My right hand twitches and for a horrible moment, I think I’m going to slap Elle. I’m not sure I’ll be able to control it. Elle’s eyes widen just a fraction, as if she sees it in me.
As if she knows what I’m capable of.
I stuff my hands in the pockets of my shorts. “Fine,” I say. “We’ll all have a nice night inside.”
Elle’s plan is a good one, and if I had more time, I would stay in tonight and tomorrow night and however many nights I had to until she trusted me enough to leave me alone. I don’t have time. Jane is still missing and now we’ve lost Winnie and Claire said tonight.
After dinner, I volunteer to make hot chocolate for everyone. As an apology. They accept that reason. They all know by now that I’ve been leaving at night and thus have something to apologize for. It makes sense that I’m ready to get back in their good graces. No, no—I don’t need help. I can make it.
While the kettle’s on the stove, I take a handful of dirt from one of the kitchen plants, and use it to grow something new. I’m careful. I focus. I know exactly what I want. The flowers of the plant are small and white, but I’m after the roots. They writhe over the counter as they grow. When I’m satisfied with the amount, I separate stem and flowers from root, and rinse it off. I chop the root, put it in a tea infuser, and let the water for the hot chocolate soak it up.
I turn toward the living room and lean casually against the counter. When Brooke looks my way, I wave. She smiles, waves, turns back to the movie. Anastasia. It’s one of our favorites. A girl with little to no memory of her past, raised in an orphanage, finds out she’s a long-lost princess.
The lake house is better than Anya’s orphanage, and it’s not the princess part that we gravitate toward. It’s her grandmother. Anya’s surviving family has spent years longing for her to return home.
The kettle whistles. I quickly toss the remaining root down the garbage disposal and wash the infuser, putting it back in the drawer wet just as Violet walks up. “Can I help?” they ask.
“Sure. Will you grab the mix and a spoon while I pour water?”
The water that comes out is faintly yellow. The black interior of the mugs hides the color, but it’s obviously yellow as it pours. I move fast to finish pouring water in all seven mugs before Violet sees.
“Okay, time to scoop,” I say. I lean in and whisper, “Make them extra chocolatey. I think we could use it tonight.”
Violet nods, scooping the powder in generously. I follow behind with a splash of milk and a spoon for each mug.
If any of my siblings think the hot chocolate tastes strange, they don’t say so. They don’t seem to notice that my mug stays full.
The valerian root I put in the water won’t hurt my siblings. I wouldn’t do this if I thought it would hurt them. I don’t know if it will do anything. I’ve never tried to grow something with intent before, not like this. I may have read every book Frank owns on plants and herbology, but I like to grow imaginary plants, and I grow them usually for aesthetic, not purpose.
I’ve never asked a plant to grow with instructions like, Not too much taste. Just a little sedative. Just a deep sleep.
Whether or not it works, I’m a monster for trying. I know that. I’m drugging my siblings.
It’s only to make them sleep through the night, without noticing me coming or going. They don’t understand that I have to go out to the forest tonight, to save our sisters. I don’t blame them or anything. They’re scared. We all are.
But if I can’t make them understand, they’ll try to stop me. That can’t happen.
By the time Anya and Dimitri are fighting Rasputin on the bridge, the little twins are out and everyone else is yawning. Once the movie’s over and everyone’s shuffling off, I help Irene carry the little twins to bed.
“Sorry about this,” she says. She spreads a blanket on the floor in front of the tunnel wall, yawning. “I think it’s a little extreme, but . . .”
“But Elle’s worried,” I say distractedly. Irene’s lying down right against the wall. If I open it, she’ll fall backwards. Not sure she’d sleep through that. “I get it. Please, don’t worry about it.”
Elle’s already asleep when I get to my room. She hasn’t taken Jane’s bed, as if it’s off-limits. Instead, she’s built a nest of her own blankets on the floor, like Irene did. I sit on the edge of my bed for a moment and watch her. Her breathing is slow and even. Paranoid, I go room to room, checking everyone’s breathing—they’re all fine.
Now I just have to navigate getting out of the house if I can’t use the tunnel or the doors. The windows on the first floor are all alarmed, too.
Not the second floor, though. Those windows are too high to jump from and have nothing nearby to climb on. We can open and close them as we please, for the most part.
I trace the dried candle wax on the windowsill in my bedroom like a prayer before I open the window. I glance at Elle, but she hasn’t stirred.
I ask the vine to grow thick and sturdy up the side of the house, with handholds like a ladder. Like the beanstalk that took Jack up into the clouds, my vine provides me safe passage to the ground.
“I won’t be gone long,” I whisper to my vine. “And I’ll need to get back up.”
Claire’s waiting for me in the forest, like I knew she would be.
“Do you know where Winnie is?”
“No,” she says. For the first time, her voice sounds completely normal. No lag, no skipping. “But I know how you can find her and Jane. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before now, it’s been . . . difficult.”
“Who are you?” I ask. “How can I trust anything you tell me if I don’t know who you are? Or what you are?”
“I’m just like you,” Claire says, stepping toward me with that little crooked smile on her face. “A lost little alchemist who was seen by a man, and then by a forest. The forest sees you, Derry. It saw what you did.” She raises her hand to my cheek, a breath away from making contact. “You impressed it.”
“Impressed it?” I draw back. “But—I—I didn’t do something good, it’s not something to be proud of—”
“Isn’t it? You protected your sister and yourself at all costs. You proved there’s no length to which you wouldn’t go. Admittedly, your technique and control could use a little work. But that’s why the forest wants you here. We can teach you.”
I shake my head, reeling. “Teach me? To, what, hurt people better?”
“No, no,” Claire says. “Of course not.” She hmms. “Well, unless you want to. Unless it’s needed.” She takes my hands, and it’s like an electric shock. She’s never touched me before. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she’s incorporeal, but she’s not. I can feel her. Her hands are a little cold, her skin a little dry.
“The forest sees potential in you, Derry,” Claire says. She laces her fingers through mine. I can’t breathe. A small part of me still itches, hearing her voice. It still yells that she’s a hole in the universe.
She’s a hole in the universe I increasingly think I’m willing to fall into.
“And it wants you to see potential in yourself,” Claire continues. “Frank’s methods build your power little by little, and never enough. We can teach you to build your dreams. And an alchemist who’s powerful enough to build dreams . . .”
She steps in closer. I realize I’m trembling. Her breath ruffles my hair when she whispers in my ear. “She’d be powerful enough to find her sisters.”
I pull away just enough to look her in the eye. “Teach me.”
12
Thunder booms so loud overhead that my bedroom window shakes. A worksheet on permutations sits in front of me on my desk. I’ve done all but three out of fifteen problems, and spent the last ten minutes staring at the rain, doodling idly on scrap paper. The window is cracked just enough for me to smell the storm.
“Tell me something you failed to grow,” Claire said to me after I asked her to teach me.
“Well . . . I failed to gr
ow accurate snowdrops in my test this week. Real plants are harder, especially out of season.”
“Your test.” She sighed. “Frank still thinks that’s how you nurture an alchemist? Doesn’t he want better results?” Claire knelt, and patted the ground next to her until I knelt as well. “Magic shouldn’t feel like a test. It creates a barrier. When you aren’t being tested, what does it feel like?”
“A conversation,” I said immediately.
“Good. That’s a good answer. Now that you’re out from under Frank’s watchful eye, try the snowdrops again. And don’t worry—there’s no grade here.”
It wasn’t easy to drop that stress. Frank wasn’t there, but a teacher was watching, and she said there wasn’t a grade, but my anxiety said there was a grade, a secret one. I tried square breathing for nearly half an hour, even though in my gut I knew that no matter what Frank said, it wasn’t the right way.
Claire was patient. She didn’t prod me like Frank would, or sigh and get bored. She sat with me, and an hour later, I grew a blanket of anatomically perfect snowdrops. The magic made my blood feel like it was sparkling.
Claire beamed with pride. “Now that you’ve passed that mental hurdle, we’ll really be able to get started.”
Everyone was still asleep when I got home, and in the morning, no one seemed suspicious of why they’d all slept so deeply. Maybe I got away with it. My stomach twists at the thought. I shouldn’t get away with it. I don’t want to get away with it. If I did, it means I could get away with it again, and that would just be too tempting.
I don’t want to be the person who drugs her siblings every night.
I also don’t want to be the person whose siblings won’t trust any drink or food she hands them.
Can’t admit guilt, can’t stand getting away with it.
Lightning flashes. Eyes closed, I whisper, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississipp—” and the thunder claps.
When I open my eyes, maybe I’ll be home. I’ll be nine years old and standing on the porch with my dad while the tornado sirens rise and fall. I knew by then that sirens didn’t always mean you’d get hit with anything. The sirens aren’t saying A TORNADO IS HERE, they’re saying pay attention, please, it could get bad in a hurry. My mom will be inside pacing in front of the TV, tuned to her favorite news channel for severe weather, the multipurpose lantern-slash-weather-radio clutched in her hands. Every couple of minutes she’ll call out to us, and Dad will say, “We’re fine, we haven’t seen anything.”
I’ll hear this, distantly, but all of my focus will be on the huge tree in our front yard. The leaves are so dense that when the wind blows strong enough, they look like green ocean waves. The limbs creak.
I want it to fall.
I know that if it falls, it could hit our house or the car or destroy the garden. I know the tree is big enough that it would be bad, so I don’t really want it to fall, but I do. I imagine how my bones would tremble when it hit the ground with a mighty crash. Mom would scream, Dad would swear. When the storm finally passed I’d go outside in rain boots and pick my way through fallen branches. I want the tree to fall, and I want to climb up onto the thick trunk like it’s my own fresh kill.
It was still standing the last time I saw it.
I return my attention to the worksheet. #3: How many unique ways are there to arrange the letters in the word ORANGE? Your answer should be an integer . . .
I have the formula scribbled at the top of the worksheet. On scrap paper, I find space around the doodle—another two-legged being with impossible antlers, but this time their entire body is tree branches and flowers—to plug numbers into the formula. I don’t get past the first couple of numbers before lightning flashes.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .
I give up on permutations. Frank’s not back yet, anyway. I just used worksheets as an excuse to be alone. Every time one of my siblings looked at me, I thought, They know, they know. It was suffocating. All I want is to be back in the forest.
I wonder if Claire can teach me to grow a tree as big as the one in my old front yard. I wonder if she can teach me to bring it down.
Brooke knocks on my door. When I look up, she signs, ‘We’re going to watch another movie during dinner. Do you want to choose?’
‘No, I’m fine. Let one of the little twins pick.’
She nods, but doesn’t leave. She’s tugging at the sleeves of her cardigan, biting her lip.
‘Is there something else?’ I ask.
‘How did you sleep last night?’
My stomach twists again. ‘I passed out,’ I sign. ‘Don’t know what it was. I was out like a light and slept right until morning.’
For a moment, all we do is stare at each other. She searches my face for answers, because . . . she doesn’t know. I don’t think she does. She just wonders.
I break eye contact, which is probably all the confirmation she needs. I should meet her eyes again. I should smile. I should do anything but keep my eyes glued on her shoulder, broadcasting my guilt, risking missing anything she might sign.
‘How about you?’ I ask. My hands stumble over themselves on even this simple question. I train my eyes on her hands.
‘Same,’ she signs. ‘Come to dinner soon?’
After dinner and the movie, Elle announces that she and Irene will be sleeping in their own beds tonight. It’s not that she completely trusts me yet, she warns—it’s that sleeping on the floor sucked and she’s not going to do it again, so I better not make her. Jane’s bed isn’t even mentioned as an option. I suppose that whether Jane is missing or dead, it still feels wrong to sleep in her bed.
I swear I won’t, and I hide my smile. Just to prove how entirely trustworthy I am, I even stay in the living room and play a few rounds of Uno. The little twins go to bed after one round. I spend the entire game fighting not to look out the window, scared someone would notice.
When I finally escape Uno, London and Olivia are in my room. They’ve got Jane’s candles on the sill and Olivia’s trying to light a match.
“What are you doing?” I ask. It comes out harsher than I mean to. Olivia drops the unlit match and they both snap their heads toward me with wide eyes.
“We wanted to do the candles,” Olivia says. “To wish for Jane and Winnie to come back.”
It’s harmless, and I should let them do it. There’s no reason not to, except that every moment in this house is a moment I’m not in the forest.
“No. You’re supposed to be in bed.” I whisk the candles off the sill into the box, and grab the matches off the floor.
The way Olivia’s looking at me should make me stop and think. It should worry me. Instead, I walk briskly to the closet and throw the box onto the highest shelf. “The candles can’t bring anyone back.” I slam the closet door closed. “Now go to bed.”
As soon as they’re gone, I hate myself. I should run after them. Apologize. Bring them back, do the candle ritual. Ask London what she thinks of another option I found for what we could call ourselves—arcanists. A fine word. A little stuffy, in my opinion, but what does she think?
I should sleep, too. I haven’t gotten much lately, and the exhaustion is catching up with me. A more well-rested version of me wouldn’t have snapped at two little kids like that.
I shouldn’t go to the forest.
I’m going to, but I shouldn’t.
I still can’t risk the tunnel. I ask my vine to grow again. The rain stopped hours ago, so I land on dry ground.
It’s good my feet know the way, because my brain is full of you really fucked up this time, you have to stop this, it’s not worth it if you’re going to hurt them, but I have to find Jane and Winnie, but—
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“Shit!” I gasp, stepping backwards. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“You’re the one who was lost in a daydream somewhere,” Claire says.
“Not as nice as a daydream,” I say.
“D
o you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. “No. I came here to learn magic and save my sisters, not complain about my anxiety.”
“Are you sure?”
I smile to show how sure and totally fine I am. “Yeah. Actually, I was wondering—could you teach me to grow a giant tree?”
“Growing a giant tree would be nothing for you. I told you, you’re going to build dreams. Don’t you want to dream a little bigger?”
“Bigger than ‘giant tree’?”
Claire laughs, and it feels like a brush of starlight. I want to make her laugh again. “Bigger doesn’t have to mean bigger.” She spreads out her arms. “But . . . sure, we can start with a giant tree.”
The forest already being full of trees and not having much room for a giant new one, I don’t actually grow a giant tree. Instead, I grow more and more trees inside a cluster of trees, until they’ve wrapped around each other, merged, turned into something like a giant tree.
Close enough.
Maybe next time I can work on bringing it down.
“Are you happy here?” Claire asks as we sit beneath the canopy of my tree(s). “In the house, I mean. With Frank.”
“I was happier before my sisters disappeared, of course.”
“And how happy was that?”
I shrug, pulling up a few blades of grass. “Frank takes care of us. Teaches us. Keeps us safe.”
“We’ve established he isn’t very good at teaching you,” Claire says. “He couldn’t even get you to grow some snowdrops, could he?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re a better teacher,” I say, laughing.
Claire doesn’t laugh. She’s looking at me gravely. “What I mean is—he’s not very good at teaching you. Maybe you should think about how good he is at keeping you safe.”
After she says it, it’s hard to think about anything else. On the walk home—which is way too late, it’s almost dawn—the same images flash through my mind. The last time I saw Jane. The last time I saw Winnie. Maybe he’s not keeping us safe right now. But he’s not actively hurting us. The memory of Frank punching the wall joins the images of Jane and Winnie. I shake it away. That’s not the same as hurting us.
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