Moonlight glinted off Rex's boots as he lifted them from Ben's bloodied ribs, revealing the faint rise and fall of the boy's chest.
"Tougher than you look," Rex spat, heaving Ben over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
Sara, weakened by exhaustion and terror, felt a primal dread seize her. "You hell-spawned bastard! Where are you taking him?!"
"Save your breath for weeping," Rex sneered, shifting Ben's dead weight. "After I deal with this trash, I'll deal with you. And mark my words—breathe a syllable of tonight to anyone, and I'll make you wish you'd jumped off Howler's Crag yourself."
Sara's curses dissolved into the night wind as Rex vanished down the path to the Blackwood—the forbidden forest no soul in Oakwood Vale dared enter.
Whispers spoke of a headless woman in white haunting its depths, and of the seventeen loggers who'd vanished there thirty years prior, their bones surely buried beneath its cursed soil.
——
Rex hauled Ben to the edge of Blackwood Gorge, sixty meters of sheer rock plunging into darkness below. "Don't blame me, boy," he panted, gripping Ben's collar. "Blame that fool's courage of yours."
As Rex leaned to shove him, Ben's blood-slicked hand shot out, clutching Rex's leather belt. Survival instinct lent Ben unnatural strength, dragging Rex backward. They grappled on moss-slicked stone—until Rex's hunting knife flew loose, embedding itself in Ben's thigh.
"Get off!" Rex roared, delivering a brutal kick. Ben plummeted over the edge.
——
Ben woke at dawn. He remembered the fall, the knife… yet felt no pain. Only warmth pooling in his veins, strength returning like a receding tide.
"Where…?" He pushed himself up, finding himself in a cave, embers still smoking in a firepit.
"Awake at last?" A woman's voice, dry as autumn leaves.
Ben startled. At the cave mouth stood a figure draped in a frayed white shawl, her hair long and silver. Her movements held an otherworldly stillness.
"Who are you?"
"They call me the Witch of Blackwood. I mended your wounds. Gratitude would be customary."
Ben thanked her, learning fragments of her story: She was the "ghost" townsfolk feared. The loggers' deaths? "The woods claimed them," she rasped. "This forest eats the unwary."
Strange—this woman, known for her bitterness, found herself moved by Ben's shattered innocence. Using forbidden arts steeped in blood and herb-lore, she'd not only healed him but burned away the fog of Down syndrome from his mind. He stood before her now, whole—and unnervingly sharp.
"You… wish to teach me your arts?" Ben stammered.
She nodded, a cough rattling her chest. "I haven't long. These arts… they cost me everything. Let them not die with me."
Ben agreed without hesitation. He owed her his life.
Truth be told, Ben knew little of the craft—hardly understood its purpose before this night. Yet the mind that now lived within him was no longer shackled by simplicity. Through observation and newfound clarity, he'd grasped fragments of the witch's art.
"What would you have me do with this... gift?" Ben asked as the witch prepared her tools, her movements brittle as dried reeds.
"Do as you will!" She rasped, not turning from her mortar and pestle. "When the time comes, my bones will be dust in this earth. Your deeds—fair or foul—are no burden of mine." She ground dried nightshade into bitter powder. "I pass this craft not to make you good. I care not a whit for goodness. Be true to yourself, boy. The rest..." She gestured vaguely toward the cave's mouth where moonlight bled into the forest, "...leave to the fates."
Ben nodded. He settled onto the woven grass mat as instructed. When the witch finally offered the vial—its contents swirling like liquid twilight—he drained it without hesitation.
The potion worked swiftly. A cold fire spread from his throat to his limbs, then a heaviness deeper than lead settled behind his eyes.
His last conscious thought was the witch's silhouette against the ember-glow—a crooked tree against a dying fire—before darkness swallowed him whole.
——
After eight hours trekking east through the forest, Ben emerged as twilight painted the village windmill in storybook hues.
Martha, hauling milk pails, gasped. "Sweet mercy! Rex said a bear got ye—"
"Ben… chased rabbit," he mumbled, letting his left arm hang limp, feigning a limp. Not yet. Let them see only the fool. Until the reckoning.
From the farmhouse came the smash of pottery. "Sign the damn lien papers!" Tax Collector Davies's snarl cut through the dusk. "Or I seize the hives at first light!"
Ben burst through the door. Davies had Sara by the hair, forcing her toward the table. What followed unfolded in brutal silence: Ben grabbed the honey masher; swung; struck Davies's kneecap with a sickening crack. As Davies howled, Ben looped cheesecloth around his throat—a beekeeper's knot—and pulled.
"Run," Ben hissed as Davies's eyes rolled back.
Davies coughed himself upright, eyes smoldering with outrage. As Oakwood Vale's tax collector, no one dared lay hands on him—not even the conniving, lecherous Rex Hawke, who bowed and scraped when needing favors.
Yet here he lay, floored by the town's most notorious simpleton. The humiliation curdled in his gut, but Davies choked back his fury. Something about Ben felt off today—a shift he couldn't yet name. Years of sniffing out weakness told him: Bide your time.
"You'll pay for this!" Davies spat, wiping blood from his lip. "Every word of tonight reaches Rex Hawke. Pray he shows mercy—I won't." He limped into the moonlit yard, shoulders rigid with wounded pride.
Ben's fists clenched at his sides. Hawke's handiwork. The thug was covering his tracks after the Blackwood, sending this weasel to sniff out the truth.
Behind him, Sara remained crumpled on the honey-stained floorboards. Moonlight carved Ben's silhouette in the doorway—the torn shirt revealing corded muscle, the boyish softness gone from his frame. But it was his eyes that held her breath captive: where childlike fog once swam, cold fire now burned.
"You…" Sara trembled, cradling Ben's face in her calloused palm. "Is this truly my Ben?"
Ben knelt, pressing his face into her honey-sticky hand—a gesture unchanged in five years. Yet Sara felt it: scalding tears searing her skin, scorching a path no salve could soothe.