Page 92 of Into the Heartless Wood
for nothing.
“I met a boy in the wood. I spared his life. He told me I had a choice—that I choose to be our mother’s monster. That I do not have to be. Do I? Do I have a choice?”
Rowan berries gleam in Criafol’s green hair. “If you did not have a choice, you would not be here.”
He gestures with one hand.
A branch grows up from the ground,
twists and flattens into a chair.
“Sit, little sister. Tell us everything.” He waves his hand again, and three more chairs sprout up. My brothers sink comfortably into them.
I sit, too.
I tell my brothers about Owen,
about sparing him and his sister,
watching his house,
leaving him violets.
I even tell them
about dancing on the hill.
I do not tell them
that our mother stripped the skin from my back.
That my sister forced me to sing the railroad workers to their deaths.
That I am the reason his mother is dead.
Cangen, the brother who met me at the pool, says: “But what is it you wish from us?”
A sweet-smelling wind
blows down from the cliff,
wraps around me,
rustles the leaves in my hair. “I want to choose not to be her monster.”
Pren says: “It sounds as if you already have.” A yellow finch lands on his beard. He strokes its head with one finger. “What do you really want?”
I am not ready to answer.
I ask them a question instead. “What did you do to defy our mother? Why did she send you away?”
Criafol says: “She could not control us.”
Cangen nods. “We could not overpower her.”
The finch flits away. Pren says: “She wanted death. Wanted us to help her cover all the world with her trees, choke out all life that did not belong to the wood. But we had no wish to entangle ourselves in her petty quarrel with the Soul Eater.”
“We tried to kill her.” Cangen’s eyes burn deep and sad. “We tried to take her heart, but we failed. We did not know it was protected.”
