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

by Emily Tesh

He caught sight of a slim figure in the trees off to his left; golden-eyed like all her kind, but moving swift, so she was Bramble, the youngest of Tobias’s dryads and the one with the nastiest temper. “Leave ’em be, miss,” he said to her.

Tobias 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.

It was a lot of nonsense. No such thing as a fairy king, so far as Tobias knew, and by now he’d probably have come across one if there was one to find. Fairies he had met, and chased off usually; even more than dryads, they were better off far away from humans, and humans far from them. But the nonsense made it easier for Tobias to be amused by the whole thing: lying in a soft white bed, with his wood too far away, listening to old wives’ tales of himself.

“You should choose yourself a tree, you know. Plant yourself. Else you’ll get peculiar.” “I am peculiar,” said Bramble. “I chose already.” “Tell me where to visit you, then,” said Tobias. “Everywhere,” she said simply. “Every tree. They’re all mine.”