The Book Of Lost Things

The Woodsman led David down into the courtyard, where a horse was waiting, and told him to climb on, but David instead found Scylla in her barn. The horse, frightened by the sounds of battle and the howling of the wolves, whinnied with relief at the sight of the boy. David patted her forehead and whispered calming words to her, then mounted her and followed the Woodsman from the castle. Guards on horseback were already harassing the fleeing wolves, forcing them farther and farther away from the scene of the battle. A steady flow of people was moving through the main gates, servants and courtiers loaded down with whatever food or riches they could carry as they abandoned the castle before it fell into ruins around their ears. David and the Woodsman took a route that led them away from the confusion, pausing only when they were safely away from wolves and men, and stood upon the brow of a hill overlooking the castle. From there, they watched as it collapsed upon itself until all that was left was a hole in the ground marked by wood and brick and a cloud of filthy, choking dust. Then they turned their backs upon it and rode together for many days until they came at last to the forest where David had first entered this world. Now there was only one tree marked with twine, for all of the Crooked Man’s magic had been undone with his death.

The Woodsman and David dismounted before the great tree.

“It is time,” the Woodsman said. “Now you must go home.”

XXXII Of Rose

DAVID STOOD in the middle of the forest, staring at the length of twine and the hollow in the tree that had now revealed itself once more. One of the trees nearby had recently been scored by the claws of an animal, and bloody sap dripped from the wound in its trunk, staining the snow beneath. A breeze stirred its neighbors so that their branches caressed its crown, calming it and reassuring it, making it aware of their presence. The clouds above were beginning to part, and sunlight speared through the gaps. The world was changing, transformed by the end of the Crooked Man.

“Now that it is time to leave, I’m not sure I want to go,” said David. “I feel that there’s more to see. I don’t want things to go back to the way they were.”

“There are people waiting for you on the other side,” said the Woodsman. “You have to return to them. They love you, and without you their lives will be poorer. You have a father and a brother, and a woman who would be a mother to you, if you let her. You must go back, or else their lives will be blighted by your absence. In a way, you have already made your decision. You rejected the Crooked Man’s bargain. You chose to live not here but in your own world.”

David nodded. He knew that the Woodsman was right.

“There will be questions asked if you return as you are,” said the Woodsman. “You must leave all that you are wearing behind, even your sword. You will have no need for it in your own world.”

David took from his saddlebag the package containing his tattered pajamas and dressing gown and put them on behind a bush. His old clothes felt strange on him now. He had changed so much that they seemed as if they belonged to a different person, one who was vaguely familiar to him but younger and more foolish. They were the clothes of a child, and he was a child no longer.

“Tell me something, please,” said David.

“Whatever you wish to know,” said the Woodsman.

“You gave me clothing when I came here, the clothes of a boy. Did you ever have children?”

The Woodsman smiled. “They were all my children,” he said. “Every one that was lost, every one that was found, every one that lived, and every one that died: all, all were mine, in their way.”

“Did you know that the king was false when you began to lead me to him?” asked David. It was a question that had been troubling him ever since the Woodsman had reappeared. He could not believe this man would willingly lead him into danger.

“And what would you have done had I told you what I knew, or what I suspected, of the king and the trickster? When you came here, you were consumed by anger and grief. You would have given in to the blandishments of the Crooked Man, and then all would have been lost. I had hoped to guide you to the king myself, and on the journey I would have tried to help you see danger that you were in, but that was not to be. Instead, while others aided you along the way, it was your own strength and courage that brought you at last to an understanding of your place in this world and your own. You were a child when first I found you, but now you are becoming a man.”

He stretched out his hand to the boy. David shook it, then released it and hugged the Woodsman. After a moment, the Woodsman returned the gesture, and they stayed that way, garlanded with sunlight, until the boy stepped away.

Then David went to Scylla and kissed the horse’s brow. “I shall miss you,” he whispered to her, and the horse neighed softly and nuzzled at the boy’s neck.