“Owen,” he says heavily. “Owen Merrick.”
“Why are you crying, Owen Merrick?”
I watch him consider his answer. I wonder why it is hard to find. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Have I been lost? I have been … I have been dreaming for a long time, I think.”
“Three years, Seren,” he whispers. “It’s been three years since I buried your heart.” He runs his fingers through his hair, glancing up at the birch tree that almost seems to bend over us, listening. “It took one year until your tree sprouted, another year for it to grow. And yet another year for you to come back to me. Perhaps … perhaps it will take one more, for you to remember.”
Something pulses within me, and I place one hand on my chest. “My heart,” I say in wonder. “It’s beating.”
His smile is laced with grief. “I gave up my soul, as you gave up your heart. It seems both have been returned to us.”
There is something else, too. Filling up the deepest part of me, a place I think was once hollow. It’s bright and strong. More than that, it’s mine.
I drink in the depth of the summer night, and I am glad I have stopped dreaming. I am glad to be awake. I turn back to the boy. “Will you tell me, Owen Merrick, all the things I cannot remember?” I stretch out my hand to him, and after a moment’s hesitation, he takes it. His hand is warm and large overtop of mine.
“I will tell you,” he says. “I will tell you how the Gwydden’s youngest daughter forsook the monster her mother made her. I will tell you of the boy who lost his heart to her, and how together they kept all the world from crumbling to nothing more than leaves and stars.”
I smile into the sky, and scoot closer to him, our backs pressed up against the silver birch tree. I close my eyes, and listen to his story.
