I don’t go to lunch. I go for a walk that turns into a run that turns into me hacking away at a tree on the edge of the woods.
I can’t believe that my blade comes when I call for it.
17
SIMON
I stop looking for Baz anywhere where he’s supposed to be.…
But I don’t stop looking for him.
I take walks in the Wavering Wood at night. Penny sees the look on my face and doesn’t try to join me. Agatha’s always off doing schoolwork; she must be buckling down this year—maybe her dad’s promised her a new horse or something.
I used to love the Wood, I used to find it calming.
I realize after a few nights that I’m not just walking aimlessly; I’m covering the Wood like I’m sweeping it. Like we swept it that year that Elspeth disappeared—all of us holding hands, walking side by side, marking off parcels as we moved through them. I’m marking off parcels in my head now, casting for light and waving my blade back and forth to clear branches. I’ll mow the whole fucking forest down if I go on like this.
I don’t find anything. And I frighten the sprites. And a dryad comes out to tell me that I’m basically a one-man walking woodland apocalypse.
“What do you seek?” the nymph asks, hovering over the ground even though I’ve already told her that it gives me the creeps. She’s got hair like moss, and she’s dressed like one of those manga girls with the Victorian boots and the umbrellas.
“Baz,” I say. “My roommate.”
“The dead one? With the pretty eyes?”
“Yes.” Is Baz dead? I’ve never thought of him that way. I mean, he is a vampire, I guess. “Wait, are you saying he’s dead? Like, really dead?”
“All the bloodeaters are dead.”
“Have you actually seen him eat blood?”
She stares at me. My sword is stuck in the ground beside my feet.
“What do you seek, Chosen One?” She sounds irritated now. She lets her green brolly rest on her shoulder.
“My roommate. Baz. The bloodeater.”
“He’s not here,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“More sure than you.”
I sigh and dig my sword deeper into the ground. “Well, I’m not sure at all.”
“You’re burning up goodwill here, magician.”
“How many times do I have to save the Wood to win you people over?”
“There’s no use saving it if you’re just going to hack it down.”
“I’m looking. For my roommate.”
“Your enemy,” she counters. She has grey-brown skin, ridged and rippled like bark, and her eyes glow like those mushrooms that grow deep in the woods.
“It doesn’t matter what he is,” I say, “you know who I’m talking about—how can you be sure he isn’t here?”
The dryad tilts her head back, like she’s listening to the trees behind her. Her every move sounds like a breeze blowing through branches.
“He isn’t here,” she says. “Unless he’s hiding.”
“Well, of course he’s hiding! He’s hiding bloody somewhere.”
“If we can’t see him here, magician, neither will you.”
I pick up my sword and sheathe it at my hip. “But you’ll tell me if you hear anything?”
“Probably not.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m improbable.”
“This is important,” I say. “A very dangerous person is missing.”
“Not dangerous to me,” she hisses. “Not dangerous to my sisters. We don’t bleed. We don’t play petty games of more and most.”
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten that Pitch is the House of Fire.” I gesture to the woods behind her, all of it flammable.
Her head snaps up. Her smile creaks down. She switches her umbrella to her other shoulder. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“If we see your handsome bloodeater, we’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
“Not. Helping.”
“We’ll tell the golden one, then.”
“The golden one … Am I the golden one?”
She scrunches her nose and shakes her mossy hair. Flowers bloom in it.
“Who, then?”
“Your golden one. His golden one. Your pistil and stigma.”
“Pistol … Do you mean Agatha?”
“Sister golden hair.”
“You’ll tell Agatha if you see Baz?”
“Yes.” Her umbrella twirls. “We find her peaceful.”
I sigh and rub the back of my hand into my forehead. “I’ve saved you at least three times. This whole forest. You know that, yeah?”
“What do you seek, Chosen One?”
“Nothing.” I throw my hands in the air and turn to leave, kicking at the nearest sapling. “Nothing!”
Nothing good ever happens in the Wavering Wood.
* * *
I walk the Wood.
I walk the fields.
I cover the school grounds between classes, poking through empty buildings, opening long-closed doors.
Sometimes Watford seems as big on the inside as the walled grounds and the outer lands combined.
There are secret rooms. Secret hallways. Entirely hidden wings that only reveal themselves if you know the right spell or have the right artefact.
There’s an extra storey between the second and third floors of the Cloisters. (Penny calls it “bonus content.”) It’s an echo of the floor above it. All the same things happen there, a day later.