And the Trees Crept In(15)

He laughs at me. It’s like a jingle from a TV commercial.

“What?”

He shrugs, but the gesture is awkward on him and I know he is copying me. “There’s a library in there. In the manor. I remember it. You can keep teaching yourself. Don’t need school for that.”

I’m surprised that he knows about the library, but then I remember he used to live here. I guess he was telling the truth.

“You were one of Cath’s orphans.” I state it. It’s the truth.

He nods, but makes no further comment. My gaze slides away.

“You’re preoccupied,” he says.

“You don’t know me well enough to think that.”

“Sure I do. You’re distracted. Your eyes keep jumping from the ground to the trees, to the sky… and you’ve been digging a hole in the same spot since before I sat down.”

I can’t stop the slow smile. I feel it cracking my granite. He is the first person I’ve had a normal conversation with in three years, two months, and sixteen days.

“So? What is it?”

“I just wish I had news. From my family in London. From my old friends. I’m beginning to feel completely cut off from everything and everyone I used to know. I keep waiting, even though it’s been months since anyone wrote to us. And the postman used to come at least once a week, but he came less and less until one day he just stopped. They closed the post office, I guess. He left, with everyone else. It’s weird not having him come by every few days. It’s weird not having the corner shop in the village open every night, all night, or having the sounds of people at all hours like back in London.” I look at Gowan. “First-world problems,” I add casually.

“Those are pretty big problems,” Gowan says. “Are you lonely?”

“A TV would be nice.”

“No TV?”

I shrug. “Cath isn’t big on technology. No TV, no phone, no computer. The radio barely works and is this giant piece of furniture all on its own.”

He smiles fondly, gaze turning inward. “I remember.”

I sigh and rub at my arms. “Is there even a world out there anymore? Have we blown ourselves to bits yet?”

“There’s a world. Just beyond the trees. Not half a day’s walk. And it’s beautiful, full of beautiful things, even if they’re scary.”

Bullshit. I don’t say it. I wish I hadn’t said anything.

Instead, I say, “I don’t remember there being so many trees when we first came here. Nori was only four. They’re *s.”

“They’re just trees.”

I look up, not at him, but beyond him, at the trees. I know they’re watching us, laughing at my distress.

I clench my jaw. “There are so many… they go on forever.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not!” I retort. “But there’s so much work to be done. I have to look after”—Cath—“Nori.”

I gather up my spade and garden fork, shaking loose the fine gray sand. “Go away.”

I get up, turning my back on him, and head toward the manor, the scorching-red manor, and I hear his retreating footsteps. I turn, want to say I’m sorry, please stay but instead I watch him leave. Alarm bells ring inside me: DANGER. DANGER. Can’t he see the dark, the curse, in those trees? Can’t he feel the wrongness when he crosses into those shadows?

He’s already here.

I don’t think Nori was talking about Gowan.





I’m digging in the garden, looking for potatoes or turnips or carrots or worms, when I find another root. It can’t be the same root… but this is the same spot I found the other one. Only this one is three times bigger. And I pulled the other root out completely.

No. “This is not happening. It’s impossible.”

I look up

and scream.

The woods are closer. They are definitely closer. Every time I look away and then back, they seem to have moved, the trunks looming ever taller. I keep wiping my hands on my dress—get it off me, get it off—when I feel it.

Another root.

Sticking out of the dirt like another broken finger. Pointing, accusing. I know, it seems to say. I know, Silla Daniels.

The woods are coming. He’s here. I shake my head. No. No, this is not happening. Stop it. Stop it now. But I know that this land is cursed more than I know that Cath is mad. It has to be cursed. What else is there? I have felt it for a while now. First the town left, then (crazy) Aunt Cath went mad, and now the woods are closer and the garden is dying…

And I am not crazy.

I’m not like Cath.

I get to my feet, never taking my eyes off the trees for paranoid fear that they will be closer once again if I look away even for a moment. I step backward, toward the house, my feet finding their way, and when I’m through the doorway, I slam it shut and pray that the woods will not be right outside when I open it again tomorrow.





I hate the mirrors in this place. As if it isn’t big or creepy enough already, the largest mirror just makes the corridors longer, repeating ever onward to infinity. It’s warped in its age, and doesn’t reflect the truth. The edges are all blacked out and mottled like an old crone’s hand. The head on my first reflection is distorted: too narrow, eyes too dark. The next, her head is normal, but her neck is too long and thin. Each one not quite me. I am looking at hundreds of little almost-me’s, decreasing in size down an endless corridor until I can’t see the last at all. There is no last.