Too bad my life just isn’t that simple.
With ten minutes left in class, I feel it, like a dodgeball in the gut. My breath huffs out of my lungs and my skin prickles, hair rising on my forearms and neck. My legs cramp from the urge to move, to run, to get into my wood and not stop until I’ve done my job. My neighbor side-eyes me as I squeeze my hands into fists. I bite my tongue to keep from whimpering.
I stand abruptly, cutting off Mr. Abbott’s lecture about the symbolism of the moors in Wuthering Heights. “I need to go to the nurse’s office.”
He blinks at me. “Can it wait for the bell?”
This seems like a reasonable request. Even my classmates are staring at me like I’m crazy. There’s no point in leaving school now, with only one class period left after this one. But sixty minutes is worth several lifetimes in the wood. I can’t risk it.
“No, it can’t.” I cough into my hand, but it doesn’t sound very convincing.
Mr. Abbott studies me, no doubt weighing the number of times I’ve already skipped his class this year against the fact that I still have the highest grade in the class and participate more than anyone else when I am here. Staying on top of my schoolwork is my way of making up for my absences to my teachers. It also helps me talk the principal down from a suspension to a detention when I’m in serious trouble. Or at least it did, before I discovered Principal Edwards has a Lake Erie–size crush on my mom. I even overheard him call her a “babe” once to the guidance counselor, a fact I’ve used to my advantage on more than one occasion.
My calves cramp again and I double over, slapping my hand on my desk to steady myself.
Mr. Abbott’s eyes widen. He hands me the hall pass. “Feel better.”
I thank him, scoop my books into my arms, and head out into the hall. I already feel better now that I’m doing something, but the buzz beneath my skin won’t subside until I’ve emptied the wood of travelers. I make a quick stop at my locker and throw everything in my backpack. There’s no time to weed out what I need from what I don’t.
I text Mer once I get to my car, telling her something came up and asking if she’ll need a ride after school.
She replies: Nope, dance troupe until four thirty. Someone else can take me home. Have fun skipping class, loser;)
I don’t know what Mer thinks it is that I do when I skip school. If she thinks I’m a stoner or meeting up with a boy or what. It started right after Dad disappeared, and I think she assumes it’s my way of coping with my loss. Either way, she gives me my space and pretty much leaves me alone like everyone else. Sometimes I get the sense that she’s a little jealous, though, that I manage to skip school and still get good grades. She wouldn’t be so jealous if she knew why I skipped, or that I have to study into all hours of the night just to keep up.
I speed down 315, going forty-five on the curves and punching it to just under sixty on the straight stretches. I know I should slow down, but I can’t. Every fiber of my being is telling me to move, move, move. Faster, faster, faster.
A mile from my house, I have to drop down to forty as I pull up behind a garbage truck. Good thing, too. I pass a speed trap around the next bend. The cop doesn’t even look at me as I pass, just keeps his radar gun pointed at the curve. I let out a sigh. It’s killing me to go this slow, but it’d be even worse if I had to actually stop and waste time getting a ticket.
Finally, I swing into my driveway, pull the keys out of the ignition, and head into the wood.
*
I know where Brightonshire is as soon as I step over the threshold, a predator sniffing its prey. He decided to circle around this time, like that would make him harder to find. I veer to the right, not even bothering to hide my footsteps. It’s not like he isn’t expecting me. My knife flashes under the afternoon sun.
I find him less than a mile in, standing in front of the Amsterdam threshold, staring at the glyphs carved into the branch that hangs over the invisible doorway between the trees. His head tilts and his hand cups his chin. His eyes move right to left as if he can actually read them.
But that’s impossible—it’s a dead language. Only an Old One or a direct guardian descendant can read the glyphs.
I stop five feet behind him, watch the dancing strips of sunlight filtering through the trees turn his hair from dark blond to caramel to gold and back again. The wind is light, a toddler blowing out its birthday candles after an extra-special wish, but it still manages to rustle the thin cotton of his shirt.
He doesn’t look away from the carving as he asks, “Must we go through the same charade every time?”
“What charade?”
“‘From whence do you come,’ ‘return to your threshold,’ ‘don’t come back.’ It is getting rather tiring.”
“No,” I say to his spine. “I need some information from you first.”
He turns away from the threshold, and that’s when I notice the leaf turning black at the edges. The black is running down the green in thick globules, like blood instead of paint. It covers the leaf and drips to the ground, but the color doesn’t disappear. It sizzles into the earth, smoldering in the grass, creating a pool of black glass.
My eyes widen as I step forward. “What is that?”
I glance around at the other trees, at the leaves on the lower branches that have already been painted the colors of orange flame and yellow sunbursts and red candy apples. There are a few dark purple leaves that flip up to show pink undersides as the breeze kicks by, but nothing that could be called a true, endless-abyss black.
“I’m not certain,” he says. “There’s naught like it in the journals.”
My brow furrows as I look at him, really look at him. I take in the small scar on his chin, like an off-kilter dimple, the slash of his eyebrows hanging low over his eyes. “Who are you?”
“I will not give you my name,” he scoffs. “Not until you have earned it.”
“Is that some kind of eighteenth-century rule they don’t teach in our history classes?”
“Names have power,” he says, watching our reflections in the black puddle. “You can control those of us who do not belong here more easily if you know them.” His eyes flick to mine. “I am surprised your father did not teach you that.”
“How do you know my father?”
“I do not know him personally,” he says, “but I know of him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugs. “Believe what you like. That is all the answer I am prepared to give.”
“Fine.” I cross my arms over my chest. “If you won’t tell me who you are, then at least tell me what you’re doing here, and how you know so much about the wood.”
“Only if you promise not to send me back.”
“Nope, sorry,” I say, grabbing his arm and turning him back toward his threshold. “Not that interested.”
He wrenches his arm from my grasp.