Page 155 of Into the Heartless Wood
Her will compels me on and on.
The Soul Eater’s army looms close.
He wars with my sisters and my mother’s trees.
The ground is slick and muddy in the rain. There are bodies. Fire.
The trees are burning.
The heartless lion snarls as my mother jerks it to a stop. It is angry at being held back.
I, too, grow still,
the creature
she shaped
to take her form.
To bear her heart.
Lightning sears the sky.
My mother says: “The Eater will come to meet me. And then the one who eats will become the eaten. My soul has fed him well for four centuries, but he should have chosen better than a simple dryad. Even dryads die.”
He is weak enough for her to kill him. I sensed it in the palace, in the light of his dimming soul. My mother’s soul.
When he is dead,
she will grow her wood until it has swallowed the land.
Then she will begin upon the sea.
And when all the world is choked in her trees,
when she has slaughtered every last human
for the crime the Soul Eater committed against her—
What will she do?
Will she wander alone
through her fathomless wood?
Will she regret
the things
she has done?
I will not live to see that day.
My death will come
before the night.
I kneel in the muddy grass. I press my fingers into the earth. I reach out for my brothers.Pren, Criafol, Cangen. You have to stop her before she destroys everything. You are the only ones who can. Please. Do not leave me here to die for nothing.
