Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  Something in the cadence of her voice belies her. It startles me into speech. “That is not what you said to your sister.”

  She hisses again, flings me bodily to the ground. I land hard on my right shoulder.

  “Take your chance with my sister, then!” she snarls.

  The music seethes on the wind; it pulls at me, jerking me to my feet. I take a shaky step toward it against my will. I fight the pull, but it’s not enough. I take another step. “Please don’t hurt Awela.” A sob rips out of me as the music forces me forward. “Don’t take her to your mother. Please let her go. She’s just a child. She doesn’t deserve to die in the dark. Please.” My body takes another unwilling step. “Please.”

  Oh God. I’m going to die in the wood after all. My death wasn’t avoided. Only delayed.

  The music reels me in, a fish on a line. The trees sway ahead of me, laughing and dancing, applauding my end.

  I’m never going to see Father and Awela again. I can’t even tell them goodbye.

  Rough fingers grab my hand, yank me away from the looming trees and the beguiling music. The tree siren leans her face down to mine. “Be still.”

  She drags me over to the place where Awela lies. I wrap my arm around my sister, pull her tight against me. I’m shaking and crying. “Awela. Awela.” I kiss her cheek.

  My sister sleeps on.

  “Close your ears.”

  That is all the warning the tree siren gives me before she opens her mouth, and starts to sing.

  Chapter Ten

  MONSTER

  THE BOY STINKS OF FEAR AND SALT.

  He shakes like a rabbit in the snow.

  His soul is a tremulous thing,

  yet it burns so very bright.

  I sing and sing,

  music to combat my sisters’.

  They will hear it.

  They will think that the prey they ensnared with their song

  has fallen to me.

  They will not hunt him in the dark.

  They will not feed his soul into their own orbs.

  He will be safe.

  Yet he whimpers and shakes.

  How fragile he is.

  How easy it would be,

  to break his body to pieces.

  Chapter Eleven

  OWEN

  SHE RAISES HER HANDS, AND VINES GROW FROM THE GROUND IN A circle around the three of us, weaving together like canes in a basket. As the siren sings, the vines grow higher. They shut out the starlight, piece by piece. Fear eats at me. I cling to Awela, and try not to feel the tree siren’s music twisting down into my soul.

  Just before the vines seal us in completely, I lift my eyes to hers. I’m staggered to see her face bathed in starlight for one heartbeat, two, before the vines weave their last knot, and darkness swallows us up.

  She stops singing.

  I gulp ragged mouthfuls of air, numb with terror.

  “Do you fear the dark?” she asks me. Her voice is biting. Cruel. “Or only the monster who lurks here?”

  “What have you done?” My words come brittle from my raw throat.

  “Saved you from my sisters. From the wood.”

  I think for the first time of the root that grabbed my ankle, that pinned me to the ground while this siren kept the other from taking Awela. “Why?”

  She hisses a word in the dark, and fireflies slip through the cracks between the vines. They spark and glitter between us. Her face comes alive with a hundred darting shadows. She is so strange, up close. The skin on her cheeks curls and peels. Twiggy growth protrudes from her knuckles. Her yellow eyes make me want to crawl out of my own skin.

  “I did not want my sister to kill the child.”

  This admission startles me. “Why?” I repeat.

  For a long moment, she doesn’t answer. She cocks her head to the side. “I heard her laughing in the wood. I have never heard such a sound among the trees. I did not want my sister to silence it.”

  I cradle Awela’s head in my arms. How can she sleep, with so much horror spinning around her? But I’m glad of it. I don’t know how I could explain. How I could keep her still. “But what about me?”

  She peers at me, as if she can see through skin and muscle and bone, down to my very core. “I did not know a sister could be someone you might offer your soul for. My sisters are cruel, as I am cruel. Even if I had a soul to give, I would not give it for them.”

  “And yet you saved us.”

  She turns away. I think I’ve angered her, but I don’t know why. Her silver skin shines in the light of the fireflies.

  Beyond the bower she built around us, the tree sirens’ music seethes on the wind. I hear it, but it can’t touch me here. Can’t put its hooks in, or make me dance like a puppet on a string. She protects me from that. Guards me. Why?

  “Sleep now,” she says. “Until morning.”

  I gape at her. I can’t sleep. Not here, not shut in with a monster. “You will devour me.”

  Her pale brows draw together. Her skin creaks and cracks. “Sleep,” she commands. Her voice is heavy with the power of her song.

  I obey, as I must.

  I sleep.

  I do not dream.

  Chapter Twelve

  MONSTER

  IN THE FIREFLY DARK, HE SLEEPS.

  The prints of my hands bruise his throat. Almost, I killed him.

  But I did not.

  His soul burns so very bright.

  My mother will rage, if she learns what I have done.

  She gave me my heart. She could take it back again.

  I fear her.

  But

  I

  will

  not

  kill

  him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  OWEN

  I WAKE TO THE SCENT OF RICH EARTH AND WILDFLOWERS, MOSS pressed under my cheek. Awela is tucked tight against me. Sunlight seeps through the cracks in the bower the tree siren wove around us. The siren herself stands silent and still, her head turned away.

  An overwhelming sensation of peace steals through me, so strong I nearly drift back to sleep, but then I remember my fear, and jerk to a sitting position. Awela whimpers in her sleep. I take her small hand in mine.

  The tree siren looks at me. Her yellow eyes are brighter this morning, her pale eyelashes tinted ever so slightly green.

  “You wake,” she says. “Come. I will lead you from the wood before it wakes as well, and knows that you have lingered too long.”

  For a moment, she does nothing, just watches me. I realize the violets in her hair closed up sometime during the night, that they’re beginning to open again. I think they must be part of her.

  She raises her hands, her silver-white skin patchy and curling off of her in places.

  She touches the branches that are woven around us, and they begin to unwind, shrinking down layer by layer until they vanish altogether. Beads of perspiration show on her forehead. An indigo butterfly lands in her hair, drinking nectar from the violets.

  Still Awela sleeps, her small fists bunched in my shirt. “Why doesn’t she wake?” I ask. I can’t quite tamp down my sudden fear that she will sleep forever.

  The Gwydden’s daughter glances down at her. A breeze stirs through the wood, whispering past my ear and making the tree siren seem to shimmer.

  “I did not want her to be afraid of my sister, so I caused her to sleep. When she wakes, she will think all of this nothing more than a strange dream. Come, now. The wood is watching.”

  I realize she sent me to sleep last night, too, but I am too bewildered to be angry.

  She slips away, a white shadow among the trees. I pick up Awela and follow.

  The siren makes no noise as she walks, and the forest seems to bend to make way for her. Awela grows heavy and my arms tremble with the effort of carrying her, but the siren does not stop, and I don’t dare ask her to.

  On and on we go, farther than Awela could have possibly wandered yesterday, farther than I remember walk
ing. I don’t recognize this part of the forest—nothing looks familiar. The scent of loam is rich, deep, chased with a sweeter aroma of violets and honey.

  Just when I am about to collapse from the strain of holding my sister, there’s a break in the trees, the glimpse of an observatory window, the scent of mint and basil growing in the garden.

  The wall my father built, with no hint of the hole Awela squeezed through to mar its unyielding surface.

  The tree siren stops at the very edge of the wall, and turns to look at me. The violets have wilted in her hair. She looks younger or sadder or both. I don’t know why.

  “What are you called?” Her voice is the high vibrato of a hesitant violin.

  “Owen Merrick.” I shift my grip on Awela. “What’s your name?”

  Her eyes narrow. “I am my mother’s youngest monster. I do not have a name.”

  “All living things deserve a name.”

  “Even monstrous ones?”

  I find I don’t quite fear her, in the light of day, the same as I did in the dark wood. There is the memory, still, of blood dripping from her silver-white fingers, the snap of bone, the litter of bodies. But she saved Awela from her sister. She saved me. And that means something. It has to.

  “Even monstrous ones.”

  “What would you call me, Owen Merrick?”

  I think of her face last night, flooded in starlight in the moment before her bower sealed us in. The image confuses me, unsettles me, more than anything else. “I would call you Seren.”

  “Seren.” The word is harsh on her lips, full of jagged edges. “What does it mean?”

  “Wen?” says Awela sleepily, yawning and rubbing her eyes as she finally, finally wakes.

  One moment more I stare at the tree siren. One moment more she stares back. “It means ‘star.’”

  She touches my forehead with one silver finger, and something cool rushes through me. Then she melts into the forest with the sound of wind in the trees, and the next moment Awela and I are alone.

  I could almost believe it all a strange dream, except for the wilted violet lying bright on the forest floor. Awela squirms out of my arms as I crouch to pick up the flower and tuck it into my pocket. I don’t want to forget her, and I have the strong feeling that without a tangible reminder, I will.

  We’re at the place in the wall where the hole should be, but there’s no trace of it. It’s as if the wood pulled out the stones to lure Awela through, and then put them back again. I think of roots writhing under the ground and I shudder.

  I pull Awela up onto my back and tell her to hold tight to my neck as I climb over the wall and lower her safely to the ground. I scramble down myself just as Father steps from the house.

  “Papa!” shrieks Awela, barreling toward him.

  His hair is disheveled, his shirt and trousers rumpled. His hands are rough and raw, as if he spent the whole night beating them against rough stone. He cries out at the sight of Awela, scooping her up in his arms, weeping into her neck.

  I join them and Father pulls me close. His whole body shakes. “I thought I’d lost you,” he gasps. “I thought I’d lost both of you, just as I lost Eira. And the wood would not let me in. It wouldn’t let me in.”

  “We’re here, Father,” I say. “We’re safe.”

  I don’t even register his words about the wood until I glance behind me. The wall is streaked with dark stains, and I look back to my father’s raw hands.

  It wouldn’t let me in.

  Awela wriggles from Father’s arms and dashes into the house, hollering for bread and milk and strawberries. Father and I follow her inside.

  Father tells me what happened over breakfast, though Awela is the only one who really eats anything. I sip tea and try to gather the pieces of myself, try to think around the cold silvery feeling in my head.

  Father doesn’t even sip his tea, just holds it, his large hands engulfing his mug. “You weren’t here when I got home from Brennan’s Farm. Either of you. I knew the wood had taken you—I could feel it. So I put wax in my ears and lit a torch. I tried to climb the wall, again and again. But the trees hissed and pushed me off. I tried to go around, but somehow the wall was always there—I couldn’t find the end of it. I took a sledgehammer to the stone but it wouldn’t break. And I knew, I knew you were trapped on that side of the wall, as I was trapped on this side. I heard the sirens singing. I thought they were devouring you. God help me, Owen. I thought you were gone.” He bows his head into his hands, and an awful sob wrenches out of him.

  “Papa!” Awela tugs on his arm, concerned. Her face is smeared with honey; bread crumbs cling to her chin.

  He pulls her onto his lap, holds her so tight she shrieks and squirms free. She finds her blocks under the table and begins merrily stacking them on top of each other and knocking them down, again and again.

  The clatter of them grates at my mind.

  “What happened, Owen?” Father’s eyes catch mine across the table. Already he seems more solid than he did an hour ago, more himself. But the barely scabbed cuts on his hands make me shudder.

  The strange coolness in my head has grown into a pain that seems to slice straight between my eyes. My fingers find my temples. I want to scream but I don’t know why.

  “Owen?” He stretches out his hand to touch my shoulder.

  “Awela got lost in the wood,” I whisper. “I followed her. A tree siren protected us in a bower of branches. She brought us home.” I frown. This doesn’t seem right.

  And yet.

  What would you call me?

  Seren.

  Star.

  “Owen?”

  I jump, knocking over my tea mug. Milky brown liquid seeps across the table. My father grabs a rag and mops it up.

  “You can’t have met a tree siren.” His face is hard, his voice strange. “You must have dreamed it. What really happened?”

  My fingers go to the bruises at my throat.

  Silver hands, crushing the life out of me.

  A voice like a gale of wind through dead trees.

  You cannot give a soul for a soul.

  “What happened?” my father asks again.

  The scent of violets.

  Fireflies in the dark.

  Seren. Star.

  Something inside of me is screaming, but that cool sensation drowns it out. I shake my head. My shoulders slump. I tell my father the truth. “I don’t remember.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  MONSTER

  HE WILL FORGET ME.

  I touched his mind.

  I made sure.

  I will be nothing more than a dream to him.

  Dappled leaves,

  silver bark.

  This is how it must be.

  But.

  I

  do

  not

  want

  him

  to

  forget.

  My mother reaches out for me.

  Her power pulses in the earth, in the trees.

  She commands me to return to her.

  I do not obey.

  I cannot.

  She will see the truth in me.

  She will hang an orb around my neck

  and force me to fill it with his soul.

  And

  I

  will

  not

  kill

  him.

  But I cannot forget him, as he has forgotten me.

  He is so helpless.

  So frail.

  Yet he would have given his soul

  to save the child.

  His sister.

  I do not understand.

  I want to understand.

  In the evenings I come to the edge of the wood.

  I peer over the wall at his house.

  I watch.

  Until the lights in his windows are put out.

  Until stars shimmer in the wide sky.

  Until the memory of his voice pours through me.

  I would call you
Seren. Star.

  I have never had a name.

  But I desire one.

  The desire consumes me.

  How can I have a name?

  I am nothing

  but

  a

  monster.

  Still I watch, through the long night and on into morning.

  The sun rises, red as blood.

  His door opens.

  For a heartbeat I see him: slim form, dark hair.

  I jerk back into the trees.

  I am terrified

  that he will not remember me.

  I am terrified

  that

  he

  will.

  Seren.

  Star.

  Chapter Fifteen

  MONSTER

  I AM DREAMING WHEN THE PAIN COMES.

  Searing agony, under my skin.

  I open my eyes.

  My mother.

  Here,

  in this quiet glade I chose

  for my dreaming time.

  Her claws are burrowed into me.

  She slices me open from the inside.

  “You wake.” Her voice, cool with rage.

  The relief, sudden and sharp, as she pulls her claws out of me.

  I stumble back.

  Pain dances bright behind my eyes.

  Anger burns in hers. “I called to you. For twenty turnings of the sun I have called, and you have not come.”

  Her antlers are stained dark with berry juice,

  stark against the green of the trees.

  Her claws drip amber,

  sticky with my sap.

  I

  am

  so

  afraid.

  I quail before her.

  She knows.

  She knows.

  She made me.

  She will unmake me.

  He will never remember.

  “Why have you not come?”

  Wind snarls her green hair.

  She wears a briar necklace,

  blooming with roses.

  She is heedless

  of the thorns.

  “ANSWER!”

  Her voice is the bugle cry of a stag in spring.