ennyboy once believed that sorcerers did not pay for anything.
Sorcerers paid with riddles, or favors, or curses. They paid with knowledge of old roads and older names. They paid with mysteries that no farmer nor king could understand.
He learned differently the first spring he and Parlock lived in the Wychwood.
It began with a knock.
Not on a door—for they lived in a clearing with a tent instead of a house—but a knock all the same. Three soft, deliberate taps on the trunk of a dead elm at the edge of camp.
Parlock was stirring nettle porridge when the sound came.
His spoon froze mid-stir.
He muttered, “Oh no. Not yet.”
“What is it?” Pennyboy asked.
Parlock sighed the sigh of a man who knows its time to pay up but doesn't have the money.
“It’s the landlord.”
The Landlord Arrives
Pennyboy expected something human, or at least humanoid.
He got a bush.
A bristling, waddling bush—thorny, round, covered in leaves that rustled far more intently than any wind could cause. The entire thing shuffled into the clearing like an annoyed grandmother who wanted to know why you hadn't been to visit.
Pennyboy blinked. “Master… is that…?”
“Yes,” Parlock muttered. “The Landlord.”
The bush rattled its branches sharply.
Parlock bowed stiffly. “Good morning, Lady Thornbriar.”
Pennyboy’s eyes widened. “She’s a lady?”
“She prefers ‘lady’ to ‘great old arboreal sovereign of the undergrowth,’” Parlock murmured. “Long titles annoy her.”
The bush—Lady Thornbriar—made a rustling sound that very much resembled tapping one’s foot.
Pennyboy whispered, “What does she want?”
Parlock winced. “Payment.”
“For what?”
“For living here.”
Pennyboy frowned. “But the woods don’t belong to anyone.”
Parlock gave him a pitying look. “Everything belongs to someone. The trick is to learn who.”
The Demand
Lady Thornbriar shook her branches in a pattern that to Pennyboy made no sense whatsoever.
Parlock, however, groaned. “All of them? This year? Surely a few would suffice.”
More rustling. Sharp. Impatient.
Parlock folded his arms. “Now listen, my prickly sovereign, there are only so many acorns that can fit in our pack—”
Lady Thornbriar rattled so violently that Pennyboy stepped back.
Parlock muttered, “Fine. I accept the terms.”
Pennyboy whispered, “What terms?”
Parlock shut his eyes. “She wants us to gather the stray spirits.”
Pennyboy squeaked. “The ... the what?”
“Spirits,” Parlock repeated. “The lost ones. Wandering memories. Shadows that never found a body. The leftovers of dying magic.”
Pennyboy shuddered. “Why would she want those?”
Parlock looked to make sure the waddling bush was leaving. “She collects things. It’s what she does.”
The bush puffed itself proudly.
The First Spirit
They found the first one near a hollow oak at twilight.
It looked like a ball of dust turning in place… until it lifted a hair’s breadth off the ground. Its shape shifted—sometimes a face, sometimes a hand, sometimes a fluttering of wings that dissolved before they fully formed.
Pennyboy whispered, “It looks… lost.”
“That’s because it is,” Parlock said. “Bring the jar.”
Pennyboy held out the jar—glass etched with runes and capped with bronze.
Parlock coaxed the spirit forward. To Pennyboy’s surprise, the thing drifted willingly into the jar, settling at the bottom like a single sigh caught in a bottle.
Pennyboy swallowed. “How many of those do we have to find?”
“All of them,” Parlock said grimly. “And there are dozens.”
Pennyboy glanced nervously at the woods. The shadows seemed eager.
The Second, Third, and Fourth
They found more the next day.
One in the roots of a rotten log, laughing faintly in a voice that was not a sound but a memory of sound.
One floating above a pool of still water, and when Pennyboy reached for it, the pool rippled in the shape of a face.
One perched in a tree like a bird made of smoke and questions.
Each spirit was different.
Each spirit was strange.
Each spirit went willingly into the jars.
Pennyboy felt uneasy about the process.
“Master,” he whispered as they hunted deeper into the forest. “Are we… helping them? Or capturing them?”
Parlock did not answer directly. “We are paying rent.”
The Final Spirit
Near dusk of the third day, they reached a grove Pennyboy had never seen before.
The trees grew in a perfect circle, trunks spiraled like twisted rope. The air hummed with something that felt too old to name.
In the center floated the largest spirit Pennyboy had ever seen—tall as Parlock, shaped almost like a person but blurred, indistinct, shifting in and out of reality.
It turned toward them. Pennyboy felt cold slide down his bones like melting ice.
It whispered, not with a voice, but with knowing:
“I remember you.”
Parlock stiffened. His staff trembled.
Pennyboy swallowed hard. “Master… what does it mean?”
Parlock exhaled slowly. “Spirits remember everything. Even what we’ve forgotten.”
The spirit drifted closer.
“I remember the bargain,” it whispered. “I remember the price you promised.”
Pennyboy tugged on Parlock’s sleeve. “Master… what bargain?”
Parlock didn’t look at him. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
The spirit leaned toward Pennyboy.
“Do you know what he gave away,” it murmured, “to live in these woods?”
Pennyboy's knees felt rubbery. The spirit was having some sort of effect on him that was very unpleasant. He started to fall.
But Parlock stepped quickly between them, his staff grasped before him, putting Pennyboy at his back.
“That is enough,” he said, voice steady, staff glowing faintly. “It is time for you to rest. Aren't you ready to go?”
He lifted the jar and held it out towards the swirling smoke.
The spirit hesitated.
Then, slowly, it bowed. And floated into the jar, allowing itself to be sealed inside.
The Collection
They returned to their clearing with forty-three jars.
Lady Thornbriar was waiting. She was pacing around the cold fire pit and various possessions of theirs were embedded in her branches.
When she noticed them, her branches shook and various cooking implements, bottled ingredients and bits of clothing flew out all around her. The bush waddled forward, rustling in delight, scooping the jars out of Parlock's hands and into her tangle of branches as though they were shiny baubles.
Pennyboy cleared his throat. “Lady Thornbriar? What will you do with them?”
The bush rattled a sound Pennyboy could only interpret as none of your concern.
Parlock folded his arms. “We’ve paid. Until next spring.”
The bush rustled once—firmly, approvingly—and waddled back into the shadows of the woods.
What Pennyboy Didn’t Ask
Only once Lady Thornbriar was gone did Pennyboy speak.
“Master… what did that spirit mean? About a bargain?”
Parlock poked the fire.
“It meant what all old things mean,” he said at last. “That the woods take care of their own. If you want to live here, you must give something to the land.”
“What did you give?”
Parlock looked into the flames.
“When the time comes,” he said quietly, “you’ll know.”
Pennyboy felt a chill coil inside him. He did not ask again.