Page 9 of Into the Heartless Wood
I don’t understand the question. I’m bleary and bewildered. Every part of me aches, and for a moment I forget why I was lying on the train tracks in the middle of the wood. I don’t understand why my father is here.
“Owen,” he says gently. “Are there any other survivors?”
Remembrance slams through me and I stagger under the weight of it. My father keeps a steady hand under my elbow.
“She slaughtered them.” The words choke out of me. “She slaughtered them all.”
He nods, like he was expecting this. “Stay close. We have to move fast.” He shoves wax in my ears and ties a scarf over my head, then does the same for himself.
The world is suddenly muffled.
Father grabs the torch lying on the ground—the source of the orange light—and brandishes it ahead of him like a sword. He takes my arm, and I stumble along with him down the railroad tracks. I feel as if I’m in a dream. Perhaps I am.
We walk quickly. The trees don’t like my father’s torch. They hiss and draw back, and I pray to God they’re not calling for their mistress. She would laugh at the fire while she sank her claws into us, while she broke us like so many twigs.
Around us, the sky begins to lighten. I never expected to see another morning, and yet here are the ragged edges of dawn. The sight of it chokes me.
And then we’re stepping from the forest, turning south toward our house. We don’t take the scarves from our heads or dig the wax from our ears until the observatory tower comes into view, bright in the morning sun.
We stop at the garden gate, and Father turns toward me, clapping his hands on my arms.
My jaw works as I reach for adequate words to express my gratitude and sorrow and relief. I realize none exist.
“How …?” I say instead.
“I went to the telegraph office last evening on my way home from Brennan’s Farm. There was no telegram from you, so I sent one inquiring after your train. It had never arrived.”
I’m shaking. I can’t stop. It’s only my father’s presence that grounds me. “How did you know to come look for me? How did you know I wasn’t …”
“I wasn’t going to lose my son like I lost my wife.” His voice is jagged and raw. “I would have burned the forest to the ground to find you. I would have driven a knife into the witch’s heart. I would have ended all the world before I lost you.”
I believe him.
He pulls me into an embrace, holding me hard against his chest as I shake and shake.
I’m safe now. I don’t have to be afraid.
But I am.
Horribly, horribly afraid.
Father goes to fetch Awela from Brennan’s Farm, and I crawl into my bed and try to sleep. All I can see are her yellow eyes, the blood dripping red from her hands.
Chapter Seven
OWEN
THE DAY WE LOST OUR MOTHER WASAWELA’S FIRST BIRTHDAY. There were cake crumbs scattered on the floor beneath the kitchen table. Mother tucked Awela into her crib after lunch and took her cello outside into the garden, where she liked to play for the birds and record music on wax cylinders for her phonograph. She composed her own music, but that’s not how she explained it. She said she played the songs her heart taught her, or the wind whispered into her ears. I wondered sometimes if she played the songs of the wood witch’s daughters, too, but I never asked her that.
Perhaps I should have.
I liked hearing Mother play. I played some, too—she’d given me my first lessons when I was so small the cello dwarfed me, my hand barely big enough to wrap around the bow. I enjoyed playing, but I’d never be as good as her. Her whole soul was filled with music; mine brimmed with stars.
That day I was up in my room, reading one of my father’s scientific journals about a telescope being built in Saeth that would be powerful enough to look deeper into space than ever before. My mother’s music drifted up from the garden.
She stopped playing suddenly, in the middle of a phrase. It was strange enough that I glanced out the window in time to see her drop her cello onto the cabbages to stride with purpose toward the Gwydden’s Wood.
“MOTHER!” I cried, flinging the journal onto my bed and bolting downstairs.
