I bury it.
The souls will run through the veins of the earth,
into the heartless tree.
They will be strength for my mother.
Food for her.
I am lighter,
when the orb is gone.
Light enough
to dream.
I must go back to her.
I must kneel at her feet
and receive a new orb.
I must go and kill for her,
and fill it up again.
I do not want to collect more souls.
But my mother bids me.
I
am
her
creature.
I must obey.
But not yet, not yet.
There is peace here.
Solitude.
Silence.
I stretch my feet
into the earth.
I stretch my arms
into the sky.
I dream
I am once more
a tree.
Part of the earth and
part of the stars.
I drink rain,
wind.
The deer bow to me,
birds nest in my branches.
There is no blood here.
No sound
of screaming,
no bones
no souls
no music.
But there is a voice, high and bright in the air.
It
wakes
me.
Chapter Nine
OWEN
THE WOOD ENGULFS ME. THE AIR IS DENSE AND COOL IN HERE, that scent of dead things stronger. Dark branches thick with rustling leaves blot out the sky. Fear burrows under my skin like a thousand stinging nettles. I’ve come unarmed into the Gwydden’s Wood like the greatest of fools—I don’t even have wax to plug my ears.
I try to push away the memory of yellow eyes and silver skin. The scent of blood and snap of bones.
I force myself to walk on.
“Awela,” I call softly. I meant to shout, but the wood swallows my voice. “Awela.”
There’s no answer. I try not to wonder how long she’s been wandering in the forest. I try not to wonder if she’s already dead.
The trees are quiet, but I feel them watching me. Listening. They’re ash trees, gnarled and old, the undergrowth a tangle of ivy and rotting leaves. The ground is never quite still: The earth moves in humps and hollows, roots writhing impossibly just below the surface. It scares me almost more than the trees—I don’t want to be pulled under the earth, suffocated, swallowed. With my last breath, I want to see the sky.
I pick my way slowly over the ground, watching my footsteps, straining for any sign of my sister. I’m terrified I’ll go the wrong direction, that I’ll be too late to save her because I went right when I should have gone left. Everything in me screams to turn around, to bolt back to safety.
But I’m not leaving Awela at the mercy of the wood.
An icy wind stirs through the trees. They seem to bend their heads over my path. Branches snag my sleeve. I yelp and leap forward, a gash ripping in my shirt. Cold air touches my skin. I walk faster.
I find Awela’s other shoe a moment later, caught in the rotting leaves at the foot of another ash. I shove it into my pocket. Hope sparks—she can’t have wandered too much farther on bare feet. I’m going to find her. We’ll be home in time for tea.
I pass through a pocket of violets, dark as poison against the forest floor. Awela’s hair ribbon is caught in a bush; it’s frayed almost to nothing, too tangled to pull free.
“AWELA!” This time the word rips out of me, thunderous in the dead air. Branches creak and stir. The trees are listening. Watching. Waiting. The ember of hope inside me dies.
Silver skin and dappled hair. Yellow eyes. A violet crown. The images clamor into my mind. I can’t shove them out again.
But there is no music in the air. My will is yet my own.
I walk faster, the ground eerily still again. I strain to see Awela behind every tree. But I don’t.
Somewhere outside the wood the afternoon is waning. The light fades bit by bit; the air grows cold. Father will be home soon. I have to find Awela. I have to bring her back before he comes into the wood after us. I don’t think the trees would let him go a third time.
I’m nearly running now, crunching over twigs and fallen leaves. The noise of them is somehow muffled and deafening all at once. I come to another patch of violets, or is it the same one? I’m certain it can’t be, until I see Awela’s frayed ribbon, trembling on the bush.
Fear grips me. The light is nearly gone. I can’t find Awela in the dark. I can’t even find my way home. The siren will sing. She will trap me with her music and break me with her silver hands, and cast me aside for the earth to swallow.
“AWELA!” I scream.
But there’s no answer. I hurtle deeper into the wood, crushing the violets underfoot. Their scent clings to me, so sweet I want to gag.
I race against the setting sun and my own throbbing panic, the trees clawing at me, twigs scratching my neck and face. Even if I knew the way home, I’m not going back without my sister. I’m not leaving her to die in this Godforsaken place.
The light is nearly gone when I burst through the trees into a small clearing, a single pale birch alone in the midst of it. The remnants of the sunset are splashed red across the patch of sky, and it’s bright enough to see the blur of pale blue at the base of the birch tree.
I bolt toward it, a cry tearing from my throat. “Awela!”
The birch tree moves.
Oh God.
Not a birch tree.
The siren is crouched over my sister, green and yellow hair dragging across Awela’s motionless form. She’s crowned with roses.
I lunge for Awela, with no other thought than to snatch her from the siren’s grasp. Roots burst up from the earth, knocking me backward, wrapping around my leg and pinning me to the ground.
I blink and there’s another siren, tall and silver-white, yanking the first siren away from my sister. They hiss at each other, the first with roses in her hair, the second violets. They are like, and yet not like, monsters of the same blood.
“Leave it,” seethes the siren with the violet crown, the siren who slaughtered every person on the train. “Leave it to me.” Her voice is a gale of wind through dead trees.
“I found it first,” hisses the other. “Its soul is mine.”
“I will bring it to our mother. A peace offering.”
“You are late returning. She will be angry.”
The siren with the violet crown snarls. Her teeth gleam like bones. “That is why I must have the child.”
“It will not save you.”
Wind tears through the clearing, whipping the sirens’ hair about their shoulders, leaves about their knees. All the while, Awela does not move, and I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, because what if she’s already dead?
“You are in our mother’s favor,” says the siren with the violet crown. “What is one soul to you?”
“I see why our mother despises you. You are foolish. Weak.” The siren with roses in her hair rakes her claws down the other’s bare arm. Dark liquid bubbles up from the wounds. Then the rose-crowned siren turns away, and vanishes into the wood.
The root around my leg releases me. I scramble to my feet. I bolt toward my sister.
The siren with the violet crown wheels on me, swift as a snake, and grabs me by the throat. She holds me choking and writhing, my feet hanging in empty air. I claw at her hands, try to pull them off, but they squeeze tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Oh God. Spots blink bright behind my eyes. Blackness crowds the edges of my vision. I’m choking. I can’t even scream.