1643164341 (F)

by M Sawyer

Melissa was asleep, still wrapped in a web of tubes. Nolin raised a hand to her neck, remembering the sting of tranquilizers, painkillers, and who knows what else being shot into her own veins years before. The fine hairs on her arms stood straight up. Her breathing grew shallow and her legs twitched to run away. She forced herself to stand fast. She wouldn’t be here long.

  Melissa looked so weak in the hospital bed, barely a bump under the thin blankets. Nolin tried to imagine her as that young, wild girl in the yearbook photos, her face streaked with paint as she swept the brush over a theater backdrop. She imagined Melissa laughing, eyes sparkling and hair long and full rather than brittle. That girl was a ghost. Now, Nolin only saw sharp cheekbones, deep purple circles under Melissa’s sunken eyes, and hair dull as straw.

  Now that she was there, she wasn’t sure what to say or do. Melissa wasn’t even awake. She took Melissa’s limp hand. It was cold; the skin was dry and rough. Nolin gathered words that floated around her mind, tried to wrestle them into coherent sentences.

  “I’m sorry,” Nolin finally said. “I’m so sorry. For everything.”

  She paused, half-expecting Melissa to wake, for her features to take on the constant glare she wore around Nolin. Nothing. Her chest rose and fell softly, her nest of tubes rising with her.

  Nolin went on. “I just want you to know that I never meant to hurt you, or anyone else. This isn’t what you bargained for. You had a daughter, and she was stolen, and you got me. I was never your daughter. You knew that. Maybe not consciously, but on some level, you knew what I was. What I am. And now I know it, too. I know I don’t belong here, so I’m going to make things right.” She swallowed hard. “I’m going to find your daughter.”

  Nolin carefully placed Melissa’s hand at her side on the bed.

  It was time.

  Nolin chewed her lip, thinking how she could leave the room without Drew noticing. The room had one door. Hospital windows didn’t open—she’d learned that in the mental ward. Could she tell him she had to use the restroom? No, he’d wait by the door like a watchdog. He’d know she was going to do something stupid.

  How could she leave without being seen?

  A tingling sensation prickled in her fingers, up her arms, and down her legs. A thought popped into her head, one that didn’t seem to come from her own mind: I won’t be seen if I don’t want to be seen.

  It made no sense. Her legs moved on their own. She approached the door and peered down the hall as far as she could without poking her head out of the doorway.

  There was a stairwell across and down the hall about twelve feet. If Drew wasn’t looking for just a second, she could dart out of the room and down the stairs. How would she know if he looked away? If she peeked to see whether he was watching, he’d see her.

  Nolin stood on the side of the doorway where she could see the stairwell. Her fingers tingled, and a thought that she suspected wasn’t hers drifted across her mind.

  He’s not looking. Go.

  Voices moved down the hallway from the direction of the waiting room. Without thinking, she stepped out in front of a group of doctors making their way down the hall. She peeked over her shoulder. Five male doctors walked behind her, all taller than she was, hiding her from view of the waiting room.

  When she got to the stairwell, she stepped inside it. She paused, listening for frantic footsteps down the hall, Drew calling her name, or the protests of the nurse at the desk. Nothing. He hadn’t seen her.

  Nolin ran down the stairs, adrenaline pumping, and dread pooling deep in her gut like ice water.

  Four floors down, Nolin reached the lobby and nearly ran out the front door, throwing one more look over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. It wouldn’t be long before Drew realized she’d left. He’d come looking her. By then, she’d be somewhere he wouldn’t know to look.

  Nolin crossed the parking lot and the street to the woods. She groped at her pockets for Alexa’s map. She felt nothing. It was gone. The shoe was missing, too. Frantically, she checked all of her pockets and scanned the ground around her. Damn.

  Time was tight; she couldn’t backtrack.

  She’d find the way on her own. She knew she would. At the edge of the woods, she stared into the trees and took a deep breath. The dreams of walking to the Claw Tree played in her mind. They always started somewhere in the woods, never at her house or anywhere she knew.

  Maybe it was always supposed to be this way.

  She knew where to go. Without looking back, Nolin stepped into the trees and veered slightly to the left, walking purposefully, letting her insides go numb, willing herself to forget what she was leaving behind.

  In her pocket, her phone vibrated. She didn’t need to look to see who it was.

  Grief sliced through her as she reached into her pocket, slipped out the phone, and dropped it on the ground.

  She walked deeper into the trees.

  ***

  The Shadow sat before the Claw Tree, gazing into its canopy. The thick, serpentine branches cut the blue sky above into puzzle pieces. Her eyes traced their familiar lines, and she waited.

  Nolin was coming.

  Chapter 44

  NOLIN HAD NO way of knowing how far or even how long she’d walked through the silent woods. She crept like a thief, constantly glancing up to the treetops, half-expecting a goblin ambush at any second. No sounds of birds or insects. The whole forest watched.

  Though she didn’t know where she was going, something told her she was headed in the right direction. After all, she’d found the Claw Tree once before—that day she’d fled the playground and run into the woods. The tree was like a beacon. She’d always known the way.

  What would happen once she got there? She hadn’t given it much thought.

  Did Alexa have a plan when she entered the forest with Melissa? Did she intend to find her human counterpart, to return to the woods for good, or did she have something else in mind? Nolin suspected Alexa hadn’t thought it through either, that she was driven into the woods by the same force that propelled Nolin: desperation, guilt, and the exhaustion of living in a world where she didn’t belong.

  Nolin shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself and trudged forward, stepping over fallen logs, clumps of bushes, rocks, around holes. Without thinking, she steered herself to the right.

  It was like walking through her dreams. She felt surreal, her mind full of fog and the edges of her vision not quite clear. The woods took on an odd glow, like the trees were giving off their own light instead of being lit by the columns of sunlight that managed to shine through the thick canopy. In a way, it was magical.

  Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was walking to her execution. She felt like a condemned woman climbing the steps to the gallows for a crime she hadn’t meant to commit. Whether she’d meant to commit that crime or not, she had to try to make things right.

  But how? When she found Nolin, the real Nolin, how would she get her back? How would she get her out of the woods and to her mother?

  Her temples started to throb. She’d have to figure that out when it came up, she decided. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into; there was no way to prepare for the unknown.

  The real Nolin.

  Nolin.

  That name was stolen, like everything else in her life.

  Melissa wasn’t her mother.

  The house she’d grown up in wasn’t her house.

  Would Drew have wanted to be with the real Nolin?

  The thought of him felt like a punch in the gut. She pushed him out of her mind, along with the name that was never hers.

  Do I have a real name?

  It didn’t matter, she decided. Nothing mattered except getting to the Tree and finding Nolin. Only then would the relentless guilt leave, and when everyone was back where they belonged.

  The light faded. Night would fall in a few hours. She clambered on, feeling more and more like she was entering a different part of the forest, somethi
ng mysterious and ancient. The ringing silence took on a deeper, lower tone like a gong. The trees stood straighter. The rocks and boulders became larger and more jagged, coated with soft, green moss. The smell stirred something inside Nolin: excitement, memories she couldn’t quite place.

  She noticed rocks, a few misshapen trees, and a berry patch that looked familiar. The farther she walked, the surer she was she’d been there before.

  Not much farther.

  ***

  Melissa’s head throbbed. The painkillers in her system were wearing off. Her limbs were full of needles. Her face was a tangle of tubes poking into her nose and down her throat. Horror pulsed through her veins.

  Nolin was going into the woods. What had she learned?

  Melissa made her decision in an instant: She was going after her.

  One by one, she pulled out the tubes. Needles slid out of her skin, and she dropped them on the mattress. Flecks of crimson blood speckled the starched white sheets. Finally, she peeled up the tape on her cheek that held the feeding tube in place and grasped the thin hose that threaded into her nose and down her throat.

  Her hands shook as she slowly pulled on the tube. A sharp pain in her nostrils made her eyes water, and she forced herself not to cry out. Something in her throat tickled, then scratched. The end of the tube climbed up her esophagus. She started to gag.

  She paused, a short rest. Pinching her eyes shut and taking a deep breath, Melissa counted to three in her mind, then gave the tube one last tug.

  The end of the tube shot up past the back of her throat and through her nose until it dropped out in her hand. She retched on the bed, her eyes watering and throat burning. Her torso heaved. Drops of blood splattered on her arms from her nose, and she wiped them on the bedsheet.

  Now she had to get out. She knew she could do it. Slipping out of the hospital unseen wouldn’t be the problem.

  The woods...the thought of what she’d find there wrapped her with terror. Something deep and primal stirred within her, a long-dormant instinct: protective, intuitive, benevolent. She’d felt glimmers of this feeling over the years, but nothing like this. The pain dimmed, and a manic strength returned to her body.

  She had to save her daughter.

  ***

  She was close.

  Nolin didn’t think it was possible for the woods to grow quieter. Instead of ringing in her ears, the silence whooshed, like the wings of a bird taking flight. It was almost nightfall. The ground felt different beneath her feet. It seemed to move, rising and falling softly. Grasses and ferns around her twitched in unison with the whooshing noise and the rising and falling of the soil.

  Nolin looked down. Trickles of soil fell away from her feet, and she thought she rose an inch. She heard an unmistakable inhale that seemed to come from her own mind. The ground was moving.

  Were the woods...breathing?

  As she inhaled, the ground swelled. When she exhaled, it fell. The forest is alive, she realized. She wasn’t sure if this scared her or comforted her. No wonder she’d always felt like the trees had eyes.

  Nolin’s instincts told her to run, but she kept walking. Even if the ground was breathing, breathing couldn’t hurt her. Within minutes, the trees thinned. Ahead, Nolin saw a clearing. Her heart slammed against her chest. This had to be it.

  She stood before the massive, tilted tree, its ancient black bark twisted and lumpy, its branches speckled with small leaves. Her dreams had come to life. Her foggy childhood memories of the place suddenly felt razor sharp. The smells, the sounds, the strange feeling of this part of the woods—she remembered everything.

  At the foot of the Claw Tree sat a pale figure, her back to Nolin. A mass of tangled dark hair fell down her back. She wore a long, gray garment that reflected the dying light like soft metal. The girl sat still, legs crossed, watching the sparse canopy of the tree. Her white skin was almost transparent, ghostly in the fading light.

  Nolin froze, her breath caught in her throat.

  Was that the real Nolin? Another goblin? She had no idea. Why didn’t she think of what to say or do when she found her? Now that she was here, her mind was blank.

  Nolin cleared her throat to kick-start her voice. “Nolin?” she said. The name felt strange in her mouth. The girl didn’t stir.

  A soft voice whispered in Nolin’s ear. It didn’t seem to come from the figure before her, but from the forest itself.

  You’re here, it said.

  The voice was gentle and delicate, with an edge of suppressed emotion. It was like a cold touch to the back of Nolin’s neck. Goose bumps erupted over her body.

  This was her, the real Nolin.

  There was no turning back. She had to finish this.

  “I know who you are,” Nolin said. Her voice quavered like a leaf in an icy breeze. “I’m here to bring you home.”

  No. I am home. You’ve come home.

  Nolin hadn’t expected that. It never occurred to her that perhaps the girl wouldn’t want to leave the woods. Nolin didn’t understand.

  Sit with me.

  The ground beneath Nolin’s feet heaved slightly. The rushing sound filled her ears again, like a sigh. She took a tentative step forward. The leaves of the Claw Tree twitched as the ground beneath it exhaled.

  Nolin approached the figure slowly. The girl was small, about Nolin’s size. She was very thin. Though her wavy hair was matted and dirty, it shone in the evening sun.

  Nolin’s calves twitched. Something inside her wanted to run. Ignoring her impulses, she rounded to the girl’s side and lowered herself to a sitting position a few feet beside her. Nolin’s stomach twisted itself in knots. Sweat beaded in her hairline, palms, and the groove of her back.

  The girl gazed up into the canopy serenely. Nolin knew that face. She’d seen it in her dreams, staring back at her when she’d woken beneath the Claw Tree when she was ten, and in the window only nights ago, but somewhere else, too. There was something oddly familiar about her. Nolin couldn’t quite place it.

  The girl’s eyes were so dark they were nearly black. Nolin couldn’t see a difference from the irises to the pupils. Her narrow face was smooth and ageless; she could have been in her twenties or her forties. It was impossible to tell. Her frosty-white lips parted slightly. The cheekbones, nose, and chin were sharp. Her eyelashes were long, strangely pale like feathers.

  I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.

  Her lips moved slightly. The voice was curiously disembodied, emanating from the girl but at the same time, from Nolin’s mind. It was so soft and sharp at once, like a cold puff of air.

  I’ve been calling you for years, in your dreams, in your mind. I was starting to worry. No matter, you’re here now.

  This wasn’t what Nolin was expecting at all. She’d expected anger or fear, for this girl to be completely feral, anything but this.

  Still, something about it made sense. All her life, she’d felt the woods calling her, both in her dreams and when she was awake.

  “It was all you,” Nolin said. “You...you spoke to me in dreams? Those dreams about this tree, those were from you?”

  The girl turned and looked Nolin in the eye. The face was expressionless, the eyes cold and flat. Her gaze fell on Nolin like a bucket of ice water.

  I had to show you the way. The girl said. I had to remind you. That’s how you got here all those years ago, when you hid here. You already knew the way because I showed you.

  “You’ve been following me all my life,” said Nolin. “Following Melissa. You’ve watched us both.”

  Yes. I have.

  “You wanted me to come here.”

  The girl nodded, her eyes never leaving Nolin’s.

  “You always knew who I was, who Melissa is. That she was your mother, and that I was”—she fumbled for words—“who you were supposed to be.”

  The girl’s eyebrows knit together.

  No.

  “No?” Nolin repeated. Something wasn’t adding up.

  Meliss
a isn’t my mother.

  “But...” Nolin was confused. “Are you, weren’t you Nolin Styre?”

  The girl’s expression softened. She looked away, her eyes focused straight ahead on the trunk of the tree.

  No. I’m not. I wasn’t.

  Nolin couldn’t believe it. She sat up straight and her mouth dropped open slightly. Her mind spun. What was going on?

  “Then who are you?”

  The corners of the girl’s lips turned up. The effect didn’t warm her cold face. You read my journal. Your mother knows me well. Much better than you know.

  Realization dawned on Nolin like a punch in the stomach. The threads she’d woven together into a flimsy understanding of her life unraveled before her eyes.

  “Alexa?”

  Chapter 45

  ALEXA SMILED, HER features softening for the first time. Now Nolin saw her age. It wasn’t marked in lines on her face because there were none. It was her demeanor. Nolin sensed a weariness about her that echoed the weariness Melissa wore like a shawl. This was Melissa’s childhood friend, the one whose supposed death triggered decades of mental illness and led the whole town to believe that Melissa was a murderer. All these years of being followed and watched. It was always Alexa.

  “Does Melissa know?” Nolin asked.

  Alexa nodded.

  “She knows you’re alive. She knows you’re still here.”

  Alexa nodded again, then chuckled. The curve of her throat twitched. The sound might have been branches clicking together in the treetops.

  No wonder Melissa is half-insane. At least that much made sense. Nolin had so many questions, she didn’t know where to start.

  “You’ve been spying on me. On us,” Nolin said. “Why?”

  Alexa’s smile faded, and she looked at her hands in her lap, fiddling with her fingers.

  “I was lonely.”

  Her voice startled Nolin. She spoke out loud this time, truly out loud, not in Nolin’s mind or through the woods. Nolin wondered if Alexa could tell the difference, if she could control it.

  “You were lonely,” Nolin repeated.