Page 28 of Into the Heartless Wood
Wind coils past my ears. The scent of wildflowers is suddenly strong.
“A mistake.” The voice is like a violin, rich and throaty with vibrato. “Forget me. Do not come again.”
The scent vanishes. The trees grow still. I know I am once more alone.
In the deep part of the night, when my father and I have laid aside our star charts, he goes to bed and I do not.
Violets,I tell myself, as I have all day.Violets and fireflies.Everything else has slipped away again. I want to remember. Ineedto. The desire consumes me and I let it, even though I know what it means—if I want answers, I have to go back to the wood.
It’s foolish. Reckless.
But I take a lantern and a knife. I pace up to the wall and stare at it, my terror warring with my desperate compulsion toknow.Somehow it’s enough to dull my fear. I scramble over the wall and pace under the trees. My heart is overloud in my ears. I grip the knife and lantern so hard my hands ache.
A cloud of moths swarms around me, attracted to my light. I watch them for a while as I walk, flitting shadows, leaves with wings. They dart away as suddenly as they appeared.
The wood is wakeful. Watchful. Roots buck and dip under the ground like living creatures. The trees whisper, writhe. Chinks of moonlight cast wavering patterns on the forest floor. My lantern chases them away.
Fear is a second heartbeat, resounding in my bones.
Violets and fireflies.
I have to know who left me the flowers. Who spoke to me from the trees. I have to know what really happened that day Awela wandered into the wood. So I walk on into the dark.
I have no warning beyond a flash of silver.
A hand presses over my mouth, silencing my scream. Fingers seize my arm, pulling me into the trees. I struggle, thrash. I drop the lantern.
Terror claws up my throat.
Leaves trail past my cheek.
All is horror. Shadow.
There comes a note of song. It catches at my soul.
I writhe in the siren’s grasp, but she doesn’t let me go.
Oh God.
Ahead of me looms the form of a giant oak. It splits open with a creak and a sigh, and my captor shoves me toward it, her hand falling from my mouth.
I try to wheel on her; I try to scream.
The tree swallows me whole.
Chapter Seventeen
OWEN
BLACKNESS ENGULFS ME,PRESSES ALL AROUND. ICAN’T MOVE ORbreathe. I can’t see. I wonder in a panic what death will feel like, or if there can even be a greater horror than this immobilizing, choking dark.
Sap drips somewhere near; branches rustle in the muffled distance.
The tree seems almost to hum, examining me with invisible fingers, trying to see what I am made of. The silver pain in my head works itself free, like a splinter drawn out with tweezers. Memories take the place of it, everything flooding back at once: the tree siren’s hands around my throat. The bower of living branches. Awela tucked safe and slumbering in my arms. The siren’s voice, punctuated with fireflies.
Do you fear the dark? Or only the monster who lurks here?
What have you done?
