
Didn’t she get a say in this? She was the one who’d been hurt, after all.
Fetching Lament from the stables, Emeline mounted up. The ember mare’s hooves clattered over the mossy bridge as they left the stone house behind.
Lament took her to the edge of the woods, where her tree stood rooted on the border. Its gnarly, twisted bark flew upwards, breaking into branches. Sprouting dark leaves and red berries.
Emeline swung herself down from the ember mare. Her steps thundered as she approached.
“You’re afraid of hurting me again?” she said to the hawthorn. “I hate to break it to you, but that’s what humans do: We hurt each other. We fight, and we fail, and we fall short of the standards we set. We’re a little bit broken—every one of us. If you can’t handle that, then maybe you don’t deserve to be human.”
The hawthorn stood silent and still. Unresponsive. Because, after all, it was just a tree. Not a boy. Not her Hawthorne.
What did she expect? That a good scolding would change him back?
Tears burned in her eyes.
Enough of this. The king was right. The woods and everything in them might be saved, but the boy she loved was gone.
It was time to move on.
The anger trickled out of her as she realized it, and something fragile and trembling rushed in to replace it. Slumping, Emeline pressed her hands to her tree and closed her eyes against the falling tears. When she stepped in close, her lips brushed the bark as, very softly, she started to sing. Just one last song.
A song for good-bye.
AFTER DINNER, PA’S HOUSE roared with laughter and conversation as the neighbors stayed late into the night. When she finished helping Maisie with the dishes, Emeline noticed three silhouettes sitting in chairs outside. Curious, she grabbed her notepad and pen, then pulled open the door and stepped out.
The air was strangely warm tonight. A heavy fog settled in the trees, giving the sky a misty glow.
Her mother and Tom sat close together on one side, sharing a blanket. Pa sat on the other. Emeline kissed Rose’s cheek, then signed hello to Tom. Rose and Tom had been taking sign language classes ever since Emeline came out of the woods mute. They’d been teaching her, slowly, but Emeline was nowhere near adept yet.
That’s what the notepad was for.
She sat down beside Pa, who sipped the brandy in his hand, the ice cubes clinking against the sides of his glass.
“Tell me: Who are you again?”
Emeline looked to find Pa regarding her. She was so used to this question by now, it no longer bothered her.
“She’s your granddaughter,” said Rose, studying Emeline like she was a small wonder. Emeline often caught her mother staring at her these days, as if trying to memorize the exact shade of her hair, every faint freckle on her nose, the precise curve of her cheekbones. Like an art student seeing van Gogh’s Sunflowers up close for the first time.
“Ah,” Pa said, nodding to himself, leaning in towards Emeline. “I’m getting old, you know.” He tapped his temple lightly. “My brain doesn’t work like it used to.”
It’s all right, she wanted to tell him. I don’t mind.
But she couldn’t speak the words. Instead, she reached across the space between them and took his hand in hers. He patted it gently, as if understanding her perfectly, and held on tight.
He might not know her name or recognize her when she entered the room. He might not remember the day she was born or all the nights he carried her to bed as a child or that he’d planted a tree just for her.
But it didn’t matter.
His forgetting didn’t hurt anymore. He was her Pa, and she was his Emeline, and whether he remembered today or not, that didn’t change.
She remembered enough for them both.