Page 17 of Into the Heartless Wood
SHE RAISES HER HANDS,AND VINES GROW FROM THE GROUND IN Acircle around the three of us, weaving together like canes in a basket. As the siren sings, the vines grow higher. They shut out the starlight, piece by piece. Fear eats at me. I cling to Awela, and try not to feel the tree siren’s music twisting down into my soul.
Just before the vines seal us in completely, I lift my eyes to hers. I’m staggered to see her face bathed in starlight for one heartbeat, two, before the vines weave their last knot, and darkness swallows us up.
She stops singing.
I gulp ragged mouthfuls of air, numb with terror.
“Do you fear the dark?” she asks me. Her voice is biting. Cruel. “Or only the monster who lurks here?”
“What have you done?” My words come brittle from my raw throat.
“Saved you from my sisters. From the wood.”
I think for the first time of the root that grabbed my ankle, that pinned me to the ground while this siren kept the other from taking Awela. “Why?”
She hisses a word in the dark, and fireflies slip through the cracks between the vines. They spark and glitter between us. Her face comes alive with a hundred darting shadows. She is so strange, up close. The skin on her cheeks curls and peels. Twiggy growth protrudes from her knuckles. Her yellow eyes make me want to crawl out of my own skin.
“I did not want my sister to kill the child.”
This admission startles me. “Why?” I repeat.
For a long moment, she doesn’t answer. She cocks her head to the side. “I heard her laughing in the wood. I have never heard such a sound among the trees. I did not want my sister to silence it.”
I cradle Awela’s head in my arms. How can she sleep, with so much horror spinning around her? But I’m glad of it. I don’t know how I could explain. How I could keep her still. “But what about me?”
She peers at me, as if she can see through skin and muscle and bone, down to my very core. “I did not know a sister could be someone you might offer your soul for. My sisters are cruel, as I am cruel. Even if I had a soul to give, I would not give it for them.”
“And yet you saved us.”
She turns away. I think I’ve angered her, but I don’t know why. Her silver skin shines in the light of the fireflies.
Beyond the bower she built around us, the tree sirens’ music seethes on the wind. I hear it, but it can’t touch me here. Can’t put its hooks in, or make me dance like a puppet on a string. She protects me from that. Guards me. Why?
“Sleep now,” she says. “Until morning.”
I gape at her. I can’t sleep. Not here, not shut in with a monster. “You will devour me.”
Her pale brows draw together. Her skin creaks and cracks. “Sleep,” she commands. Her voice is heavy with the power of her song.
I obey, as I must.
I sleep.
I do not dream.
Chapter Twelve
MONSTER
IN THE FIREFLY DARK,HE SLEEPS.
The prints of my hands bruise his throat. Almost, I killed him.
But I did not.
His soul burns so very bright.
My mother will rage, if she learns what I have done.
