David was very frightened, and knew that he was about to die.
“His name is—” he began.
“Yes!” said the Crooked Man, “Yes!” as the king’s last breath bubbled in his throat and Leroi cast his dying body aside, wiping the old man’s blood from his mouth while he advanced on David.
“His name is…”
“Tell me!” shrieked the Crooked Man.
“His name is ‘brother,’ ” said David.
The Crooked Man’s body collapsed in despair. “No,” he moaned. “No.”
Deep in the bowels of the castle, the last grains of sand trickled through the neck of the hourglass, and on a balcony far above, the ghost of a girl glowed brightly for a second, then faded away entirely. Had there been anyone there to see it happen, they would have heard her give a small sigh that was filled with joy and peace, for her torment had come to an end.
“No!” howled the Crooked Man, as his skin cracked and all of the foul gas began to burst forth from within. All was lost, all was lost. After time beyond measure and stories beyond telling, his life was at an end. And so furious was he that he dug his nails into his own scalp and began to tear it apart, ripping at skin and flesh. A deep cut appeared in his forehead, extending quickly down the bridge of his nose as he pulled at himself before bisecting his mouth. One half of his head was now in each of his hands, the eyes rolling wildly, yet still he tore, the great wound continuing through his throat and chest and belly until it reached his thighs, whereupon his body at last became two separate pieces and fell entirely apart. From the two halves of the Crooked Man crawled every nasty spineless thing that ever lived: bugs and beetles and centipedes, spiders and pale white worms, all of them twisting and writhing and scurrying upon the floor until they, too, grew still, as the final grain of sand fell through the neck of the hourglass and the Crooked Man died.
Leroi looked down upon the mess, grinning. David had started to close his eyes, preparing to die, when Leroi suddenly shuddered. He opened his mouth to speak, and his jaw fell away and landed upon the stones at his feet. His skin began to crumble and flake like old plaster. He tried to move, but his legs would no longer support him. Instead, they broke at the knees, so that he fell forward on the ground, cracks appearing across his face and the backs of his hands. He tried to scrape at the ground, but his fingers shattered like glass. Only his eyes remained as they had been, but they were now filled with confusion and pain.
David watched Leroi dying. He alone understood what was happening.
“You were the king’s nightmare, not mine,” he said. “When you killed him, you killed yourself.”
Leroi’s eyes blinked uncomprehendingly, then ceased all movement. He became merely the broken statue of a beast, now without another’s fear to animate it. Tiny fissures covered his entire body, and then he collapsed into a million pieces and was gone forever.
All around the throne room, the other Loups were crumbling to dust, and the common wolves, deprived of their leaders, began to retreat through the tunnel as more guards entered the throne room, their shields raised to form a wall of steel through which the tips of spears poked like the spines of a hedgehog. They ignored David as he picked up his sword and ran through the hallways of the castle, past frightened servants and bewildered courtiers, until he found himself in the open air. He climbed to the highest battlement and stared out over the landscape beyond. The wolf army had descended into confusion. Allies were turning on one another now, fighting, biting, the fast climbing over the slow in their urge to retreat and return to their old territories. Already great columns of wolves were fleeing for the hills. All that was left of the Loups were columns of dust that swirled for a moment, then were scattered to the four winds.
David felt a hand upon his arm and looked around to see a familiar face.
It was the Woodsman. There was wolf blood on his clothing and his skin. It dripped from the blade of his ax and pooled darkly on the floor.
David could not speak. He just dropped his sword and pack and hugged the Woodsman tightly. The Woodsman laid a hand on the boy’s hand and stroked his hair gently.
“I thought you were dead,” sighed David. “I saw the wolves drag you away.”
“No wolf will take my life,” he said. “I managed to fight my way to the horse breeder’s cottage. I barricaded the door, then fell unconscious from my wounds. It was many days before I was well enough to follow your trail, and I could not get through the ranks of the wolves until now. But we must leave this place quickly. It will not stand for much longer.”
David felt the battlements shake beneath his feet. A gap opened in the wall beneath his feet. Others appeared in the main buildings, and bricks and mortar began to tumble down to the cobblestones below. The labyrinth of tunnels beneath the castle was collapsing, and the world of kings and crooked men was coming apart.
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.
David walked to the old tree and looked back at the Woodsman. “Can I ever come back here?” he asked, and the Woodsman said something very strange in reply.
“Most people come back here,” he said, “in the end.”
He raised his hand in farewell, and David took a deep breath and stepped into the trunk of the tree.
At first, he could smell only musk and earth and the dry decay of old leaves. He touched the inside of the tree and felt the roughness of its bark against his fingers. Although the tree was huge, he could not go for more than a few steps before striking the interior. His arm still hurt from where the Crooked Man had pierced him with his nails. He felt claustrophobic. There appeared to be no way out, but the Woodsman would not have lied to him. No, there must have been some mistake. He decided to step back outside again, but when he turned around, the entrance was gone. The tree had sealed itself up entirely, and now he was trapped inside. David began to shout for help and bang his fists against the wood, but his words simply echoed around him, bouncing back in his face, mocking him even as they faded.
But suddenly there was light. The tree was sealed, yet there was still illumination coming from above. David looked up and saw something sparkling like a star. As he watched, it grew and grew, descending toward where he stood. Or perhaps he was rising, ascending to meet it, for all of his senses were confused. He heard unfamiliar sounds—metal upon metal, the squeaking of wheels—and caught a sharp chemical smell from close by. He was seeing things—the light, the grooves and fissures of the tree trunk—but gradually he became aware that his eyes were closed. If that was the case, then how much more could he see once his eyes were open?
David opened his eyes.
He was lying on a metal bed in an unfamiliar room. Two large windows looked out on a green lawn where children walked with nurses by their sides or were wheeled in chairs by white-clad orderlies. There were flowers by his bedside. A needle was embedded in his right forearm, connected by a tube to a bottle on a steel frame. There was a tightness around his head. He reached up to touch it with his fingers and felt bandages instead of hair. He turned slowly to the left. The movement caused his neck to ache, and his head began to pound. Beside him, asleep in a chair, was Rose. Her clothes were wrinkled, and her hair was greasy and unwashed. A book lay upon her lap, its pages marked by a length of red ribbon.
David tried to speak, but his throat was too dry. He tried again and emitted a hoarse croak. Rose opened her eyes slowly and stared at him in disbelief.
“David?” she said.
He still couldn’t speak properly. Rose poured water from a jug into a glass and placed it against his lips, supporting his head so he could drink more easily. David saw that she was crying. Some of her tears dripped onto his face as she took the glass away, and he tasted them as they fell into his mouth.
“Oh, David,” she whispered. “We were so worried.”
She placed the palm of her hand against his cheek, stroking him gently. She couldn’t stop crying, but he could see that she was happy despite her tears.
“Rose,” said David.
She leaned forward. “Yes, David, what is it?”
He took her hand in his.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And then he fell back into a dreamless sleep.
XXXIII
Of All That Was Lost
and All That Was Found
IN THE DAYS that followed, David’s father would often talk about how close David had come to being taken from them: of how they could find no trace of him in the aftermath of the crash, of how they’d been convinced that he had been burned alive in the wreckage, then, when no sign of him was discovered, fearful that he might have been abducted from them; how they had searched the house and gardens and forest, finally scouring the fields for him, assisted by their friends, by the police, even by passing strangers troubled by their pain; how they had returned to his room in the hope that he might have left some hint as to where he was going; how they had at last found a hidden space behind the wall of the sunken garden, and there he was, lying in the dirt, having somehow crawled through a crack in the stonework and then become trapped in the hollow by the falling rubble.
The doctors said that he had taken another of his fits, perhaps as a result of the trauma of the crash, and this one had caused him to lapse into a coma. David had stayed in a deep sleep for many days, until the morning when he awoke and spoke Rose’s name. And even though there were aspects of his disappearance that could not be fully explained—what he had been doing out in the garden to begin with, and how he had come by some of the marks on his body—they were just glad to have him back, and no word of blame or anger was ever directed at him. Only much later, when he was out of danger and back in his own room, did Rose and his father, when they were alone in their bed at night, remark upon how much the incident had changed David, making him both quieter and more thoughtful of others; more affectionate toward Rose, and more understanding of her own difficulties in trying to find a place for herself in the lives of these two men, David and his father; more responsive to sudden noises and potential dangers, yet also more protective of those who were weaker than he, and of Georgie, his half brother, in particular.
The years went by, and David grew both too slowly and too quickly from a boy to a man: too slowly for him but too quickly for his father and Rose. Georgie grew too, and he and David remained as close as siblings can be, even after Rose and their father went their separate ways, as grown-ups will sometimes do. They divorced amicably, and neither of them ever married again. David went to university, and his father found a little cottage by a stream where he could fish upon his retirement. Rose and Georgie lived together in the big old house, and David visited them as often as he could, either alone or with his father. If time permitted, he would step into his old bedroom and listen for the sound of the books whispering to one another, but they were always silent. If the weather was good, he would descend to the remains of the sunken garden, repaired somewhat since the crash of the plane but still not quite as it once was, and stare silently at the cracks in its walls, but he never tried to enter it again and no one else did either.
But as time progressed, David discovered that about one thing at least the Crooked Man had not lied: his life was filled with great grief as well as great happiness,
with suffering and regret as well as triumphs and contentment. David lost his father when he was thirty-two, his father’s heart failing as he sat by the stream with a fishing rod in his hands, the sun shining upon his face so that, when he was found by a passerby hours after his death, his skin was still warm. Georgie attended the funeral in his army uniform, for another war had commenced to the east and Georgie was anxious to do his duty. He traveled to a land far from this one, and there he died alongside other young men whose dreams of honor and glory ended upon a muddy battlefield. His remains were shipped home and buried in a country churchyard beneath a small stone cross bearing his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the words “Beloved Son and Brother.”
David married a woman with dark hair and green eyes. Her name was Alyson. They planned a family together, and the time came for Alyson to give birth to their child. But David was anxious for them both, for he could not forget the words of the Crooked Man: “Those whom you care about—lovers, children—will fall by the wayside, and your love will not be enough to save them.”
There were complications during the birth. The son, whom they named George in honor of his uncle, was not strong enough to live, and in giving brief life to him Alyson lost her own, and so the Crooked Man’s prophecy came to pass. David did not marry again, and he never had another child, but he became a writer and he wrote a book. He called it The Book of Lost Things, and the book that you are holding is the book that he wrote. And when children would ask him if it was true, he would tell them that, yes, it was true, or as true as anything in this world can be, for that was how he remembered it.
And they all became his children, in a way.
As Rose grew older and weaker, David looked after her. When Rose died, she left her house to David. He could have sold it, for by then it was worth a great deal of money, but he did not. Instead, he moved in and set up his little office downstairs, and he lived there contentedly for many years, always answering his door to the children who called—sometimes with their parents, sometimes alone—for the house was very famous, and a great many boys and girls wanted to see it. If they were very good, he would take them down to the sunken garden, although the cracks in the stonework had long been repaired, for David did not want children crawling in there and getting into trouble. Instead, he would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books.