Silver in the Wood

Tobias had thought and thought about it, for four hundred years, until he’d reached the conclusion that Fabian must have loved him, after all, in his own way. That was the worst of it. The thing that woke now every year was always glad to see him.

There was a time three thousand years gone you could have walked from one end of the country to the other never leaving the shadow of the trees. “The Green Man walks the wood,” he tried explaining. “But the wood remembers.

At once slow deep green rolled over him. He took a breath, and another, smelling old rotting leaves and healthy growth and autumn light. He felt almost as though he could have planted his feet and become a tree himself, a strong oak reaching up to the sky, brother of the old oak who ruled the wood.

The Green Man walks the wood," he tried explaining. "But the wood remembers.

He felt almost as though he could have planted his feet and become a tree himself, a strong oak reaching up to the sky, brother of the old oak who ruled the wood.

Pearl graciously crawled into his lap and butted his hand with her head to indicate he might have the honour of petting her.

he felt himself for a moment as the stump of a rotten old tree, putting up thin green shoots at strange new angles.

The world was far bigger than Tobias remembered from four centuries ago. It was bigger than he had ever known, and he was living in it. He had thought himself a thing uprooted, like the great oak, ready to begin his death. "Mr Finch," said Mrs Silver, the one time he said anything about it. "you are not, in point of fact, a tree.

He was ashamed after for losing his temper. He always tried not to: it seemed to him that being a big fellow meant you had to keep a rein on yourself.

he never has a court and is always fundamentally alone:

He planted his feet a shoulders width apart in the ground. After a moment he closed his eyes. Here was the wood. Slow and green he felt the life of it, the life that had been his life as well these four centuries past. It poured around him thick and steady, binding all together: the long patient strength of the trees that anchored, the deep bright power of the handful of dryads--Tobias felt Bramble clear as day among them, young and strong--and then the small and necessary, the bracken and ferns, the mosses and mushrooms. Here were the songbirds and ravens and solemn wide-winged owls, shy deer and burrowing rabbits, fox and badger and snake, beetles and moths and midges, all the things that were in the wood, that lived each in their own way under the shelter of the old oak.

The way he said it, and the look he gave Tobias with it, was flirting. Flirting! At least Tobias recognised it this time. Funny thing, to be flirted with by a pretty young fellow who wore expensive coats. Made Tobias feel young again, and at the same time very, very old.

A long, long time, that was what. A long time, whispered the low rustle of the breeze in the leaves outside. A long time, sang the drip-drip-drip of rainwater, softly, while Tobias sat clear-eyed and sleepless in the dark, listening to the wood.

Fairies he had met, and chased off usually; even more than dryads, they were better off far away from humans, and humans far from them.

He knew it the same way the woodsman knew it, because he knew trees: but he also knew it with the knowledge of the Wild Man of Greenhallow, who felt every slow green beat of the forest's heart.

You’re another folklorist,” said Tobias, trying to keep up. “A practical folklorist,” said Mrs Silver. “Vampires eliminated, ghouls laid to rest, fairies discouraged, and so on.

Silver was like Fabian, a little; beautiful and clever, just as Fabian had been. Those things didn’t mean much to Bramble, of course. She looked at the world with different eyes.

They were the things of this world and of this time, human right through. Tobias started to find he liked them.

It was a foulness that refused to surrender to cleansing decay. Year on year it endured, throwing off poison in all directions, waiting in the dark, coiling itself into the fabric of the wood.

No, no, he loves them,” said Tobias. “They distract him, you see. Keep him amused with drink and song and games, and he won’t be any trouble. It’s when he gets bored that the trouble starts.

it was a damn good coat, even Tobias could tell that, the kind so perfectly tailored it required a servant to pour you into it and peel you out again—

Funny thing, to be flirted with by a pretty young fellow who wore expensive coats. Made Tobias feel young again, and at the same time very, very old.

Tobias lurched into his cottage and time abruptly poured itself back into its proper shape. He saw the shadows settle over the floor as Bramble took up a guard all around the place, calling up blackthorn and dark holly on every side, planting herself by the door in a menacing tangle. Well, there went Tobias’s vegetable garden.