He wondered at it, but not for long. Mostly, he thought of the Black Wood, of what awaited them there. He’d heard the stories, of course. Everyone had. His own mother—and father, before he’d passed—had refused to tell him any, claiming the stories painted the Fey as evil, like demons, when in truth they were just creatures acting according to their nature as all creatures must. Felmer’s dad, though, had enjoyed telling them, and more often than not, Matt had spent those nights when he’d stayed over at his friend’s house lying awake, terrified, sure that the Fey would appear at any moment and eat his insides or chop off his face and wear it like a mask, the way Felmer’s dad said they had during the war.
A war which, Felmer’s dad told him, wasn’t over, for while a treaty had been signed between the mortals and the Fey following the Fey king’s death, it was said to be an uneasy peace, one in which each side nursed the anger its losses had kindled. There were a thousand creatures which had, barely a lifetime ago, lived in the entire country and which now were said to all lurk inside the Black Woods, plotting their revenge for being driven from their lands. Boughdins and Berdocks, Walers and Wuvias, and a thousand others. All manner of creatures of all shapes and all sizes, yet all of them, according to Felmer’s dad, sharing one very particular, very nasty characteristic—the consuming of human flesh.
Matt felt a chill run up his spine at that, one he could not wholly blame on the cold no matter how much he might want to. He glanced up at Cutter who was now packing everything away for the journey. If the man felt any fear at the prospect of entering the Wood, he did a good job of hiding it.
“Finished?” Cutter asked, glancing at him and holding his hand out for the bowl.
In truth, Matt could have eaten another two bowls just like the first, but considering that there was nothing left and that he was more than a little sure that the man had foregone his own meal so that he might eat, he tried a smile. “Yes, thank you. It was good.”
Cutter grunted—it seemed the man had a policy not to waste any words when a grunt would do—then took the bowl, stowing it in the pack.
Matt moved to help him, but Cutter waved him away. “Get your fur coat—the one in your pack. There’s a freeze coming.” He paused, sniffing the air, once again putting Matt in mind of some predator, perhaps one questing for prey. “Won’t be long now.”
“Okay,” Matt said. He walked over to his pack and withdrew the fur coat he’d placed inside the night before when he’d lain down to sleep. Then he paused, looking at it, a stab of sadness, sharp as a razor, cutting through him. His mother had made him the coat years ago, from a bear Cutter had killed. It was a fine one, finer than any of the fur coats any of the other villagers had, for his mother had been as skilled with a needle and thread as she had been a cooking pot and spices. Tears were running down his cheeks before he realized it, and he wasn’t sure how long he stood there, only that, after at time, he felt the big man’s hand on his shoulder.
Gentle, but he could feel the strength in it, strength that he thought could have crushed his shoulder if the man had taken it in mind to give it a good squeeze. “Come on, lad,” he said. “We’ve got to go. We’ll need to be in the forest before the snow comes. Might be we can find some shelter.”
“Does it ever stop?” Matt asked, still staring at the coat he held. “The guilt, I mean?”
“Guilt?”
“The villagers,” Matt said, turning on him. “Brighton. My m—the woman who raised me. We let them all die.”
“You have nothin’ to be guilty of, boy. I made you come, remember? Besides, even if you had stayed, you could have done nothing but die with them. That’s the same for both of us.”
Matt nodded slowly. “But does it ever stop?”
Cutter watched him for a moment, those eyes, so pale blue as to be almost white, studying him. “No. But sometimes, you forget it. At least for a while.”
“Only to remember it again?”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Some men think the Fey evil and therefore believe that their home, the Black Wood, must be evil also.
They are wrong on both counts. The Fey are not evil, not anymore than a winter storm or a summer hurricane is evil.
Not anymore than men might be said to be evil.
Not evil, then. But are they deadly?
Oh yes. In all the worlds, there are few things deadlier than the Fey.
—Exiled Historian to the Crown Petran Quinn excerpt from “Coming to the Known Lands”
It felt as if they walked forever, as if they trudged through some gods-forsaken land of the damned in which there was no rest or comfort. And no warmth, that most of all. Matt had lived his entire life—at least as much of it as he could remember—in Brighton. Had believed, at least until yesterday, that he had been born there and that he would likely die there. And, for the most part, that had been okay, that belief.
But now things were different, everything was different. There was no Brighton, his mother was not his mother, and though he’d spent his entire life in
