Silver in the Wood (The Greenhollow Duology, #1)

by Emily Tesh

He often intimidated people, being a big and grim-looking sort of fellow; he’d accepted it years ago and had long since stopped trying to be the kind of man who smiled enough to make up for it.

Silver’s hair dried into fluffy curls, and although not a particularly small man, he looked like he might disappear inside Tobias’s shirt and trousers.

“The bed’s big enough to share, surely.” He gave Tobias a smile.

How long had it been, if Tobias couldn’t even recognise a handsome lad suggesting a bit of mutual entertainment anymore?

The slow green time carried on pooling around Tobias’s feet, and the pain of the wound felt distant through it.

“Leave ’em be, miss,” he said to her. “You’re hurt!” she cried. “They’ll hack you back to a stump if you’re foolish,”

Leave people things to people, dear heart.”

lurched into his cottage and time abruptly poured itself back into its proper shape. He saw the shadows settle over the floor as Bramble took up a guard all around the place, calling up blackthorn and dark holly on every side, planting herself by the door in a menacing tangle. Well, there went Tobias’s vegetable garden.

When Tobias next woke, he was lying on a bed as soft as moss and as cool as fresh water, and the throb in his leg was a steady

healing pounding, not the slow burn of infection and death. He knew at once that he would be well again.

“I’m a wounded man,” said Tobias. “You insult me. I wouldn’t bring scissors to bear on an invalid.” “Only way you’d have a chance,”

He could not say to Silver: like a thing uprooted, though he was.

“I didn’t want you to be in pain,” said Silver, confused and put out. “The doctor said . . .” “Hang the doctor,” growled Tobias.

“Wouldn’t mind hearing some tales, though. You could read to me.”

It was nice to hear a human voice speaking, the rises and falls of it.

Just listening, to the hills and valleys of Silver’s voice. Watching the candlelight on his curls.

“But so much of our heritage is disappearing in this day and age. The costs of progress. I’m interested in preserving what I can.”

Funny thing, to be flirted with by a pretty young fellow who wore expensive coats. Made Tobias feel young again, and at the same time very, very old.

Wildflowers began to spring up in the woods around the same time Silver came back.

but to feel as mortals felt—to laugh as mortals laughed, and look up under the eyelashes, and sing old songs to the plucked strings of a whatever-it-was—

Tobias was a fool and always had been. He groaned and stood up. When he looked up he found it was pitchy dark. Time had softened around him the way it so often did. Maybe that was the wood’s version of pity.

“A practical folklorist,” said Mrs Silver. “Vampires eliminated, ghouls laid to rest, fairies discouraged, and so on.

He’d never used Silver’s given name aloud before. It felt strange on his lips.

Tobias was wrapped in thorns and crowned with leaves: the Wild Man of Greenhollow, a lunatic, a bandit, a follower of the old gods,

In all of four hundred years, only Silver had never been afraid. “Pay no attention to him,” said Mrs Silver. “Or the dryad. It’s not her tree.” Well, thought Tobias, Silver and his mother.

It poured around him thick and steady, binding all together: the long patient strength of the trees that anchored,

Here were the songbirds and ravens and solemn wide-winged owls, shy deer and burrowing rabbits, fox and badger and snake, beetles and moths and midges, all the things that were the wood, that lived each in their own way under the shelter of the old oak.

It was a foulness that refused to surrender to cleansing decay. Year on year it endured, throwing off poison in all directions, waiting in the dark, coiling itself into the fabric of the wood.

There had been a graveyard beneath the oak, buried deep, deeper every year, feeding on the wood as the wood fed upon it in turn.

We’ll swallow it whole. We’ll sleep in feather beds. You can chase off every monster but me.

“Good,” said Bramble. “He’ll need you.” “You won’t, though.” “No,” she said patiently, “because I’m not a people. But I will still love you.”