I did promise Seren.
And I know, despite everything Father said to me, despite the awful, foolish recklessness of it, I’m going to keep that promise.
When the house has fallen wholly quiet, and I’m sure Father is asleep, I sling the strap of my portable telescope over my back and shimmy out the window. I nearly fall and break my neck, but something keeps me clinging to the ivy on the rough stones. I leap down safely by the kitchen window, and creep past the garden, along the length of the wall to a spot that (I hope) is not as visible from the house as my usual one.
I clamber over.
Seren is waiting for me in the same place she was last night. She turns as I thump to the ground, and the sight of her floods my whole body with heat.
She moves toward me like a silver ghost. “I did not think you were coming.”
“I promised.” I don’t tell her that I’ve just jeopardized my relationship with my father, that if he has his way I won’t even be here this time next week. I don’t tell her I’m the greatest of fools.
She smiles.
We walk together up to last night’s little hill, and I find that my lingering fear of her has somehow entirely gone. The simple fact of her existence fascinates me. Intoxicates me. As nothing has in all the world except the stars. The wind whispers over the leaves that trail down the length of her silver-white form. Her beauty takes my breath away.
She sinks to the ground and I kneel beside her, shrugging off the telescope strap. She glances at it, then at me.
My cheeks blaze. “You said you wanted to know more about my world. About me. I thought I’d show you the stars.”
Seren’s silver-green brows slant down, scornful. “I’ve seen the stars.”
“Not like this.” I find a flat spot in the grass and set up the telescope, adjusting the mirrors, focusing the lens. Seren watches me without a word.
The wind is warm tonight. It smells of sun-baked earth and that sharp, tangy scent that hangs in the air before a thunderstorm. Clouds dot the sky away to the east, but above us the stars shine clear.
“Here,” I say when the telescope is ready. “Come and look.”
She scoots close to me, her woven-leaf dress trailing across the ground. Her arm brushes mine. It’s smooth, except for the places where her skin curls backward like peeling bark.
She peers through the eyepiece of the telescope, and for some moments is wholly silent, wholly still. I try not to see the clouds massing quickly over the tree line, try not to feel the keen bite of disappointment at the thought of rain driving us from the hill I have unintentionally begun to think of as ours.
At last she sits back from the telescope. She seems almost to glow. “The stars are very beautiful,” she says, awe in her voice.
I grin. “You see? You do have a soul. A monster wouldn’t care about the stars.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Her face closes, and she turns away from me. Above us, the clouds blot out the sky; the air is heavy with the scent of rain.
Below the hill, the trees stir and whisper. Leaves rattle. Branches creak.
Seren flings her head up. “Owen, you must go.”
“What? Why?”
“The wood knows you’re here, and someone is coming. Maybe my sisters. Maybe my mother.” She jerks to her feet and grabs my hand, pulling me up with her. “You must go. At once.”
“But the telescope—”
She yanks me down the hill and I stumble after her, the rough part of her hand scraping painfully against mine. The clouds break just as she tugs me under the trees. The rain scarcely touches us here, but I can barely see her in the shadows, in the dark. We run together, back to the wall.
At the border of the wood, the rain sheets down, drenching me in an instant, turning Seren’s skin a darker shade of silver. She lets go of my hand. For an instant, she stares at me in the rainy dark. “Come again tomorrow. I will make sure it is safe. Goodbye, Owen.”
Behind her, the wood is teeming, howling. She turns to face it. Disappears into the trees.
“Goodbye, Seren,” I say after her.
I clamber back over the wall, creep around the garden and up through my window. I strip off my wet clothes and hide them under the bed, so Father won’t see.
In the morning, I take Awela with me into the village to see about a job in the telegraph office.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SEREN
RAIN DRIPS COLD
between the thrashing trees.
My oldest sister stands among them,
the sister with
roses in her hair.
The boy’s telescope is in her hands.
She looks at me as she bends it,
as she snaps it like bone.
She flings the pieces behind her
into the dark.
“The wood has been telling tales, little sister.”
She strides toward me.
She stops a leaf’s width away.
Her breath is cool on my face. “Did you think the trees would not tell that you brought a boy into the wood? A boy whose soul you did not claim for our mother?”
Her fingers close around
the empty orb at my neck.
She smells of roses,
of fear.
“Your disobedience has not gone unnoticed. Do not dare to believe you are safe from our mother, that you are free to do as you please, like our brothers once presumed. They were not. You are not.”
She lets go of the orb.
It settles hard
in the hollow
of my throat.
Rain seeps through the thread of air
that divides us.
I say: “Why are you here? I do not want you.”
She says: “I am here to save you, little fool. Come, we have work to do.”
She snatches my hand.
She drags me through the trees.
Deeper into the wood.
I let her.
Because she pulls me
away from the wall,
away from Owen.
He is safe,
at least
for now.
She pulls me on,
until we are so deep into the trees
the rain does not touch us.
Dawn breaks beyond the wood.
The rain fades.
There comes the clang of hammers,
the grate of voices.
An axe bites wood.
A tree falls to the earth.
I jerk away from my sister.
She watches me. “The Soul Eater has sent them. They poison the wood. Mother needs their souls. The trees need their absence. Sing with me, little sister. Let us destroy them.”
I shudder at the name of the Soul Eater,
the monster even monsters
know to fear.
But I told the boy:
I am not going to kill anyone. Not anymore.
I tell my sister: “I will not.”
She seethes with anger.
She grabs my hands.
She snaps my fingers off,
one
by
one.
Agony bursts
behind my eyes.
I cradle my hands
to my chest.
She will kill me,
if I do not sing.
I
do
not
want
to
die.
I have no soul.
When I am gone,
there will be no part of me
left to remember
that I lived,
that I looked at the stars
with Owen
on a hill.
But I will not sing.
I will not be the monster
my mother made me.
Not even to fight the Soul Eater.
My sister sings.
Her song coils through the wood
and the men drop their hammers.
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They turn to her.
Some sob.
Some smile.
She flicks her eyes to me.
She takes away my choice.
Her power is greater than mine.
Strong enough to force my mouth open.
To pull the song
unwilling
from my lips.
I sing.
I cannot stop.
The men come and come,
like flies drawn to honey.
But I do not go to her.
I do not help her
as
she
kills
them
all.
Blood drips from her hands.
Red,
like the roses in her hair.
She hisses at me as the bodies fall,
as the wood grows quiet,
as the screaming is cut off.
She stops singing.
She lets me stop, too.
She commands me: “Collect their souls.”
Dew
pours
down
my
cheeks.
“I will not.”
She drags one claw across my face,
deep enough for sap to well up.
“Do you think yourself above us? Do you imagine yourself to be something more than what our mother made us to be?”
“I am more. I have named myself.”
“Monsters do not have names.”
Pain pulses
from my ruined hands.
“I do not want to be a monster.”
She sneers at me
as she rips the orb from my throat,
as she collects the dead mens’ souls
and leaves their bodies
for the earth
to swallow.
Then they are all of them gone
and the wood is empty
of souls,
of life.
Wind stirs through the trees.
It washes away
the scent of blood.
My sister kneels on the ground,
relinquishes the orb to the power
of the heartless tree.
Strength for the wood and our mother,
Strength to aid her fight
against the Eater.
My sister turns to me once more. “I will not help you again. If you value your life, you will remember that you are our mother’s monster. Go to her. Receive a new orb. Fill it up with souls you take yourself.”
“I will take no more souls. I will no longer be her monster.”
“Then you are a greater fool than even our brothers. You do not deserve the heart our mother gave you.”
My sister leaves me
in the empty wood.
I stare at twisted iron.
At the lumps in the earth
where the slaughtered men lie.
I did not kill them.
But
that
is
not
enough.
I go to the place I was born.
The ring of birches.
There are other trees here now,
growing in the place of me and my sisters.
They are tall.
Silver.
Strong.
I sit at the feet of the oldest one.
I lean back against its trunk.
I try to draw strength
from this place that usually comforts me.
But I find none.
My fingers will grow back, little by little.
I will be once more whole,
though perhaps not quite the same
as I was.
I cannot go to Owen tonight.
He will ask about my ruined hands.
If I tell him what I’ve done
he will recoil from me.
He will remember
what I am.
He will climb over his wall
and
never
come
back.
Beyond the wood, the sun sinks.
Soon, the stars will come.
Soon, Owen will climb over the wall
and I will not be waiting.
It is better, this way.
Better if he never sees me again.
The last of the light fades from the wood.
Beyond the trees, the stars are spinning.
I will stay at the feet of the silver birch.
I will not go to him.
I will not.
Chapter Twenty-Three
OWEN
I GET THE JOB AT THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE, BUT IT DOESN’T COME with room and board.
I tell Father so at supper, which is roasted lamb and fresh green beans from the garden.
He raises his eyebrows at me across the table.
I force myself not to squirm. “It’ll be better like this—I’ll be away from the wood all day but home in time to cook for you. To chart the stars with you.”
He takes a bite of lamb. Chews it slowly. “Owen, that wasn’t what I told you to do.”
“Please, Father.”
Awela is sucking the beans from their pods and merrily spitting them onto the floor. I can’t believe he really intends to send her away from us. I wait for Father to say he knows I went over the wall again last night. To carry out his threat to lock me in my room.
But he doesn’t say anything. Maybe I was careful enough. Maybe he didn’t see. “And if I’m staying the nights, it can’t hurt for Awela to sleep here, too. Please, Father? Can’t we all stay together?”
There’s a thundercloud on his brow. I’ve never feared my father—it never really occurred to me before. But I sweat now under his gaze.
I have one last tactic to try. I blurt it out before I can think better of it. “Let’s not worry about the wood right now. What did Mother always say? ‘Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow.’”
Father’s face closes. He crumples in on himself like a dropped handkerchief.
I loathe myself, instantly regretting my words. “Father, I’m sorry. Please—”
“Don’t apologize. Your mother is always before my eyes, you know. Always at the very top of my heart.”
My throat clenches. “Mine too.” I don’t dare press the issue. We go back to our dinner.
I get nothing else out of him until Awela is in bed and we’re up in the observatory again, unrolling star charts and uncapping ink bottles.
“You’ll stay away from the wood?” he asks me, taking the chair in front of the telescope.
I spin the brass rings of the armillary sphere and try to ignore my thundering pulse as I lie to him. “I’ll stay away.”
He nods, adjusts the telescope, and looks into the eyepiece. “Stay, then. I never wanted you and Awela to leave, Owen. I just want to protect you.”
Guilt churns in my gut. I dip a pen in an ink bottle and hand it to my father. “I know.”
He makes a mark on the chart. “I trust you.”
I pour us each a cup of cinnamon tea. “I know.”
We chart the rest of the stars in silence, then take the narrow stair down from the observatory. Just outside my bedroom door, my father catches my arm. “Remember your promise,” he says. “To stay away from the wood.”
“I remember,” I tell him.
And I do. It’s all I think about as I sneak out my window and crawl past the garden and climb over the wall.
Chapter Twenty-Four
SEREN
HE IS WAITING BY THE WALL.
The sight of him
makes my heart swell
like wood in water.
I hide my ruined hands in my gown of leaves.
I do not want him to see.
He has a large oblong box strapped to his back. It makes his shadow overlarge in the light of the rising moon.
Behind me, the trees whisper and hiss.
They are watching. Listening.
They will tell my mothe
r we are here.
I say: “Come. Quickly.”
He follows me into the wood. The box thumps against his back.
Trees reach out craggy fingers. Roots writhe under the ground. They mean to snatch him. Ensnare him. Choke the soul from his body, since I will not.
I say: “Stay close.”
He curls one hand tight around my arm. Fear sparks off of him, hot and bright. But his trust in me is greater.
He does not let go.
The souls my sister slew today clamor in my mind.
He should not trust me.
We reach our hill. I climb to the top; I kneel in the grass.
He crouches beside me. Watchful. Tense.
The trees clatter and creak.
They are angry.
They mean to claim him for themselves.
But I will not let them.
I plunge my ruined hands deep into the hillside.
The earth reaches out for me,
breathing in the lifesap
that flows through my veins.
New fingers grow from my hands,
and from them I send out roots,
pushing them up and up, toward the sky.
I sing the shoots to life.
I call them higher, higher.
They reach up all around us.
They sprout branches,
unfurl tender leaves.
I sing and sing,
until the trees are tall enough to screen the wood below.
I stop
before they blot out the sky.
I make
our ceiling
stars.
I open my eyes
and draw my arms from the earth.
My mother’s trees were angry.
So I grew my own.
I did not know
I was strong enough.
All this while, Owen has crouched beside me, silent.
Now I look to him. His eyes are round with wonder.
He says: “Magic.”
I say: “Growth. My trees will shelter us for as long as we wish.”
He studies me
in silvery light.
His throat bobs as he swallows.
“They are beautiful. Impossible. Like you are.”
In the wood, my sister killed them all.
I
watched
and
did
nothing.
He calls me beautiful and
I cannot meet his eyes.
I say: “What have you brought?”
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