The way home was short and direct. The path opened easily, unspooling like ribbon. The trees thinned and the canopy lightened. They passed the threshold of twisted, blackened trees into the more familiar thickets of Faewood far sooner than expected.

As they left the shadows of the Darkwood behind, Penelope felt the sharp, aching grasp of the forest’s grief falling away.

Penelope felt the barest sense of squeezing, pulling, folding in the forest around them, and then they were tipping out of the woods towards the dusk of the cottage garden.

Sister Rosin bellowed for Sister Heely, who met them on the back porch with a fretful frown. They levered Steph up the steps and through the kitchen as Penelope held open the door.

A flurry of activity followed as Steph, groggy and weak, was laid on soft, downy bedding in the sitting room. Sister Heely and Marmalade danced about, tending Steph with herbs, tinctures, and warm compresses as he succumbed to sleep.

Marmot tucked himself into the lower cranny of a bookshelf and watched from the shadows.

The Sisters spoke in hissed whispers about what had occurred in the forest, what they had seen. Penelope felt their concerned gazes linger on her as she sat by the fire, drinking tea with hands that still trembled, feeling tense and alert to Steph’s every twitch and murmur as he slumbered.

Despite her exhaustion, Penelope slept restlessly, waking in the night several times. Each time, the echo of a nightmare would compel her from bed to tip-toe down the stairs, the cold press of fear in her chest easing only when she saw the rise and fall of Steph’s breath as he lay by the hearth.

Sometime around dawn, Penelope found Marmalade in the kitchen adding a golden berry and vibrant pink leaf to a steaming teapot.

“This plant is... remarkable. Utterly, singularly, remarkable. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it...” Marmalade tapped the pot in short, gentle rhythms as the brew steeped. “But then, the same could be said of most anything that grows in these woods.” Marmalade smiled at Penelope, who sank into a chair with a sigh.

“I thought... I really thought he was going to die. I was so scared, Marmalade.”

“Steph has come to mean much to you in such a short amount of time,” the witch remarked, lifting the pot’s lid to stir the brew.

Penelope nodded absently, nibbling at her lower lip. “Yes, he has... It doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

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“It makes perfect sense. Steph came to mean much to me in the time it took to read a child’s poem.” Marmalade grinned at a memory, her gaze distant, before setting down the spoon and replacing the lid.

Marmalade turned to watch Penelope, her eyes a thrashing storm of colour at odds with the serene tilt of her lips.

“Thank you,” the witch said, reaching forward to grasp Penelope’s hands in both of hers. “Thank you for communing with the woods on Steph’s behalf. For saving his life.”

“I feel responsible, I—” Penelope rasped, guilt coiling in her gut. “He—we shouldn’t have been there, I shouldn’t have followed the paths so deep.”

Marmalade hummed but said nothing for a long moment, simply tipping her head in thought. “We can’t always choose the paths we walk. Sometimes the paths choose us.” With that, Marmalade left the kitchen with the teapot in hand, stepping down the hall with the grace of a stalking cat. Penelope listened to the light brush of her retreating footsteps and rested her cheeks in her palms.

✧✧✧

Steph recovered slowly in the coming days, waking and sleeping at odd hours, but always with a jovial spirit, brushing off his near death by poisoning as a mere mishap on a grand adventure.

Yet Penelope could see the tension that lingered around his eyes, the winces of pain he suppressed as he moved about, the fatigued and furrowed gazes as he watched the golden flames of the hearth, lost in thought.

Though, when she passed him a warm cup of ginger mint tea, or a freshly buttered scone to nibble at, he would bury that darkness behind the light of a smile as they sat side by side on the lounge seat. Together they would drive back the shadows that lingered in their minds, chatting about plants and books and small adventures, swapping stories of their childhoods.

“And that’s how I wound up lost in the Grimwood catacombs for a whole day and night,” Steph finished his tale with a mock flourish. Penelope smothered her giggles with the back of her hand. “That’s horrible,” she choked. “Your parents must have been furious at your brother.”

“Oh, they never found out, they’re used to me disappearing for a day or two here and there.”

“So they won’t be fretting where you are now?”

It had been three days since the poisoning and Steph still shivered with unnatural cold, even wrapped in blankets and sitting near the fire as they both were, empty cups of sweet cocoa discarded by their feet.

“Nah, Heels gave me some messenger paper. I wrote to let them know I’ll be home in a few more days.”

Penelope pressed her shoulder to Steph’s, and he leaned against her heavily as his eyelids began to droop. She smiled at the nickname, an informality Sister Heely pretended to be affronted by, yet was secretly endeared if the curve of her thin-pressed lips was anything to go by.

“They must be out of their minds with worry, though, with what happened,” Penelope spoke quietly, pressing her cheek to Steph’s curls as he rested his head against her shoulder.

“Well, perhaps, they might be, later, when, um, if, they find out.”

Penelope gasped, shocked. “You didn’t tell them?”

“You don’t know my family,” Steph groaned. “They, and my oldest brother especially, are... well, extremely protective is the blunt way to put it. He’d march out here, truss me up like a plucked turkey, and then lock me away forever if they knew I’d been... well, you know.”

“And yet they’ve always let you sneak off for days at a time without telling anyone?” Penelope frowned, perplexed by this strange, contradictory person nuzzled against her side.

“Let is a strong word,” Steph snickered, his words slurring as he began to doze. Penelope huffed a laugh and watched the flames dance themselves to embers.