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

by Emily Tesh

He took a breath, and another, smelling old rotting leaves and healthy growth and autumn light. He felt almost as though he could have planted his feet and become a tree himself, a strong oak reaching up to the sky, brother of the old oak who ruled the wood. Ah, he thought, and nothing else.

Then he had nowhere to go, so he went to the bedroom where Silver had put him to convalesce, the room with white walls and heavy furniture where he had first read Tobias the tales he chased like butterflies. Tobias sat down on the clean white bed and put his head in his hands and sobbed like a child. The sun was rising before he finally slept.

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.”

Alone by moonlight he went out to the wood.

He kept moving, listening to his footfalls in the damp mulch, smelling the wet spring scent of growth. There were fronded ferns putting out fans of fresh green along the gully of the stream, and rotting autumn leaves still heaped by the wind in some of the clearings. The bluebells were putting up their early sharp stems like soldiers; no flowers till April, but there were patches of crocus here and there promising future colour.

Tobias tried to stop. There was a smile that wanted to creep onto his face no matter what.

“Tobias—Mr Finch, that is,” said Silver, and then he smiled an irrepressible, dimpled smile and said, “In fact, no, Tobias. It’s so good to see you. I missed you. The wood missed you.”

But my point is—I forget what my point was.”

That was a lot of words at once for a dryad and Bramble looked rather shocked at herself. “Go,” she managed. “Grow.”

“I’ll come back,” Tobias said after a moment, “and do people things.” He took the mistletoe and tucked it through his belt. “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.” “You as well, my dear,” Tobias said, after a moment when his throat felt too thick to speak. “You as well.”