Page 14 of Into the Heartless Wood
But I’m not leaving Awela at the mercy of the wood.
An icy wind stirs through the trees. They seem to bend their heads over my path. Branches snag my sleeve. I yelp and leap forward, a gash ripping in my shirt. Cold air touches my skin. I walk faster.
I find Awela’s other shoe a moment later, caught in the rotting leaves at the foot of another ash. I shove it into my pocket. Hope sparks—she can’t have wandered too much farther on bare feet. I’m going to find her. We’ll be home in time for tea.
I pass through a pocket of violets, dark as poison against the forest floor. Awela’s hair ribbon is caught in a bush; it’s frayed almost to nothing, too tangled to pull free.
“AWELA!” This time the word rips out of me, thunderous in the dead air. Branches creak and stir. The trees are listening. Watching. Waiting. The ember of hope inside me dies.
Silver skin and dappled hair. Yellow eyes. A violet crown. The images clamor into my mind. I can’t shove them out again.
But there is no music in the air. My will is yet my own.
I walk faster, the ground eerily still again. I strain to see Awela behind every tree. But I don’t.
Somewhere outside the wood the afternoon is waning. The light fades bit by bit; the air grows cold. Father will be home soon. I have to find Awela. I have to bring her back before he comes into the wood after us. I don’t think the trees would let him go a third time.
I’m nearly running now, crunching over twigs and fallen leaves. The noise of them is somehow muffled and deafening all at once. I come to another patch of violets, or is it the same one? I’m certain it can’t be, until I see Awela’s frayed ribbon, trembling on the bush.
Fear grips me. The light is nearly gone. I can’t find Awela in the dark. I can’t even find my way home. The siren will sing. She will trap me with her music and break me with her silver hands, and cast me aside for the earth to swallow.
“AWELA!” I scream.
But there’s no answer. I hurtle deeper into the wood, crushing the violets underfoot. Their scent clings to me, so sweet I want to gag.
I race against the setting sun and my own throbbing panic, the trees clawing at me, twigs scratching my neck and face. Even if I knew the way home, I’m not going back without my sister. I’m not leaving her to die in this Godforsaken place.
The light is nearly gone when I burst through the trees into a small clearing, a single pale birch alone in the midst of it. The remnants of the sunset are splashed red across the patch of sky, and it’s bright enough to see the blur of pale blue at the base of the birch tree.
I bolt toward it, a cry tearing from my throat. “Awela!”
The birch treemoves.
Oh God.
Not a birch tree.
The siren is crouched over my sister, green and yellow hair dragging across Awela’s motionless form. She’s crowned with roses.
I lunge for Awela, with no other thought than to snatch her from the siren’s grasp. Roots burst up from the earth, knocking me backward, wrapping around my leg and pinning me to the ground.
I blink and there’s another siren, tall and silver-white, yanking the first siren away from my sister. They hiss at each other, the first with roses in her hair, the second violets. They are like, and yet not like, monsters of the same blood.
“Leave it,” seethes the siren with the violet crown, the siren who slaughtered every person on the train. “Leave it to me.” Her voice is a gale of wind through dead trees.
“I found it first,” hisses the other. “Its soul is mine.”
“I will bring it to our mother. A peace offering.”
“You are late returning. She will be angry.”
The siren with the violet crown snarls. Her teeth gleam like bones. “That is why I must have the child.”
“It will not save you.”
Wind tears through the clearing, whipping the sirens’ hair about their shoulders, leaves about their knees. All the while, Awela does not move, and I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, becausewhat if she’s already dead?
“You are in our mother’s favor,” says the siren with the violet crown. “What is one soul to you?”
