Page 143 of Into the Heartless Wood
The wood is silent. Eerily so. Stars wink through chinks in the tree canopy. King Elynion carries no torch; he doesn’t need one—light sparks between his fingers.
We stop at the base of an ash tree, tall and dark and strong. The king lifts his hands, slashes them in a sideways motion, and a shaft of impossibly bright light cleaves the tree in two. For a moment the trunk shudders, unsure, before toppling backward. It lands with a resoundingthudthat shakes the earth.
Elynion regards his handiwork with a smile. “Let’s see what kind of fish will bite.” He draws a glass vial from his breast pocket. A vial filled with crushed leaves.
Suddenly I’m more afraid even than I was in the observatory, with Elynion’s machine boring into my chest and stars and glass raining down.
Now I have everything I need to catch a tree siren,the king said.A piece of one. And something to use as bait.
I stare at the newly hewn stump, a yawning pit of horror engulfing me.
I am numb as the king drags me to the stump, as he binds me with rough cords that cut into my chest and press against my broken rib. I am too afraid to feel the pain. “What are you going to do?” I choke out. “What are you going to do when—”
“When I catch one?” Elynion laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re sentimental about the witch’s bloodthirsty monsters! I couldn’t very well lead my army against the wood without some means of protecting them, you know. And to do that, I need a siren. What does it matter what happens to it?”
There’s a fire in my chest and I can’t breathe, can’t breathe.
I flinch when he draws a knife against my arm, as the skin breaks, as blood drips hot.
Beyond the wood, the sun is rising. In its first rays of light, I notice from somewhere outside of myself that the leaves are just beginning to turn. Summer is gone. Autumn has crept in without me realizing.
The trees shiver in a wind I do not feel. Blood runs down my arm and I am numb, so numb. The world goes black around the edges.
A thread of song cuts through the haze, and I am suddenly, horribly, aware.
Now I have everything I need to catch a tree siren.
King Elynion stands just past my peripheral, watchful, waiting.
I heave against my bonds, jostling my broken rib; I hiss in agony.
The tree siren’s song grows louder.
It’s her.
I know it’s her.
The king will harm her andI can’t bear it.
I thrash in the ropes, heedless of the pain, and the music twists into me, deeper and deeper until I grow still again, until I lift my eyes toward the wood and see her coming, silver and white through the trees.
For a moment my will breaks through even the power of her song, and I shout “SEREN!” into the heedless air.
She laughs as she lunges toward me, as her claws graze against my cheek.
It’s only then I realize that her eyes are all wrong, that there are roses in her hair instead of violets.
That she isn’t Seren.
The king shouts a harsh word. There’s a crackle of electricity, a smell of stars and crushed leaves. He flings the contents of the vial onto the siren, infusing them somehow with his power. Vines wind up out of thin air, coiling around the siren’s wrists and ankles, weaving over her mouth until her song is cut suddenly and irrevocably off.
I blink, and I see the vines are twisted with strands of iron.
The king’s magic has paralyzed her, but her eyes are vicious, wild.
Elynion strides into view, cutting my bonds with one efficient swipe of his knife. I fall to my knees on the forest floor, trembling all over.
The siren wears a necklace, similar to one Seren wore sometimes: an orb of pulsing light hanging on a piece of braided grass. The king yanks it from her throat and puts it on over his own head. It clinks against his plate armor. He looks at me impassively. “Get up, Merrick.”
