Into the Heartless Wood

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  She saved Awela. She saved me, again and again.

  Now my mother and my sisters—despise me.

  But none of this matters. It can’t. Because my mother was lost to the wood, and whether or not this tree siren had anything to do with it, it’s part of what she is. It always will be. Awela and I are safe and whole, and for that I am grateful. That is the end of it.

  I’m done with the wood. I have my memories and my answers. There’s nothing for me out there.

  And yet.

  You have changed me.

  I’m listless through dinner. Distracted charting the stars with my father.

  He goes to bed, and I do, too. I pull the covers to my chin. Close my eyes. She’s a monster! I scream inside my own head. It doesn’t matter that she’s beautiful.

  You have broken me. You have changed me.

  I know it’s inevitable, but I lie here as long as I can bear it, longer, before at last I get up and shove my feet into my boots.

  You have changed me.

  I have to know if that’s true. I tell myself that’s the only reason I step from the house and pace up to my father’s wall.

  I can’t quite justify scrambling over it, so I sink to the ground, my right shoulder pressed up against the stone. I sit there as the summer night grows deeper, as the chill of the earth and the wall shiver through me.

  I sense the moment she’s there, on the other side. There’s a change in the wind, a subtle difference in the way the leaves rustle over the stone. The slightest hint of sap and flowers.

  “Tree siren,” I say to the wall.

  “Boy.” Her voice is muffled by the stone.

  The grass ripples in the breeze, and I forget what I want to say to her, why I thought it necessary to have a wall between us when I said it.

  Monsters can be beautiful.

  “Why did you leave the violets on my windowsill?” It’s not what I meant to ask.

  For a while there’s silence from the wood, though I know she’s still there. I would have felt it if she’d gone.

  “I wanted you to remember me,” she says at last.

  “Why?”

  The wind picks up, branches swaying wildly over the wall. Somewhere deep within the forest a wolf howls at the moon.

  “I did not want you to think me only a monster.”

  Her confession makes me uneasy, far too like the thoughts that won’t leave my own head. I force out the words I came here to say: “Thank you for saving me and my sister. But I’m not coming back into the wood anymore. I shouldn’t even be this close to the wall.”

  “Are you afraid of me, Owen Merrick?”

  The wind whips wilder and wilder, and I have the funny idea it’s picking up on her mood. My name on her lips makes me shiver. “Yes.” It’s the truth, even though I don’t quite fear her in the same way as before.

  “Do you always run from the things that you fear?”

  I don’t know why she’s asking me this, if she wants some sort of confession in return. That isn’t something I can give her. I stand up, and on the other side of the wall, she does the same. I forgot how tall she is—her face is visible overtop of the wall, her hair tangled with leaves and petals in the wind.

  “I am what my mother made me,” she says. “But I do not wish to be. I am—different than I was.”

  My uneasiness sharpens. Her words are seductive—they’re what I want to hear. But that doesn’t make them true. “I have to go.”

  “Stay.” There’s a longing in that one word, a loneliness that knifes into me.

  I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  “Then come again tomorrow.”

  “I can’t,” I repeat. “I shouldn’t have come tonight. Goodbye, tree siren.”

  But for a moment, I don’t go. For a moment, I linger.

  She tilts her head to the side, brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes as the wind tugs a petal free, sends it spinning to the ground. “Seren,” she says. “My name is Seren.”

  Chapter Twenty

  SEREN

  I ASKED HIM TO STAY.

  He

  did

  not

  stay.

  I told him my name. The name I chose, the name he offered me.

  But he gave no answer.

  He went away into the dark.

  He says he will not come back.

  I want him to come back.

  Why?

  He should not. The trees are watching. They will bring tales to my mother. Perhaps they already have.

  He would be in terrible danger.

  But there is something growing

  deep inside of me.

  Something

  that calls out to him.

  I am different,

  than I was.

  I do not want my mother’s song,

  my mother’s souls.

  I want—

  I do not know.

  But I want something more

  than the death that she offers me.

  I want something more

  than her voice, her power.

  I want something more.

  I want something mine.

  I wait for him all day.

  It is foolish.

  He said he would not come.

  But I wait.

  Night swallows the sun. The stars appear, fierce and white.

  I watch his house. The silver dome opens. Its strange arm pierces the dark. Its long white eye peers into the stars and I wonder:

  Why does it look?

  What does it see?

  I wait for him.

  Will he come?

  My heart beats

  hummingbird quick.

  My eyes strain into the darkness.

  He will not come.

  But if he does, I must hide from him. I must not speak to him again.

  I must not look

  to find inside of him

  a reflection of myself

  that is not

  wholly monstrous.

  His door creaks open.

  His footsteps pad across the earth.

  Lightning crashes through me.

  He is coming, and I must hide.

  But when he comes,

  when he scrambles

  over the wall and

  into the wood,

  he finds me.

  Standing here.

  Waiting

  for

  him.

  I say: “You said you would not come.”

  He says: “I did not mean to.” He is restless. Uneasy.

  But he is here.

  His face

  is touched

  with starlight.

  I ask him: “Will you come with me?”

  He says: “Where?”

  “Away from the wall. Into the wood.”

  He wars with himself.

  Fights the pull of me.

  As I ought to fight

  the pull of him.

  He says: “Why?”

  “I am uneasy, near the wall.”

  “I’m uneasy in the wood.”

  “I will not let it hurt you.”

  His body is tense as a hare,

  ready to spring away at any moment.

  “Will you hurt me?”

  The question sears

  like my mother’s claws under skin.

  “You know I will not hurt you.”

  His jaw goes tight. “I don’t know that.”

  I hold out a hand to him.

  It is hard

  to keep

  from trembling.

  I say: “Come with me.”

  If he denies me

  I think I will splinter apart.

  He watches me as he gives me his hand.

  I fold my fingers over his.

  Rough bark

  against smooth skin.

  He is fragile and

  it frightens me.

  I do not want to scratch him.

  So I let go.

  I step into t
he wood. I command the trees to make way for us.

  They obey.

  He walks beside me in the forest dark. He stumbles over trailing roots.

  I bring him to a clearing, not far away:

  a little hill, open to the sky,

  to the stars.

  It will make him feel easier, perhaps.

  A window to his world,

  encircled within mine.

  I lead him to the top of the hill. I sink onto cool grass.

  He sits, folding up his long legs. He stares at me across the air that divides us.

  He says: “What are you?”

  I say: “You know what I am. You saw me for what I am.”

  Darkness comes into his face.

  Memory.

  Fear.

  He says: “You slaughtered them all. Women and men. Children. You took every soul on that train, save mine.”

  There is horror in his voice.

  But

  he does not

  shrink from me.

  “Why did you spare me? On the train. With Awela. In the oak. Why did you spare me?”

  Anger radiates from him

  like summer heat.

  Something cracks deep inside of me.

  I should not

  have asked him to come.

  I should not

  wish for him to see me

  as something

  I

  am

  not.

  I say: “I do not know.”

  He rakes a hand through his hair.

  He curses in the dark.

  But

  he does not leave me.

  Below the hill the trees pulse and shiver. Listening. Listening.

  He says: “The wood has taken everything from me. It stole my mother away. It broke my father. And were it not for your mercy, Awela and I would be dead. Why did you spare me? What do you want? Do you truly expect me to believe that you wish to be more than a monster? That you are something more?”

  There is iron in his words.

  There is longing, too.

  I tell him: “I have not killed since that day.”

  This is the truth that pulses inside of me.

  That wants to spill out.

  I needed him to know this.

  I did not know I did till now.

  He looks at me, looks at me. “The stories say there are eight of you. That the Gwydden poured her evil and her malice into a ring of birch trees and created monsters. Tree sirens, to do her bidding, to devour anyone who dared step within the shadow of the wood. But that can’t be all. The Gwydden couldn’t have given you a soul. Evil cannot create life.”

  “Can it not?”

  Wind breathes over the hill. It brings the scent of iron.

  There will be blood, tomorrow. More souls for my sisters to take for my mother.

  More and more.

  Until there are none left.

  “My mother could only give her children what she herself possesses: a heart. I told you before. I do not have a soul.”

  This shakes him.

  I wish I were brave enough

  to take his hand in mine

  and not let go.

  But my bark is rough.

  It would cut him.

  He says: “You reason and act and feel. You had mercy on Awela, on me. How can you not have a soul?”

  There is a taste like ashes

  in my mouth.

  “I do not need a soul to kill. I do not need a soul to refrain from killing.”

  “Then what is to keep you from killing again? What is to keep you from killing me?”

  I stare at him.

  I could never kill him, not now.

  Not even if my mother compelled me.

  I might shatter to pieces from rebelling against her

  but that would be better

  than watching the light

  go out of his eyes.

  I think

  I shall drown

  in his eyes.

  “I am not going to kill you. I am not going to kill anyone. Not anymore.”

  I am too aware of my heart

  beating and beating inside my chest.

  I wonder why

  my mother gave me one at all.

  What use is it?

  His eyes meet mine.

  I am a sapling again,

  undone by sun and rain.

  He says: “I believe you.”

  In this moment,

  it

  is

  enough.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  OWEN

  SHE WALKS WITH ME TO THE WALL AT THE EDGE OF THE WOOD, silver and silent, the wind teasing through the flowers in her hair. Something is different now, something I don’t quite understand. My fear of her is still there, vibrant in the air between us, but it isn’t as strong as it was two hours ago. We stop at the wall, and she turns to look at me.

  “Will you come again tomorrow?” she asks.

  Her gold and silver hair whips about her face; her honey-colored eyes shine in the darkness. Even monsters can be beautiful.

  “Is it safe?” I return.

  “I will keep you safe.”

  That isn’t quite the same thing. “Why do you want me to come?”

  For a moment she watches me. Then she dips her head, her eyes flitting away. “Because I am lonely. And because you are … kind. I want to know more about your world. About you. I want to know why you make me desire to be more than the monster my mother created.”

  I take a breath, trying to think past the intoxicating leaves-and-violet scent of her. “I’ll come,” I say.

  I’m rewarded with the flicker of her eyes and a flash of a smile. Then she’s gone into the wood, and I’m scrambling over the wall, dizzy with trying to reconcile my lingering horror of the monster who slaughtered the train passengers with the silver-white creature I’ve just parted from. With … Seren.

  I sneak back into the house and crawl into bed, and the dawning realization of what I’ve done makes me shake. I went willingly with a tree siren into the wood. I promised I’d go back. She says she hasn’t killed since the day of the train crash and she says she won’t kill me. I believe her. How can I be such a fool?

  Because she saved Awela, says my stubborn mind. Because she saved me, again and again.

  My restless thoughts fade somehow into sleep. I dream of leaves and stars, tangled together in the tree siren’s hair. I dream the sea is made of violets.

  “Owen.”

  There’s a note of severity in my father’s voice I’m not used to hearing. I can sense his eyes on me, but I don’t lift my own to meet them. Instead, I jot down the last star in the Morwyn constellation on the chart, then squint through the eyepiece of the telescope to observe the relative positions of the stars around the Morwyn.

  “Owen, look at me.”

  I sit back in my chair and obey.

  “I know you went into the wood last night.”

  A knot twists in my gut. “I didn’t—”

  “I saw you climb back over the wall.” He stares me down, daring me to contradict him.

  “I—” I scramble for an excuse and come up empty.

  He shakes his head, not angry so much as … grim. Resigned. “The wood has got its claws in you. I mean to rip them out.”

  “It doesn’t—it doesn’t have its claws in me.”

  “Then tell me why you went over the wall last night! Tell me it was the only time you’ve ever done it. Tell me you don’t mean to do it again.”

  I open my mouth and shut it again several times in succession. I can’t lie to him. And I can’t tell him about Seren. He would take an axe over the wall and hunt her down. He would kill her, and he’d be justified in doing so. My throat hurts. I don’t attempt to explain.

  Father nods. “It’s time to resume our conversation about your future. I haven’t pressed it since the train crash, since Awela wandered into the wood. You’ve been … different since then, Owen. I wanted
to give you space. Clearly, that was a mistake.”

  “Father—”

  He holds up his hand and I snap my mouth shut. “I was in the village yesterday,” he continues. “King Elynion is recruiting soldiers into his army, looking for the next generation of guardsmen—there was a notice hung up at the inn.”

  I flick my eyes to the star chart, trying to ignore my rising unease. King Elynion’s standing army is a legend in Tarian. They live and train just outside Breindal City, and being one of his soldiers is a huge honor. The king’s personal guards are selected from among the standing army, too—many a career has been made that way. There hasn’t been war in generations, but the army is ready in case Gwaed, the country on the other side of the Carreg Mountains, decides to reignite old grudges—or in case invaders come from across the sea.

  “You’re sending me away,” I say quietly.

  His jaw tightens. “I’m keeping you safe. You don’t have to be a soldier. The village butcher is needing an apprentice. Or you could ask at the telegraph office. The inn. The baker’s. Anywhere that includes room and board.”

  “But Awela—”

  “Awela will be old enough for boarding school in a year. Until then, Efa has agreed to watch her during the day, starting next week. You need to find yourself a position by then.”

  I shudder at the thought of working for the butcher, elbow deep in blood, shut away from the sky. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t have a choice. I see how the wood draws you. Why else did you climb over the wall? How long until it lures you in and you never come out again?”

  I want to be angry, to shout something ugly back at him, but all I can think about is sitting with Seren on a hill under the stars, promising her I’ll come again. Being drawn to her and not even fighting it. Father is right. He can’t trust me. I can’t trust myself. I hang my head. Avoid his eyes.

  “Go to the village tomorrow,” he says. “Find a position. We’ll all still see each other very often, and when I can persuade the king to hire a new astronomer, we’ll go to Breindal City. Leave the wood behind forever.”

  Panic writhes through me. I’m numb with the thought of leaving Father and Awela, with the loss of honey-colored eyes and silver skin.

  “And Owen?”

  I raise my glance.

  “If you even attempt to climb over that wall again, I will lock you in your room and not let you out for the remainder of your time living here. Do you understand?”

  I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak.

  When the star charts are filled and Father and I have withdrawn to our respective rooms, I sit staring out my window for over an hour. The same traitorous thought worms through my head in endless repetition: I didn’t actually promise my father I wouldn’t go back into the wood.