Page 49 of Into the Heartless Wood
He takes a bite of lamb. Chews it slowly. “Owen, that wasn’t what I told you to do.”
“Please, Father.”
Awela is sucking the beans from their pods and merrily spitting them onto the floor. I can’t believe he really intends to send her away from us. I wait for Father to say he knows I went over the wall again last night. To carry out his threat to lock me in my room.
But he doesn’t say anything. Maybe I was careful enough. Maybe he didn’t see. “And if I’m staying the nights, it can’t hurt for Awela to sleep here, too. Please, Father? Can’t we all stay together?”
There’s a thundercloud on his brow. I’ve never feared my father—it never really occurred to me before. But I sweat now under his gaze.
I have one last tactic to try. I blurt it out before I can think better of it. “Let’s not worry about the wood right now. What did Mother always say? ‘Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow.’”
Father’s face closes. He crumples in on himself like a dropped handkerchief.
I loathe myself, instantly regretting my words. “Father, I’m sorry. Please—”
“Don’t apologize. Your mother is always before my eyes, you know. Always at the very top of my heart.”
My throat clenches. “Mine too.” I don’t dare press the issue. We go back to our dinner.
I get nothing else out of him until Awela is in bed and we’re up in the observatory again, unrolling star charts and uncapping ink bottles.
“You’ll stay away from the wood?” he asks me, taking the chair in front of the telescope.
I spin the brass rings of the armillary sphere and try to ignore my thundering pulse as I lie to him. “I’ll stay away.”
He nods, adjusts the telescope, and looks into the eyepiece. “Stay, then. I neverwantedyou and Awela to leave, Owen. I just want to protect you.”
Guilt churns in my gut. I dip a pen in an ink bottle and hand it to my father. “I know.”
He makes a mark on the chart. “I trust you.”
I pour us each a cup of cinnamon tea. “I know.”
We chart the rest of the stars in silence, then take the narrow stair down from the observatory. Just outside my bedroom door, my father catches my arm. “Remember your promise,” he says. “To stay away from the wood.”
“I remember,” I tell him.
And I do. It’s all I think about as I sneak out my window and crawl past the garden and climb over the wall.
Chapter Twenty-Four
SEREN
HE IS WAITING BY THE WALL.
The sight of him
makes my heart swell
like wood in water.
I hide my ruined hands in my gown of leaves.
I do not want him to see.
He has a large oblong box strapped to his back. It makes his shadow overlarge in the light of the rising moon.
Behind me, the trees whisper and hiss.
