“Second,” I say, talking louder when it looks like he’ll try to interrupt. “How do you know that Cath vanishing wouldn’t just leave everything like this forever? How do you know that her”—death death death—“disappearance isn’t part of the puzzle?”
His eyes burn me. “I don’t. We don’t know anything.”
“Exactly.” Our lips are close now. So close.
“But I do know this,” he persists, his breath caressing my lips. “I know you’re hiding something. You’re carrying around a secret, Silla Daniels, and it’s eating you alive.”
His words stop me in my tracks. Suspicion pulses inside me. Howdoesheknow? Howdoesheknow?
It’s eating you alive.
“What are you talking about?”
He leans even closer to me and the shadow of a thick branch falls over his face like a shroud. “I can see it in your face. It’s like a weight pulling down your features. It’s dragging you into the earth.”
I snort. “Melodramatic much?”
He lets go of my shoulder and touches my cheek, and his words are soft. “Come off it, Silla. Let me help you.”
“Gowan,” I whisper, our lips touching ever so slightly. “Let me go.”
“Silla, please,” he breathes, closing his eyes. “Please don’t do this to me.”
“Let me go. Let me go, let me go—”
And he does. He lets me go, even though I can see in his face everything inside him is bursting to keep me. Love and hope are warring with despair, all on his beautiful face. He wants to help me, to love me, and to save me. I recall his words on those green pages; I hate what I’m doing to him. But he’s an idiot because you can’t save someone from herself.
“Stop trying!” I yell at him, as though he knows what I mean.
I walk some feet away from him and then collapse into a puddle because my legs can’t hold me anymore and the weight on my shoulders is too heavy to carry much farther.
I’m just another rock on a forest floor.
“I can’t,” I say at last.
He stays still, breathing heavily. Waiting.
“It’s too hard.”
“Too hard to keep inside of you, Sill. It’s going to break you if you don’t let it go.”
“My mother… my… she…” I pause. Wipe my face. “When we first got here, Nori had a broken collarbone and arm. It’d been healing for a few weeks, a month maybe, and…” I squeeze my eyes shut. Can’tdothiswon’tdothis—
I feel his hand on my fist, warm and sturdy.
“I told Cath it was a birth defect.”
“So you left Nori’s arm to heal askew.”
“Yes. Her teeth, too. I… I left her to be a cripple with messed-up teeth and now I’m paying for it.”
To prove it, I bite down on the loose tooth in the back of my mouth and spit it out, blood and drool on my chin.
Gowan swallows. “Why lie? Why protect your father?”
“I didn’t want to, but telling the truth would have meant accepting the other truth. I was safe for the first time in forever, and I didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to admit—”
I shake my head, and my body retches as my mind skims the edge of the truth.
He’s still standing behind me, some way off. “Tell me,” he says.
“When we first got here and Cath asked me what happened, I… I told her a story. But… I can’t, Gowan. I can’t.”
“Tell it to me. Tell it to me like a story, just like you did to Cath.”
A Story
Cause and Effect
Silla Daniels learns about cause and effect in school.
Cause: The blush of blue on Nori’s cheek. The shock of red on her lips. The snap of her collarbone when the father pushed. Her silent cry.
Effect: A plan, over time. The stashed bag.
Cause: Nori’s silent laugh, so full of sound. The sparkle in her eyes that, somehow, remains. The silent plea of the mother. Go. The teeth, broken and askew.
Effect: The attempted escape.
Nori is already awake when Silla removes their bag from its hiding place behind the loose boards in the wall. She watches, expectant, as Silla adds the good blanket to the bundle.
Ready?
Silla’s hands seem worried, so Nori smiles. Nods. Everything is going to be okay.
Quiet as a mouse, Silla signs.
Squeak! Nori signs. Smiles.
Silla nods.
The sisters tiptoe into the living room on the balls of their feet, shoes in Silla’s bag. Like a bird, Silla signs. Like air. Sssssshhhhhhh. Mam and Dad are sleeping in the middle of the floor again, a thin blanket tossed across his torso, hers draped close to his. Not too close. Just out of reach.
Silla hesitates a moment. If this goes wrong… if she fails…
One glance at Nori is enough to push her forward. The bruise, the cut lip, the way she holds her arm askew, shoulder raised. The terrible bend in her tiny collarbone, unnatural and awkward. So tiny—too tiny—to be so broken.
Silla moves, her hand wrapped around Nori’s. They are traversing a minefield just as hazardous as the rumored ones out there in the war zone.
Step.
Stop. Listen.
Step.
Feel, stealth, shallow breath.
Five more steps.
Four.
Nori is being careful, even with her shoulder.
Three. Silla can see the door.
Two.
Something stirs.
One.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”