And the Trees Crept In(51)
Silla turns and runs, grabbing the bags on the way out.
At the door she hear Mam’s whisper.
“Take care of her like she was your own.”
Silla and Nori run through the morning smog, directly for the train station.
Cause: An unlikely ally.
Effect: A successful escape.
Gowan is sitting beside me on the forest floor now, holding my hand. He lets the silence grow for a moment, and then reins it in.
“Okay. Now tell me the truth.”
I open my mouth, and then I’m sobbing, shoulders heaving with each gasp. “Gowan, I—” The sobs take over.
“You can,” he says, telling me a truth. “You can do it.”
“I can’t open this again—”
He kisses me on the cheek and whispers, “Slowly. Piece by little piece.”
I suck in a breath, squeeze my eyes shut, and say it. “My mother… was carrying the getaway bag. She was coming with us. I was carrying Nori. We had to be quiet, more than quiet, or he’d wake up. We got as far as the living room, almost to the front door…”
“And then he woke.”
“… yes…”
“And he was angry?”
“Drunk and angry, but different, too… He was out of control. Seeing us trying to leave him was enough to push him over. Mam confronted him. She told him, ‘Stan, we’re going.’ And he grabbed her wrist. She threw me the bag, but before that she pulled free a hammer. One of Dad’s hammers. She raised it and told him to let her go. But he wouldn’t. She hit him on the head—over his eye, but she was small and frail—he grabbed the hammer from her and knocked her down. Nori was wedged in my arms, clinging to me. I just couldn’t move. I just stood there and stared as my mother fell.
“Then Dad was on top of her, his hands… his hands around her neck. He was choking her. And then I did move, I ran forward to try to help—but she gurgled, ‘No!’ I saw what that cost her. I could see her eyes turning red—” I break off, retching, and the rest of my words are garbled together with my grief and my chokes and my sickness at myself, rushing from me in a tide. “He was killing her! She used her last breath to stop me from saving her, and her cry was so desperate. I looked her in the eyes and I saw her plea there: Run. She was telling me to take Nori and to run, and…
“… I did. I ran. I ran away while my father killed her, and now I have a part in her death. I’m the reason! If I hadn’t told her I needed to take Nori away, she wouldn’t be dead. I’m a killer. I killed her. I watched her die! I let her die! I killed her!”
Gowan is holding me now, rocking back and forth, stroking my hair. “No, no, you’re not. You saved Nori. You honored your mother by doing that. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
It takes a long time for me to cry my grief into exhaustion. When I do, I’m empty.
“I’m just like him.”
“Never,” Gowan whispers, kissing my thin skin, what’s left of my hair, my cracked lips.
“And now I’ve lost Nori, too.”
“We’re going to get her back.”
“And then,” I say, turning to him, “I’ll lose you, too.”
“Stop this. You’re not going to lose any more people. Come on, let’s get searching again. I’m sure we’re going to find her, Sill. You have to believe it.”
“Believe a lie?”
“Have hope.”
I swallow. “I can believe a lie.” [YOU ARE A LIE.]
And I trudge on.
21
young and stupid
Careful, my dear,
when you enter his lair
you may not hear
if he follows you there.
We walk in a straight line for a long time, but then the corridor breaks down and other paths fork off from it. We have to make a choice. I choose the one closest to straight and keep walking, looking through the branches for any sign of Nori’s dress flashing past.
Something Cath said has been running around my head. I couldn’t put my finger on it for the longest time, until…
“Nori’s voice.”
Gowan looks at me. “Huh?”
I stop. “Nori can talk. I… it was her voice.”
“You lost me.”
“I thought I was going nuts.… I kept hearing a child’s voice at night, echoing through the house. Giggling. I thought it was haunted. I thought there was a ghost or, you know… nutso Silla. But it was Nori. She’s been talking and she never told me. Cath said I was missing things. She said I wasn’t listening. She knew. She knew Nori was talking—probably to that thing.…”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. Like it matters. Cath was insane. And Nori’s gone.” [YOU LET HER GO.] “It was just something I realized. Something I had missed.”
I keep walking.
Nori… talking. Nori, laughing! And I hadn’t known. She hadn’t told me.
The trees grow denser, and I don’t know which way Nori and… that thing went. The forest, so like Python, yet so unlike Python, is the most peculiar place I have ever seen. Roots have twined themselves around the tapestries, which hang off-kilter from places that used to be walls and are now just more trees. The wall sconces flicker ominously, as though they are still, somehow, connected to our joke of a generator, except now they grow from trunks and branches.