ennyboy never liked graves to begin with, and he liked open ones even less. Yet there he stood, peering over the edge of a rectangular pit in the middle of the Wychwood, while Parlock poked the dark soil with his walking staff.
“Well?” Pennyboy asked, wrapping his cloak tighter.
Parlock frowned. “She’s definitely gone.”
That was not the answer Pennyboy hoped for.
The grave lay beneath a twisted elder tree whose roots wound into the mound like clutching fingers. Judging by the worn stones scattered around, someone—or several someones—had tried and failed to keep the grave shut.
Pennyboy swallowed. “Is… is that bad?”
Parlock gave him a look that suggested Pennyboy should already know.
“When a witch dies,” the sorcerer said, “she seldom stays where you put her. But Ellie of the Elder Tree was meant to stay put. I nailed the coffin. I knotted the shrouds. I even poured salt round the grave. Salt from the coast. Expensive salt.”
“Does it help if it's expensive salt?”
Parlock waved a hand toward the grave. “Clearly not.”
The Witch’s Last Warning
Pennyboy looked nervously at the shadowy woods around them. "Why did you bury her? Was she a friend?"
“I knew her. Troublemaker. Last time I saw her alive, she promised she’d behave,” Parlock said irritably. “Said she’d put her wild days behind her. Said she’d only charm a frog now and again, perhaps bother a farmer’s dreams, nothing serious. She lied, naturally.”
"How did she die?"
Parlock made an "ugh" sound. "It was her own fault. A spell gone wrong. It exploded, and her with it. it wasn't a peaceful passing."
“Why did Ellie have to stay buried so badly? What did she do?”
Parlock was inspecting the grave closely, having stepped down into it. He was waving his staff here and there as he walked from one end of the hole to the other. He looked up and gave Pennyboy an unfathomable look before answering, like he wasn't seeing him at all. He blinked then threw his staff out before he climbed out of the grave.
“She tried to steal the Wychwood’s heart when she was alive. She'll try again now that she's back up.”
Pennyboy’s mouth dropped open. “There’s a heart?”
“Every old wood has one.” Parlock tapped his staff on a knot of tree root. “A memory, a power, the place where the woods remember themselves. Ellie thought if she held it, she could live forever.”
“And could she?”
“No. But she could make a mess trying. She did make a mess trying.”
Parlock leaned back over the grave and sniffed.
“She's not been gone long. She’s close. She’ll be hungry. Recently dead things usually are.”
Pennyboy took several steps away from the grave and looked nervously back where Jonathan was tied to a low branch.
"I'll stay with the mule," he offered.
"Then how will you learn anything?" Parlock asked, but he didn't wait for an answer as he headed deeper into the woods.
The Not-Quite-Dead Woman
They followed the drag marks—thin, uneven, as though someone had climbed out of earth with tangled limbs and one definitely wasn't working—and soon found themselves near a clearing that Pennyboy had never noticed, though he was certain they had passed it before.
The clearing circled a massive stump, old and rotted, furred with moss. Something moved on the far side.
“Master?” Pennyboy whispered.
Parlock raised a hand. “Ellie,” he called, voice steady. “Come out.”
For a moment, the forest held its breath.
Then she emerged.
Ellie had been a small woman in life. In death… she looked smaller still, shrunken like an apple left in the sun. Her skin was gray, her eyes sunken but sharp as broken glass. Her long grey dress was shredded and muddy, as was her white hair.
“Parlock,” she rasped. “You said I could rest. You lied.”
“You were stealing the heart of the Wychwood,” Parlock reminded her.
Ellie waved this off with a withered hand. “I would’ve given it back.”
“No, Ellie. You wouldn’t have.”
Pennyboy clutched Parlock’s sleeve. “Master, she’s—she’s—”
“Yes, yes, mostly dead. Happens.”
Ellie’s eyes narrowed at Pennyboy. “What’s this? A new one?”
“He’s my apprentice.”
Ellie’s lips cracked into a smile that was all teeth and no kindness.
“Oh ho. You? With another apprentice? Delightful. Lovely. Young, soft. I could use a voice. Mine keeps fading.”
Pennyboy yelped and ducked behind Parlock.
Parlock Makes a Bargain
“Ellie,” Parlock said, his voice shifting from stern to gentle—too gentle for Pennyboy’s comfort. “You don’t want trouble. You don't want to live forever. You want what all spells want.”
Ellie blinked. “What’s that?”
“Closure.”
Pennyboy stared at him. “But she’s dead.”
Parlock shook his head. “Death is not the same as done.”
Ellie hesitated.
“I think I know what happened. That wasn't your elder tree, was it? That stump,” Parlock continued pointing to the center of the clearning. “It’s yours, isn’t it? Your old home?”
Ellie stared at the stump as if she was seeing it for the first time. "Is it? My beautiful elder tree is a stump?"
“You’ve come back for it.”
“To return,” she whispered, suddenly subdued. “To end where I began… but I couldn’t find it.”
Pennyboy looked around, bewildered. “But it’s right here.”
Ellie glared at him. “Well, it wasn’t before you got here.”
Parlock leaned close to his apprentice. “The dead don’t always walk the same paths the living do.”
Ellie drifted toward the stump, brushing her hand along its rough bark. Her form flickered—first gray, then pale, then faint as breath.
Parlock murmured something Pennyboy didn’t catch.
Ellie stepped into the stump.
Not behind it—into it.
The wood rippled, swallowing her like water swallowing a pebble.
Softly, she sighed:
“Let me sleep… this time…”
And then she was gone.
The Woods Shift
Pennyboy exhaled shakily. "Will she become a... um... tree thing? Like the last one?"
Parlock pursed his lips for a moment. "I think not."
“So… is she gone for good?”
Parlock shrugged nonchalantly. “For now.”
“What does ‘for now’ mean?”
Parlock started walking back toward the mule. “The Wychwood will decide. It always does.”
“But—she could come back?”
“She could,” Parlock admitted. “Or she might stay peaceful for a hundred years. Or someone might chop the stump for firewood and wake her accidentally.”
Pennyboy groaned. “Shouldn’t we… stop that?”
“Oh, certainly,” Parlock said. “We should tell every woodsman in Ravenmoore never to chop any stump. Ever.”
“That won’t work.”
“No,” Parlock agreed cheerfully. “It won’t.”
They walked in uneasy silence until Pennyboy finally asked:
“Master… what if we die here someday?”
Parlock smiled in the dim light of the Wychwood.
“Then let’s hope we die somewhere inconvenient. It’s harder for the dead to find their way out.”
Pennyboy decided right then that he would not die in the Wychwood if he could help it.
Behind them, in the clearing they had left, the stump groaned softly—just once—like old wood settling.
Or something waking.