THE GRAVEDIGGER’S CHILDREN were troublemakers.
They chased chickens through the neighbors’ yards, brandishing sticks like swords, claiming that the fowl were monsters in disguise. They went to the fields and returned with berry-stained lips, crunching seeds between their teeth. They tumbled through the house, slamming into walls and breaking one of the wooden love spoons their father had carved. And once they’d tied a small wagon to a pig and raced through the village, screaming with mingled fear and joy. It was widely thought that the eldest, the only daughter at that time, was filled with mischief, and her younger brother trailed in her wake.
They would settle down, said Enid, the innkeeper. Children raised so close to Annwvyn were bound to have a spark of wildness in them. Their parents were both considered decent folk. The children would follow.
And if they didn’t, said Hywel, the girl would make a fine recruit for the cantref’s armies.
Their father dug graves and when he came home at night, his fingernails were stained with dirt and his boots were muddy. When there were no deaths in the village, he would vanish into the woods, reemerging with plump mushrooms, wood sorrel, and all sorts of berries. They were never rich, but their table was laden with good food. Their mother kept account of their bookkeeping, talked with the mourners, and planted fresh gorse along the edges of their graveyard as a protection against magic.
For all their freedoms, the children had one rule: They were not to follow their father into the forest. They would trail after him until the shadows of the trees fell over the rocky ground—and then the father would lift his hand, fingers splayed: “farewell” and “no farther,” conveyed in a single gesture.
The children obeyed—at first.
“What are you doing?” asked the brother, when the girl stepped beneath the tree boughs.
“I want to see the forest.”
The brother tugged at her arm, but she shook him off. “You can’t,” he said. “We aren’t allowed.”
But the girl ignored him.
The forest was beautiful—lush with ferns and thick with moss. At first, all was well. She picked wildflowers and wove them into her tangled hair. She tried to catch small fish from a stream. She laughed and played until evening fell.
With the creeping darkness, things came awake.
A figure stood nearby, watching her. For one moment, she thought it was her father. The man was tall and broad-shouldered, but too thin around the waist and wrists.
And when the man walked closer, she realized it was not a man at all.
It could not be. Not with a face of raw bone, with bared teeth and hollow eye sockets. She had seen bodies before, but they were always gently wrapped in clean cloths and then lowered into the ground. They were peaceful. This thing moved slowly under the weight of armor, and a sword jutted from a belt. And it stank.
The girl had a vague idea of picking up a fallen branch to defend herself, but she was frozen with fear.
The dead creature came so close that she could see the fine pockmarks and cracks in its bones, and the places where its teeth had fallen out. It knelt before her, its empty gaze fixed on her face. It pulled her close.
And then it inhaled. Sucked a rattling breath through its teeth, as if it were trying to taste the very air.
She quaked with terror. Every gasp was raw with it.
The dead thing drew back, tilting its head in a silent question. Then it rose to its feet and looked beyond her. Heartbeat hammering, the girl glanced over her shoulder.
Her father stood a few strides away. In one hand, he held a basket of forest greens, and in the other he wielded an axe. The threat was unspoken but heard nonetheless.
The dead thing retreated, and the girl shook so hard she could not speak. The father knelt beside her, checking her for injuries. “I told you not to follow.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Death is not to be feared,” he said. “But nor can it be forsaken. One must be mindful.”
“What was that?” she asked. “Was it truly death?”
The father placed his hand on her shoulder. “A bone house,” he replied. “They linger beyond death. It is why the villagers do not disturb the forest.”
“But you come here,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. “Those of us who deal in the trade of death are familiar with it. I don’t fear them—and as long as you know how to navigate the forest, nor should you.”
She looked at the trees—their tangled branches wreathed in fog, the chill of the night settling all around them. And she was not afraid—rather, something like excitement unfurled within her.
“Teach me?” she asked.
Her father smiled. He took her hand. “I’ll show you. But hold on, and do not let go.”
For two years, he showed her how to find paths through the trees, where rabbits made their warrens, how to tell between the sweet berries and the poisonous ones. And always, he carried his axe with him. On the days when they did not go to the forest, he brought her to the graveyard. She learned how to break up rocky topsoil, how to wrap a body, and how to pay last respects to the dead.
Winters came harsh and cold, and their provisions of food dwindled. Soup was watered down, and the memory of plump blackberries and buttered greens kept the children awake at night. The village became smaller; farmers packed up their families and went elsewhere, leaving empty homes and barren fields. And fewer people required the services of a gravedigger.
The mother became pregnant a third time, and when the father was offered a job as a scout, he accepted. The local cantref lord wished to investigate a collapsed mine, and the only way to get there was through the forest. And so he asked the man who did not fear the woods.
The daughter begged to go with him, but the father refused. When she protested, he gave her half of a wooden love spoon. He had carved several for their mother during their courtship—and this one had been broken when the sister and brother were tussling in the kitchen. The whorls of dark wood were smooth against her fingers, and she traced the overlapping hearts and flowers. “Here,” he said, cupping his larger hands around hers, pressing the spoon gently. “You take this half, and I’ll take the other. So long as you have it, you’ll know I’ll find you.”
She clutched it to her chest and nodded. The father kissed his children and his pregnant wife, and he went into the forest.
He never returned.
By night, the daughter slept with her half of the spoon beneath her pillow, and by day, she carried it in her pocket. He will come back, she said, when anyone asked.
Some days, the daughter went back to the woods. She stood in the forest, beneath the shadow of the mountains and waited. She waited to see another dead man.
The forest did not scare her; rather, she wanted to be like it: ageless and impervious, cruel and beautiful.
Death could not touch it.
CHAPTER 1
THE EVENING AIR smelled pleasantly of a fresh grave.
Ryn breathed it in—the sweetness of overturned sod, mists rising from the green grass, and the woodsmoke drifting from the village. The spade felt comfortable in her hands, slotted in amidst familiar calluses. She hacked at the damp earth, dislodging rocks and thin roots. She’d marked the outline of the grave with twine and nails, and now it was just a matter of cutting through greenery and topsoil.