And the Trees Crept In(31)

I recoil from him. “I don’t believe in that.” I pause. “And I hate apples.”

He laughs. “Since when?”

“Since you brought them.”

His face falls. “Oh.”

A moment of silence, and then he says, “I still love you, even if you hate my apples.”

Flights of fancy, passion… love… What good do they do? They destroy people. Women. My mother.

But he won’t listen. I can see it in the way he looks at me. Gazes at me. As though I hold all his hope.

But I’m the wrong person to hold so much. I’m clumsy with emotion. Rage is pure, eloquent, and I can weave it into a tool. Sadness, loneliness, anguish—none of them require a partner.

Love? Love is a crack in my armor.

I pull away.

“I wish you’d save yourself,” he says. “So stubborn.”

I almost smile at that.





I hear them talking in the kitchen. I stop just outside the door.

“In the woods. Across them. Would you like to see?”

I don’t know what her reply is because I’m too angry to look around the corner.

“You want to go away from here, don’t you?” Gowan says.

I do peek around the corner then, and I see her nod: Yes.

“We need to make Silla see. She won’t listen to me, but maybe if you tell her, she will.”

Nori looks doubtful. She reaches for the notepad and pencil, and she writes something I don’t see.

“She might be angry for a little bit, but it’s for her own good.”

Nori looks uncomfortable, biting at her lip.

“If you go first,” he says, kneeling down to her level, “then she’ll come after you. We could find somewhere nicer than this horrible house. All you have to do is go into the woods.”

Blood boiling

Traitor!

Bones cracking

Manipulator!

Feel my veins in my face

Liar!

Slowly, Nori nods—and that does it. I storm into the room and yank her away from him.

“Go to your room.”

But I’m hungry.

“Go to your room!”

She runs from the kitchen and I round on Gowan. “How dare you.”

“Silla—”

“How dare you use her to manipulate me? You thought you could use her as a weapon? Sending her out there alone to lure me in?”

“Silla, she asked me where I go. Where I come from. I told her. If she wants to come, that’s how she feels.”

My voice is venom. “Don’t lie to me.”

He throws up his hands. “I had to do something.”

I look at him. Look at every line, every crease and bend of his face. Look at the textured brown of his eyes. Look at his lips, which almost quiver with emotion, and I wonder why he even cares.

Oh, right. He “loves” me.

“I already told you: We are staying here.”

“Goddamn it, Silla, what are you doing?”

“I’m keeping her safe!”

“You’re not! You’re hiding in this dying place because you’re a coward!”

COWARD.

“Screw you…” I shove him away from me. Liarliarliar bastard liar! “Screw you! You’re like a trampoline, bending under whoever’s feet trample on you, and bouncing back into the same old shape!”

He nods, laughing derisively. “Yeah. You’re right. I am. I’m a trampoline. And you’re the bloody feet.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them, his voice is lower. “If you do nothing, you’ll die here.”

“You don’t know that. And you don’t know us! You have nothing to do with us!”

“How can you say that after all this time?”

“What, the few weeks you’ve been toiling in my garden and hanging around like a bloody creepo, bringing apples like some pied piper or something?”

He takes a step away from me, all his fire gone. “Is that how you see me?”

“I see a manipulator, a traitor, and someone trying to force my hand. Just get out of our lives. I will never go into those woods with you! Never!”

He nods. “Okay.” He shakes his head. “Okay.”

He walks to the kitchen door and turns the handle, hesitating only a moment.

“It’s been months,” he says, his voice low. “Not weeks.”

And then he leaves.

The sickness I feel when he walks out is enough to make me double over, breathless.

“No… no, no, no. Gowan…”





This book is consuming me. I carry it everywhere.

It’s broken, like me. It’s hardened over time.

The once-leather is more like stone now.

Calcified. The pages crinkle, some tear.

There is a symbol on the front,

I remember it from school.

The Greek alphabet. It’s called omega.

Omega means… I forget. The end?

Like alpha and omega.

Beginning and end?

It’s like it was left for me to find.

It feels like a secret worth having.

I wonder who left it behind.



I burn the note.