And the Trees Crept In(52)
“This is insane,” I keep muttering. “This is not bloody Alice in Wonderland.”
“More like Alice in CreeperManland,” Gowan mutters, and I can tell that this eerie stillness is getting to him, too.
“Nori!” I yell. “Nori! Answer me!”
She loves to hide. But she promised she wouldn’t hide from me again. Still. She did walk off with that thing. She willfully went with it. Maybe he promised food. Maybe she thought he was her friend. Maybe he’s some creepy pervert and I have lost her forever.
“Stop it.”
I start, and look at Gowan. “What?”
“I can tell you’re thinking the worst. Stop that. We’re going to get her.”
He raises a hand to touch my cheek and I can’t help it, I instinctively draw away.
His hand freezes in midair. “What is it?”
“Don’t fall in love with me,” I whisper. “I’m…”
“Not ready?”
“I’m crazy.”
He laughs. “Crazy? Silla, that’s crazy.”
“I don’t know anymore! I mean—is any of this real? Are you? And if I am crazy, then you can’t fall in love with me. It’s too dangerous.”
“Too late.” He says it simply. “I love you.”
Stop. Please, stop. “Shut up.”
“I love you, Silla.”
“You don’t know anything. You don’t even know me.”
“And I will love you forever.” He says it like I’m not really even meant to listen. Like I’m not really the one he’s saying it for.
“How can you be so sure? How can you know that you’ll love me forever?”
He smiles. “I do, Silla. I just know it. I will love you forever.”
He is so young. So na?ve. There’s no way he can promise me that. No one can, unless he is a fool. Did Dad say that to my mother? I will love you forever? God, what bullshit.
“I couldn’t promise that. I just couldn’t. I don’t know who I’ll be in ten, twenty—fifty years. So how could I promise for my future? I just can’t tell. And neither can you.”
He smiles again. “I just know I will.”
I force a smile, but he is young and stupid and he has no idea what life is like. I know what it’s like. I know that love is a weakness that gets under your skin and chips away at your rock until all that’s left is a bleeding mess.
I don’t have time for love.
I love Nori.
Look where that got me.
“Besides. I’m seeing this, too. I’m right here, with you, in this forest—thing. So either we’re not crazy and this is really happening, or we’re both totally bonkers.”
I sit down, feeling the weight of the trees around me. “I don’t know how to find her.”
Gowan takes my hand. “We keep going. We keep searching.”
“For how long? This is impossible. We’ve walked beyond the length of La Baume, and still…”
“I don’t understand this either. But what else is there to do?”
“Something. Anything else. There has to be an answer. Maybe in the library. Something about this curse.”
Gowan looks behind us. “I don’t know if we could even find our way back.”
“I have to try. I want to go back. Cathy is gone, fine. But her library is back there, full of answers.”
“Half the books are in French—”
“I can’t keep wandering this place like a maze! We could be getting farther away and that madman has Nori—he has Nori!”
Gowan gathers me into his arms. “Please, Silla. We have to keep going, keep trying.”
I pull away from him and get to my feet again, leaning on one of the cursed trees. “Keep trying what? Walking in circles? There is a reason for all of this, and it’s somewhere in Cathy’s past, I know it!”
I’m running before he can stop me. I’m tired of talking. Tired of reasoning, of waiting. Nori is out there with a crazy man—a thing—and for all I know he could be doing anything to her. I’m going back to the library and I will rip every single book out of the bookcases if I have to. I will burn each of those volumes page by page if that’s what it takes.
I run until I can’t.
Until my lungs are bubbling and my legs are hissing with lactic acid.
I am lost.
And the library is nowhere. The house is one giant wood. A maze.
I am trapped.
I growl in frustration and then sit down in a heap.
“NORI!” My screams echo back.
Something has buoyancy, after all.
And then I hear a sound. Nori’s tiny bell… tinkling through the trees.
Nori…
“Yes! Good girl! Good girl!”
I jump to my feet, listening, and then I follow the tendrils of sound deeper into the not-wood of La Baume.
22
between trees, a tinkle
Boys and girls
have their parts
but beware of
losing hearts.
I look behind me. The terrain is unfamiliar and uniform. Arched doorways have sprung up between trees in the distance—four at least that I can count—and I have no idea which leads back to the entrance hall.