Page 84 of Into the Heartless Wood
It lands with athunkin the soggy dirt, buried to the hilt.
For one moment more, his eyes meet mine. He says: “Don’t follow me.”
He turns and tugs the blade from the earth.
Then he’s gone.
I sink to my knees. The scents of moss and leaves and blood overwhelm me.
But my sister
does not let me mourn in peace.
She grabs my hands, yanks me to my feet.
There is scorn still in her face, but there is something softer, too.
I think it is pity.
“You are the greatest of fools, little sister. You cannot love one who is not your own kind. You should not love at all. That is not why our mother gave you a heart.”
Dew mingles with the rain on my face. “Why did she?”
“Perhaps because that is where her own power came from, in the time before she lost her soul.”
“Are you going to take me to her? Or will you kill me here in the mud?”
Her lip curls. “You are not worth killing. Go. Go far and fast away from here, for our mother will not have pity on you.”
She yanks the amber orb from my neck. “I will fill it for you. I will tell her you are dead. Your death will come soon enough, when the Eater is gone and the wood has swallowed the world.”
“Sister—”
She spits at me: “I am not your sister. I could never share blood with such an unworthy creature. Nowgo.”
I stumble into the wood.
Misery and numbness come in waves.
It is not a mercy, for her to let me live.
Perhaps she knows that.
Perhaps that is why she did.
His voice repeats in my mind,
over
and
over
again,
like the recording on his magical phonograph.
You’re not her slave. She doesn’t control you—your will is your own.
