He sighs. “Let me ask you this instead: Do you think you can handle this boy on your own, or do you need the council to look into other means of controlling the situation?”
My nails bite into my palms. I wish I could say it was out of some extreme confidence in my abilities that I respond with, “No, that won’t be necessary. I can handle it,” but it’s the image of those green eyes boring into mine with the same hopelessness I see every time I look into the mirror that makes me say it. I’m not sure what the other means of control would be, if they would go straight to closing the threshold, or if they would do something to Brightonshire. If they would find some way to make him—I don’t know—disappear, or mess with his memories. And even though I have no reason to care what happens to him, a boy who lived hundreds of years before I was born, I do.
Alban nods. “Very well. I expect another full report on the situation next week.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, sitting back down.
Two more guardians give their reports, and then Alban closes the meeting by striking the gavel a second time.
Uncle Joe walks with me in silence back through the portal and into my section of the wood. The sun is even lower on the horizon now, a ball of orange flame vertically sliced by tree trunks, as if one of us—the sun or me, I’m not sure which—is trapped in a cage.
“Let me know if that boy gives you any more trouble,” Joe says.
“I will.”
There’s a sudden twinge in my stomach and my head whips to the path on my right, where instinct tells me another traveler will be waiting to go home, and my instinct is never wrong. It’s just another bonus to being a guardian. Instinct is a primal urge evolution never bred out of us.
Uncle Joe follows my gaze as he starts to disappear, just as the bench and streetlamp he conjured disappeared earlier. “Better get on with it,” he says as the side of his face scatters on the wind. “Twenty minutes to sundown.”
*
It doesn’t take long to find the traveler. The man standing in front of me is middle-aged, with thick blond hair swept off his face and a suit that is simple and clean, double-breasted with wide lapels. Early 1990s, most likely, although it’s always harder to tell with suits. They haven’t changed all that much in the last fifty years.
He’s breathing heavily. He rubs the palms of his hands against his eyes, whispering in French, “Ce n’est pas le cas, ce n’est pas le cas…” This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening …
“Pardon, monsieur,” I say gently, my brow crumpling with practiced worry.
He drops his hands, meeting my gaze.
“êtes-vous perdu?” Are you lost?
“Oui,” he replies, but when I move toward him, he backs away. “Stay right there!” he shouts in hurried French. “Don’t move.”
“I’m here to help.”
He folds in on himself, gripping his knees. For a moment, I think he’s going to throw up. Instead, he sobs. “It was dark, so dark…”
I frown. The sun is setting, but its light still shines through the trees, painting the path gold and brown. There is shade here, but it isn’t dark, and there is no way this man has been in the wood overnight. I feel the travelers as soon as they breach the thresholds. My body hums and my legs carry me to them.
“What’s it like?” I asked Dad once. We sat on an overturned log, munching on the trail mix and apple slices Mom had packed for us. “For the travelers?”
“Disorienting,” he said. “A maze of vertical bars and a never-ending green ceiling. Every turn looks the same. Every path contains their footprints, even when they’re certain they’ve never walked that path before. The more time they spend in here, the more they lose themselves.”
I nodded as if I understood, but the truth was, I had never felt disoriented in the wood. I always knew where I was going, where I had been. I knew the paths as if they were etched into my brain. I still do, even when they change, even when an old threshold closes for good and a new one pops up in its place. I have never lost myself here.
I keep Dad’s explanation in mind, trying to empathize with what the French man is going through, hoping that empathy will show in my face and in my posture as I approach him. But he eyes me like he’s in a bad dream, and I’m the monster stalking him.
“Monsieur,” I start again, “from whence do you come?”
“I was walking back to the office from lunch,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. “I was in the middle of the city. How did I end up here?” He slaps his palm against his brow. “How did I end up here?”
“Please, sir, I need you to stay calm. I’ll help you find your way back—”
I reach for him, but he slaps my hand away. “Non!” he shouts. “Where am I?”
“Tell me where you came from,” I say, “and I’ll tell you where you are.”
He scoffs at my questioning. A strong wind rustles the leaves overhead, dousing us with sunlight. A moment later the wind dies down. The leaves settle, shrouding the man in a dense patch of shade. His eyes widen as he takes in the trees surrounding him. “Non, non, non, non—”
He scrambles out of the shade.
“Monsieur,” I say very slowly, very calmly. “Tell me where you came from and this will all be over.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Don’t I look trustworthy?”
He squeezes his eyes shut.
“Please,” I say. “All you have to do is trust me, and you’ll go home. I swear it.”
He stops breathing, and for a moment I worry he’s going to pass out. Then one eye opens, followed by the other. “Paris.”
“What street?” There are three active thresholds in Paris, thresholds being much more common in older cities.
“Rue Mazarine,” he says. “That’s where I live. But I was walking down Rue Princesse when I somehow ended up in this godforsaken place.”
“Good. What year?”
He narrows his eyes. “That’s an odd question.”
“Humor me.”
“1993.”
I smile to myself for guessing right. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
The walk isn’t far, which only cements the fact that he couldn’t have been wandering in the wood long enough to become quite so paranoid. Then again, maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe he’s just paranoid by nature. If I were a regular person, with no knowledge of the wood, and I was walking down a street in Paris and suddenly walked onto a path in the middle of an enchanted forest, wouldn’t I be a little less than trusting of the random girl who showed up asking me where I was from?
“If you walk through the gap between those two trees, you’ll find yourself back on Rue Princesse,” I tell him, stopping at his threshold.
He gives me a quizzical look. “Thank you, Mademoiselle…?”
“Winter,” I say.
“Winter,” he repeats, nodding and starting forward—
“Wait.”
He looks back at me.
“Why were you saying it was dark?”
“Pardon?”
“When I found you,” I say. “You said, ‘It was dark, so dark.’ But the sun’s still up, and I know you weren’t here overnight.”
He shakes his head. “It only lasted a few seconds, but the sun—it was like it had been blotted out of the sky. I couldn’t see anything.” He laughs a little and scratches the back of his neck. “Perhaps I had a panic attack.”