II: The Willow
The trees closed behind them like a gate.
Rafe walked slowly, his arm wrapped firmly around Tomas’s waist, bearing more and more of the boy’s weight with each step. The trail beneath their feet was little more than a line of flattened ferns and wet moss, winding through elder and birch trees whose roots coiled like resting serpents.
Tomas was light—frighteningly so. What strength he had left burned out fast, and by the time they reached the second rise, he was panting. Rafe said nothing. He simply paused, adjusted Tomas against his side, and kept moving.
They were far from the chapel now. The mist was heavier here, drawn low to the forest floor, curling around their legs like smoke. Somewhere behind them, a raven called—once, then was still.
"Are we... nearly there?" Tomas’s voice was cracked, dry.
"Closer than we were," Rafe replied, eyes never leaving the path. “There’s a stream ahead. We’ll rest there.”
Tomas tried to nod but winced instead. His injured arm hung limply, bound tight against his chest. The fabric of the bandage was dark and stiff with old blood. A long black vein now crept up from his wrist toward the bend of his elbow.
“You didn’t have to come,” the boy muttered.
“I never do,” said Rafe. “But sometimes I go anyway.”
They reached the stream just before the light began to fade. A narrow ribbon of water gurgled from the mouth of a mossy rock, pooling in a shallow basin before continuing downhill. Rafe eased Tomas to the ground beside it.
The boy drank. Not much, but enough to wet his lips. His eyes fluttered.
Rafe crouched and washed his hands in the stream, watching the water swirl red and then run clear.
“Can you walk the rest?” he asked.
Tomas didn’t answer. He was already asleep, head slumped forward.
Rafe looked up at the darkening canopy.
“Then I’ll carry you,” he said, not unkindly.
And he did.
***
It was full dark by the time Rafe reached the hollow.
The path had narrowed to nothing, swallowed by thick undergrowth and the weight of unmarked time. Only those who had been there before would know it was a path at all. At last, beneath the thick eaves of a yew grove, the hillside opened like a wound, revealing the mouth of an earthen hut built into the slope. Above it, rising from the crown of the hill, stood an ancient willow—its branches long and trailing, draped like curtains of shadow against the sky. A thin trickle of water ran nearby, fed by a spring that burbled unseen beneath moss and stone.
A faint light flickered from within—yellow, steady, purposeful.
Rafe approached without knocking. He shifted Tomas gently in his arms, stooped under the low frame of the doorway, and stepped inside.
The space was close and warm, thick with the scent of dried herbs, ash, and damp earth. Bundles of root and leaf hung from the rafters, brushing his head. At the back of the room, kneeling before a wide stone hearth, was Rowena of the White Thread.
She did not turn. "Lay him down," she said.
Rafe obeyed, setting Tomas carefully on a bed of fur and reed mats near the fire. The boy stirred, moaning faintly.
Rowena rose at last and came to kneel beside him. Her eyes were sharp, her fingers gentler than they looked. She peeled back the wrappings around Tomas’s arm and hissed softly through her teeth.
“You bring him late.”
“I brought him as soon as he was given to me.”
She didn’t argue. Her eyes met his only once, and then she held out her hand.
Rafe reached into his coat and produced a small disk of carved willow wood—the token Oswin had given. He placed it in her palm.
Rowena closed her fingers around it. "He stays."
Rafe exhaled.
“I’ll return in two days,” he said.
“You’ll return when the forest allows,” Rowena replied, already at work grinding dried bark into a clay bowl.
Rafe nodded once. He stepped back into the night.
And the door shut behind him.
***
Rowena did not speak again until Rafe’s footsteps had long faded into the moss. She moved with silent purpose, setting aside the bowl and turning to a small shelf lined with clay pots and carved bone vessels. From a pouch at her hip, she drew out a tight bundle wrapped in fox-fur and bound with red twine.
She knelt by the hearth, cleared a space on the stone floor, and spread the bundle open. Inside: a collection of carved bones—small, polished smooth with age, some inked with runes, others etched with animal sigils. She whispered to them in a tongue older than law, older than church. Her fingers moved deftly, as though she were not casting, but remembering.
Tomas lay still, breath shallow, his face slick with fever. The fire popped softly beside him.
Rowena cast the bones.
They clattered against the stone like brittle branches in wind. She leaned forward, eyes narrowed.
One bone landed upright, the black ink of its rune stark against the grey floor. Another cracked as it landed. A third rolled into the shadow and stopped.
She exhaled sharply. Her hand reached into the circle and pulled two bones together.
Rafe, though gone, had known the signs she would look for. He had seen her read them once before. He had not stayed then, but he had remembered what she did when she found what she feared.
She sat back and stared into the fire.
“Bad blood,” she murmured. "The black has taken root."
Tomas stirred, his head lolling sideways.
She reached for the clay bowl once more.
And the bones remained where they lay—in a pattern she did not disturb.
***
The fever had not broken.
By the third day, Rowena had tried every tincture, every poultice, every whispered charm she trusted to speak aloud. Tomas’s arm was now the color of rot—dark streaks climbing like vines beneath the skin, the wound itself swollen and weeping. The boy’s body burned with heat, though his hands and feet had grown cold. His breathing came in shallow pants, lips cracked, eyes sunken and glassy.
She pressed a strip of linen soaked in spring water to his forehead and whispered again—not to him, but to the root spirits that watched over her door.
Nothing answered.
The hut was too still.
She stood, wiped her hands, and threw open the door. A sharp wind stirred the willow’s hanging branches.
Rafe had returned sometime before dawn, his face hollowed by sleeplessness, his cloak streaked with mud. He stood quietly in the doorway until Rowena looked up from Tomas’s bedside.
“You can’t help him,” she said flatly. “But you can fetch someone who might.”
She stepped outside with him, pointed down the shadowed trail. “Find the brewer’s boy. Tell him to bring the gruit. And hurry.”
***
Brother Edric arrived before dusk. He was younger than she expected, barely older than the dying boy inside. His robe was patched and his boots were wet with spring mud, but he carried a clay jug marked with Brigid’s cross, pressed deep into the side.
Rowena eyed him suspiciously. "You brought what I asked?"
He nodded, his voice soft. "Blessed by Brother Tuck at dawn. Brewed on full moon, over ash and alder."
She allowed him in, barely.
Edric stepped inside, bowed his head, and knelt at Tomas’s side. The boy barely stirred.
"He burns like the hearth," Edric whispered.
Rowena said nothing.
The apprentice uncorked the jug and poured a portion of the dark liquid into a shallow clay dish. The scent filled the room—herbs, yeast, something faintly sweet and earthen.
Edric murmured a prayer in a voice trained in liturgy but softened by uncertainty. “Saint Brigid, who brews the grace of the green world, pour peace into this vessel of clay.”
He lifted the dish to Tomas’s lips.
The boy coughed. Tried. Swallowed half a mouthful—and retched. The gruit splashed across his chest, staining the linen darker. His eyes rolled back.
Rowena moved forward, took the jug from Edric’s hands.
“That’s enough.”
“He must drink—”
“He can’t.”
The door creaked.
They both turned.
David stood in the threshold, eyes burning.
He did not knock. He did not speak.
He stepped inside and knelt beside Tomas.
“What’s left of him?” he asked.
Rowena didn’t answer.
Outside, the wind picked up, and the willow branches scraped like fingers along the roof.
Inside, the fire burned low, and the boy’s breath grew fainter.
***
Robin arrived as the light was failing.
He stepped through the willow’s curtain with no announcement, his hood still drawn and the hem of his cloak damp with stream water. The air inside the hut was heavy—thick with herb smoke, sweat, and the slow, sour rot of sickness.
Tomas lay on the reed mat by the fire, eyes half-lidded, lips parted. His breath came in slow, irregular pulls. Each one sounded like it had to be convinced.
Rafe stood at the far wall, arms folded tight. Brother Edric sat quietly beside the boy, a fresh cloth in hand, whispering prayers under his breath, words shaped more by habit than hope.
Robin did not remove his hood. The firelight cast shifting shadows across the lower half of his face, but the rest remained hidden, as always—unchallenged, unseen.
"I came as soon as I heard," he said, not to anyone in particular.
Rafe gave the barest nod.
David, already there, rose from a low stool near the hearth, eyes rimmed red, fists clenched.
“You came late,” he said. “You always come late.”
Robin ignored the barb and moved to kneel beside Tomas. He placed a hand gently on the boy’s chest, as if measuring how much was left.
“He’s nearly gone,” he murmured.
David’s voice sharpened. “And whose fault is that?”
Robin turned. “Not mine.”
David stepped closer, heat rising in his voice, his grief sharpening into fury. “Not yours? You think giving a few coins to beggars makes up for what you’ve refused to see? Tomas is dead. And you want to talk about strategy?”
“I told you we can’t act out of vengeance,” Robin said. “That way leads to ruin.”
“You say that now?” David snapped. “You stood by while Tomas rotted. While his mother begged. You speak of strategy, of balance—but I see only boys dying and you calling it restraint. You stole from the rich and claimed it was justice. But who did it feed? Tomas was turned away from the city gates with nothing in his hand. Nothing.”
“I can’t save everyone—”
“No,” David growled, “but you could have saved him. You chose not to. You clutch your symbols and your silence while the rest of us bury the dead.”
Robin bristled. “I carry the burden of every death. Every child. Every name. But if we answer blood with more blood, there’ll be nothing left but bones in the leaves. I will not be the butcher.”
David’s voice dropped. “Then I will. Because if you won’t give the people justice, someone has to.”
Tomas stirred. A ragged gasp. Then another.
Everyone turned.
He exhaled one last time, a long, rattling breath that seemed to carry something out of the room with it.
Then he was still.
For a moment, the fire crackled louder than breath. The air itself held still.
Rowena stepped forward and closed the boy’s eyes with two fingers.
Brother Edric crossed himself and rose. Rafe stood beside him.
They turned toward the door, but Rowena stopped them with a glance.
“It’s done, then,” she said to Rafe. “Tell the boy’s mother.”
Rafe’s throat tightened. He nodded once and stepped out into the fading light. Edric followed, casting a final look over his shoulder.
Inside, the silence returned, harder now. More final.
Robin stood. David did too.
“This ends now,” Robin said.
David laughed—low, bitter. “You think you command me still?”
“I think we built something once,” Robin replied. “And you would see it burned.”
“You built it with oaths and riddles. I bled for it.”
“We all bled,” Robin snapped. “But you’ve confused vengeance with justice.”
David’s hand went to his blade.
Robin’s hand mirrored the motion.
They stared.
David drew—Robin did not.
“I won’t cross blades with you,” Robin said.
“Then don’t follow me.”
David turned and stepped into the darkness beneath the trees.
Robin didn’t stop him.
Rowena, having wrapped Tomas’s body in a linen shroud, returned from the shadows. A cloth bundle in her hands, she looked at Robin with cold eyes.
"Take your quarrels elsewhere," she said. "This is a place of rest now."
Robin did not speak. He looked once more at the small figure on the mat.
Rowena moved with quiet purpose, rinsing the cloths, stoking the fire, setting small clay tokens around the boy’s head and feet. She did not speak to Robin again, but her movements spoke clearly: he, too, was no longer welcome.
Robin lingered only a moment longer, one hand resting on Tomas’s shroud.
Then, without a word, he turned and stepped beneath the willow’s trailing limbs. The branches whispered behind him like a veil falling closed.
***
The fire burned low in the clearing. The men had gathered at David's call—no scouts, no sentries, just a whispered word passed from grove to gully.
Ewan of Greaves was the first to arrive, his face weathered like bark, suspicion in every line. Brand Rook followed, leading his boy by the hand, though the boy didn't speak a word.
David stood waiting with no fire in his voice, only ice. “Tomas is dead. And Robin will do nothing. If we want justice, it must come from us.”
Ewan glanced at Brand, who said nothing.
David stepped closer to the flame. “We strike at dawn. Not with blades in the open—but with fear. Let them feel the ground shift beneath them. We’ll send a warning first. Then blood.”
He knelt beside a bundle of sticks and cloth. “We place the mark tonight. Then lie in wait for the patrol. They won't expect us this close to the gate.”
Ewan crossed his arms. “And after?”
“We vanish,” David said. “Back into the woods. Like smoke.”
No one answered, but neither did they refuse.
David stood at the center, a thick branch in his hands, carving it slowly with a belt knife. Red cloth lay on a stump beside him, and something white—bone, or maybe antler.
Ewan leaned against a fallen log, his arms crossed, brow furrowed. "This won’t bring him back."
David didn’t look up. “Nothing will.”
Across from them, Brand crouched low, mending a frayed bowstring. Beside him, silent and still, sat his boy—Noll. The lad watched David with sharp, unreadable eyes.
“We strike soon,” David said, not stopping the blade. “Before they forget his name.”
“They already have,” Ewan muttered.
David stood and held up the roughly carved figure—two crossed sticks, bound with cord. The ends of the winter reed were blackened with ash, and he wrapped the red cloth around its shoulders like a shroud. At its chest, he tied a bead of pine, worn smooth and etched with a crude circle and cross. Beneath it, he secured a chicken’s foot with a length of red thread, its claws curled and sharp like a curse. He stepped back to examine it.
“A warning,” he said. “A mark for the gate. Let them know the blood they’ve spilled has been counted.”
David looked at Noll. "He will place it."
Brand hesitated. “He’s just a boy.”
David looked to Noll. “So was Tomas.”
Brand flinched. Noll said nothing. He rose without being asked and took the effigy from David’s hand.
Ewan turned his face away.
David knelt beside the boy. “You’ve been quiet, Noll. But I’ve seen your eyes. Tomas was your friend, was he not? You know what they did. This is for him.”
The boy nodded once.
No more was said.
***
The forest was quiet as Noll walked, clutching the figure tight to his chest. Mist clung to the roots, and owls whispered above him. He moved like a shadow—trained, careful. His father had taught him well.
Before the dawn light broke, he reached the paddock behind the gate. The trough stood still and dark in the mist, the fence slick with dew. Noll stepped to the outer post, pulled a length of horsehair from his pouch, and lashed the bundle into place.
Then, without a word, he vanished into the trees.