And the Trees Crept In(45)
I remember when she was born, this tiny, wrinkly thing in my mother’s arms. Squirming, and so… silent.
“I will protect you,” I’d told her.
I was ten.
I was the biggest.
I was Big Sister.
I will protect you.
My mouth is open and my eyes are open and my palm is open. Stinging.
Nori has staggered, but she looks up at me, cupping her cheek, and she laughs, like this is a joke. A game.
My heart cracks
breaks
falls out of me.
Because that tiny, mute laugh is one of disbelief, forgiveness, alarm, shock and then her eyes change, widen, fill up with water she is crying
and I wish there was sound so that I could hear what I have done, but she is still trying to smile at me like, It’s okay, Silla, it’s okay, like I’m the one who is hurting, and I am staring at my hand and it is still burning and I hit Nori. [YOU ARE THE BIGGEST.]
I hit my little sister. [YOU ARE BIG SISTER.]
Do you love anything? Anything at all? I love my sister. [HAHAHAHA!]
I will protect you. [LIAR.]
Gowan is as mute as Nori but I see something in his face that I recognize.
Rage.
I spin, nearly falling, and run away, leaving Nori and Gowan behind me. Leaving their shock and their goddamn silences and their eyes looking at me all the time and seeing me. Too deep. Too hard.
I am shaking.
What have I done?
Who am I?
The smell hits me again as I race past the hole.
Meat.
Meat.
Somehow, I let meat go to rot in this house while Nori gobbles up worm-infested fruit and wasp husks and tries to ignore the roaring in her stomach.
Meat.
Jesus, God.
How did I let precious food rot away to feed this damn house instead of us? How did I… hit my Nori?
“What’s happening to me?” I whisper, but there is nothing except the creaking of Cath’s pacing above me, and the creaking of the house around me, and the creaking of my heart inside me.
This house.
It’s watching every mistake I make with glee.
“You’re not going to win,” I tell it, as though we are in some dangerous competition and it can actually hear me. “You hear that, you little bitch? I’m going to beat you.”
But I’m beating myself all alone. I don’t need any help.
I search for the smell all day.
Nori and Gowan are nowhere to be seen, and I’m glad. I can’t face them. [HIT HER HARDER.] I can’t look into his eyes and see judgment [YOU DON’T GIVE A DAMN] like that. I don’t [DO] want to hurt them. I will never [ALWAYS] hurt them. [LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE.]
“I will never hurt them,” I whisper, hurrying on.
I end up in the basement, contemplating the wine racks.
And my palm, hot on her little cheek.
I don’t want to think about what is happening to me. I don’t want to think about what’s happening to us. I don’t want to think about the mold on our skin, our clothes, the walls. The rotting fruit and the maggots in the walls.
I don’t want to have those intrusive thoughts
Rot
breaking into my mind
Decay
all the time
Stench
like flashes of lightning, snap, snap, snap!
I don’t want to be here. I want to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl, worried about graduation and prom and boys (like Gowan) and getting my own car and going to university and “getting a life.” Aren’t I supposed to be freaking out over my eyelashes, the new tattoo, this hot band, my next outfit like those kids out there? Or shouldn’t I be pondering my career, my path in life, the meaning behind everything for me, the future?
My head is a word cloud of turmoil, but all of it is silenced—frozen still—by what I see in the concrete of the basement floor.
A root.
A root has broken through the concrete, and is growing out of the floor.
Holy shit bastard shit.
I thought being trapped in La Baume with Python right outside was bad. But now it looks like not even solid stone will keep the trees away.
We’re infested.
We’re infected.
We can’t win.
When I finally come out of my hiding place, I feel my way through the house quietly and tentatively, realizing with an ache inside that I miss them… my family. I miss Nori. I miss Cath. And I miss Gowan.
I find them by following the glow. It’s a soft orange light, moving like the gentle pulse of a heartbeat, drawing me to it.
The library. They lit the fire.
I find them on the sheepskin rug in front of the grate, Nori lying against Gowan, the light of the flames dancing over their faces. In Nori, it has a softening effect, her eyes faraway and unseeing as she stares at the flames. In Gowan, the effect is one of hardness. The light sharpens his jaw and brow bone and sets a fire in his near-black eyes. His gaze is here, in the now, even as he watches the heat.
He senses me, standing still in the doorway, and turns. Ever so slightly.
I expect his jaw to clench, or his eyes to narrow, or his hand to tighten on Nori’s shoulder, protective.
But he smiles, and the tension in his eyes vanishes. He’s… relieved.
I hesitate, looking down at Nori, who, sensing the change in the room, sits up and turns to face me.