Zenna took her hand again, lacing their fingers lightly. With her free hand, Zenna pointed gracefully at the foot of the queen tree.
For a time Ariel could see nothing. She realised she didn’t believe, and that in itself was quite shocking to her. But then she could see: there was someone curled up among the knuckles of the roots. As she looked closer, she could see that this someone was trembling. They were half covered with leaves, perhaps their shadowy garments were actually made from leaves. Zenna dragged Ariel nearer, her fingers had closed tightly about Ariel’s own.
“It’s a boy,” Ariel said, half relieved, half disappointed.
Zenna glanced at her, said nothing. Again she let go of her cousin’s hand and hunkered down. “He’s hurt,” she said. “They left him behind.”
“He’s a boy,” Ariel said, in a voice that sounded to her like her aunt’s. Maybe she was shattering magic, but if the boy really was hurt, fairy tales were no good for him.
You can’t be too careful… you can …
Ariel went to the boy and touched him. He uttered a sigh and shuddered. He reminded her of a wounded dog, but it was too dark here to look for injuries. “We should take him back,” she said.
“Into our house?” Zenna sounded afraid, and for once Ariel felt older and more confident and capable than her cousin.
“We can’t just leave him here. He needs to be looked at … a doctor …”
“We shouldn’t do that. They’ll come back for him. It would be stealing …”
“Zenna!” Ariel sighed heavily. “Stop it. I don’t know what he’s doing here, but this lad is very much flesh and blood like us. Help me get him to his feet.”
Ariel put her arms about the boy and tried to lift him. It surprised her how light he was, almost insubstantial. “He’s half starved,” she said.
With clear reluctance, Zenna came to help. He didn’t resist them. He uttered soft whines, like a puppy. All the other sounds of the forest had faded away. For the briefest moment, Ariel thought how they might just have dragged this boy into the mundane world. Perhaps he didn’t belong in it. But this was just a fleeting thought.
Maeve and Darn, and the doctor who came to inspect the boy, decided he must be a traveller lad, somehow separated from his people. He did have an injury, yes. He’d been shot in the thigh.
“No doubt caught stealing from some farm,” the doctor said as she put away her things.
Everyone was gathered in the small spare room at the top of the house; an attic full of light that remained golden-brown even when the sun shone right through the window. The boy lay on a narrow bed. He was dark of skin and hair, slight of form, more like an elf than a boy. No wonder Ariel and Zenna had been able to carry him home as if he were no more than a handful of leaves.
“We’ll call the police,” Darn said.
But Maeve said, “No.” She was Zenna’s mother after all, and perhaps the sight of this fey, dark creature affected parts of her that had been asleep for many years. “There’s no need for that. Not yet. Let him speak first.”
The doctor had cleaned the boy’s wound and stitched him up. There was no bullet. It had gone right through him. No one spoke again of official things, such as hospitals and authorities. They lived right on the edge of the forest and things were different here.
The boy slept for two whole days, and Maeve stayed with him, sitting by the narrow bed reading a book, or else curled up on the mattress that Darn had carried to the attic room. Zenna was often there too, frowning at the boy on the bed. No one really spoke about things, not even Zenna, although Ariel guessed her cousin’s head was full of unspoken thoughts. It was as if they were all waiting for something. The weather became hotter and all around the Green House was a narcotic humid atmosphere that slowed movement, that stilled voices.
Ariel found sleep difficult during that time. At night, she lay awake breathing quickly, listening to the soft pound of her heart, her ears straining for other sounds. In particular, her senses extended upwards, out through wood and slate, to the roof. I am too many people, she thought. She wasn’t sure what was real; the sort of world where common sense held sway or the sort where you