Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  At least in the light of day, there’s the garden to weed and the meals to cook and the futile task of attempting to keep Awela out of mischief. When night falls, there are the stars to chart with my father, a pot of cinnamon tea to drain down to dregs. But after that, when I crawl into bed and try to sleep—there is nothing to keep that day in the wood from playing itself over and over behind my eyes, an endless parade of blood and leaves ringed with a violet-flower crown.

  It is impossible to distinguish the moment my thoughts morph into nightmares, for my sleep is the same as my waking: yellow eyes and silver skin, blood dripping red onto the ground.

  But in my dreams the tree siren doesn’t let me go. In my dreams she never stops singing, not even when she rips my heart from my body, not even when she breaks all my bones and leaves me gasping up at the wheeling sky, the lifeblood pouring out of me. Even in death, I hear her song.

  She kills me again and again, her teeth sinking into my throat, her branches impaling my chest. I drown in dirt and leaves and blood.

  I wake up screaming, my heart racing like a wild hare, my body slick with sweat.

  I don’t try to go back to sleep. I pull on a robe and climb up to the observatory, opening the dome and adjusting the telescope. I take comfort in the planets and stars, in telling myself the old stories of the constellations.

  Astronomers speculate that the constellations as we see them now didn’t always look the same—that they have shifted, little by little, over time. In a few thousand years, I might not even recognize the Twysog Mileinig—the Spiteful Prince—or the Morwyn, the Maiden. Maybe future astronomers will rename these constellations, create new myths to go with them. But I can’t imagine the Spiteful Prince being anything other than the thief who betrayed the Morwyn and stole her crown. He escaped up into the heavens, where he made himself into a constellation to hide from her. She wasn’t deceived; she followed him there, and now every year she chases him around the ecliptic, stretching out her hand for the crown, never quite catching it.

  Nonsense, of course. But it was one of my mother’s favorite stories.

  It hurts to think of her. I shift the telescope to a different part of the sky, and doze off in the chair trying to forget anything ever existed apart from the stars.

  Father goes back to his work at Brennan’s Farm, and I go back to minding Awela and the house every day, trying to regather the pieces of myself that fractured apart in the Gwydden’s Wood.

  It’s hard. It’s so, so hard, and try as I might I can’t quite fall back into the rhythm of it. I’m restless and uneasy, my eyes traveling always to the trees over Father’s wall. They hang lower with every passing day, trailing leaves rattling over the stone. It feels as if the wood is watching me. Waiting.

  I don’t trust it. And I don’t trust myself around it.

  So as much as is humanly possible, I try to keep Awela indoors.

  Her response is to learn how to unlatch the door and let herself out, and after that I do take her outside, so I’ll at least always know where she is.

  Because I don’t trust Father’s wall, either.

  Spring deepens into summer, and Awela helps me pick the first batches of strawberries from our garden. Most of the ones she picks don’t make it into her basket, and she’s soon covered in sticky red juice. I wash her with water from the pump, and she laughs and wriggles and screams as I scrub her clean.

  “Come inside, little one. Time for lunch,” I tell her.

  “Want stay siiiiide!” my sister wails.

  And I can’t quite deny her, so I make a picnic for us, and we eat on the blanket in full view of the warm sun. A cool breeze curls out from the wood and over the wall, smelling of earth and growth and that acrid scent of dead things. I push away the memory of yellow eyes and blood dripping from silver skin.

  Exhaustion weighs on me. Nightmares chased me to the observatory again last night—as they have every night since my father rescued me—and Awela woke earlier than usual. She eats half her lamb and potato pasty and licks the gravy from her fingers, then clamors for her milk. I lounge on the blanket and she leans against my chest as she drinks, curling her small body into the hollow of my shoulder.

  The trees whisper and the bees hum in the garden. The blanket is soft beneath my cheek. My eyelids drift shut.

  For the first time in weeks, I sleep deeply, dreamless. Some part of me is certain Awela hasn’t left the shelter of my arm, that she has fallen asleep, too.

  But when I wake with a start, the afternoon is half gone and I am alone, Awela’s bottle empty and abandoned beside me.

  For a moment, I don’t understand the sudden, paralyzing fear that seizes me. Then I raise my eyes, and see the hole in Father’s wall.

  No. No. This isn’t real. I’m dreaming.

  I jerk upright and bolt to the wall. The ground bulges with the lump of a tree root, with the tumbled stones it shifted as it grew—somehow—in the short time I was sleeping. The hole is big enough for a child to squeeze through. A child wearing a dress the same color blue as the scrap of torn cloth caught on the jagged edge of one of the stones. The trees rustle eerily, though there is no wind.

  I can’t breathe. This is a dream.

  But I drag my finger along the broken stone, and suck in a breath at the prick of pain, at the blood beading up.

  Something else catches my eye just beyond the wall, incongruous with the undergrowth.

  It’s one of Awela’s shoes: scuffed brown leather, the strap undone.

  I shimmy over the wall and drop down on the other side and snatch it up.

  I’m caught in one of my nightmares. This can’t be real. This is a dream.

  But it’s not, oh God it’s not.

  I’m shaking hard. I can’t stop. Please, I plead, please let this be a dream. I can’t go back in there. I can’t.

  The trees whisper around me, the ground undulates with more hidden roots, moving like living creatures under the earth.

  Terror suffocates me. Paralyzes me. But I can’t let my sister be swallowed by the wood. I won’t. I will find her. Save her, like my father saved me. And then all three of us will go away from here. Far, far away. We’ll never come back.

  I’m still shaking as I shove Awela’s shoe into my pocket, and step under the trees.

  Chapter Eight

  MONSTER

  THE SOULS ARE TOO HEAVY.

  I cannot bear them any longer.

  There is a patch of earth at the foot of an ash. It is dappled with sunlight, thick with moss.

  I kneel in the earth, tug the orb from my neck.

  I bury it.

  The souls will run through the veins of the earth,

  into the heartless tree.

  They will be strength for my mother.

  Food for her.

  I am lighter,

  when the orb is gone.

  Light enough

  to dream.

  I must go back to her.

  I must kneel at her feet

  and receive a new orb.

  I must go and kill for her,

  and fill it up again.

  I do not want to collect more souls.

  But my mother bids me.

  I

  am

  her

  creature.

  I must obey.

  But not yet, not yet.

  There is peace here.

  Solitude.

  Silence.

  I stretch my feet

  into the earth.

  I stretch my arms

  into the sky.

  I dream

  I am once more

  a tree.

  Part of the earth and

  part of the stars.

  I drink rain,

  wind.

  The deer bow to me,

  birds nest in my branches.

  There is no blood here.

  No sound

  of screaming,

  no bones

  no souls

  no music.r />
  But there is a voice, high and bright in the air.

  It

  wakes

  me.

  Chapter Nine

  OWEN

  THE WOOD ENGULFS ME. THE AIR IS DENSE AND COOL IN HERE, that scent of dead things stronger. Dark branches thick with rustling leaves blot out the sky. Fear burrows under my skin like a thousand stinging nettles. I’ve come unarmed into the Gwydden’s Wood like the greatest of fools—I don’t even have wax to plug my ears.

  I try to push away the memory of yellow eyes and silver skin. The scent of blood and snap of bones.

  I force myself to walk on.

  “Awela,” I call softly. I meant to shout, but the wood swallows my voice. “Awela.”

  There’s no answer. I try not to wonder how long she’s been wandering in the forest. I try not to wonder if she’s already dead.

  The trees are quiet, but I feel them watching me. Listening. They’re ash trees, gnarled and old, the undergrowth a tangle of ivy and rotting leaves. The ground is never quite still: The earth moves in humps and hollows, roots writhing impossibly just below the surface. It scares me almost more than the trees—I don’t want to be pulled under the earth, suffocated, swallowed. With my last breath, I want to see the sky.

  I pick my way slowly over the ground, watching my footsteps, straining for any sign of my sister. I’m terrified I’ll go the wrong direction, that I’ll be too late to save her because I went right when I should have gone left. Everything in me screams to turn around, to bolt back to safety.

  But I’m not leaving Awela at the mercy of the wood.

  An icy wind stirs through the trees. They seem to bend their heads over my path. Branches snag my sleeve. I yelp and leap forward, a gash ripping in my shirt. Cold air touches my skin. I walk faster.

  I find Awela’s other shoe a moment later, caught in the rotting leaves at the foot of another ash. I shove it into my pocket. Hope sparks—she can’t have wandered too much farther on bare feet. I’m going to find her. We’ll be home in time for tea.

  I pass through a pocket of violets, dark as poison against the forest floor. Awela’s hair ribbon is caught in a bush; it’s frayed almost to nothing, too tangled to pull free.

  “AWELA!” This time the word rips out of me, thunderous in the dead air. Branches creak and stir. The trees are listening. Watching. Waiting. The ember of hope inside me dies.

  Silver skin and dappled hair. Yellow eyes. A violet crown. The images clamor into my mind. I can’t shove them out again.

  But there is no music in the air. My will is yet my own.

  I walk faster, the ground eerily still again. I strain to see Awela behind every tree. But I don’t.

  Somewhere outside the wood the afternoon is waning. The light fades bit by bit; the air grows cold. Father will be home soon. I have to find Awela. I have to bring her back before he comes into the wood after us. I don’t think the trees would let him go a third time.

  I’m nearly running now, crunching over twigs and fallen leaves. The noise of them is somehow muffled and deafening all at once. I come to another patch of violets, or is it the same one? I’m certain it can’t be, until I see Awela’s frayed ribbon, trembling on the bush.

  Fear grips me. The light is nearly gone. I can’t find Awela in the dark. I can’t even find my way home. The siren will sing. She will trap me with her music and break me with her silver hands, and cast me aside for the earth to swallow.

  “AWELA!” I scream.

  But there’s no answer. I hurtle deeper into the wood, crushing the violets underfoot. Their scent clings to me, so sweet I want to gag.

  I race against the setting sun and my own throbbing panic, the trees clawing at me, twigs scratching my neck and face. Even if I knew the way home, I’m not going back without my sister. I’m not leaving her to die in this Godforsaken place.

  The light is nearly gone when I burst through the trees into a small clearing, a single pale birch alone in the midst of it. The remnants of the sunset are splashed red across the patch of sky, and it’s bright enough to see the blur of pale blue at the base of the birch tree.

  I bolt toward it, a cry tearing from my throat. “Awela!”

  The birch tree moves.

  Oh God.

  Not a birch tree.

  The siren is crouched over my sister, green and yellow hair dragging across Awela’s motionless form. She’s crowned with roses.

  I lunge for Awela, with no other thought than to snatch her from the siren’s grasp. Roots burst up from the earth, knocking me backward, wrapping around my leg and pinning me to the ground.

  I blink and there’s another siren, tall and silver-white, yanking the first siren away from my sister. They hiss at each other, the first with roses in her hair, the second violets. They are like, and yet not like, monsters of the same blood.

  “Leave it,” seethes the siren with the violet crown, the siren who slaughtered every person on the train. “Leave it to me.” Her voice is a gale of wind through dead trees.

  “I found it first,” hisses the other. “Its soul is mine.”

  “I will bring it to our mother. A peace offering.”

  “You are late returning. She will be angry.”

  The siren with the violet crown snarls. Her teeth gleam like bones. “That is why I must have the child.”

  “It will not save you.”

  Wind tears through the clearing, whipping the sirens’ hair about their shoulders, leaves about their knees. All the while, Awela does not move, and I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, because what if she’s already dead?

  “You are in our mother’s favor,” says the siren with the violet crown. “What is one soul to you?”

  “I see why our mother despises you. You are foolish. Weak.” The siren with roses in her hair rakes her claws down the other’s bare arm. Dark liquid bubbles up from the wounds. Then the rose-crowned siren turns away, and vanishes into the wood.

  The root around my leg releases me. I scramble to my feet. I bolt toward my sister.

  The siren with the violet crown wheels on me, swift as a snake, and grabs me by the throat. She holds me choking and writhing, my feet hanging in empty air. I claw at her hands, try to pull them off, but they squeeze tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Oh God. Spots blink bright behind my eyes. Blackness crowds the edges of my vision. I’m choking. I can’t even scream.

  She releases me without warning, and I slam onto the ground, sobbing for breath.

  She looms over me, silhouetted against the wood, a monster in her truest form. The violets tremble in her hair. Dark liquid drips from the sores in her arm.

  I gasp, shaking. I gulp air but it’s not enough. The pain in my throat is unbearable. I shake and shake. Tears pour from my eyes. She’s going to kill me. She’s going to kill Awela. And when our father comes looking for us, she’ll kill him, too. We’ll all be nothing but bones, scattered and swallowed beneath the forest floor.

  “Why have you come?” she hisses at me. “Who are you to rob me of my prize?”

  “Please.” The word scrapes raw past my bruised throat. “Please spare her. Do what you like to me, but don’t hurt my sister. Please.”

  “Sister?” The tree siren kneels beside me, the wind stirring through her long hair.

  In the sky above the clearing, the stars appear, one by one. They cast her in a luminous silver light, and it softens her. Makes her look less monstrous. But that frightens me even more.

  “She’s just a child,” I rasp, “hardly more than a babe. Please let her go.”

  The siren tilts her head. Her eyes glitter. “What do you offer me in exchange for her life?”

  My heart wrenches. I shove up to a sitting position, forcing myself not to recoil from her proximity. She smells of deep earth and new growth. She smells of violets. “My own life.”

  She sneers, a curl of her lip. “You cannot give a soul for a soul.”

  “It’s all I have.” My eyes fix on Awela’s
small form, the steady rise and fall of her chest. Somehow she’s sleeping in the horror and the dark of the Gwydden’s Wood.

  “Who are you?” the siren demands again. “Why did you follow me here?”

  I stare at her, still feeling the echo of her hands squeezing the life out of me. “I didn’t follow you. I followed Awela.”

  Her eyes narrow, the wind rising wild. It whips her hair about her face, sends a gust of dead leaves rattling past us. “You were there before. In the wood. The last soul from the iron machine.” Her face hardens in the silvery light. “I let you go, and I should not have. I will not let you go again.”

  It’s so hard to breathe, with the fear slamming through me. “I’m not asking you to. Let my sister go. Let me take her home to our father. Then you can do anything you wish with my soul.”

  She regards me coolly. “You should not have come here.”

  From the depths of the wood comes a sudden thread of music, a song that coils up my spine and pulls me ramrod straight—the other siren. I’m climbing to my feet without realizing it, turning toward the song.

  The tree siren hisses, and snatches my wrist in her rough, unyielding fingers. “You are weak,” she scoffs. “As weak as the rest of them. Easy prey for my sisters.”

  I try to jerk out of her grasp, but she catches my other arm and wrenches me close. She’s taller than me by nearly a foot, and clothed in leaves that are sewn together with translucent thread.

  “I thought you were stronger than the others,” she hisses into my hair. “But you would go to my sisters like a moth to a flame, no matter it will burn you.”

  My heart beats erratic and wild; it pulses in my neck, in the places her rough fingers press into my wrists.

  “Should I let you go to them?” She tilts her face down, exposing the curve of her strange silver cheek, the glint of her eyelashes, the harsh line of her mouth. “They would not hesitate to rip your soul from your body, or the child’s either.”

  I try to shove down my terror but it roars through me, ravenous. “Why do you hesitate?” My voice shakes.

  Her face hardens. “I have not yet received a new orb from my mother. There is nothing to put your souls into. I must drag you both to her court instead, and it is far, and I am tired.”