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.

Sometime after midnight, sitting in the near dark and thinking about nothing very much, Tobias suddenly snorted with laughter. Silver had been inviting him, and not just to share a bed that definitely couldn’t fit the two of them. How long had it been, if Tobias couldn’t even recognise a handsome lad suggesting a bit of mutual entertainment anymore?

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.

“I heard a story in Hallerton about how they’d chased off the wild man with a pistol,” Silver said, staring down at him. “I came to see if— My God.”

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.

“Folklore,” said Silver. “Studying—investigating. Of course I’m not a real scholar.” He said this as if Tobias might have challenged him on it. “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.”

Silver carried on chasing his butterflies.

“But that’s all they are—folktales. There are no dryads, no wild men, no fairy kings, and no monsters. Isn’t that right, Mr Finch?” “Certainly haven’t seen a fairy king yet,” said Tobias.

“This isn’t proper dryad doings, my dear. You should go plant yourself. Grow big and tall like your sisters.” “Is that what you did?” said Bramble. “You are much bigger than any other human. Did you plant yourself?” Tobias caught his breath on a painful laugh. “Not exactly,” he said. “But maybe that’s close enough.”

Ah, Fabian, with his long copper braid, his sweet smile, his brilliant eyes! No need to wish for beauty, that one; and riches he’d preferred to win for himself. Immortality, though. The wood could give you that, after a manner of speaking. And it had, after all, been Fabian Rafela’s wood.

The songs were old ones. Tobias knew most of the tunes, though not all the words. He was enjoying it, truly enjoying it and not thinking of anything else, feeling like a man and not something from under the old oak, when Silver said, “And this one’s from the village,” and launched into Bloody-Handed Toby. It was a punch in the gut. The tune was the same Nathan had used to whistle,

Silver eyed him curiously. Clever fellow, Tobias thought with a sudden bitter fondness. Clever, generous, good-looking fellow, who kept coming back to show Tobias the stories he’d found like a child with a butterfly trapped in a jar.

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.

“Mr Finch,” she said. “There will be no need for the crossbow. You are the Tobias Finch my son has been visiting regularly, yes?”

Slow and green he felt the life of it, the life that had been his life as well these four centuries past. It poured around him thick and steady, binding all together: the long patient strength of the trees that anchored, the deep bright power of the handful of dryads—Tobias felt Bramble clear as day among them, young and strong—and then the small and necessary, the bracken and ferns, the mosses and mushrooms. 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.

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.

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

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.

“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. Silver was there in the shadow of the trees. His pale eyes gleamed in the dim light. His hair was curling loose around his face. He was smiling.

I tried to mend your cottage.” Tobias snorted. “I know, I know, but the wood seemed willing to help, so I did my best, but I kept getting distracted and going for a walk, as it seemed to me for an hour or two, and I’d come back and find everything I’d built undone and ivy growing everywhere. Don’t laugh at me!” Tobias tried to stop.

“And you’d better come to see your mother,” he concluded after all was said, “and beg her pardon.” Silver shuddered theatrically. “Must I?” “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.”

Tobias stood up. He reached down a hand and pulled Silver to his feet. Silver wasn’t expecting it and stumbled a little. He felt heavier to Tobias than he should have been; there was a weight and solidness to him now that went beyond the physical, that had deep roots. Tobias paid it no mind. He put his big hand round the back of Silver’s head, into his mud-coloured curls, and kissed him.

“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.”