And the Trees Crept In(40)
“Nori doesn’t seem so bad,” he jokes, smiling up at me.
“She got a lucky escape, unless you remember her teeth, her arm.…”
His smile falters and dies. “You’re perfect, Silla.”
And you’re a fool.
“My mother was like a leech. Needing someone to lock on to. She needed someone stronger than herself. But my father wasn’t strong. He was weak. Weaker than her, even. I was born from weakness, and that’s why I’m so flawed. And that’s why I love my sister and nothing else. She’s a victim of their dependency and cruelty. And I love her for it. But I love something else, too.… I love my anger. It’s solid, pure. Anger doesn’t lie. Anger allows me to carry on.” I close my eyes. “It’s all I have.”
“Silla…”
“Don’t say it again, please.” I can’t hear him tell me I’m perfect one more time.
“You can’t take my opinions away.”
“Even if they’re stupid?”
He grins. “Even then.” He goes very still, eyes taking me in. Eyes, to lips, back to my eyes. “Silla… I want—”
“Don’t.”
But he is going to. He leans in, and my treacherous body responds in kind. The gap between us, which seemed a gulf, is suddenly gone, and his lips are on mine, and his hand is on my cheek and I am losing myself to this kiss.
I fall asleep in his arms, and I think, Maybe there is hope.
My father’s voice is cackling downstairs, calling me on my bull.
16
the mad always are
Four corners around my bed
four demons round my head
one to watch and one to prey,
two to eat my soul away.
Come, little darling, don’t say a word
I am trying to ignore
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
his voice as it seeps
And if that mockingbird don’t sing
out of the black hole
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
which has gotten bigger again.
No one else can hear it. Only me. So I’m imagining it. It isn’t real. But how perfectly the sound mimics his voice. How clear and ringing and deep the tones. I can believe, just for a moment, that my father—cruel, hard, and (horribly) beloved—is down there. Waiting for me.
I find myself leaning over.
Looking down.
Wanting so badly to just—
give in
—but I can’t. I won’t.
This isn’t real. It’s a hole, for crying out loud. The floorboards have fallen away, that is all. So why does it seem like there may be a tangle of twisting roots, reaching to receive me, lurking down there in the pitch? I sometimes think I half see them.
I step away, which is very, very hard to do, and the hole seems to sigh with disappointment. I sigh, too.
And then I run into the dining room and begin to gather all the chairs. One by one, I place them around the edges of the tiny gulf, a barrier between the pull and me. I call Nori and tell her, while she stands looking solemnly at me, that the hole is a hazard and that she should go no farther than the chairs, not until Gowan has fixed it.
She nods that she understands, but I can see she doesn’t. Not really. She thinks I am being overprotective and maybe just a little bit nutty, but at least I have an excuse.
You won’t get me, I think.
Oh, Silla, darling, the hole laughs in Father’s voice. We’ll just see about that.
Along the hall, in Nori’s bedroom, something is stirring in the darkness.
I assume that she’s having a nightmare.
Though an infrequent occurrence, it has been known to happen, and I can always sense it. I lift my head from my pillow, holding my breath, and wait.
It’s a muffled noise. A shuffling almost, punctuated with a little bump! here and there.
It is cold.
I don’t want to get out of bed to check.
Instead, I wait.
As I suspected it would, the noise dies down, and the house is filled with absence.
About an hour later, it’s the silence itself that wakes me. It’s a heavy silence, and I startle so intensely that light spots of adrenaline prickle across my vision.
A terrible, horrible dread creeps up my legs and I suddenly regret not going to check on Nori sooner. It takes a moment for the paralysis to pass, but when it does, I hurry down the hall, ignoring the old paintings of madmen leering at me from the walls.
I stop just inside Nori’s doorway.
I’m still.
I swallow.
Waiting.
Creep closer.
The sudden—and certain—sense that Nori will not merely be sleeping, but… something far, far worse, had come over me intensely upon waking. And now… it’s all I can do to breathe.
The room is too still.
I stumble forward and lay a gentle hand on Nori’s small head, and am racked with silent and intense sobbing—the kind of sobbing that jerks the soul from the deepest reaches of the body—when I find that the forehead is warm.
I was so sure.
So absolutely sure…
That I would find Nori in the bed, dead and cold.
The sobs pass after long, agonizing minutes, but the dread doesn’t diminish.