Page 70 of Into the Heartless Wood
My eyes burn. “There has to be some way—”
“There is not. Can you believe me?”
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod.
“Then come. We must go quickly, so the wood does not have time to bar our way.” She offers me her hand.
I take it, her rough-smooth-sharp fingers encircling mine.
We walk together through the wood. I retrieve my lantern, abandoned when the tree sirens’ music caught me. It’s still full of oil, and I light it again. It flares yellow. Shadows play about Seren’s face, making her look unearthly and angular in the darkness.
“What is the heartless tree?” I ask her, to distract myself from the teeming wood, the crash and rattle of a thousand branches.
“My mother’s first creation. Before she knew how to make hearts, she gave the heartless tree life. It has no will of its own, but it is very strong. It is where she keeps the souls. The souls feed the tree and the tree feeds the wood and the wood feeds my mother. It is how she harnesses her power. How she focuses it.”
“Perhaps I should take an axe to the heartless tree.”
Seren shudders. “That would kill us all, I think. All but her.”
We walk on through the night, and Seren never lets go of my hand. Just before dawn she orders me to sleep, and I am too weary to refuse. Once more she causes a bower of branches to enclose me, and I fall into swift, dark dreams.
When I wake, we continue on. I worry about my father, waiting for me to come home. To fulfill my promise. I hope he knows I still mean to. But if he were here, if he knew I was going after my mother, he would understand. If he knew, he would come with me.
The wood is different in the daylight, shifting shades of green and brown, of wildflowers in unexpected places, of spiders spinning webs in hidden shadows. It still teems with power, but it is beautiful, too. Perhaps the beauty makes it more dangerous, because there are long moments when I begin to feel safe.
Seren is as much a part of the wood as I am not, moving soundlessly through the trees, melding into them. Birds flit about her shoulders, bees drink from the violets in her hair. Deer bow to her, and a fox rubs against her legs like a cat.
I am bumbling and awkward next to her, every step seeming to disturb the peace of the forest. Yet the trees let me pass, as if Seren has asked them to do her a favor. Branches don’t reach out to grab me, roots don’t writhe beneath my feet. With her, I am safe.
But as we walk, even though she is always beside me, her hand tight about mine, it feels as if she is slipping further out of my reach with every step we take. Our nights on the hill are gone. I know that. And whatever awaits us at the heartless tree, whatever has truly happened to my mother, that will be an ending, too. I don’t see how Seren and I can have anything more than this. We have been caught in a dream, and we’re about to wake up. I am losing her. It breaks me, piece by piece.
And yet—
How can I lose her? She was never mine.
How can I love a thing that has no soul?
How can I love her at all? When did I attach such a weighty, impossible word to the Gwydden’s youngest daughter?
But what else could it be?
Dancing on the hill, four minutes at a time. Starlight and telescopes and strawberries.
Her hands pressed against my ears, blocking out the deadly music of her monstrous sisters. Her silver lips touching mine. She tasted of rain and grass and earth. Of heat and ice and wind. No matter how I try, I cannot push the memory of that kiss from my mind.
We walk all day. A few times, Seren presses nuts and berries into my hands, and waits for me to eat them before leading me on. In the slanting light of the afternoon, we come upon a ring of birch trees, stark white against the browns of the oaks and ash around us. Seren’s steps slow, and she turns to walk among the birches.
I follow.
She stops in the center of the birch ring, and kneels on the forest floor. I realize, without her telling me, that this is the place she was born. I brush my fingers along the birches, their silver-white bark like her skin, and yet unlike, too. They are not alive. They have no hearts.
Seren lifts her face to mine, and I am gutted to see the tears shining on her cheeks. “I am not a tree,” she says. “I am not a woman. What am I?”
I kneel beside her, wrap my arms around her shoulders, feel her heartbeat against mine. There is nothing I can tell her, no answer I can give, because I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know if there is one. But I can hold her while she cries. I can stroke her hair and wish that I could make her happy. I can believe, deep down, that shedoeshave a soul, no matter how much she denies it. Because how can she not?
You only want her to have a soul so she won’t be a monster,says a voice in my mind.You don’t want to love a monster.
She is warm and solid in my arms; her tears fall damp on my shirt. I almost tell her that I’ve changed my mind; she doesn’t have to face the horror of her mother for me.
