The forest was beautiful-lush with ferns and thick with moss. The brother tugged at her arm, but she shook him off. “What are you doing?” asked the brother, when the girl stepped beneath the tree boughs. They would trail after him until the shadows of the trees fell over the rocky ground-and then the father would lift his hand, fingers splayed: “farewell” and “no farther,” conveyed in a single gesture. Their mother kept account of their bookkeeping, talked with the mourners, and planted fresh gorse along the edges of their graveyard as a protection against magic.įor all their freedoms, the children had one rule: They were not to follow their father into the forest.

They were never rich, but their table was laden with good food. When there were no deaths in the village, he would vanish into the woods, reemerging with plump mushrooms, wood sorrel, and all sorts of berries. Their father dug graves and when he came home at night, his fingernails were stained with dirt and his boots were muddy. The children would follow.Īnd if they didn’t, said Hywel, the girl would make a fine recruit for the cantref’s armies. Their parents were both considered decent folk. Children raised so close to Annwvyn were bound to have a spark of wildness in them. They would settle down, said Enid, the innkeeper. It was widely thought that the eldest, the only daughter at that time, was filled with mischief, and her younger brother trailed in her wake. And once they’d tied a small wagon to a pig and raced through the village, screaming with mingled fear and joy. They tumbled through the house, slamming into walls and breaking one of the wooden love spoons their father had carved. They went to the fields and returned with berry-stained lips, crunching seeds between their teeth. They chased chickens through the neighbors’ yards, brandishing sticks like swords, claiming that the fowl were monsters in disguise. T HE GRAVEDIGGER’S CHILDREN were troublemakers.

The bone houses by emily lloyd jones