“Then tell me!” Lenora’s voice was wild and shrill, like the squall forming in her chest. The words tasted bitter. She knew the answer before Uncle Richard even spoke again.
He did not tell her anything except, “The woods are no place for a child.”
The fury burned through her words. “I have walked all the way through the woods,” she said. “They have never hurt me. Not even once.” The silvery waters crept into her mind. She shoved them away.
Uncle Richard’s voice turned wild now. “They will take you and keep you and kill you!”
“You are as mad as they say you are!” The words were loose before she could stop them.
“Lenora!” Mrs. Jones’s voice rose in a high-pitched reprimand. Lenora dropped her eyes to her lap.
The room was so silent she dared not move.
Finally, Uncle Richard spoke. “Your father knew the truth of those woods. I didn’t listen. And my son paid the price.”
Lenora shook her head. She wanted to tell him that Bobby was in the woods, that Bobby was safe, that she would bring him home. But she knew he wouldn’t believe her. He hadn’t seen what she had seen; her father hadn’t seen what she had seen. They didn’t know the truth of the woods.
“Don’t go back to the woods, Lenora.” Uncle Richard sounded broken, defeated, and Lenora lifted her eyes. She could see the pain in his, and it squeezed her chest. She was sorry for what she’d said. She wished she could take it back. He dropped his eyes. “They may not let you go next time.”
She would prove him wrong.
“Mrs. Jones?” This time Uncle Richard’s voice was strong, unbendable.
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t return,” Mrs. Jones said.
Before Lenora could say anything else, Uncle Richard was gone.
Lenora turned her face away from Mrs. Jones. The next time she looked, her room was empty. But she could see the shadow of feet outside her door. A guard.
Now she was a prisoner.
His strength, in death, was tangled up in sorrow, as his power had been in life. The grieving were the easiest victims to deceive; they were all too unquestioning of another’s motives, blinded by sorrow and pretty words of understanding. He had used them liberally.
Death shifted his focus to the young—those wealthy in grief, rather than material goods. The young could not always comprehend the shifting nature of sorrow; they often felt like grief and its accompanying pain would last forever. He promised otherwise, and that was enough to lure them into his realm.
Sorrow is a constant in life. One does not truly live without it.
And so the woods continued, and he along with them.
April 29, 1947
I will not let the woods take her. I will not let them have another victim. They—he?—almost lured her into the abyss while I was off traveling, gathering supplies for the final piece—the piece that will return my son to me (if he is still alive; I am not entirely certain he is, but at least I will ensure that no one else will become like him), the piece that will save my niece’s life. When Mrs. Jones told me that she had not been able to find Lenora on the grounds of Stonewall Manor or inside the house, though the day had surrendered to dark, the panic flared so fiercely and profoundly in me that I hardly thought I could do anything but retreat to my work, immediately. I almost gave her up for gone.
But courage is often surprising, and mine moved my feet for me, with hardly a second thought. I did not hesitate to breach the woods, calling her name, carrying the brass bell I constructed myself to ensure that I could escape whatever spell is woven around those who enter the trees. This bell is comprised of the scientific and the spiritual—a blend of metal and spirit that can pierce both. I have used it many times myself. I thought it might work for Lenora, too.
I did not locate her on my search inside the woods, but I found her, hours later, lying right on the border between the woods and the grounds. I caught only a glimpse of a strange creature—pink with golden eyes—before it scrambled away. It was very near Lenora’s crumpled form. It had touched her. I am certain of it. Perhaps it even whispered in her ear and caused her to stumble. I do not doubt the possibility of anything anymore.
I do not know what kind of creature it was; I did not have my eyepiece with me, which allows me to see things more clearly and up close. I suspect it is a creature the world has never known. But even that does not convince me the woods are worth saving. Let every sinister species inside die together with it.
It will burn, yes. But burning is not enough. To end the curse of the woods, which could remain indefinitely, I must destroy the presence that resides deep within them, and that will need more than fire. That will need . . . me.
I am not noble; I am merely desperate.
Lenora will return to the woods. I could see it in her eyes. There is a chasm of loneliness and sorrow in my niece, and while I am grateful that I can recognize it in her as I could not in my son, it frightens me. Sorrow and loneliness are strong allies, and I cannot provide solace. The woods, however . . .
I must finish my work as soon as I can. I must destroy the evil that hovers around us. And I must do it while watching Lenora closely and ensuring that she does not run to the woods and its charms again.
I have never faced a more impossible task.
—excerpt from Richard Cole’s Journal of Scientific Progress
DEEPER INTO THE WOODS
45
The sticky days of April lengthened into the steamy days of May. Lenora spent most of her time now in the garden, clearing away the weeds, watering plants, nursing them back to life. She was delighted at how green everything still was. During the longest part of the summer, the plants would likely dry up, as they did everywhere in Texas, or so her mother had always complained. But they were beautiful for now.
The woods called to her regularly. Once she even saw Bela standing at the opening, summoning her. She would like to return, but every day she spent in the garden or walking the grounds or pretending interest in the trees that arched over the sidewalk in front of Stonewall Manor, Mrs. Jones kept close behind her. Even when she explored Stonewall Manor, Lenora had a shadow.
The tables were growing dusty, since Mrs. Jones could not do her work.
As the days passed and Lenora did as she was told, Mrs. Jones settled herself into the creaking rocking chair on the porch of Stonewall Manor. She fixed her eyes on Lenora and would not look away, not even for a moment. Lenora knew the watching was her uncle’s doing. He did not want her to disappear into the woods again. Anger and sadness warred within her. She grew lonelier, less hopeful, angrier every day that passed.
Though he did not take any more trips, Uncle Richard was hardly ever around except at their silent suppers, during which he said next to nothing most days but every now and then, surprisingly, asked her how her work in the garden was coming along or what book she had read for the day. Lenora looked forward to the suppers where he broke his mysterious, contemplative quiet, but they did not come often. Immediately after eating, Uncle Richard usually locked himself away inside his laboratory and worked on his secret inventions until Lenora shuffled up to bed, alone.
Lenora wanted to know what consumed his attention. Her curiosity was untamable. But with her shadow, she could not investigate.
So, instead, she thought.
Bela had said Uncle Richard wanted to destroy the woods. Uncle Richard, then, must be working on something that could do it—but what? Was there anything in existence that could destroy woods that had been around since the beginning of sorrow, which Lenora assumed was the beginning of time?
Lenora often found her gaze drawn to the windows of Stonewall Manor, which seemed to stare back at her, perhaps even glaring. Sometimes she would see Uncle Richard peering out of the window where he worked.
She began to loathe Stonewall Manor. The spacious hallways were filled with shadows and secrets, and Lenora did not think they were all good. There were so many questions: What had happened to Un
cle Richard’s wife and daughter? Why had his son run away? Should Lenora run away? When would she have a chance? Mrs. Jones watched her every move. And if not Mrs. Jones, Uncle Richard.
She was a captive in a place that was supposed to be a home.
She had attempted, many nights ago, to escape. She had listened carefully, to make sure the house had settled into sleep. When she was sure of it, she emerged from her bedroom to find Uncle Richard sitting in a chair right beside her door, staring at the room across the hall—Bobby’s room. His head had jerked up, and his eyes had stared at her blankly. She had not said a word, had simply fled back into her room and pulled the covers up to her eyes.
She had not fled, however, before she’d noticed the mark on her door. And in the blackness under her covers, she had shivered.
It was the same silvery X that she’d seen on Bobby’s door.
What did it mean? Had Uncle Richard marked it? And if not Uncle Richard, then who—or what?
She had searched for the mark the next morning, but she had seen nothing.
The minutes and hours and days and weeks passed, and Lenora began to forget what Mother and Father and John and Charles and Rory looked like. It felt like the worst act of betrayal to forget their faces. She tried to imagine them when she was alone in her bed, in the moments before sleep, but her memory was blurry, almost blank. They had vanished as easily from her mind as they had from her life. She did not want to forget the way Father’s eyes pinched up at the corners even when he wasn’t smiling, which made him appear perpetually amused. She did not want to forget how beautiful Mother looked in her simple apron, plunging her dirty hands into the soil outside their house. She did not want to forget the music of Rory’s magical piano hands, the way John looked with his nose stuck in a book, Charles’s voice when he teased her.
How she missed them.
She roamed about the halls of Stonewall Manor, searching for a picture of her father, but she could not find him anywhere. He had left this home entirely. Her mother and sister and brothers had never been here at all.
Every morning that she woke without her family near, a heavy sadness pressed on the back of Lenora’s neck. She bowed beneath its weight.
It would not be long before she broke.
She had to find a way back into the woods.
46
Lenora sifted dirt through her hands in a somewhat distracted manner. She breathed the usually soothing smell of grass and plants and freshly turned dirt, but it did not soothe her today. She placed her palms down flat on the ground and closed her eyes, trying to feel the hum of the earth that Mother had felt when she tended her garden. She tried to picture Mother, bent over flowers. She could not see her. She could not smell her mother’s rose scent. She touched the pearl necklace, but even it did not conjure her mother’s image.
She could not let them die.
Lenora opened her eyes, blinking hard.
A movement on the south wall of the garden caught her eye. A bird hopped along its length and sang a trilling melody. It seemed to be performing for her. Lenora smiled in spite of herself. Perhaps it was one of the birds from the woods.
Perhaps it had come to save her.
She needed to escape, to return. The woods would tell her what had happened to her family, once and for all. The woods would give her company, joy, a place to belong. The woods would ease her pain.
And her uncle’s, too, if she could find Bobby. If she could bring him home, before Uncle Richard destroyed the woods.
She would not let him.
Lenora eyed the garden wall on which the bird sat, looking at her as it sang. She squinted back at Mrs. Jones. The bird was just out of Mrs. Jones’s line of vision. She was sure of it. She glanced in the woman’s direction again and then moved quickly toward the wall. The bird flittered away. Lenora scrambled over the wall and pressed herself flat against the smooth brown stone. She peeked around the edge to see what Mrs. Jones was doing. Mrs. Jones had disappeared, probably to prepare lunch. Lenora looked behind her, just to be sure she had not discovered Lenora’s plan. But no one was there.
It was her first time alone in weeks. Perhaps Mrs. Jones trusted her more now. Lenora felt a pang in her chest.
But she would not waste this opportunity. She raced across the grass, breathing hard. The heat today was already thick and suffocating.
Lenora did not run toward the woods, as she had fully expected to do. Her legs carried her, instead, toward the window that looked into Uncle Richard’s laboratory. She could not explain this; she could only go where her legs took her. She hid in the shadows beside the window and raised herself on her toes, her hands gripping the sill. The curtains were pulled across the window, concealing most of the view, but there was a crack in their middle, where one side did not quite touch the other, as though someone had been in a hurry to close them. Lenora could see something moving inside. A dark form crossed the window, and she stepped back, pressing herself against the stone of the house. She waited, trying to still her heart and quiet her breath. When she was sure that Uncle Richard would not be looking right back at her, Lenora peered inside again. She saw her uncle, huddling in a corner. The enormous white sheet had been removed, and she saw a giant rhinoceros made of the same materials she’d seen on the robots that lined the hall into his laboratory—copper, metal, gears of a thousand shapes and sizes. It looked as though it wore armor, and its horns, even from here, appeared sharp and lethal.
Lenora drew in a breath.
How on earth would he get something so large out of his laboratory? And why would he want to?
Lenora saw a puff of steam blast out of the rhino’s mouth. Her uncle flipped a switch, and the eyes—which were light bulbs—blazed to life. Lenora watched, mesmerized.
Her uncle flipped another switch, and the rhino began to move in slow, lumbering steps. She could hear its thundering through the walls. Uncle Richard hastily flipped another switch, and the rhino shuddered and stilled. Uncle Richard looked toward the door of his lab, his face creased with concern.
Lenora had never seen anything like it. It was remarkable. Extraordinary. Magnificent.
Dangerous.
The word slammed into her chest. What did Uncle Richard plan to do? Lenora could not even guess, but she knew, somehow, that it had something to do with the woods, the destruction he had promised. (Had Uncle Richard promised it, or were those the words of Bela? Her mind was a muddle.)
Lenora’s legs were stiff, frozen, unyielding, and there was nothing she could do about it. Not even when Uncle Richard turned and spied her at the window. Not even when he crossed the room with a look that could only be called furious. Not even when he shouted through the glass: “Leave me!”
But when his eyes turned menacing, shooting daggers through the pane, Lenora did leave him. This time she ran in the direction of the woods.
She did not look back.
47
Bela was there to receive her.
“Lenora. I have been waiting for your return.”
“I know,” she gasped. “I have been a prisoner at Stonewall Manor.” She knew it was untrue, but it felt true, after days under guard. “They do not want me to return to the woods.”
“They know you will heal here.” Bela’s golden eyes blinked. “They do not wish it.”
“But why?” Lenora pressed a hand against her chest, trying to ease the ache there. “Why wouldn’t they want my sorrow healed?”
“Miserable people often enjoy spreading their misery,” Bela said. “They are threatened by those who learn to heal, to live a fuller life. If one is unable to find peace, it is easier to believe peace does not exist. You will learn this about people.”
Bela began walking Lenora deeper into the forest, one hand on her arm. She did not object. She knew Uncle Richard had seen her; the deeper they went, the longer she could stay. And it felt so good to have company again.
But something nagged at the back of her mind. “Why was I so unwell last time I le
ft the forest?”
Bela did not stop walking. “You were unwell?” he said. He seemed surprised.
“I slept for many days.”
“That was not the forest’s fault, Lenora.”
“Then whose?”
“Tell me, Lenora.” Every time Bela said her name, Lenora felt herself pulled forward by an invisible thread. “Did your uncle tend you after our last meeting?”
Lenora nodded.
“Did he give you something?”
Lenora hesitated.
“A sleeping tonic, perhaps?”
She could not say for sure. The doubt wedged into the corner of her mind.
Bela said nothing more, but his silence said everything. He took one of her hands and placed it against the bark of a tree.
Lenora’s vision flashed with images she had never before seen. An army of steel, powered by fire. A crumpled car. A boy, running for his life. Her uncle, vines wrapped around him.
Her hand burned. Lenora rubbed it.
Her uncle was a dangerous man. He intended to destroy the woods, with fire. He had been responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter. His son had fled from the man whose mind was marred by sorrow and sickness.
He had almost died here. He might die here in the end.
No. It couldn’t be.
But Lenora had seen it.
She swallowed the burning rock in the back of her throat.
“You are safe as long as you remain in the woods,” Bela said.
“Uncle Richard said the woods are dangerous,” Lenora said.
“But you have seen.”
Yes. She had seen.
Still, the confusion fogged up her mind. She could not think straight, could not settle the warring emotions in her chest.
He was her family. But what did she know of Uncle Richard and his life before her?
“Take me to the Waters of Aevum,” she said.
Bela smiled.
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