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

by Emily Tesh

“His hair, hmm,” said Tobias. “Waist-length and unwashed,” said Silver, looking at Tobias. “Now that’s a slander,” said Tobias. “It’s not past my elbows, and I wash all over every week.” “I’m glad to hear it, Mr Finch,” said Silver.

“It doesn’t look very comfortable,” said Silver. “The bed’s big enough to share, surely.” He gave Tobias a smile.

#therewasonlyonebed

The tree was a tree; he felt tree-things, sunlight and earth and so on, and Tobias was only another kind of thing that dwelt upon him, no different if you thought about it from the squirrel’s nest in the nook of the trunk.

Tobias was a fool and always had been.

“An you ever loved me,” mocked Fabian. “Toby, I always loved you.” He held his arms stretched out wide. “We’ll bring the wood right up to the house again. We’ll swallow it whole. We’ll sleep in feather beds. You can chase off every monster but me. What do you say, Toby?” “You’re a dead man, Fay,” said Tobias, “and even when you were alive you were wicked right through.”

He spent his wages on baubles at the market, odd little things that took his fancy, porcelain-faced statuettes and prints on card of sailing ships and coloured glass bottles. They were the things of this world and of this time, human right through. Tobias started to find he liked them.

The world was far bigger than Tobias remembered from four centuries ago. It was bigger than he had ever known, and he was living in it. He had thought himself a thing uprooted, like the great oak, ready to begin his death.

“Mr Finch,” said Mrs Silver, the one time he said anything about it, “you are not, in point of fact, a tree.”

Mrs Silver never made Tobias cut his hair, but she sniffed when she looked at him occasionally. Eventually, he plucked up his courage and trimmed it himself, taking the worst of rattiness off the ends. The hanks of hair that fell away from the scissors never turned to dead grass and scattered bark. They stayed as scruffy knots of human hair. Tobias was not now what he had been before.

When memories of Silver pushed themselves forward for his attention he got out his knives and sharpened them one by one. When he’d run out of knives to sharpen he started darning all his socks. He’d put plenty of holes in them over the last year.

Tobias said nothing. It was not Silver he was thinking of now. It was Fay in his library, as it had been before the big windows and mahogany shelves: maybe two dozen books, and the young master of the Hall with his red braid and his brilliant smile and the secrets of the old gods held in the hollow of his hand. Fay seeking riches, and beauty, and immortality.

Well, what did the wood care for mothers? Tobias should have known.

“She never sits so long with me,” said a voice among the trees. Tobias looked up sharply. His hand went at once towards a knife.

“Though—I had no idea, I really didn’t. Tobias, how did you do it? How on earth did you stay so human? I keep trying, but the time—it just falls away from me. I tried to mend your cottage.” Tobias snorted.

Tobias tried to stop. There was a smile that wanted to creep onto his face no matter what. “Took me a fair while to get the hang of it,” he said. “You don’t have to live by the wood’s count the whole time. Better not. Keep a cat, or something like it, and it’ll keep you awake.”

“None of that,” said Tobias sharply. “She’s a nice lady and you’ve given her a nasty scare.” There was a pause. “My God,” said Silver, “you like my mother.” Tobias frowned at him. “But of course you like my mother; she’s nearly as prickly as Bramble. Does she like you?” Silver peered at him. “She does! Heaven help me, I’ve made a terrible mistake.” “What do you mean?” said Tobias. “Only that I never attempt to make myself charming to men my mother likes,” said Silver.

He grinned. “And—don’t say it—I got myself captured by some revenant perversion of the old gods and buried alive by a gang of dryads and now I’m bound to a wood. Really I think it went quite well, don’t you? But my point is—I forget what my point was.”

“You’re a damned flirt as well as a rat,” Tobias said bluntly.

“At this rate maybe I really will manage to charm you someday. I’ve been trying for so long. Since we first met in that rainstorm, do you recall? You helped me take my coat off, and I had cold water dripping down the back of my neck, and I was sure the moment I saw you that I’d found the Wild Man of Greenhollow. It seemed like the luckiest stroke of my life.”

“The Green Man walks the wood,” he tried explaining. “But the wood remembers.”

He wasn’t surprised when Bramble stepped out of nowhere and walked towards him. Small white flowers sprung up in her wake. She looked newly strange to Tobias’s eyes, which had grown used to a year of ordinary people in their ordinary houses. Her eyes were a clear shining gold. “He is not like the other one,” she said. “No,” said Tobias. “Suppose not.”

“He will be a good thing, here,” she said. “He has planted himself.” “Like I did?” said Tobias. “You were never planted here,” said Bramble. “You were only stuck, like a rabbit in a—” She stopped. After a moment she made a face.

“Everywhere,” she said simply. “Every tree. They’re all mine.” She held out her hand to Tobias and he saw it contained a sprig of mistletoe. “For hunting wickedness,” Bramble said. “Wickedness is a people thing, but your friend told me a story and made me understand. There was wickedness in the wood before, but now it is gone, and I am glad. You were unhappy, but now you will not be, and I am glad.” That was a lot of words at once for a dryad and Bramble looked rather shocked at herself. “Go,” she managed. “Grow.”

“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.”