you to die.
“Are you ready?” Gowan is beside me.
My voice is a moth in a hurricane. “Ready for what?” I hug Nori tighter for comfort, but the blanket is empty in my arms. “What’s going on? Where’s Nori?”
“You already know that. You’ll need to go somewhere very dark if you want to find her again.” The corners of his mouth fall, like he is trying not to cry for me. “Something very difficult is coming.”
My mother’s words on his lips.
What could be more difficult than this?
SILLA DANIELS’S GUIDE TO THE DEMON’S LAIR
1. Try not to look around.
2. But if you must, look carefully.
3. Watch out for tall, thin, creepy tree-men.
4. Try to keep hold of your sister.
5. If you lose your sister, follow the tinkling sounds.
6. If you happen upon a cave
7. DON’T GO INSIDE.
8. Should you choose to ignore this advice, you are a very stupid person.
9. You should probably go die now. You likely will by the end, anyway.
Everything is dark. I don’t know where I am. I don’t care.
My mind is full of cause and effect.
Cause: A man beats his wife and his children.
Effect: His children want to leave him.
Cause: A mother loves her children.
Effect: She dies to free them.
Cause: A girl runs away, leaving her mother to be choked to death.
Effect: A girl will hate herself forever.
Cause: Memories are suppressed so the girl can survive.
Effect: A girl grows a granite heart.
Cause: A child summons a child demon.
Effect: The next generation is haunted.
Cause: The sins of the mother Effect: Are the sins of the daughter.
“Something very hard is coming,” he says.
The dark is so nice this time of day.
Did you know I can draw?
I could always draw, ever since I was a little kid.
It’s my one talent, I guess. I used it to escape
when Dad was bad or Mam was quiet.
I used to draw these huge colorful pictures
of gardens and flowers.
I drew what I thought La Baume looked like,
and then I would add a tiny version of me in a
window somewhere, pretending I was there.
Free.
What a joke.
Now all I use is black pen. It’s all I’ve got.
But even if it wasn’t, it’s all I’m inclined to
use. Black ink. Because even though it’s the
most depressing thing to say, and even more
depressing because it’s true—I don’t have any
colors left in me. They’ve all been turned to mud. Color is like hope, you see.
And I lost that a long time ago.
La Baume
Gowan crouches in the corner of the kitchen, counting shriveled, sprouting potatoes. He looks different somehow. Younger, maybe. Not as clean as usual. Cathy is standing nearby, her arms limp at her sides.
“Gowan, what’s happening?”
He doesn’t answer me. Doesn’t even look up. Instead, he looks at Cathy.
“We need to get help,” he says, standing up. “This can’t go on.”
This is La Baume. Another La Baume: Sunlight streaming into the kitchen, across the surfaces, warming the floor. The smell of flowers from a vase on the counter. That vase broke months ago.
Cathy stares at nothing, her mouth hanging open.
“Catherine,” Gowan snaps. “We. Need. Help.”
She turns deadened eyes on him. “Why? We’re all dead, anyway.”
Gowan sighs, squeezes the bridge of his nose, and stalks into the garden.
And…
I’m in the garden. Some other me. I look… different. I look… fresh. Young. Maybe not happy, but closer to it than I am now. My hair is a bright, luminous chocolate brown; there are no shadows beneath my eyes. I seem to have all my teeth. No mold in sight.
And Nori!
I rush forward, unthinking, everything inside me roiling and shifting urgently. Nori is playing in the flower bed, oblivious to Gowan and the other me. She is smiling—no, laughing. Silent laughter I haven’t seen in so long. My heart breaks with yearning.
I turn back to Gowan in time to see him smile at her—me—and take her—my—hands.
“I have to get help,” he says. “This can’t go on. People are leaving in droves. All this talk of another world war… I don’t know what’s true. But we have to act now or it’ll be too late.”
She nods, but her words are pleading. “You don’t have to go… or… I could come with you.”
“Stay here and take care of Nori. God knows Cathy won’t.” He pulls her close, embraces her. Whispers in her ear. “I love you, Silla Daniels.”
“I love you,” she whispers back, tears falling from her eyes like I’ve never cried. Genuine, simple tears. Not a storm, nor a crisis.
“I will love you forever,” he says, and my heart drops because those are the words—the words—he spoke to me that night in the not-forest. He pulls back then, enough to kiss her. Their passion burns so bright I have to turn away.
And I see Gowan—my Gowan, dimmed, less, sad—watching from the gate. In his eyes, a quiet storm rages. He looks at me, and all I hear is Do you see?