He nods.
My lips tug into a half smile. “That’s kind of hard to believe, given your record.”
He doesn’t smile back. “I swear on the lives of my parents, I will not let you down.” His hand tightens around mine. “I need to know what has happened to them. I need to…” He swallows. “I need to know if they can be saved.”
And with that one statement, he unlocks the deepest secret of my heart. The belief that I can still save my dad, despite everyone telling me it’s impossible. I see the same desire in his eyes. Wonder if others have told him it’s useless, too.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I say after a moment’s pause, in which I think about the reasons why I shouldn’t do this and shove them aside, all because one thought keeps rising above them: If there’s a chance Dad’s connected to this, if I can finally find out what happened to him, don’t I owe it to myself and my mom to try?
I huff out a breath. “You have to do everything I say, no questions asked. Starting with my afternoon patrol. You need to stay by my side and not make any trouble, understand? Then I’ll sneak you into my house and you will tell me everything. If I don’t believe you or don’t like something you say, I’m bringing you right back here and you will never come barging through my wood again. You okay with that?”
Confusion scrunches his face. “Okay?”
“It means, ‘Do we have a deal?’”
“Yes,” he says, holding out his hand. “We have a deal.”
My brow arches. “Try to keep up.”
We start down the path, cutting deeper into the wood.
After several minutes of tense silence, in which I am distractingly aware of his footsteps next to mine, I ask him, “You know this is dangerous, what we’re doing? If the council finds out, we’re dead. As in coffins six feet under and worms wiggling between our decaying toes.”
“I fear it will take quite some time to become accustomed to your unusual vernacular.”
I glare at him.
“Yes, I know,” he says, quietly. “And yet it is worth it.”
I think of Dad, waiting for me to rescue him. I think of Mom, waiting for me to come home for dinner, wishing she could set a third plate at the table. I think of me, of all the times I’ve wished Dad were still here to finish my lessons. To give me some sort of validation and make me feel like I might actually know what I’m doing. To just … be a dad.
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
*
The little girl is curled up on the path. Her peach-colored dress is smudged with dirt and her hair has fallen out of pearl-encrusted combs. There’s blood on her arms, thin scratch marks trailing from her shoulders to her wrists. At first I think she must have wandered into a patch of brambles, but then her hands move up her arms. Blood coats the crescents of her fingernails. She digs them into her flesh and pulls down as she stares at trees she can no longer see.
Brightonshire pulls up short. All the blood seems to drain from his face at once. “What’s the matter with her?”
My throat constricts as I stare down at her. “The wood’s the matter with her. It makes people delirious.” I glance back at him, my eyes narrowed. “That’s why I’m still not certain I can trust you. With all the time you’ve spent in here, you should be just as crazy as she is.” Well, maybe not just as crazy, since I’ve never seen anyone lose it this quickly before, but at least a little perturbed. “Why aren’t you?”
“I took precautions.”
“What sort of precautions?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You said you’ll say anything I want you to say, and if you don’t I can send you right back to your time. So? What’s it going to be?”
He hesitates, then pulls his topcoat away from his body, revealing a silver flask at his waist. He lowers his voice and leans into my ear, his breath tickling my neck. “It is an elixir my parents were perfecting to help mortals keep a clear head in the wood. It is forbidden by the council, so I would appreciate it if you did not mention it to anyone.” His gaze flicks back to the girl. “Can we help her?”
“She’ll be back to normal once she goes home. We just have to get her there.”
What I don’t tell him is this: I have only seen three travelers look this lost in my time in the wood, back when I was first starting to get a feel for the paths without my father’s presence by my side. They had all spent hours wandering through trees that never changed, and their last shreds of hope had seeped out of them along with their sanity.
I didn’t trust my instincts then. Didn’t know the tingling in my spine and the tightening in my calves was alerting me to another’s presence in the wood. Didn’t understand it was guiding me to the travelers. I’d never really had to trust my instincts before, with Dad. I just followed his.
But this girl couldn’t have been in here more than half an hour—enough to frighten her, certainly, but not enough to break her. I’d have felt her presence as soon as I entered the wood, just like I felt Brightonshire’s.
It doesn’t make sense.
I crouch down next to her, laying my hand gently on her shoulder. “From whence do you come?”
Her skin grates into her nails, a soft sound that reminds me of the river. She doesn’t speak.
“What is your name?” I try, remembering what Brightonshire said about names. Maybe if I know hers, she’ll be more willing to follow me.
Her fingers catch on her wrists, and she reaches up to her shoulders once more.
I grab her bloodied hands. Fingernail shards stick out of the gashes on her arms. My stomach pitches, and I grit my teeth to stop myself from vomiting. “You don’t need to hurt yourself anymore,” I say. “We’re here to help.”
Something flickers in her eyes, a spark of recognition. “The shadows said no one could help me,” she whispers. “They said I was going to die in here, like the others.”
I don’t know what she means by others. I’ve watched people go insane, but there have been no deaths that I know of since I began my lessons, not during the day at least. (I can’t account for what happens in the wood after dark.) And I don’t know what she means by shadows, but the fact that she’s hearing voices concerns me. I need to get her out of here before this place permanently damages her.
“They shouldn’t have told you that,” I say. “It’s not true.”
“They said they’d come back for me, at night. They said they wouldn’t let me get out alive.”
Brightonshire drops down next to me, pushing the girl’s hair out of her eyes. “We will not let any harm come to you, little one.”
“Can you tell me your name?” I ask her.
She swallows. “Sophie.”
“Where do you come from, Sophie?”
She frowns and turns her head once more to the trees. The light begins to fade from her eyes.
“Don’t look there, Sophie,” I tell her, placing my finger under her chin and forcing her eyes back to mine. “Look at me. What year is it?”
She laughs. The sound is thin and too high-pitched. “That’s a silly question.”
“I know, but please answer it anyway.”