Chapter Text
“Everyone is in danger!” Jon snarled, slamming his hands on his side of the desk.
He hadn’t meant for it to go this way. Jon knew that if he didn’t present himself as calm and level-headed, Elias would surely laugh him out of his office. He had come in calm and level-headed, sure … and now he could feel saliva collecting in his mouth. Fantastic. Foaming at the mouth would be a beautiful way to top this off.
Elias held one hand up. That was half of Jon’s frustration, truly. Elias Bouchard, sitting primly in his chair, hadn’t so much as gotten a hair out of place, nor had he given any indication that he was actually listening to Jon’s pleas. “You keep saying that,” Elias uttered, “But you’ve yet to present any actual proof.”
“Nine disappearances in the woods. Only the past year.”
He gave a shrug. “Would you like me to call the constable on hungry bears? Wolves?”
“Carlos Vittery was found encased in webbing.”
“Perhaps he shouldn’t have wandered into a cave. Again, none of this presents any danger if you stay out of the woods.”
“And what of Naomi Herne? Four days after her fiance’s death, she –“
“Wandered into the forest to die.” Another placid shrug. Elias’ eyes kept drifting to the papers on his desk. “Suicide. All very sad.”
He could rattle off the others, each death stranger than the last. Of course they were supernatural. Jon never had any doubt, even when a little voice in his head piped up and offered rational, mundane explanations. That voice sounded an awful lot like Elias Bouchard, one of Prince Magnus’ advisors.
As it went, Prince Magnus preferred to station his advisors in the various villages of his kingdom – so that they might best be able to advise through correspondence about each village’s particular needs. Jon didn’t have any problem with that, truly, but he liked to wonder if each village’s advisor was as boorish as Elias Bouchard.
“People have been reporting nightmares,” Jon insisted, but his protests rang hollow to his own ears. “Strange nightmares, I’ve had them myself, all the same - well, all the worst period in their lives –”
“Come now,” Elias said with a sigh. “I have work to be getting on with.”
“And feeling watched –”
“By the merciful and loving eye of God, no doubt. We are blessed.”
Elias wasn’t going to understand. Was Jon really surprised? Elias, of all people in town … the only reason Jon had approached him in the first place was due to Elias’ status. He was the closest thing in their small village to an authority. Well, given that Jon wasn’t on good terms with the constable and the priest unnerved him terribly. Besides, Elias was the only one in the village who communicated with the prince – who lived several days’ worth of travel away, on the other side of the forest that encapsulated their small village.
“You haven’t heard anything?” As the anger cooled, Jon’s tone turned weary. Defeated. Damn it. “From outside of town? From the other villages, maybe, or …?”
The longer he went on, the quieter he became, until no sound came out at all. Elias spared him a pitying look that extinguished the last of the fire in Jon’s chest. No help to be found here. “Mr. Sims,” he said, pushing his glasses far back up his nose, “You clearly have an aptitude for investigation. So let’s investigate, shall we?”
Maybe …? “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“There are three hundred and eight people in this village,” Elias rattled off. “Three hundred and nine, if the Bennett pregnancy turns up. And do you know how many come to me, or to the constable, crying about monsters in the woods?”
Ah. There went that last shred of hope. Jon’s hands tightened on his knees, staring across at the desk. He couldn’t say for certain … but he could guess.
“Just you. Now, unless you think everyone else in this village are uneducated, inept imbeciles …” To that, Elias’ eyes dipped down and landed on Jon’s bag.
Jon did not spend all of his time reading. After all, he had to eat and sleep.
(Maybe not the best two examples. Jon frequently delayed both in order to read.)
And he investigated strange goings-on in the village, which took a good chunk of his time. Still, he ran the only bookshop in the village – how could he not achieve the status as the village bookworm?
Jon had had held the title for as long as he could remember. He turned to books at an early age, scarcely knowing why they called to him in ways that most people did not. Looking back on it, it seemed only an inevitability that he would become a voracious reader. The bookshop had been a family business. He had no friends and many bullies. Jon could only explore the forest so many times before his grandmother threatened to shut him in the shop for good.
Which … it was fine. He cared little for what people thought of him.
… He cared quite a lot. But there was little to be done about it, so he pretended like he cared very little. It wasn’t a bad thing to be.
“I don’t think they’re idiots,” Jon muttered, because he didn’t. They just hadn’t connected the dots. Elias continued as if Jon hadn’t spoken.
“Isn’t it much more … logical,” Elias practically purred, “That the village kook is wrong, and everyone else is right?”
The village kook?
He felt his shoulders slump. Had he overestimated what people thought of him? Certainly, he wasn’t one for social events – and growing up as the flighty, impulsive young boy hadn’t done him any favors. Jon stared at the desk. The whorls in the wood seemed to stare back up at him.
In truth, Elias’ position wasn’t the only reason Jon was here. He was here because he knew nobody else who would agree to help him. Perhaps if he’d gotten more allies on his side, gotten a petition ...
“Now, don’t go around causing a fuss.”
Jon flinched and looked up at Elias, meeting his cold grey eyes. Not the first time that he’d felt like Elias Bouchard was reading his mind … but if he said such things aloud, he really would be looked at as a kook. “You ought to focus on something else. Your shop, for example.”
No sympathy, then. Jon tried one last avenue. He really hadn’t hoped for this one, but he had no other options.
“Then at least allow me to venture to the estate outside the village?” He asked. “The witch that lives there, she may know something that can help us.”
That sent Elias into a polite laughing fit, his hand going to cover his mouth. Jon’s face was hot. God, he thought if he’d just said it confidently enough … “Didn’t your grandmother teach you that it’s unkind to refer to women as witches?”
His grandmother had been the one to tell him the story, actually. Jon hadn’t been sure whether it was anything more than a story, a scary tale meant to keep squirrelly boys in their bed all night. Best not to ask whether Lady Blackwood also ate children’s fingers and toes if they tried to sneak sweets before dinner.
Confirmation that Lady Blackwood actually existed, though? And lived in the treacherous woods?
Even if she wasn’t a witch, she survived it somehow.
Elias cleared his throat, breaking Jon out of his stupor. “The prince of Lady Blackwood’s lands is not Prince Magnus,” he clarified. “Prince Lukas owns the land to the west of the village.” The west! Jon’s mind flickered to the piles of rolled-up maps in the shop. Maybe … “So if you did go upsetting a gentrywoman’s nerves, it would be quite troublesome. Do you understand?”
He did. To trespass on another prince’s property was a tricky situation. It wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable for Prince Magnus to have Jon arrested by the constable, or worse, if only to smooth matters over with Prince Lukas. Depending, of course, on how much trouble he caused with Lady Blackwood.
That wasn’t where Jon’s mind lingered, right then. He was still thinking of those maps. The surrounding areas … how far he would have to go …
“Of course,” Jon intoned solemnly. “The forest is still dangerous.”
“Wouldn’t want to be eaten by spiders, would we?” Elias asked whimsically, shattering Jon out of his musings.
No. Had to be a coincidence. A very odd one. Jon had never told anyone about the incident with the spider, out in the forest (and to think, perhaps that very same creature had claimed Carlos Vittery’s life, like it’d claimed the life of …?).
Still, it was not a memory that gave him any more confidence for what he had to do.
He stood from his chair, his mind spinning with legends and compasses. It could still be done. Of course it wouldn’t be safe, but he could take precautions. People were dying, after all, slowly but surely.
“A word of advice? From one non-imbecile to another.” There was that smile again. Jon could almost see a canary fluttering behind his eyeteeth. “Put your intellectual efforts towards something else. Father Rayner would appreciate your … dedication.”
An involuntary shiver passed up Jon’s spine. “Perhaps,” he uttered, and then fled as politely as possible.
At least his world seemed a little brighter when he stepped outside. Funded by Prince Magnus’ coffers, Elias held the nicest abode in the village. The most stifling, too. Jon squinted up into the blue sky and the dark, scraggly trees that strained upwards to meet it. A singular cobblestone path led out of the village, beyond the stone wall that surrounded their home.
A thin ribbon of a river bisected the village east-west, snaking underneath the wall and into the beyond. Even from inside the village walls, he could see the trees parted around the banks of the river. That would provide some sort of path, at least, so he wouldn’t utterly lose himself. Right away, anyway.
Hell. Gone to Elias request help with the forest, only to find himself facing a solo journey. Sounded like madness, like certain death, like …
The sounding of the church bell grasped Jon’s attention. He turned his head to see a few mourners coming out of the church, all dressed in black. All of them recoiled in the bright sun, wincing like they’d never seen light before. Coming out of the church from one of Father Rayner’s services could be brutal.
He hadn’t woken up that morning and decided to visit Elias, though the thought had been bubbling in his mind for a long while. Two days prior, someone else had disappeared from the village. Sarah Baldwin. Jon recognized her name, but hadn’t known her face.
What he’d learned about her, he’d picked up from bits and pieces of gossip in his shop. People tended to disregard his presence there, as they’d disregarded his grandmother. One shopkeep owner perched on a rickety stool with a clothbound novel was the same as all the rest, they supposed. Not only that, but something about his dark, dusty shop seemed to encourage people to spill their idle, morbid curiosities to one another.
Allegedly, Sarah had remarked on seeing strange lights in the forest before her disappearance. Jon had sat on the roof of the bookshop that night and peered very hard into the woods. He’d seen nothing.
All moot, come this morning. Sarah Baldwin’s body had been recovered from the forest by a hunter. Jon didn’t know the details of the body’s condition, but if one’s body was found in the forest … it was rarely good.
His heart lurched in terror, seeing the coffin being brought out of the church. The graveyard was nearby. As a child, the graveyard had seemed ancient and untouchable. Now … even as someone nearly thirty, it made Jon to squirm to think about internment. So many corpses, found in so many horrific ways.
This village was all he had. Jon never had a particular wanderlust; he’d been content to have his adventures in between the pages he read. He liked how familiar the village was. The cobblestone streets, the shingled houses, the flowerpots spilling over. Even if he was not the most beloved figure in the town (kook rattled between his ears like a lost bird), the village was all he knew.
Or had been, until Jon had begun to pick. Now he could not ignore the tall trees surrounding the villages, nor the disappearances everyone so neatly ignored. It was more than only wildlife. It was more than the mundane.
Who better than a witch to know?
Jon reached back and adjusted the ribbon holding his hair in a low ponytail. The light tugging at his scalp brought him to attention. He brushed off the front of the bookshop apron (perpetually covered in dust), nodded to himself, and walked past the funeral congregation.
***
He could do with more sleep.
Just after dawn, Jon sat on the roof of his bookshop with a novel in hand. Something pleasant about reading a romance just before everyone rose for the day. Jon found that he often let himself relax more when it was quiet, let himself believe in true love and saving the day and happily ever afters. Too easy to let himself grow cynical and detached when he was around other people, for whatever that said about him – or other people. Jon flicked a page as the sun continued to cross the horizon.
His bag sat next to him, full of rations, water, books. He’d thrown a knife in there. Not like he was a particularly competent knife-wielder, but if he was going to be beset by wild beasts in the forest, he’d like whoever found his body to know he did try.
If he had a lucky break, it was coming upon the map. Blackwood Castle wasn’t labeled, but about two miles west from the village was a break in the trees and a few symbols indicating farmland. Nothing else close. Lady Blackwood did not like neighbors, it seemed.
Another page flip, and the chapter ended. Jon neatly dog-eared the page and stuffed it in his bag.
God, he hoped leaving so early meant that he wouldn’t encounter anything. Jon had considered asking someone else to travel alongside him, but he could legitimately think of nobody who would take well to Jon The Bookkeeper showing up at five in the morning and asking them to traverse into the woods.
They’d call him mad.
Hm.
He shimmied his way down from the rooftop and hefted his bag across his shoulder. After a moment’s pause, Jon removed one of the books from his bag, tore off the flyleaf, and affixed it to the door.
OUT RUNNING ERRANDS, Jon wrote in flourishing cursive. It seemed the most optimistic thing to say. Carefully, he locked the front door. He could see the towers of dusty tomes from through the window.
Don’t think about what’ll happen to the place if you die, Jon’s morbid mind unhelpfully supplied. By way of goodbye, Jon patted the window, and then he was off.
Soon, the village was swallowed by the forest behind him. Jon was disinclined to wander too far from the edge of the river. At least here the sky wasn’t blotted out by branches, and with his lantern raised in the chilly morning fog, he could make out his surroundings. It came at the cost of the occasional schlurp-ing of his boots into the river muck. Mud halfway up his knees was manageable.
He re-adjusted his cloak over his shoulders and pressed on. Advisors might not listen to him, but surely he could convince a witch to.
Once he was startled by a doe and fawn drinking from the river and twice by an owl’s yellow eyes staring at him from the trees. Still, it was not the certain death that he’d feared and he saw nothing outwardly supernatural.
Eventually he came upon a fork in the river. Jon stopped to consult the map again – yes, from here it was only about a half-mile to Blackwood Castle. No signs of people in the area. Jon wasn’t much of a survivalist, though, and it was entirely plausible that Lady Blackwood was self-sufficient. Really, if people in a neighboring village started calling Jon a witch, he wouldn’t venture out much either.
This meant that he had to leave the safety of the river. Jon rose the lantern a little higher.
Definitively the morning now, but the dense tree cover didn’t do him any favors. He stayed in as straight a line as possible.
It took him a few minutes to realize that the birds weren’t chirping.
He couldn’t hear anything, actually. Not the river behind him, not the rustle of leaves, no skittering chipmunk or warbling call. The air tasted oddly stale.
Jon tried to tell himself that this might be a good thing, actually, he’d hear anything that snuck up on him… but Christ alive, was it a disconcerting sensation. “Just a little farther,” Jon spoke to himself in a rusty voice, just to hear anything. “Just a little farther.”
Even if the witch was evil, by god, she would be company.
Up ahead, Jon saw twisted iron and the glint of sunlight against glass. He let out a sigh of relief despite himself.
My name is Jonathan Sims, I run a bookshop in the neighboring village. Witches liked books. I’ve noticed strange disappearances recently, and wondered if you’d seen anything in the woods. Not asking for anything specific. Just a conversation. Maybe she was lonely. Or maybe she put little children in ovens.
He stepped through the last of the treeline, safe and unharmed, only to come upon the largest castle he’d ever seen.
Scarcely saying much. Jon hadn’t seen any other castles; his little village didn’t boast any. Still, Jon had over two decades worth of reading fairytales … and this was so much grander than he’d ever imagined.
Imposing dark stone framed massive windows several stories high. Jon didn’t have the architectural knowledge to know what kind of towers rose above all the rest, dotting the skyline – but there were at least a half-dozen different kinds all clustered together. Shorter cupolas peeked out shyly between the jutting buildings. Somewhere towards the rear, Jon caught sight of a greenhouse.
Most of the castle was framed by a massive stone wall, at least twice as high as the village one, bastions serving as mock protection. The only exception, peculiarly enough, was the front – Jon could peer inside the giant metal gates and see the glittering surface of a fountain. A garden, maybe? Everything else was too dark to make out.
Scarcely a hut on chicken feet nor a swamp bog. If this was where lords and ladies lived, how did royalty live?
Jon suddenly felt very, very small and very, very stupid. Damn it, he hadn’t seen any other village but his own. Was this simply how castles were? He wasn’t sure he wanted any part in this. What if he did something foolish? There had to be protocol.
“You’re fine, you’re fine,” Jon reassured himself. The strange noiselessness had followed him here. “Just a castle. Just go up to the front gates and …” What, knock? Jon saw no evidence of footmen. Certainly Lady Blackwood wouldn’t appreciate strange men wandering up to her front doors.
He walked up the dirt path to the wrought iron gates. They weren’t only meant to keep people out – the craftmanship was exquisite. The iron formed into whorls and curlicues like they were made of water, and cold enough to feel just that. He let his hand run over the front gate, marveling, before …
It pushed open. Too loose, like something was the matter with the hinges.
Jon leapt back like he’d been shocked, hands going into the air. I didn’t do it.
No booming voice thundered down to meet him and no arrows whizzed by his ear. Well! That was a good start. Perhaps a witch didn’t need to lock her front doors? Right, yes. Probably curses and things. Fireballs raining from the sky. Jon’s stomach started to churn.
He pushed the gate a little farther, just enough to slip through. A few steps into the massive garden, and …
Something was wrong.
Too difficult to see from outside. This had once been a beautiful place to welcome visitors – a large courtyard with a hedge maze, stone statues, topiary.
All had fallen into incredible disrepair. Thorned vines had erupted from the hedge maze, rendering it impassible. All of the statues had been destroyed or defaced, most only displaying their bases. Others were covered with such thick moss Jon couldn’t tell their subject.
What truly unnerved Jon were the topiary. They depicted lords and ladies, mythological creatures, and perfectly mundane ones – but the same plants that overran the maze had choked the topiary. Thorned vines pierced the once-beautiful botanical artwork. Between that and the overgrowth …
Well, hard not to imagine that they had once been living beings once, strangled and stabbed by thorns. Jon’s eyes lingered on a royal lady, a spiky growth bursting from her chest.
There were no flowers on the vines. Jon caught sight of wilted petals, so dark and rotted that Jon couldn’t even fathom a guess. Everything smelled of plant rot. If this was magic, Jon was both impressed and a bit frightened.
“What happened?” Jon asked, raising his hand to touch the topiary of a lion. “Did – ow!”
Damn it. Jon withdrew his hand and saw blood welling up from his finger. Fantastic. One could only hope these weren’t cursed. He would be extremely irritated to fall into a hundred-year sleep because he’d pricked his finger on some cursed thorns.
Had the witch done this, defaced her own home? The only part of the courtyard that appeared untouched was the fountain, but it was a sad affair. Water spurted upward in a cold spray and fell into a shallow black pool, so light that it didn’t make a sound. It felt like mist against Jon’s skin. Perhaps that was why the air felt so thick here.
He looked up towards the castle and saw no lights. No signs of life. Fear began to curl in his gut. Perhaps the witch hadn’t done this, but the forest did. And if the forest did …
He wasn’t safe here, either.
Jon took a chilly breath, fog puffing in the air. No, the witch had to know something. And if she wasn’t there any longer, if she was buried in the thorns somewhere … then the castle had to know something. Jon refused to believe that the knowledge to stop all this didn’t exist somewhere. Had to. Had to.
He approached the front door with some trepidation and gave a hard knock.
Not a surprise that he didn’t get an answer. “Hello?” Jon called out, because if he was about to trespass, he wanted to prove that he did try lawful entry.
Nothing. His voice echoed along the stone walls of the courtyard. Jon looked up at the large balcony on the upper stories that wrapped around what could only be a ballroom, almost expecting someone to be looking down at him. Nobody there. The windows (those that weren’t shattered, oh dear, that wasn’t a good sign) dimly reflected the gray sky above.
“Hellooooo?” He tried, one more time, already pushing on the front door.
It swung open with an impressive creak. Rust rained down on Jon from the hinges. Inside, he saw unlit braziers on the wall, unlit candles on the tables. Dust covered the ornate surfaces, from the wooden tables to the windowsills. Pity, because this was the most lavishly decorated room Jon had ever been in. He ached to sit on the plush velvet sofa, dust be damned. A stone fireplace sat cold. Dead plant matter sat in ceramic bowls.
The Lady, it seemed, was dead or gone. Her home was abandoned. He truly was alone, out here in the forest.
That thought plagued him as he walked past the front room, through the hallways. Not only neglect, Jon occasionally saw signs of active destruction. Every painting and portrait he passed were destroyed.
No, not destroyed, exactly. Jon saw claw marks, bigger than any creature he knew of – not only on the paintings, but the wallpaper, the floors. He sidestepped shattered mirrors and destroyed busts. Feathers from a few mutilated pillows covered the floor.
A beast? Had someone been here before him?
Jon was looking for an office, or perhaps a library. Something that would provide some clue as to what lurked in the forest. A castle this large … well, Jon supposed he would be as safe here as he would be out in the forest, nor was he inclined to repeat his journey so soon.
Fear kept his footsteps light. While his determination outweighed his trepidation, something about this place was unlike anything he’d felt before. He felt lonely in the village, of course he did, he had no friends and apparently people ridiculed him. Fine.
This? This not only felt like he was alone, but that he would never not be alone again. That he could walk these halls for days, months, years, the rest of his life … and nobody would know him or his actions. He would die alone, no matter how much he screamed. Perhaps thorns would wrap around his body and he’d turn to rot.
Still a more enticing prospect than being ripped apart by a wild beast, Jon told himself, a portion of his brain dearly keen on getting back to his bookshop.
He’d check every room he had to. He was going home with something.
At the very least, it was easy to open a door, flick his eyes in, and see whether it was suitable for investigation. Jon made quick work of a few hallways. Why did castles have so many sitting rooms? Surely if you had guests over, even an entire village, you wouldn’t cordon them off into drawing rooms and cigar rooms and gambling –
Someone was at the end of this hallway.
His first indication was only of life, the gut instinct that something at the end of the hallway lived and breathed. Jon stopped in his tracks, his breath dying in his throat. Too dark to make out anything. The only window in the hallway was several stories up and the creature rested in its shadow. It heaved out snuffled breaths.
Had he been spotted? Well, the creature wasn’t bounding after him. A beat passed and Jon was able to make out a shape – he gulped.
Massive. The creature was hunched over, but he had to be well over seven feet tall. It could even have been approaching eight. Bear? No, bears couldn’t get that tall. Jon didn’t know of anything that could get that tall, not around here, but then again, spiders didn’t grow to the size of horses either.
In either circumstance … it wasn’t something he was going to stick around for. Jon took a step back, eyes locked on the creature.
He felt a bust brush against his shoulderblades. Jon took a sharp inhale and went fumbling, but the damage was done. The marble plaster fell against the hardwood floor and shattered, the sound ricocheting off every flat surface in this room. Well, at least the damn silence was broken, too.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Jon heard a bestial huff behind him and, blood running cold, looked over his shoulder.
A pair of burning crimson eyes stared back at the end of the hall, shining through the darkness.
Oh, he had to go.
He had to go now. This was not how he wanted to die – not here, not now, and certainly not in pursuit of some information that might or might not help. He quietly bemoaned the state of his boots and legs. Hard to run with mud caked halfway up his knee. Hard to outrun a creature of that size.
Had to try. He fled around the corner of the hallway. God, if only he could remember the twists and turns it took to get here, but surely there had to be other ways out. This place wasn’t a prison. If anything, half the window seemed to be at least partially shattered, he could --
Jon heard an ungodly roar behind him, loud enough and powerful enough to shake the frames on the walls. He made a noise of terror that he wasn’t aware he could make.
His sprint grew more frantic, especially as he heard the galumphing beats of a quadruped in motion. Lord, Lord – ! He slammed his hip on the edge of a corridor and felt pain sear up his side. Fine, that was fine, he just had to –
Before he could turn another corner, Jon heard the creature barrel after him into the hallway. Another roar, and Jon could’ve sworn that he felt a gust of hot air hit his back.
No. Outrunning wasn’t going to be an option, nor did he have time to hide. He couldn’t be certain if he was heading in the direction that he came – and he had to leave now.
Jon’s eyes fell on a window.
It would be a substantial drop. Though Jon wasn’t stories above the ground, it would not be as simple as shimmying out into the front courtyard. Nor did he have any guarantee that this creature wouldn’t launch himself right after him.
But what else could be done? Would he be ripped apart otherwise?
Jon lurched for the latch on the window and pulled it open. He only had a second to make a decision. Looking out the window, just below him, he saw overgrown hedges to cushion his fall. More than a few of those twisted vines, too.
Best to be impaled by a thorn than torn apart by a wild beast, Jon thought wildly. He simply did not have time to think this through.
Breathing hard, Jon got one boot up on the windowsill – and then leapt.
As he fell through the air, he could’ve sworn he heard the creature bellow something behind him. If he didn’t know any better …
It sounded like the creature was shouting no!
Odd.
Not like Jon had time to focus on that. No, he fell into the hedges – he felt thorns pierce his body – he felt his head strike against the wall – and then he felt very little.