Page 30 of Into the Heartless Wood
She jerks the wound out of my sight when she realizes I’m staring. Anger vibrates off of her.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
Suddenly she is in front of me again, lowering her head to my eye level, close enough I can see the ridges and whorls in her bark-like skin, close enough that the scent of violets and sap makes my head wheel. “Why are you sorry?”
My heart beats erratic, quick. “Why did you save me?” It’s a question, but it’s an answer, too.
Her eyelashes shimmer in the early morning light. A violet petal falls from her hair. “You have broken me, boy. You have changed me. Now my mother and my sisters—despise me.”
“Did … did they do that to you? Because—because you saved me?”
She draws back. Cold, once more. Untouchable. “It does not matter,” she says. “It cannot. Now go. You are not safe in the wood.”
“Siren—”
But she turns and sweeps away without another word. The trees and the underbrush part to make a path for her. I blink once, twice, and then she’s gone.
Gooseflesh rises on the back of my neck. I don’t know how deep in the wood I am; I don’t know quite how to get back. But I understand I’m on my own, that she’s done saving me. Exhaustion and hunger nag at me. Father and Awela will wake soon—if they discover me gone, they’ll panic.
I stumble my way back through the forest, miraculously coming upon my lantern, and my father’s wall not long after, the stones muddy from last night’s climb. I shimmy across to the welcome sight of the garden, beans ready for picking on their sturdy, coiling vines.
I needn’t have worried. The house is quiet, Father and Awela still asleep.
A nuthatch perches on the garden fence, flashing his yellow belly and cheeping to his mate somewhere in the wood.
I stare at the little bird, battling the sense of loss that feels as if it will crush me. Trying to understand what Ihavelost.
Because I have what I wanted. I have my memories back. I know what the tree siren did for Awela and me, the debt we owe her. The debtIowe her three times over, for all the times she let me live. I can’t ever repay her.
You don’t need to,I tell myself.Whatever she did for you, she’s a monster. You don’t owe her anything.
And yet.
Is she still a monster?
I heard her laughing in the wood. I did not want my sister to silence it.
You have broken me. You have changed me.
The wind stirs through the trees across the wall. The nuthatch wings away. I hunch my shoulders and go inside, just in time to greet Awela, who barrels happy and hungry from her bedroom and into my arms.
Chapter Eighteen
MONSTER
HE WAS WALKING IN THE DARK OF THE WOOD.
My sister—so near him.
He did not know.
He did not see her.
She would have killed him.
Swallowed his bright soul.
So I hid him
