Eerie.
“Tell me what this is!” My father’s voice is silent. “You son of a bitch!” I throw the lit candle into the hole and never hear it land. “Tell me!”
Gowan is behind me then, taking my shoulders. “Silla…”
It is very, very dark.
“You torture me night after night with your damn words and now you’re silent?” I yell.
“Silla—”
“What?”
“Where’s Nori?”
“What do you mean? She’s—”
I turn, looking for her, but there is no light in the house now. The black is so complete that I dare not move my foot even an inch in case I stumble into the hole. I hear Gowan rustle beside me, and then he has a flame in his fist. A lighter.
I peer around for Nori. She’s not with us. Something inside me makes a tiny click, like a piece of a wooden puzzle falling into place. And I feel sick.
Gowan’s lighter goes out, and he flips it on again. He lights another candle—the one sitting in the sconce on the wall, and I’m grateful for the tiny orange bubble of light.
I walk to the kitchen, very calmly, but it is empty.
“Nori?”
We check the scullery and then I head for the stairs. The roots have spilled into the halls now and I don’t want to think about being crushed alive by evil trees, but I can’t help it. Gowan heads back toward the entrance hall and I turn for the stairs.
“Silla!”
His voice is alarm.
I run toward the hole, and see her. She’s at the other end of the corridor, only now it’s more like a tunnel of trees, impossibly long, and she is impossibly small—impossibly far away. And her hand is in the hand of a TALL, thin man with no eyes
and
a w i d e, w i d e mouth.
Vanishing
down the woods
the also disappearing hall, is into that the
eerie
indoor
mist.
“Eleanor!”
I scream, rushing on, but the trees are growing and before I can even think, she is in that thing’s arms, her own around
his
neck
and he has carried her off into the depths of La Baume, which is now the thickest part of Python Wood.
I step forward—get her back, get her back!—right into the yawning black hole.
BOOK 5:
Rooted Fire
Three little girls
knelt by an alder
to summon a man
to be their protector.
the little girls found
their game hard to bear
when their protector turned
and gave them a scare!
20
kansas
Hold on tight
we’re going for a ride
toward a light
on the other side!
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
Okay, fine. I’m a little afraid. So? I’m even angry. But anger and fear aren’t going to feed her. To clothe her. I could even argue that he’s the one who might kill her. But relying on someone—anyone—is useless. I know that now. It’s one of the many mistakes I’ve made. Day turns into night turns into day, and still I wait. Waiting is pointless. And it’s too late to go now.
Memories come.
I am five, wearing a yellow skirt that I will love fiercely and keep until it becomes so short that Mam calls it obscene and burns it.
A straw doll at seven, which I pretend to love to please her.
A sunset on my eighth birthday when Father locked me out of the house.
Nori’s birth when I am ten.
My pride.
My terror.
Some things pass with a storm, loud and vexing. Full of drama. They are delightfully, dramatically disruptive. They blunder past like shouts of thunder and shrieks of lightning, and are always a brilliant spectacle.
Other things whisper by.
So it is that Gowan saves me from the Stygian pit.
I wither in his arms, like a wilted flower. And I shudder.
“I lost her. I lost her.”
Maybe he knows I am falling away from him, because he holds me firmly and kisses me fervently, trying to rouse me from the haze Nori’s abduction has left me in.
He got her.
I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut against the awful afterglow of that image. Nori, her hand in his, walking away with him.
She went with him.
It’s over.
Everything is over.
All over.
All gone.
I lost her.
I close my eyes and lose myself.
I wake to a new world.
My head aches, and as Gowan helps me up, I can’t, at first, recall why I feel so scared.
“What happened?”
“You nearly walked into that hole. I pulled you back but you were freaking out a bit and you knocked your head.”
I can feel the bump.
And then it comes back.
“Nori, oh God—”
“She’s gone. He took her into the… woods.”
“What do you mean into the woods—they were down the corridor, just there—”
I point and then freeze. Because the corridor is not a corridor. La Baume is utterly changed. The trees that were holding us under siege have now penetrated the walls entirely, growing in from I don’t know where, twisting and tangling like those roots upstairs that stole Cathy away. They are growing through the house, out of the walls, through the floors, up to the ceiling, draped in thick moss.