And the Trees Crept In

by Dawn Kurtagich

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  ∞

  This is the way the world ends.

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

  —T. S. ELIOT

  THERE IS A REASON FOR EVERYTHING

  Three Little Girls in the Wood

  1980: Catherine, the tallest and wisest of the girls, had the idea first, but that fact would soon be forgotten. Because the idea was a little like a drop of ink in water, it spread quickly, dissipating into each of the little girls in turn, until none of them could say for certain who had thought it up in the first place.

  Anne, the youngest, was the keenest of the three, desperate for their idea to take shape and be made real.

  Pamela was a little scared, and didn’t want to go into the woods at all, but she would never say so. She followed the eldest and the youngest, like she always did, and was a buffer between the two. She really ought to have stopped the whole palaver, but she was swept along with the tide, a pebble skidding along the bottom of the riverbed.

  The three little girls gathered in the wood, knelt down in front of the biggest alder tree, and pulled from their baskets the things they would need to make a protector:

  1. The basic materials for a rag doll. Really, it was just a stuffed head and a flap of material for the body. Genderless and featureless. (Anne was easily distracted.)

  2. Twine

  3. A needle

  4. Strips of cloth (The only color left in Mother’s old store of material was black, so there was a lot of shadow in the basket.)

  5. Buttons (for eyes)

  6. Clay

  7. Candles and a box of matches

  It was Anne who took the lead, even though she was the youngest. She gripped her rag doll between her fingers and then lit the candle very carefully. She lifted the open body of the thing and stuffed it full of clay.

  “God made Adam out of clay,” she said. “So this will give our protector life.”

  It was messy work, but Catherine and Pammy were nodding their approval, so she kept stuffing and pushing until the doll was full. Then she sewed him up—rather clumsily, for she really did get bored very quickly in her sewing lessons—and put him down next to the candle. She had managed to sew him two very long, thin legs.

  “Now his eyes,” Catherine said. “Give him eyes.” This seemed important.

  Anne groaned, so easily bored of her own project. “I’m sick of sewing. Can’t we play hide-and-seek?”

  “You have to put clothes on him, at least,” Pammy complained. “Otherwise he’ll be naked.”

  “Fine, then. Clothes—quickly—but afterward I’m playing. This is dumb, anyway.”

  Cath sighed. “You wanted to do it in the first place!”

  Anne shrugged, and as she worked, Pammy said, “We summon a protector out of Python Wood. We summon thee! Let him be fiercely terrifying to any who try to harm us. Let him be tall, taller than the tallest tree. We summon thee! We—”

  “Oh, shush!” Catherine said, scowling.

  Anne gave their protector clothes of a kind, made from strips of black, kissed his head, then dropped him heedlessly in the mud, and dashed off, back to La Baume. Pammy followed.

  Catherine was left to gather up the remnants of their half-finished ritual. When she picked up the doll, she was very disturbed, very disturbed indeed, to see that he had no eyes. And also that Anne’s clumsy needlework had made him look like he was scowling, and draped all in shadows. She pulled off the excess cloth, leaving only the clumsy black suit behind, but somehow that was even worse!

  She peered closer, looking at his legs. His two long, gnarly legs…

  They looked like roots.

  BOOK 1:

  Sanguinem Terrae

  Two little girls ran away

  from the dark and stormy city.

  they happened upon a manor one day

  and the lady inside took pity.

  in they flew and perched quite fine

  and ate all but one juicy berry.

  the little girls slept and sang and smiled

  and the memories: they vowed to bury.

  THREE

  PRETTY LITTLE TRAP

  Nori keeps asking me where I’m going, what I’m doing, where Mam is.

  It’s so dark, Silla.

  Do you have a biscuit, Silla?

  Where are we, Silla?

  Why are you crying, Silla?

  I want to tell her to shut that trap hole, but what bloody good would that do? Her words are in her hands and I can’t silence those.

  I lift my hands and tell her. Quiet like a mouse, remember?

  I wasn’t crying, I think.

  She grins. Mousy, mousy, mouse. Squeak!

  We trudge on.

  After a while, she gets tired. I lift her onto my back. Her good arm strangles me, trying to hold tight. I grit my teeth and trudge on.

  My feet will rot. Clean away, they will. The days of mud have started to waterlog the flesh, swelling it to twice the size it should be, cracking, soggy, raw.

  My foot skin will flop off soon.

  I can feel it.

  I trudge on.

  The manor is the color of blood.

  I drag Nori by the arm, through the mud, the last few feet. The rain has started hard, but at least we are cleaner. I drop her hand, thinking, I hope you’re not dead, and stare up at the manor. It’s the kind of big that makes you smell cakes and tea, see sugar lumps and silver tongs to lift them with. But the door is old. Paint flaking and peeling off like pencil shavings, the wood swollen by years of hard winters. The shabbiness of it gives me the backbone to lift the cast-iron knocker.

  KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

  It echoes beyond the door.

  Seems like a bad idea at first; I want to run away. Hear Mam’s voice telling me that Auntie Cath is circling the loom, Silla darling. Only Nori is lying in the mud, rain pounding down with her completely oblivious, so I set my teeth and I pound again.

  Let. Bang.

  Me. Bang.

  In. Bang.

  The door opens a crack. A thin, weathered face with large, sunken eyes peers out.

  “No thank you. I don’t buy anything—”

  Funny how she seems to freeze when she realizes. When she sees.

  “Presilla?”

  I nod, once.

  The door widens then, like a book opening on the first chapter, and there she is, standing in the gap to a warm, dry place, stunned like she just saw a giraffe doing backflips in a tutu. I can see her wanting to ask all kinds of questions, but her brain short-circuits with all of them rushing at her, and all that comes out is:

  “Oh my God. Oh, you poor thing. Why… why are you here?”

  I turn away to get Nori and she must think I’m leaving ’cause she reaches out a hand and says, “Wait!” like she’s the one desperate for us to come muddying up her carpet and not the other way around. “I didn’t mean…” She trails off when she spots the lump that is Nori, in the mud, dead asleep.

  “Oh my God! Is that—is it—”

  I haul my little sister up and stagger a little. The woman—Cath—gapes at me but lets me pass. I drag Nori through and dump her on the
floor just inside. The dark beams of wood that run the length of the entrance hall look older than Cath herself.

  Cath shuts the door, leaning her head against it for a good half minute before she turns around. I get that. Needing a moment to gather strength. Though, when she does turn and see us, it’s all too much, and she slides down the door onto her bum and stares at us completely bewildered.

  “Presilla… Eleanor…”

  “It’s Silla now,” I tell her. “And Nori, she’s called.”

  “Silla, yes. Nori. Okay.”

  “Hello, Aunt. We’ve come to live with you.”

  1

  la baume

  Welcome home,

  warm and whole

  to open arms

  and healing balms

  welcome child,

  welcome, child.

  Cath wore a blue-and-yellow kimono-style dressing gown, wild hair hovering around her shoulders like a mane. She stared at me with horror when Nori’s head thumped on the lip of the door as I dragged her inside. She flinched and reached forward like she wanted to lift Nori up into her arms. She didn’t, instead standing back, hand over her mouth.

  “My goodness, oh dear.” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll get a blanket.” She turned away, and then hurried back. “Oh, dear. She can’t come into the house dripping like that.” Cath leaned forward and lifted Nori’s shirt up to pull it over her head.

  I pushed her away. “Leave it.”

  She blinked at me.

  I forced a smile. “I can do it.”

  “Okay. I’ll bring two blankets and we can get you both cleaned up and warm.”

  She hurried off, her footsteps echoing through a house draped in shadow. I sat down beside Nori and turned her over, resting her head in my lap. She was fast asleep, so I leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

  “We found it. We found the jewel.”

  I stared around me, taking in the entrance hall. So dark. So empty. Safe. We were safe at last.

  The tea was good, but that was about it. It was a touch snooty, maybe, with weird flavors and all—no Tetley here—but that was expected in a place like this. A manor like this. That’s where my amazement stopped.

  This wasn’t so much a manor as a skeleton.

  Where were all the baroque antiques? The oil paintings of stern, proud old men, and the string of ancestors in suits of armor? Wasn’t there supposed to be a plethora of finery and riches? I looked around with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and took another sip of fancy tea.

  I was still wondering about the bloody color of the manor, to be honest. Made Mam’s voice pop into my head uninvited. Crazy Cath. Circling the loom.

  Nori was dead noisy when she ate, for someone who couldn’t talk to save her life.

  “Shut your mouth, would you?” I muttered.

  Sweary word, mouth’s a turd. She made quick work of the signs, despite the jam gooing up her fingers.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  I no longer saw questions in her eyes, which was nice. The quiet was nice. But she trusted me when I didn’t have a clue or a plan, and that really wasn’t.

  “So,” said Cath, coming into the room with a new pot of tea. “What’s happened?”

  I shrugged.

  (Crazy) Aunt Cath poured more tea. “Take it from the beginning. Because, I have to tell you, the Pamela I knew wouldn’t have let you come here. Not in a million years. And I would never have…” She laughed like it was a joke, a little game between her and her sister. But I could tell the laugh was covering up something else entirely. “I sent letters asking how you were. We both agreed never to let you… Well. Here you are.” She laughed again, shaking her head, and I noticed that her hair, though long and quite wild, was the warm color of wheat at sunset. Just like Nori’s. Just like Mam’s before it faded into a pale gray. But her face was off somehow. A little too old.

  I got my looks from my father (lucky me), which meant I was like the sunspot after you looked too closely at the sun. Black hair, black eyes, too-white skin. A walking cliché.

  Cath sat down at the table, her face stilling when she spotted our bag dripping in the corner. “I see. Well. Well, yes. You weren’t joking about staying.”

  “He got bad,” I said, and it’s all I intended to say.

  It was enough. Cath’s expression soured, then she nodded. “I’m glad you’re here, anyway. I’ll have to make arrangements, I suppose. School, clothing…” For a moment, she seemed overwhelmed.

  “Leave it to me,” I said, even though I wanted to let the silence draw out to infinity so I could see when it imploded.

  The lights flickered at the same moment I saw the relief on her face; she didn’t know me yet. Nori didn’t go to school, and I didn’t plan on going back either.

  “Nori and I can share a room, too,” I added.

  “Nonsense! That’s one thing I’m not worried about. Have you seen the size of La Baume?”

  I frowned.

  “The manor,” she explained. “That’s what it’s called. Did Pamela never say?”

  I took a sip of tea.

  “Hm.” Cath put her hands into her lap. “I don’t suppose I’m surprised that Pamela didn’t tell you what it was called. Neither of us much liked it here growing up.”

  Now that was a surprise. Mam always said Cath was born to stay in the “blood manor.” And now I knew what she meant by blood. I suddenly felt like there was a lot I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to. Not then.

  Cath looked into her tea and frowned. “Why did you come here? He’ll never let you leave.”

  “What?”

  But Cath drank all the steaming tea in her cup and smiled at Nori, who had stopped eating and was watching my face closely. I forced a smile and signed, Not hungry, little bug? I’ll have it, then! And I reached for her food.

  Her mouth opened gruesomely wide, revealing the gaps in her teeth where Dad had knocked them out, and she grabbed the scone and jam with her good arm. The twisted one, too small, too bent, jiggled rigidly at her side.

  Cath and I both watched Nori stuffing jam scones and biscuits into her mouth. With that smile on her face, Cath didn’t seem to half mind.

  I, on the other hand, thought I might vomit.

  He’ll never let you leave.

  I thought I knew what she meant. My bones shook with the idea of my father staking out the woods, ready to drag us back to the prison he called home.

  When Aunt Cath said she would get us cleaned up and warm, she meant it. We entered the only room she had made up, and it smelled of sweet vanilla and roses.

  It’s so big! Nori signed, rushing up and down to look at one object and then another.

  “Yeah, right,” I said, lugging our bag onto the bed. “A big fat disappointment.”

  Nori stuck her tongue out at me and continued her exploration. I busied myself pulling out the remnants of our life:

  Three shirts each

  One pair of ratty jeans each

  Six dresses for Nori

  Three dresses for me

  Underwear

  A hairbrush

  A hair dryer

  My paper

  My pen

  I carried our clothes, which now seemed meager and pitiful, to the chest of drawers in the corner and reached down to open the top drawer. It was stuck, so I tried the next, and the next, and the next.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake!”

  The last, however, gave signs of movement. Putting the clothes on top of the chest, I bent down and tugged on the last drawer, gritting my teeth and muttering my entire range of vehement expletives.

  “Come on, you son of a—”

  It gave way by three inches, revealing a drawer jam-packed with bric-a-brac. I squinted into the gap and saw feathers, fossils, and Crayola pens, items that had no place in a bedroom.

  God almighty.

  I kicked the drawer shut with my foot—a little too hard. “Crap! Damn it!”
>
  Nori tugged on my dress.

  “Sorry, bug. Just stubbed my toe.”

  There’s something under my bed.

  I forced myself not to roll my eyes. Not the monster-waiting-to-get-me bit again. We had played this one out to death.

  You’re too old for this, I thought. “Let me look,” I said.

  I bent down and lifted the bed skirt. And there it was. A dusty, flowery chamber pot.

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  What is it?

  “You pee in it.”

  Nori’s nose wrinkled.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Let’s see! I want to see!

  I heaved the pot out from under the bed, and we both jumped back. The entire bowl was a dusty network of tunneled cobwebs, so thick we couldn’t see the bottom.

  “Hell no,” I muttered, pushing the thing away from us with my foot into the corner of the room.

  I ran to my side of the bed and found another just like it. Also covered in cobweb tunnels, only mine had torn, revealing the husk of a giant house spider, long dead.

  “Bloody hell.”

  My chamber pot joined Nori’s far, far away from us.

  I can’t sleep if there are spiders in the bed.

  “They’re gone. Just climb in and sleep, okay? It was a long walk.”

  I don’t remember.

  Of course she bloody didn’t. She had been sleeping without a care in the world for most of it. I, on the other hand, had felt her full weight, and my body was screaming for rest. Added now to my burning feet: a throbbing toe.

  “Go to bed,” I muttered, climbing in beside her.

  Before I even fell asleep, she was drooling on my chest.

  I snapped awake.

  I needed to pee.

  Damn. I really needed to pee.

  Nori had rolled over to her side of the bed. Dead to the world. She would sleep through a tsunami if allowed to.