And the Trees Crept In(13)

She might have bloody well brought back some food.

I shake my head and continue to fold the laundry, which is still damp, though it has hung outside all day. Nothing ever dries anymore in this damn climate. Our clothes are all slightly moist, and they have the smell of it, too—of mold, of wet, of rotting material. Even my skin smells mildewy.

God, I need a proper shower. Hot, running water. Stupid bloody generator. It broke a few months ago. I fixed it, and it works… some of the time. But the water pressure sucks the farther up the house you go. And the shower is on the third floor—in the abandoned hallway.

I can’t get my thoughts off that boy. Gowan. If he really did live here once, why come back? There’s nothing left. It’s so isolated—not a single neighbor now for thirteen or fourteen miles. Unless you count him. Three miles from town. Three miles from us. But this land is poisoned, infected, dying, and I doubt he can fix that. I doubt anyone can. So why come? What’s the point?

“Have you seen him before?”

No.

“He seemed familiar.”

He’s fun. We should go visit him.

“No!” I spin, grab my sister’s tiny shoulders, and give them a shake. “We are never entering the woods, do you understand me?”

Nori blinks at me and then begins to cry. She tries to wriggle free from my hands, her bad arm bent and useless.

“Nori, I’m serious. He could be a spy or a hobo or some kind of terrorist! He could be looking for a place to set up some kind of military base—”

Stupid! Nori yells with her hands. I have to admit, I do feel kind of idiotic.

“It’s possible,” I insist. “Remember what they were saying on the news before we left? We could be the only ones left for all we know.”

She tugs away from me again. Go away, go away, go away!

“Nori, promise me you won’t go into the woods! They’re coming closer!”

I don’t mean to say it. It slips out. There is a pause, and then Nori jerks hard, manages to get free, and rushes from the room. At the doorway, she turns back, her face red and wet. Too late! The woods are coming! And he’s already here!





THE KIND MADE FROM LOVE




“Auntie?”

I am getting older now and creaking in all my bones. I turn; my eyes fall on the girl who stands at the bottom of the stairs. I know she’ll come no closer, so I linger in the doorway, looking down. How much the girl has changed.… She is not a child any longer; she is a younger version of me. Of little Pammy. Except for that dark hair.

When first the two children came, there was life in this house. Not much, but I managed to hold the dark at bay. He was confined to the woods. The children, my nieces, were innocent—or at least the young one was. The eldest, though—Silla, who stands before me now an almost-woman—had seen a sliver of darkness already. Still, she was innocent in that she was untouched by the madness that infects this house.

But that is gone now, too.

“He’s out there,” I say, turning back to the window. “Always watching. Getting stronger.”

The girl steps hesitantly onto the bottom step, eyes darting up and away like a skittish cat, and stands awkwardly on the very edge. “Who is?”

I sigh and curl my legs underneath me as I sit on the floor, shifting so that my back is now to the window and I am facing the girl looking up at me.

I don’t want to do this again.

“When I was a little girl, your mother and I used to love it here.”

The girl looks skeptical, and I expect no less.

“Back then the house was blue. It’s tradition that every new family head paints La Baume a different color, did you know that? Father started to paint it blue the day he married Momma. He never was very good at finishing anything. When I was four and Pammy was still a little baby, Father got it into his head that those few bits of green paint showing through were bad luck. We spent a whole summer running around the house, filling in the gaps. When we were finished, the house looked like the sky.” I smile and wrap thin arms around myself. They were good days. Good memories. “The soil was rich and fertile.”

“What happened?”

“I did.” I choke back a sob. “I came. I grew up, Father died, then Mother, Anne… and then Pammy moved away with that awful, hard man.” The man who is your father. I don’t say it, but I know the girl heard it. “I could see the stone in him clear as day… but your mother has an airy nature and was too flighty to see. Soon you were there with them, too, a little pebble yourself, and my hopes of having her back were dashed upon the rocks.” I pause, my lungs fighting to find purchase in the air.

I feel spite deep inside me as I watch the almost-woman, Silla, who is my niece and to blame. It is a curling thing I can’t suppress. “The day you were born, I began to paint the manor red. The new color for my rule. Red was blood and rage and passion.” I smile wanly. “It seemed fitting at the time.”

“I’m sorry.”

I laugh, cackles bounding along the walls. The girl is sorry.

“Ten years. Waiting. And still I hoped that Pammy would come home. I bought so much yellow paint, hoping against hope that she would join me and we could remake this house again. A giant sunflower, full of light and joy…” Oh, it was such a glorious dream! Such grand ideas! Such wonder in the darkness! “And then Eleanor came. Little Nori, so precious. Precious enough to tie your mother to him for longer. Little Nori, full of water, fluid—an easy survivor. She couldn’t be tainted by your father the way—”