Never.
Something of my thoughts must reflect on my face because Gowan, now observing me again, sighs, his mouth pinched, and goes back to his book. I watch him for a while, but he’s not seeing the pages. He’s lost somewhere else, probably in a fantasyland where I’m not myself and I take his hand and follow him stupidly into Python, singing and dancing, both of us draped in sunlight.
I have to admit, it sounds appealing. Not being me. Being… I don’t know. Warm, or something. It sounds sort of perfect.
And very na?ve.
THEY COME
I don’t move as much anymore—or maybe I move more. I know this space very well. So well. And I know what to expect, even though they think I am craaaaaayyyyzzzzeeeeeee. I know, oh yes I do.
“This is all your fault!” I spit, my saliva, white and drying, hitting the glass. “This is all your fault!”
I look out the window, past the creeping ivy.
Here they come.
Here they come.
“Oh, dear. oh, dear, oh, dear.”
Here they come again.
I wake to the sound of clapping. Little claps somewhere in the house. Distant, at first. I climb out of bed and open the door.
“Nori, would you quit—”
The corridor is dark and empty, but I still hear the claps. They are coming from down the hall, too far down the hall, and in the opposite direction from where I am looking.
“N… Nori?”
I stand frozen as the claps draw closer. Grow louder. Until I am sure someone has to be standing not three feet from me, watching me.
Clap, clap, clap.
And then the clapping stops. And it is infinitely, infinitely worse. The silence. Loud, awful silence.
And then creak.
Upstairs, in the attic.
Creak…
From (crazy) Aunt Cath.
Creeeeaaaakkkk.
I hold my breath, my mind so full I worry it might burst with fear and— Stop it.
Stop it now.
But as I close my bedroom door, the clapping starts again. Slow. Mocking. Exulting.
CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.
Hide-and-seek is our favorite game to play. He is reeeeeeally tall, but he’s very good at it! There are a lot of places to hide away in the basement—it’s my new favorite place! I cover my eyes and count, “One… two… three!” And then when I look, he’s gone! When I find him, I giggle, but I try not to be very loud because Silla will get angry.
Silla doesn’t sleep anymore. And we hardly eat anything and the monster in my tummy gets loud. I think her tummy monster is even bigger. And she gets upset. Sometimes I see that Gowan looks at her funny. He looks at the pointy bits on her hips and then his mouth gets all hard and he looks away quickly. I think he thinks something is bad inside Silla. Maybe Silla is sick.
I want to tell her about the tall man and my game very, very much because I hate Silla being upset. But there is the game and I’m not allowed to spoil it. There are rules.
And if you break the rules, then bad things will happen.
So the game will carry on, and I won’t say a word.
I can’t stop watching the trees.
I can’t let Nori go into them.
If it’s true, even only a little,
then we will never leave this house.
Remember what Cath said
when we arrived? “Poor thing.”
That’s what she said.
I thought she meant the state of me. Of Nori.
But she meant something else.
“He’ll never let you leave.”
She knew we were stuck here.
From the moment we crossed
through those dark woods.
I thought it was just a story.
It makes so much sense now.
And now there’s the other thing.
My suspicion.
We might be sinking.
Which means I might have no choice.
I might have to go into the woods.
But I believe what I heard.
I will die, if I try.
It makes sense why Mam never
wanted to talk of La Baume.
She wasn’t hiding a paradise.
She was hiding a hell.
The next day, the trees are in the garden.
They are the garden.
And they are definitely taller than before. Or, we are lower. Lower in the earth, which is softening like out there in the woods that day… full of worms and mulch and dead animals and— I realize, with dawning horror, that we might be at the head of a kind of funnel, s
i
n
k
i
n
g
into the earth.
BOOK 3:
Sky Roots
The earth and the sky
will not obey time,
I bet you don’t know
your life’s on the line.
the earth and the sky
met in the wood,
decided to try
all that they could.
11
bloody creepo
Wear him down?
You could try!
But patience is
His one true vice.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY