The figure gets closer, and I step back, pulling Nori with me. But then I see it’s just a boy, stalking out from between the trees, hands in his pockets. Dark hair, dark eyes. Like me.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he says. He crosses into the field like it’s nothing. Like he’s not the first person we’ve seen in months. “We were playing hide-and-seek. I think I was losing.” He winks at Nori, but stops smiling when he looks back at me. “Or maybe I’ve already lost.”
“Who are you?” My voice is gravel. “What kind of perv are you? Trying to get my sister to go into the woods. She’s seven!”
“That’s not… I’m—I think you have the wrong…” The boy half smiles, then thinks better of it. “My name’s Gowan. I was just… I used to live here, ages ago, when it was an orphanage? I took care of the garden.” He nods down to the house.
Some vague memory of Cath running an orphanage pricks the edges of my mind. Must have been ten years ago at least. Did she ask him to come back because of what’s been happening with the garden? Possible, but improbable. There’s no phone. The postman hasn’t been in ages. So, unless Cath left the attic at night, in secret, and crossed Python to get a letter to town, then this boy—this Gowan—is lying to me.
“Where did you come from?”
He laughs, then frowns. “I live on the other side of the woods. About three miles from town.”
“There is no town,” I say. “Not anymore.”
“How do you know?”
“I went to look… once. There’s nothing. Everything is still, empty and falling down.”
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to think about this.
The boy shifts on his feet and glances over his shoulder. “I, um, well… I’ve obviously said or done something wrong. I’m sorry for that.” He hesitates. “I’ll go.”
He turns to leave, to go back into the woods—the woods!—but I cry out a wordless plea, my arm reaching forward before I’m aware I’ve done it. He turns toward me.
I don’t understand myself.
His eyes question me.
“What are you looking at?” I growl, folding my arms over my chest.
“I—you looked like you wanted to ask me something.”
Nori stares up at me, sucking on the hem of her dress. Damn.
I clear my throat. “Do you… do you have food? Some pears? Or radishes? Anything?”
He laughs. “Radishes?”
“We don’t have much. The land is… off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you blind?” I snap, though I regret it when he steps away from me. “Look around you. The garden’s dying. Everything is dead. The threat of war…”
“Threat of war?”
“World War Three, some say. They were saying that when we left.”
“Left?”
“London.”
“Oh.”
The boy, Gowan, looks down at Nori, who is staring up at him, still munching on the hem of her dress. “I have to go now. I’m sorry.”
I hesitate, wanting him to stay, wanting him to leave—regretting my abrasive nature, my stony heart. I hate my need, my loneliness. I stand silent as the first visitor in so long leaves us behind.
Idiot.
I retreat from the edge of Python Wood as the boy vanishes from view, once again certain that the trees have been watching the exchange. Now, though only minutes have passed, the woods look like they are greeting an early dusk. Weird stuff like this is enough to give Cath’s warning more weight.
I scowl at them. “Piss off.”
You ruined the game! Nori signs, then she stomps away from me, back to La Baume, which sits eerie and alone, a large ruby in the center of three rings. Wood, field, garden: the blood manor.
I scan the trees again, the eerie stillness of it so wrong, but I don’t see the boy anymore. Maybe he was a hopeless wish. Or a desperate delusion.
I scowl, staring for long minutes into the murk.
For a moment, I’m frozen where I stand, acutely aware that I’m alone at the boundary with Python. Python damned Wood.
“You let me think this was paradise,” I whisper at my mother. “You let me believe this… this lie.”
At last, I turn away. I’ve seen too much to let trees scare me. I walk back to the manor, which sits under a dank midday sky, while the woods behind me greet a rising moon.
Mam used to write down the things that scared her, or the things she wished for. Fear. Hope. Two edges of the same knife if you ask me. I would see her scribbling on tiny pieces of paper or the margins of books. She’d tear them off and then burn them in the candle, locked forever as a perfect truth.
This is mine: We are alone. I am alone. La Baume is wrong and Python Wood is watching. A boy came today, but I scared him away. He might have been my only chance. But I know what cause and effect are. Cause: Python delivers a boy. Effect: A girl stays away. I’m going to burn you now, tiny, perfect truth.
Creak. Creak. Creak.
I grind my jaw.
Creak.
Creak.
Creeeeeeaaak.
Always the same. Never ends. The floorboards squeak and move above us as (crazy) Aunt Cath paces. Cause, effect, step, squeak.
Hungry, Nori signs. Is there jam?