The Foxglove Forager

By Howle A. Gaunt

"When the Fair Folk asked me to come away, the answer was not yes or no, but how and when."

When Teaching Assistant Dorcas Sallow heads out to the quarry in the sleepy village of Forage Hill, she hardly expects to witness a child turning into a goblin - much less a goblin hunted by three strangers covered in mo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asmus
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739150310

Book preview

Foreword

Dorcas Sallow is a young woman with Dermatillomania, a form of OCD. I have written her character’s mental illness based on my own experiences. If descriptions of body-focused behaviours make you uncomfortable, then please protect your peace.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim grey sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

The Stolen Child, W. B. Yeats

Prologue

When the Fair Folk asked me to come away, the answer was not yes or no, but how and when.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter One

The Mortal Realm

"T

here’s a monster in the quarry. The student peered through the fence. It’s in the water."

They’re not monsters, Miss Dorcas Sallow said. It’s just frogs and fish and ducks – all the animals we learned in class, remember?

The twenty or so five-year-old children from Forage Hill First School pressed themselves against the iron bars. It was a dreary afternoon, and they were restless. A trip to Forage Hill Quarry was about as exciting as it sounded, especially when An Ewok Adventure had been released. Teaching Assistant Miss Dorcas Sallow, with her flask of nettle tea, supposed the closest thing the children could get to entertaining themselves was seeing things that didn’t exist.

No, they’re monsters! the girl insisted.

They heard the trickle of a stream against September’s breeze. Dorcas tried to remember how it used to be. Four years since the accident, she’d never forgotten the cold stink of the quarry and the way petrol glistened on water, a toxic blend of grief-stricken beauty.

Dorcas saw the twisted beauty of the quarry: trees, flowers, bushes blooming as they soaked up toxic quarry water. It made her think Forage Hill was rotten at its core. Quiet. Isolated. There were many mining prospects in these East Midland crags. This one couldn’t be provided after the accident. In fact, like the car plunging headfirst into the quarry, so did Forage Hill’s profits – an isolated, useless, empty void. Much how Dorcas felt herself. All this destitution added to the disregarding nature even the villagers had for healing Forage Hill. The grass didn’t grow, no ducks nested in the water, and it stank.

The children couldn’t fathom what had happened there. Dorcas had been a child herself, but these little ones were too busy clawing at the bars in the promise of a monster.

Dorcas sipped her drink. Beside her, Miss Adeline Fletcher, Teacher and professional Dungeons and Dragons Master, shoved her hands deep into her pockets.

Miss Sallow coughed and said, Excuse me, Class 1B? We are standing here waiting for you to be quiet! Quiet with fingers on lips? Quiet with what, Class 1B?

Fingers on lips! the children chanted, except Erin Blackthorn, the little girl who saw monsters in the quarry.

The distracted child was new to Dorcas’s class, a rare occurrence in Forage Hill, where everyone knew everyone and everything about everyone. The only item of gossip about Erin was there was no gossip – this was highly peculiar. She had black hair that curled around her head and lovely, wide eyes, no history, and no distinguishable accent. She might as well have walked out of the woods.

That includes you, Dorcas said to her. It was out of her professional jurisdiction to be more austere, and the child knew this. But everything felt out of her control. The quarry. The children. Herself.

Two years ago, she started pushing her fingers across her back, specifically her shoulder blades, and now there were all these hardened calluses. All those bumps made her skin a mosaic of budding scars, so she used Vaseline to try and stop picking. But sometimes, she could feel spots under the skin like grains of sand, and she needed to get them out – that was not something to be controlled; it just had to be done. Once she started thinking about those grains, she had to get them out.

I don’t think you understand–

I have to get them out.

Listening to Erin made her want to pick her skin. She fought the urge to do so then, what with a raincoat and scarf on, it would’ve made her a trifle sweaty and flustered. But it was out of her jurisdiction not to pick, so she skimmed her jaw with her forefinger and dug into a spot until it popped up against the nail.

You can’t see monsters, Erin said, You can’t see at all.

Oh, and you can, Erin?

Erin didn’t reply. She didn’t even look, distracted by whatever her wild imagination was conjuring. Dorcas thought she was strange enough to be considered normal – for a child, anyway.

A very good liar, at least.

Dorcas sighed, entirely done with the entire affair. She had chosen teaching as her employment before her parents died so she would always be employed and have a purpose in life. I’ll count to three, 1B. If I count to three, you’ll see a monster when Adeline here sprouts body hair and turns you all into little werewolves.

Erin sneered. Werewolves aren’t real.

They’re not?

No, there are scarier monsters, Miss Sallow.

And without discussing it, Dorcas thought it would be traitorous to choose another job after they both died; she had considered opening the old apothecary, even bartending at the Horse and Hound, shortly before she saw how much it hurt her parents when her sister said she’d instead run away than stay in Forage Hill. A traitorous thing to say, Dorcas thought, thinking that while the village was isolated, all their ancestors had lived there, and it felt right to do the same. And when you enjoy foraging as much as Dorcas, it was hard to imagine being anywhere else. 

Don’t talk back, Erin, Dorcas said.

I’m better than you, she answered. Erin turned from the gate, crossing her arms.  Her eyes weren’t so sweet, and neither was her attitude. Dorcas looked over the student. Yes, there was much worse out there. One of those things is children like Erin. There was a word for children like Erin that her grandmother, Isobel, would call her later. Insolent.

An insolent, little wretch.

Dorcas could see her grandmother signing the words out already: Insolent, little wretches deserve to be left downstream. And she would reply: Grandma! That’s so cruel. Why would you say that? But she’d shrug and return to her piano.

Thankfully, Miss Adeline Fletcher shut her campaign planning guide and sighed, We’ll start with Blue Table. Form a line in front of me.

Those specific pupils shuffled into place. Dorcas handed Adeline her tea flask.

It’s nettle tea, she said. I gathered them last week.

Adeline unscrewed the lid to peer inside the green brew. I still find it strange that you forage like some medieval hag, she said. What if it’s poison?

As long as you know what you’re gathering, you’ll be safe.

Adeline sipped a little and grimaced. I thought weeds were the sort of thing you yank out the ground, not put in a drink.

It’s an herb.

It’s unnecessary. Rolling her eyes, she waved to the rest of their class. Now, Red Table and Purple Table line up. Quickly! Blackadder is on soon! Do any of you know what Blackadder is?

All the children shook their heads.

Well, when you stop finding Ewoks funny, Adeline said, you’ll discover Blackadder.

Adeline snickered, but Dorcas didn’t notice. She stared into the quarry – that dark mouth with stone teeth crags, a black, bobbled sewage tongue, and grey vapours. There was a buzz of flies. The edge of Forage Hill bordering Forage Hill Forest always lacked colour. It was a dreary, eye-sore, uglier still with Class 1B’s multi-coloured papier-mache chain stringing the iron bars. It was how Dorcas thought her face looked when she put make-up over her spots, and it would discolour with the congealed scabs – like a very depressed clown whose grey innards bled the colour out of everything. 

You see, the quarry was abandoned. And like abandoned things, it was a reliquary tomb of time. Dorcas touched the foxglove necklace around her neck and stared into the water; her gaze swallowed up by this monstrous sepulchre. She found a cluster of lilypads, and a frog covered in rot climbed over it, dragging its legs like paintbrushes.

Dorcas knew there were monsters, but they weren’t what children think of. This monster was death – and Dorcas knew well what death could devour.

Beneath her jaw, she felt another spot and, without stopping, dug her nail in again. All the while, she counted the children with her eyes, her mind elsewhere – on the dirt under her skin – enough.

With all the pupils lined up, including a bitter, scowling Erin, she counted them again. They were itchy with boredom. It was home time. Dorcas knew they’d crowd the new Magnavox Odyssey gaming console or Tandy Radio Shack instead. But, stubbornly, she didn't understand why the children preferred these technological games while nature was more exciting and playful – when you knew how to make it so that was. Avoid the quarry, at least.

Are you finished counting? Adeline asked.

I have to start all over again, Dorcas groaned. One, two, three…

Dorcas began or attempted to – reaching a girl with a pink water bottle and backpack who was patting her wet hair, the spittle setting her coils to frizz–

She lost concentration again. Maybe it was because they had come to the quarry, or it was her itchy jaw, but Dorcas had constantly been distracted and easily led astray when outside. Then she was in nature; she felt drawn to foraging the forest and the water – no matter how much mould there sat, there was always more under the surface. Her nimble fingers were scared by thorns and nettles. Maybe it had always been an obsession, but everyone had one (take Adeline’s affinity for Dungeons and Dragons). Dorcas’s obsession between the seeds in her body and those in the wild always competed. Dorcas had an infatuation with foraging. The first memory of this fascination came from her grandmother:

Look, and you will see, she always signed. And hope that they see you, too.

Look and see – that was the forager’s rule.

It was also what she did, nose pressed to the glass, eyes wide, examining every inch of her skin.

Dorcas returned to Adeline’s side, saying, I think I’ll start writing, she shrugged, maybe I’ll write a whole book.

This seemed unlikely. Adeline, as always, conjured these ideas often and randomly, new ways to bring some excitement to her life and give her something to do outside of work. She was restless. For what? She hadn’t figured that out yet.

Right! Adeline ordered. Let’s start marching back to the school. Left! Right! Left!

Quick, marching her troops up the valley in her green scarf, handmade during the week, she was obsessed with knitting and cracked out a pair of fingerless gloves for Dorcas, socks for her grandmother, and a little hat for Dorcas’s German Shepherd, Indiana. She would probably scribble out the first draft and leave it in the drawer, like her knitting needles and unfinished stockings.

What about starting your dad’s iron forge back up? Dorcas said idly. You know, getting back into the family business.

Mm. I’m just not interested in carrying on that practice. I mean, it’s 1984, not the Dark Ages. The iron-forging bloodline dies with me.

That’s nice. As they herded the children along the hillside, Dorcas knew perfectly well that Adeline only chose teaching as her vocation because she wasn’t sure what else there was to spend her day doing. She was sure it was the simplicity of a child’s day she despises – making potato stamps, playdough breakfast. It was, Dorcas confessed, a way to pass her time – the early morning cycle through the fog, the reading hour, little pieces to remind her of her childhood, that she could still be imaginative and not fall into the trap of adulthood. But she always felt like the grip of fantasy slipping away. 

Anyway, Adeline prattled on, waving her hands at the children so they’d hurry along. I’ve been thinking about how exciting adulthood is and concluded that a Walkman is the best thing to happen to me. I like to be in bed by eight, and I’m also pretty sold on being child-free, so I guess your grandmother’s right – I’m a yuppie.

Dorcas stopped to look back at the quarry. Her gaze settled on the trees – the kind of trees she’d foraged – majestic, wealthy, beloved countryside staples with their medicinal, edible, and herbal uses. But there was something more – something she couldn’t see. But like her own skin, she could sense it was there.

I think, Adeline went on, that we ought to go to the pub, sing karaoke all night, and cry. What do you say?

Dorcas looked at the marching line of students who were all bright colours in their almanacks. Adeline, meanwhile, drifted away in humming one of the songs they’d heard at the pub last week.

Twenty-four, Dorcas said, counting each of the students. There are twenty-four.

What are you muttering about, Doe? said Adeline. We’ve got to get back before half-three.

I don’t think I’ve counted right. Dorcas thought for a moment. Something was missing. Her face fell, Twenty-five… we’re meant to have twenty-five…!

Did you forget Erin? Adeline said.

Yes. Dorcas covered her mouth and started back to the quarry.

Adeline choked.

Where are you going? She held her arms up to stop any of the students from following their teaching assistant. Cassie! Please don’t leave me with these things! I mean, look at me, children. Let’s start marching again — left, right, left—!

At that moment, Dorcas was blind with worry. She hurried back to the quarry, and Adeline returned the children to the school grounds. Dorcas felt along the iron gate, passing many fading flowers: daisies, sweet peas, iris, and gypsophila. She was following the iron line when she discovered a hole under the fence, just big enough for a child.

And on the other side, by the stream, was Erin’s bookbag.

Dorcas’ mouth fell open in horror, and her heart jolted. Having never wanted to specifically be a teacher, she’d always wanted to help people – through knowledge, stories, or learning. Being a teacher was the closest thing to that while being paid. And now she’d lost one of those budding learners and her job.

Erin? she shouted, fumbling for a key strapped to her necklace. She flashed it, and the engraving glinted in the grey light: Andrew Sallow-Nielsen, Nielson Building Works. With a creak, it opened, and Dorcas ducked inside.

Erin, it’s Miss Sallow!

Dorcas knew she ought just to pretend she didn’t see the quarry, but the moment she picked up the book bag, she was reminded of — of –

She couldn’t bear to think about it. 

But there the quarry sat; its edges moist as a new-dug grave. The stream running in dewed the bracken before the forest. It was drear and dank as a cave with a dim, wet shine.

She crept forward with one hand on her nettle flask, holding the bookbag to her heart and the other on her necklace. 

E-Erin? she called; her voice hoarse.

And there — there in the trees! A shadow!

The shock of its size chased Dorcas’s voice back down her throat. Who was that?

Through the smog, rain, and mud, this figure blended into the dark tree line. Was this person the monster Erin was so enticed by? It must be because a smaller shape – a child – blended into the trees a moment later.

Dorcas glanced worriedly into the water and flinched. She held her breath. There was no use dwelling. The past was gone. She was there, and so was Erin, strange as she was. It pained Dorcas so. She went forward into the trees, those vaulting heather sentinels which bordered the quarry’s destruction. You could see where human touch started and where it ended.

Dorcas felt her way around an oak. One of her hands was sticky with sap, picking up needles and moss as she moved.

With worry in her heart, she called out, Erin? Are you there?

She held her pendant again. The cold silver gave her comfort. There was uncertainty in the air. She stopped moving and listened. Something wet sloshed nearby, ridging the mud.

The stream. A gummy, infested substance which ran black, thicker than water and thinner than blood. Its stain grew up the edges of the river and rock of the quarry.

Dorcas pulled her gaze away.

Erin, where are you? she called out. What’s wrong? She was stepping forward slowly, suddenly wary, her necklace in hand. Erin must have seen the shadows as she did. There was now nothing to see. Darkness within darkness. Answer me! Where are you?

Dorcas watched the thick goo – dark, moulding tendrils of rotting mould. She turned her head, hearing something else. A voice.

She made out the shape of a tall, hooded woman wearing wooden bandages wrapped around her eyes. She opened her mouth, but the sound was inhumane. It was a high-ringing sound which would set her dog into a bark. But then Erin laughed. She was there – hiding in the trees.

Dorcas could faintly make out the woman was wearing thin clothing, a tunic and slim-fitting trousers suited for a bygone age. Dorcas thought she might be a larper or part of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Yes, Adeline would know what she is. That was enough for Dorcas to confirm she was as strange as Erin. Maybe this was a friend coming to play in the woods. Dorcas used to do the same with her sister before she – before she –

Such as her grief, her foxglove necklace and her brown curls. Her slender form, her sorrow, all-consuming. She would never forget; her wandering hands couldn’t dig deep enough to shovel her grief.

Dorcas looked at the woman stalking forward, stepping through the heather quickly as if her limbs were a breeze. Maybe they’re not friends, not even family.

A small bird of apprehension beat its wings inside Dorcas’s chest.

Possibly, this wasn’t nefarious at all. It wasn't anything Dorcas hadn't seen before; family taking the forest route home – but what made it strange was they were meeting by the quarry. The locked quarry. More so was the state of the water there, all decay and rot and stinking. What average person wanted to be near this stench?

Dorcas stepped forward again, trying to see through the dark. And then she spotted two shadows to her right. The blind stranger ducked under an oak tree. The newcomers followed her, shimmering green shadows in the darkness. Then they were gone. Branches stirred in the wind, touching each other with their wooden fingers. Dorcas opened her mouth to call out for Erin, but the wind seemed to hiss at her. She clamped her mouth shut. 

Dorcas’s feet sank a little. She slipped forward into a thicket. Her tea flask dribbled hot water down her hand. She hissed and shook them. Funnily enough, the movement made her feel like she was shaking off the stress of her situation there. She could concentrate.

Two shadows emerged. They stood with their backs to Dorcas. Tall, gaunt, and hard as stone, tilting their heads like listening dogs. Their ears were pointed; their eyes the colour of burning coals. Even their clothes had dappled linens of deep grey greens like the trees themselves. The embroidery shifted in the light like the veins of a leaf.

The man had black hair, and the woman had no hair. But scarred runes were carved into her scalp, crooked as if done with her nails. The man raised a hand, and something long and thin wound down to curl through his fingers.

A snake? No, it’s too long. It’s almost like the tree is–

What on earth? Dorcas breathed. 

Dorcas looked down, watching them walking forward and leaving footprints in the mud. But the strangest thing – grass grew from the fissures of their imprints.

Dorcas blinked in disbelief.

Oh, my–

Dorcas clambered over a fallen tree, stumbling against another. She could smell the ferns spreading around the trunk, the dying salvia, the yarrow snaking up its bark, and the lichen beneath her fingers. The forest smelled old, and the thick trees pressed so close together it was almost black a few feet ahead. But it was not what Dorcas could smell but who she was listening for.

For a moment, she thought the strangers were gone. They were only the thrumming fingers of rain, faint on the canopy above and voices merging within, seeming to belong to the chorus of nature.

Who is that?

Dorcas frowned, peering forward in bewilderment. They were there, standing damp and cold with rain. Her neck was sticky with sweat. She took a step forward, tangling her feet in brambles.

Give me your name, said Erin.

Dorcas froze, hunched over with her flask clamped under one arm and her silver pendant knocking her teeth.

The blind woman stuck a finger in her ear and frowned. Hm? What faint light in the forest wriggled down through the thick canopy, a thick crotchet of knotted branches and leaves. The ground was thick and compacted with mud, leaves, and twigs. The woman raised her hands to balance herself as she approached the child.

Your name? Erin asked again. Give it to me–

–I’m hard of hearing. I can’t hear a thing you’re saying over there. The stranger interrupted.

Erin stopped walking, patiently waiting in the oak thicket, still as a tree herself. In the dark light, the woman looked quite like a part of the woods, her dark clothing and hair and her gaze hidden behind the wooden bandage.

Give me your hand, Erin said.

Give you my what? the bandaged woman asked, tilting her head down at his open palm. Something was poking out of her hood, just sticking through her hair–then, as Erin started, she saw they were twigs, and her hat was clamped down upon a circlet of thorns and red berries.

She hissed, pulling her hand back. Blackthorn half-breed–

The stranger yanked her hood free, silencing Erin setting loose a billowing curtain of black hair. She threw something at the child, which smacked her face, bursting into moths. Then the woman crossed the space between them with sprightly swiftness, twisting her wrist so the moths converged to her hand, and then she slammed the horde into Erin’s mouth. She staggered back and choked out black blood, about to fall to her knees, when a root unfurled from the tree behind her and curled around her stomach, jerking her off her feet. She hit the trunk, spluttering and choking, the moths all inside and the tree tightening its grip on her.

Dorcas picked the brambles off faster–nearly pitching herself forward. The man snickered at something she didn’t catch.

Then the blind woman laughed, shaking her long, flowing hair. Her bandage, Dorcas saw then, encircled her head like a crown, rising into thin antlers atop her head. Give me your name, she said to Erin.

No, I won’t. the young girl said. 

She made a convulsive move, her voice caught in her throat as much as her feet were in the brambles. A ghastly laugh from the strange woman ahead followed by a hiss. Expecting further explanation, Dorcas stayed quiet. A cool swish of the wind rippled up her back, and she held her breath.

The bandaged woman said, Tamar, it’s mine.

It is not mine or yours to bloom, Lilach, Tamar said. Tamar was the bald woman. In her hand, she carried an axe made of dark oak.

Dorcas awkwardly strained against the brambled knots.

Lilach was the blind woman Tamar sauntered toward. She placed a hand on her shoulder. Lilach hissed at the touch, hair strands sticking to her sweaty face.

Dorcas lowered her gaze and saw they were barefoot. Their toes curled in the autumn mildew. At the sound of their languid squelch, Dorcas clamped a hand over her mouth, possessed with wonder and affright.

Lilach sneered at Tamar; the grey light illuminated her grinning spite.

Erin was suddenly very wide-eyed and uncertain. Then the boy stepped into view, equally as haunting as the two women. His black eyes shone like obsidian quartz. On the White Raven, he sighed. Tell us why you are here.

Erin wriggled against the bonds, slamming her head back against the bark. No, no, no, she said. I owe you nothing. You can have nothing from me.

Don’t make me ask again. The dark-haired man took his hand from his pockets, revealing rings made of oak and amber and a bangle of hardened tree sap. At least don’t make me take your name.

Deep within the girl, the thrumming of a dozen moth wings wriggling their way into her belly, filling her with fright. She clamped her mouth shut.

The boy crossed his arms and stepped closer, tilting his head this way and that as he peered at her with an archaic and ancient demand. Give me your name.

The girl suddenly bit out, Erin Blackthorn. Then she snapped out at the boy like a rabid animal.

All three hissed, not enjoying her answer. Blackthorn? Lily seethed. You dare use Blackthorn?

You’re not worthy of the Blackthorn name! Tamar spat.

The boy was the only one who laughed, You’re not clever. Tell me you’re not clever.

N-No. Erin’s voice cracked, suddenly low like a congealed record. I’m not clever.

Why did you come here as a Blackthorn?

Erin thrashed in her bonds. I can’t say. I can’t say.

Tell me!

I heard it in the tombs! Erin burst. I heard it in the tombs.

The three paused, staring at the child, their faces haunted. An autumn wind whispered through the woods. Their otherworldly presence stirred something inside Dorcas like she wasn’t meant to intervene or intrude.

There’s nothing in the tombs, the boy muttered.

Lilach gave him a grimace. I can feel it at night.

Feel what? Tamar asked. The dead?

Dorcas could feel something. Crouching there in the woods, and she had never been so speechless. Why?

The dead. The dying. Ghosts. No matter how much our lord tries, you can’t simply bury five decades of rot. When Tamar didn’t reply, Lilach stepped gracefully around the boy. She tilted her head back and forth, listening well.

There is a great sadness here, she warned. Death in the earth. The air. The water.

The boy tightened his bonds with Erin. Is that why you’re here? he demanded. Are you here to feast on the dead?

Erin scowled. I am not here for the dead.

Then, why are you here?

How weak do you think I am? It’s not Samhain; you can’t keep bewitching me!

The boy laughed louder. Are you finding it quite fun playing dollhouse? he said.

When Dorcas stood up, she held her flask like a lifeline.

It’s as if they move with the breeze, slipping into sight the moment the wind meets the trees. Tamar, the tall, bald woman, stood still as stone. Lilach, with her bandaged eyes, tilted her head to and fro, sniffing at Erin. And the boy, still nameless, crossed his arms. His pointed ears were laid back against his head.

Heart racing, Dorcas ducked behind the nearest tree and peered around it. She watched the dark-haired man pacing back and forth, arms crossed over his chest. Now, he said. Why are the Unseelie rotting the forest?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Little Erin’s tone shifted, childlike once more. She was suddenly terrified and high. Please, I’m scared. I’m just a kid.

Is it quite delightful playing in sandboxes and stacking bricks all day while you cuddle up to some miserable teacher practising the alphabet with you? drooled Tamar. Or do you miss being a wretched Unseelie?

Excuse her manners; she means traitors, said the dark-haired boy, hateful. You must be acquainted with treachery, or at least with its odour.

On a bonach, Tamar groaned. You are worse than me.

Erin tilted her head, her mouth working.

Seelie. Unseelie. None of it matters when both are as traitorous as each other.

There are ancient rules we all follow, the boy drawled, tracing the thorns wrapped around a tree. You rotting, emotionally-repressed traitors who claw and cling to their own denizen, damned to burn in the Dark Tombs of Elphame for all eternity—

Elphame, Dorcas thought. Is this a place in Adeline’s D&D campaign? Or is it a county up north? Maybe it is a new computer name – I mean, what kind of Sci-Fi nonsense was Solaris, Dune, or Tron? Those made-up words – this had to be another one.

They’re definitely northerners travelling down to some nerd convention in London. They’re simply stopping off! In the woods. With a random child. Dorcas grimaced; surely not.

That’s enough, Wil, said Lilach.

Don’t interfere, Lily, warned Tamar. We’re here to understand their scorn, not bicker like mortal younglings.

They call them children here.

Oh my God, Dorcas thought, they’re insane.

Wil lifted his head to the sky and sighed. Something haunting about the gesture reminded me of a devout man reaching through the clouds for some… sign from the Divine, breathing in an unseen power. I find you clever, he said pitifully. This quagmire that you’re actually as advanced as a five-year-old mortal.

What was that word? Lilach grimaced. It means distasteful–

You’re a quackmig, then. You read too much poetry.

It’s a quagmire, you thick urisk.

Urisk? Dorcas thought, what is a urisk?

Tamar hissed. Wil, when are you going to grow up?

They’re siblings. Dorcas knew that tone too well. These three strange people were family.

Erin tilted her head again in that way that made the whites of her eyes shift, flashing