Chapter 15Hertfordshire was a special kind of hell. A lovely, verdant, English countryside hell, but a hell nonetheless.
The familiarity, the unfamiliarity, burned under Henry’s skin. He recognized the village of Boreham Wood; he recognized the inn they’d found; he’d recognized the hills and the roads and the distant trees along their carriage route. He’d known them all.
He’d known them the way he might’ve known illustrations, maps, pale memories. He couldn’t feel the earth. He couldn’t reach out to find joyous strands of magic and position and place and presence, because he grew ill and shaky and airless every time he tried.
The world belonged here. Each tree and stone and root knew itself and its home. Henry Tourmaline, a boy who’d grown up amid meadows and streams and an unquestioned
