he people of Ravenmoore said that only fools and the desperate walked the Wychwood after sundown.
They forgot the third sort. Sorcerers.
Pennyboy followed close behind his master, Parlock the Keeper, with one hand on the mule’s lead, the other resting on the knife stuck in his belt.
The path beneath their boots was no true road, barely a thread of broken leaves and pressed earth where deer and... other things had passed before them. Overhead, the branches rustled and whispered like plotting lords.
Even the mule seemed uneasy. Jonathan rolled his eyes white and snorted, pulling back from time to time as if he would not go any further but Pennyboy managed to get him moving again with a few soft words and a chunk of carrot from his pocket.
Pennyboy had served Parlock five years and had learned many useful things. How to grind herbs without dulling the pestle. How to keep his mouth shut when men spoke of curses. How not to ask where certain bones came from. But now Parlocks' tasks in the city were done and he was returning to his home, the Wychwood. With his apprentice.
At somewhere around thirteen years old, Pennyboy felt he was grown and ready to take on the responsibility. Then, they'd passed into the shadowy forest just before twilight. Now he was less sure he was ready to be the Keepers' apprentice.
“Master,” he asked for the fifth time, “are we lost?”
Parlock did not slow. “No.”
“You sound unsure—”
“Do not ask again.”
Jonathon planted his hooves and brayed just then. Pennyboy hurried him with a small slap to his flank. Parlock kept walking and Pennyboy did not want to lose sight of him. They caught up to the old man and fell in beside him again as he muttered to himself, looking up into the trees from time to time.
Parlock looked like a man the years had tried to kill and failed. His face was lined, his skin browned by sun and smoke, his long grey hair wiry and bound with twine, his beard streaked with dark and grey like frost caught in a hedge. His robes were patched in many colors, each once bright, now dulled by time and travel. Pennyboy had been told each patch signified a school of magic, mastered. Pennyboy had long since stopped trying to remember which was which.
The woods pressed closer as the light thinned. Trunks bulged with age, roots clawed at the earth, and a crow watched them pass, black and patient. Pennyboy recalled a tale about crows and dead men’s eyes and looked away.
“They say witches dwell in the eastern reaches,” Pennyboy muttered, more to fill the silence than anything else.
Parlock grunted. “Witches dwell everywhere. So do thieves, ghosts, and old men who make coin from lies about all three. Best to fear none of them too much.”
“And the other things?” Pennyboy asked.
Parlock stopped and turned. His eyes were dark, deep-set, and very awake.
“What other things?”
“The ones folk don’t speak of.”
Parlock held his gaze a moment, then turned back to the path.
“Those are the ones you’ll meet most often. As a keeper, you’ll deal in what people refuse to name. That is the work.”
They made camp beside a pale twisted ash whose trunk forked like a man lifting his arms to the sky. Pennyboy disliked it at once. Parlock declared it serviceable and unpacked his teapot and herbs and set about to brew a hot drink for their dinner. It was as if they sat in a city garden instead of the heart of a cursed wood.
The fire crackled with a comforting light as twilight faded into night.
Pennyboy brushed down the mule and was humming under his breath when he heard it.
“Boy…”
The whisper brushed his ear like a cool breeze.
He spun, heart hammering. Nothing stood behind him but the ash tree, its pale leaves rattling softly. The tree seemed wrong. Too bare. Too still.
“Master?” he called.
Parlock did not look up from his book. “If something is speaking to you, tell it to wait. I am occupied.”
“It said ‘boy.’”
Parlock snorted. “Everything in the Wychwood says that. Ravens, foxes, shadows with ideas above their station. Do not answer unless it knows your name.”
Pennyboy swallowed. “Do shadows know names?”
“Only the ones freely given.”
When darkness fell, the fire burned low and steady. Parlock slept with his battered hat over his eyes, breathing slow and easy, as though the forest were his bedchamber. Pennyboy sat awake, clutching his cloak around his shoulders and feeding the fire like a man feeding a watchtower beacon.
The ash tree loomed.
Just a tree, he told himself.The crickets went silent.
The tree shifted.
Not suddenly. Not loudly. It stretched like a man easing stiff joints after a nap. The bark rippled. The raised branches bent, jointed like human limbs. A face pressed forward from the wood, features soft and vague, eyes pale as the moon.
“Boy,” it breathed.
Pennyboy could not move. His tongue stuck to his teeth. He could feel his heart beating loudly in his chest.
"Parlock," he tried to scream but only a dry whisper came out. Parlock snored.
The thing leaned closer, its branches like hands reaching out, bark stretching oddly.
“Kind boy. Help me.”
Pennyboy was paralyzed with fear but the mule was not. Jonathan brayed and pulled backwards, his tether preventing him from running madly through the forest.
Parlock was on his feet in an instant, staff in hand.
“Do not trust those who beg,” he said, voice cold as iron as he looked the thing in the eye. “He rooted himself where he should not have. He remembers being a man. He hungers for life.”
“Not you,” hissed the thing. “Too old. Too empty.”
Parlock struck the earth with his staff. Fire roared upward, bright and terrible.
"Go back! You no longer belong here!"
Parlock's voice rang through the small clearing with an authority that made Pennyboy think he ought to go back too, although he had no idea where.
The ash thing shrieked. Its face cracked and fell away, leaving only smooth, lifeless wood. Then it was still.
Silence reclaimed the clearing.
Pennyboy shook, staring at the tree.
“Why did we come here?” he asked.
Parlock sat and righted the teapot, calm as a priest at supper.
“Because the Wychwood needs a keeper who understands it. And because this place, for all its teeth, is safer than most.”
“Safer?” Pennyboy croaked.
Parlock smiled thinly. “Most nights.”
A distant howl rolled through the trees, neither beast nor wind.
Parlock drank his tea.
“Drink,” he said softly. “The woods are only greeting us.”
Pennyboy did not drink.