“Have hope.”
I swallow. “I can believe a lie.” [YOU ARE A LIE.]
And I trudge on.
21
young and stupid
Careful, my dear,
when you enter his lair
you may not hear
if he follows you there.
We walk in a straight line for a long time, but then the corridor breaks down and other paths fork off from it. We have to make a choice. I choose the one closest to straight and keep walking, looking through the branches for any sign of Nori’s dress flashing past.
Something Cath said has been running around my head. I couldn’t put my finger on it for the longest time, until…
“Nori’s voice.”
Gowan looks at me. “Huh?”
I stop. “Nori can talk. I… it was her voice.”
“You lost me.”
“I thought I was going nuts.… I kept hearing a child’s voice at night, echoing through the house. Giggling. I thought it was haunted. I thought there was a ghost or, you know… nutso Silla. But it was Nori. She’s been talking and she never told me. Cath said I was missing things. She said I wasn’t listening. She knew. She knew Nori was talking—probably to that thing.…”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. Like it matters. Cath was insane. And Nori’s gone.” [YOU LET HER GO.] “It was just something I realized. Something I had missed.”
I keep walking.
Nori… talking. Nori, laughing! And I hadn’t known. She hadn’t told me.
The trees grow denser, and I don’t know which way Nori and… that thing went. The forest, so like Python, yet so unlike Python, is the most peculiar place I have ever seen. Roots have twined themselves around the tapestries, which hang off-kilter from places that used to be walls and are now just more trees. The wall sconces flicker ominously, as though they are still, somehow, connected to our joke of a generator, except now they grow from trunks and branches.
“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.”