And the Trees Crept In(29)

“Nori, would you quit—”

The corridor is dark and empty, but I still hear the claps. They are coming from down the hall, too far down the hall, and in the opposite direction from where I am looking.

“N… Nori?”

I stand frozen as the claps draw closer. Grow louder. Until I am sure someone has to be standing not three feet from me, watching me.

Clap, clap, clap.

And then the clapping stops. And it is infinitely, infinitely worse. The silence. Loud, awful silence.

And then creak.

Upstairs, in the attic.

Creak…

From (crazy) Aunt Cath.

Creeeeaaaakkkk.

I hold my breath, my mind so full I worry it might burst with fear and— Stop it.

Stop it now.

But as I close my bedroom door, the clapping starts again. Slow. Mocking. Exulting.

CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.





Hide-and-seek is our favorite game to play. He is reeeeeeally tall, but he’s very good at it! There are a lot of places to hide away in the basement—it’s my new favorite place! I cover my eyes and count, “One… two… three!” And then when I look, he’s gone! When I find him, I giggle, but I try not to be very loud because Silla will get angry.

Silla doesn’t sleep anymore. And we hardly eat anything and the monster in my tummy gets loud. I think her tummy monster is even bigger. And she gets upset. Sometimes I see that Gowan looks at her funny. He looks at the pointy bits on her hips and then his mouth gets all hard and he looks away quickly. I think he thinks something is bad inside Silla. Maybe Silla is sick.

I want to tell her about the tall man and my game very, very much because I hate Silla being upset. But there is the game and I’m not allowed to spoil it. There are rules.

And if you break the rules, then bad things will happen.

So the game will carry on, and I won’t say a word.





I can’t stop watching the trees.

I can’t let Nori go into them.

If it’s true, even only a little,

then we will never leave this house.

Remember what Cath said

when we arrived? “Poor thing.”

That’s what she said.

I thought she meant the state of me. Of Nori.

But she meant something else.

“He’ll never let you leave.”

She knew we were stuck here.

From the moment we crossed

through those dark woods.

I thought it was just a story.

It makes so much sense now.

And now there’s the other thing.

My suspicion.

We might be sinking.

Which means I might have no choice.

I might have to go into the woods.

But I believe what I heard.

I will die, if I try.

It makes sense why Mam never

wanted to talk of La Baume.

She wasn’t hiding a paradise.

She was hiding a hell.





The next day, the trees are in the garden.

They are the garden.

And they are definitely taller than before. Or, we are lower. Lower in the earth, which is softening like out there in the woods that day… full of worms and mulch and dead animals and— I realize, with dawning horror, that we might be at the head of a kind of funnel, s

i

n

k

i

n

g

into the earth.





BOOK 3:


Sky Roots



The earth and the sky

will not obey time,

I bet you don’t know

your life’s on the line.

the earth and the sky

met in the wood,

decided to try

all that they could.





11


bloody creepo



Wear him down?

You could try!

But patience is

His one true vice.





BROKEN BOOK ENTRY


I found a book lying in the library, less molded than the others. Smells of mildew, still, but then everything does. It almost fades after a while. Picked up a pen—plenty of those—and began to write. Nothing very important at first. Who would ever read it? It feels old, and hard like stone; there is a long crack in the leather, calcified. A symbol in the center—from the Greek alphabet. Omega. I wrote nothing much, but then slowly, little truths. Like this one: I don’t know if I’m more terrified of the woods, or of the fact that we are going to die here, and that is the end of the story. I’d like to write it all down first, if I may. If I have enough time. It seems like all I have is time. But I know it’s only a matter of… Ha. Ha. TIME. And then there will be… I don’t know. So I will pick up my pen. It’s all I can do. And I write.





His face is pale when I open the kitchen door. Behind him, the trees stand sentinel in the garden.

[THEY HAVE PASSED THE GATE.]

I give a panicked laugh, and step back to let Gowan in. In my hand, I clutch a broken book. He stops and stares at me, taking in my pale, thin face, my collarbones, which protrude beneath my dress, and my matted hair, and it’s like something inside him snaps.

“We have to leave,” he says right away, snatching up one of Cath’s baskets and piling in the apples he has brought with him. “No more excuses. No more delays.”