A year and a day passed. That same line of trees, that had held Dectora’s eyes captive, still flanked the river where Alec had bargained with the Undying. There was only one map in the known world which plotted this river all the way to its source, and that map was being drawn by an eight-year-old boy called Drake.
His river, his Ramblewater, was a thick, blue, sweeping line that bisected an expanse of green and brown watercolour. At the most easter point, it cradled around a large oblong, containing fine markings resembling houses, churches and bridges, before draining out to sea. the dark shape was marked, “Greyhaven – the only town left.” A vague house-shape in the middle of the all this detail had been marked “home” but then crossed out so violently that the pencil had punctured the paper. Moving west, the blue river thinned and meandered, keeping to one side of it all the while a thin belt of threes that bloated abruptly into colossal mass of green and black spirals that bled to the edge of the paper. It was labelled “Wispaven: The Forest of the Undying.”
At its widest point, Wispaven Forest swallowed the river whole, and it was here that the boy had marked out a little isolated hill, topped by a round hut. “The Hollow Hill: Where I live now.” was scrawled in an arc above the conical thatched roof, faint and temporary-looking.
The real hut actually clung to the side of The Hollow Hill like a barnacle, at a lop-sided angle that made its roof look as though it was in danger of sliding off. It must have been secure enough to sit on though, because that was what Drake was currently doing; bare feet buried in the thatch, silhouetted black against the pale, early morning sky. He hunched uncomfortably over his work, shivering at intervals. Once the pencil work was done he took up a fine paintbrush in his hand and clutched it resolutely. It had been his mother’s best brush. He used it now to bleed a hint of blue watercolour into his knotted trees. He knew where the river rose, and he was taking his mother’s paintbrush there.
The forest extended forever. It was what everyone said. It was a neverending green wilderness that had devoured the world centuries ago. But Drake no longer believed that. Someday he was going to map that entire forest, and emerge into sunlight on the other side. He would be the first man to find the end of Wispaven wood, and come back to tell the tale.
His mother was in there somewhere, in Wispaven woods. “Gone,” his father had said, back in Greyhaven. Drake was only eight but he knew what gone meant. it was worse than dead. “gone” meant that there was no body to bury, no grave to mourn at, no knowing whether the person had wanted to go or not. If a person was dead, you could assume that they’d loved you until the end, even if they had an odd way of showing it; there was nothing they could ever to again to prove you wrong. But when they vanished, they left behind the gaping question of “why?”, sitting like an unopened gift among the cold breakfast things and a pile of post that would never be read.
That same day, Drake had wished his father was gone too. That thought had brought him up onto the roof to draw maps in the dead of night. That thought had been the last thing to darken his eyes as he watched his father, Seth Baines slope away into the gloom, thirteen days ago, leaving Drake behind in this little shack with nothing but an old man for company and a handful of brusque words to remember him by:
“Keep out of trouble.”
Drake knew it was wrong for a boy to hate his father. Especially when said father was risking his own skin to search for Drake’s mother. A suicide mission – that’s what the old man, Raphael had said. On some level, Drake knew that it was easier to hate his father than to love him and lose him; because hardly anyone in Greyhaven, it seemed, got to keep the people they loved for very long.
Something moved on the edge of his vision. Like a dog scenting rabbit, he tensed, glaring at the black tree line on the horizon. Something had emerged from their darkness and was labouring into the pale pre-dawn gloom. He was about to yell for his new guardian when the light of the single window below him flickered on. The door of the hut banged open, spilling warm yellow light into the grey promise of dawn. A balding head, wreathed in short white bristles, and a broad set of shoulders appeared underneath him. The old man was awake, and had probably noted Drake’s absence.
