I’m not sure what to think about that—if something I made fed on Frank.
My magic isn’t strong enough right now to get the vines to pull away from his body. That’s okay. I brought a knife from the kitchen just in case.
“What do you want?” I ask as I saw at the vines. Claire rounds the tree with her familiar crooked smile, my creature beside her. “You have a new best friend, huh?” I ask it, a little accusingly.
“Just checking in,” she says. “You don’t have to worry about that, you know.” She nods toward Frank. “The forest will take care of him.”
“Oh, I know.” Once one vine is cut, the others go quickly, like they’ve remembered who I am and want to help. “But I have to take him back.”
“What use could you have with him? At least we’ll use all the parts.”
I sigh. “We need this closure,” I say. “My siblings and I. We all need to see him and know he’s gone. Otherwise we’ll be kept up nights, imagining him running around out here. You lived with him. You died with him. Surely you can understand that.”
She doesn’t respond. With Frank’s body free of the vines, I clumsily lower him to the blanket. I wrap him in it as best I can. I straighten up, brushing my hands on my skirt. I turn my attention back to Claire.
“Considering all I’ve done for you,” I say. All I’ve killed for you. “Could you tell me the truth? Are you really Claire, the witch who died here decades ago, or are you just the forest wearing her face?”
Her smile returns along with that curious, owlish tilt of her head. “I still don’t see why you have to make that distinction.”
“Yeah.” I shake my head. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
I drag Frank through the trees. The shadows of my parents and my sisters walk on either side of us. Just before I’m out, Claire appears in front of me.
“See you again soon,” she says. I follow her with my eyes as she walks around me, and stands next to my creation. The giant roses on its antlers are dripping with a black ooze. Something like . . . ichor.
Good word.
When Claire smiles, she has too many teeth.
The sun is down by the time I return. Brooke didn’t skimp on the bonfire—I can see its glow from the tree line. I worry that everyone’s minds will change when faced with the reality of Frank’s body, even wrapped in a blanket, but when I haul it over, they only watch with solemn faces.
I need Irene’s help to get him into the fire.
My siblings and I make a circle around the blaze. We join hands.
The magic we perform doesn’t have words. It is felt. It is the roots beneath our feet. It is the strings connecting our fates to each other and to the rest of the world. It is the life-giving water, it is the power in ourselves.
We watch Frank burn. We make our wishes. We wish for peace. We wish for clarity. We wish to be able to let our past go, to grow, to move on.
We wish and the sparks float into the air and we wish harder.
26
It takes longer for Frank to burn than I would have thought. The blanket goes first, of course, and I expect the rest to be fast.
It’s not fast.
It’s almost two hours.
The others go inside before the flesh begins to melt. I stay. I watch his body melt and collapse and pop. I feed the fire to keep it hot enough, even though I’m not sure what hot enough entails when it comes to cremation.
It smells terrible. Metallic and dead. In my peripheral vision, the forest is full of lightning bugs.
I stay outside long after it’s dark, until all that’s left of Frank is bone.
I didn’t expect so many huge pieces of bone to be left over, either. I’ll have to bury those. They don’t require near as big of a grave as a full body, and I’m able to dig one myself. It’s not easy to find a place both far from my sisters and far from the forest, but I do.
When I finally sleep, I don’t have any nightmares.
A few days later, Jane’s able to take off the sling. Seems she wasn’t far off about the possibility that we have rapid healing alongside a long life. Her mobility in that arm is still limited but she can drive, so we go to town for the first time. Only Jane and I had intended to go. Other than the fact that Jane’s still a little nervous about the driving thing, we also don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. From what Irene’s found online, it seems that Frank vastly overstated how much the outside world cares about witches. They don’t seem to believe we exist at all, much less want to kill us. I was probably right about him faking all those attacks.
But what if?
The little twins won’t take no for an answer. The others stay behind more willingly. Irene has her research, and Brooke and Violet just aren’t ready. I’m not sure I am either.
So Jane, the little twins, and I pile into the truck. Jane mutters the steps to herself as she starts the truck. It only jerks a little as she steers us forward.
We drive down the same road we watched Frank disappear down so many times. The road passes through the forest, but the trees don’t encroach close enough to worry me.
The car crests a hill and we’re out of the forest and I can’t help it—I gasp.
I knew our forest and our lake weren’t the whole world, but the scenery before us is like a punch in the gut. The road dips in and out of view as we pass over hills, and on the passenger’s side there’s a drop-off. Jane swears under her breath the entire way, taking the turns as slow as she can. And the trees. Miles and miles of trees. More trees than I remember ever seeing.
These huge swaths of trees aren’t familiar, but the dip in my stomach when we crest and descend each hill? That is. My stomach rises into my throat and dives back down, and I’m nine years old again in the backseat of my parents’ car, blissfully unaware of the future to come.
At the top of a hill, I look back to our forest. It’s cut off from the rest. On the side I can see, there’s a significant barrier of what looks like dead, barren land.
I wonder who did that. Who found out what our forest was and cut it off from spreading? I’ll have to take a look at that border. Maybe we can build something like it around the house.
It’s twenty minutes to town. I don’t breathe between getting out of the car and walking into the store. Even with everything Irene found to contradict Frank’s stories, I still imagine someone grabbing us and throwing us into a fire. What if any of these people knew that hiker? What if they can smell his blood on me, weeks in the past?
But no one cares. As far as they’re concerned, we’re just people passing through. They might know Frank, but they don’t know that we’re his.
That we were his.
We aren’t here because we need anything. We just want to dip our toes into the water of the world, ease our fear. But we do have some cash from Frank’s wallet, so Jane still grabs a basket. The little twins’ eyes light up the moment they see the candy aisle, and they drag Jane, laughing, into a chocolate and caramel and nougat heaven.
I wander on my own. I walk through the pharmacy section, trying to understand the medicines and kinds of bandages we may one day need. I wander through aisles of scented toiletries I’d never imagined.
I find myself at a display of nail polish.
It’s nothing Frank would have ever allowed, but there’s an old memory. My mom. Her hand holding mine, her other hand gracefully sweeping the brush across my nails. Both of us blowing on them.
I choose a shade that says CHERRYLICIOUS on the bottom, and when I rejoin my sisters, I put it with the pile of candy and cheese puffs and other snacks Frank rarely bought us that they shove onto the counter.
The drive home is made in high spirits. I twirl Cherrylicious between my fingers, and Jane tells the little twins to wait on the candy until we’re home, even as they dig into the bag.
Once we’re home, the little twins abscond with the candy and snacks. Jane rolls her eyes and goes off to supervise. Irene is still holed up in Frank’s rooms. Violet a
nd Brooke are deep into some kind of redecoration plans.
I take the time to sit on my bed and paint my nails. The result is amateurish and messy, but I love it.
If anyone asks, I won’t tell them I chose red because it reminds me of Frank’s blood on my nails the night I killed him.
With dry red nails, I go downstairs to find my siblings, and I meet Jane in the hallway. She’s standing outside the big twins’ and Violet’s room, a piece of paper shaking in her hands.
“Irene’s gone,” she says. “She’d been in Frank’s rooms forever, so I went looking for her, and she wasn’t there. So I looked up here, and . . .” She blinks back tears, and holds out the paper for me.
I hope you’ll understand that I have to go find my peace somewhere else. I’ll come back one day if I can.
I’ve left everything I found of use on Frank’s desk. You should also know that he hoarded cash—you’ll find all of it in his office, too. Well, most of it. I took a little for myself. Trust me. There’s so much you won’t miss it.
I love all of you.
That’s it.
In Frank’s rooms, we find what else she’s left—summaries of what she learned, paths to useful files on his computer, and more cash than I’ve ever seen or would ever know what to do with. I pick up a piece of paper on one stack.
I can’t find records of where he kept disappearing to when he left us alone, but these are all the contacts I found. And, if you’re interested, he kept journals on his research.
All this information, all this money, but no goodbye.
“Why?” I ask Jane. “Why didn’t she talk to us first?”
She looks at me with that shadowed smile. “Because she needed to go be sad.”
We split up Frank’s notes, and Irene’s notes on his notes. I read about his attempt to figure out if magic was caused by our biology, or if our biology was changed by the magic. I learn that our aging will slow down sometime in our twenties, around when everyone else’s speeds up, and given the chance, we could all live to be two hundred years old or more.
I learn that Frank was much, much older than that.
Violet waves their hands to get our attention. ‘He kept family records,’ they sign. ‘On all of us. There’s records on what happened to our parents, and on immediate family—anyone who might come looking for us.’
I stare at the notebook in their hands. What happened to our parents. I know we saw similar notes in the old profiles we looked at days ago, but right there, in that notebook, is all the compiled information on who was abandoned and whose parents are dead.
I still don’t know which would be worse.
‘Can I see?’ I ask. Violet hands it over, and I flip through. We each have a page, front and back. There it is—my confirmation. My parents died in the lake. I apparently have an aunt somewhere, but she and my mom were estranged, so Frank wasn’t worried about her. I hold my breath as I turn to Winnie’s page. I know she can’t feel the hurt anymore, but I also know how badly she wanted to go home.
It shouldn’t be a relief to know her parents are dead, but it is. It says right there that they thought they’d just come to get help, and when Frank tried to keep Winnie, they resisted. He killed them.
Winnie’s parents wanted her.
I look up to find my siblings watching me. I set the notebook down. ‘So. Who wants to know?’
The little twins and Jane don’t. ‘Maybe later,’ Jane signs. ‘I’m not ready.’
We learn that Violet’s parents also died, but Brooke’s left her of their own free will. We also learn that Violet and Brooke are the only ones who have surviving family that Frank had any concern about. Violet, especially, has a huge extended family—aunts and uncles and cousins for days. Brooke has a grandmother and uncle who Frank found poking around, but were redirected.
In the end, it turns out that Irene’s departure is just the beginning.
After days of discussion and uncertainty, Brooke and Violet announce they want to find what family they have left. They take their time preparing to leave. There’s research to do and bus tickets to buy and emails to set up so that they can always contact us. They have Frank’s cell phone number, too, and they’ll call when they can.
We don’t hold a going-away party because that would make it seem permanent. We aren’t willing to admit it’s possible they’ll never come back. They’ll find their families, and we want that for them, but they’ll come back eventually. Even if it’s just a visit.
One morning, Jane drives them to the nearest bus station.
It’s not goodbye.
Now it’s just the four of us—me and Jane and the little twins. The house abruptly feels impossibly big and empty.
“I don’t suppose you’re planning on leaving, too?” I ask Jane. It’s the day after Violet and Brooke left, and the weather is gorgeous. We’re lounging on a picnic blanket while London and Olivia chase each other around the lake. “You can, of course.” I try to mean that, but I don’t. If Jane left, it’d be too much.
“I’m definitely staying. I have plans for this place,” Jane says, a smile on her face.
“Plans?” I ask.
“There are a lot of magical children out there,” she says. “Some of them don’t understand their powers. Some of them really are being abandoned by their parents. We have this big house, and Frank has records of up-and-coming witches. We could find them and ask if they need or want the kind of home we can provide. We could teach them. We could grow our family.”
It’s brilliant, and it’s incredibly Jane. She’s been back for weeks and I still keep being hit with how much I missed her while she was gone.
“Tell me everything,” I say.
Jane dives into the plans with a passion. She wants to make the house worthy of being a school and a home, which means getting rid of the division between the main house and Frank’s rooms, adding more windows, and remodeling the time-out room. She wants to take advantage of the huge yards and expand our garden. It’s a lot of work, but Jane is obviously excited, and she’ll have all of us to help her.
When the little twins crash onto the blanket, worn out, we tell them the plan.
“Promise we can get a cat before we get kids,” Olivia moans. “Please.”
“Pleeeease,” London adds.
“I’m sure we can make that happen,” Jane says.
Satisfied, the little twins run off to decide if they want a different room than they have now before anyone new comes to claim the best one.
Everyone has plans and goals for what to do with this new life.
Why am I so unsure of what I want?
Jane glances toward the forest before following the little twins inside. She’s never talked about what she experienced in there, and I don’t push. She’ll tell me when she’s ready. If she’s ever ready.
I fold up the blanket, but before I go in, I walk toward the nearest tree. I did go visit that barren land, alone, because no one else wants to go into the forest, and I don’t want them to, either. I’m still not sure how the barren circle was achieved. Someone burned and salted the earth, I guess. We’ll have to figure it out soon. The forest hasn’t slowed its approach.
I place my hand on the tree.
The magic still sparkles, but now I feel the darkness in it more keenly than ever. It’s been weeks since I killed Frank, but my own magic hasn’t returned completely. I’m worried it’ll never recover entirely.
The forest could probably restore it. In fact, I’m sure it could. I’ve been good, though. I haven’t been sneaking out at night, even though I want to, so much that it hurts. I miss my creature. I miss Claire’s gravitational pull.
But every time the urge to go cover myself in fireflies feels impossible to resist, I remember all the soft spots chewed off of Frank’s body by animals that don’t live in the forest.
I remember Claire’s crooked smile and her too many teeth.
I press my palm more firmly against the trunk. I push back the magic it
tries to flow into me, and send out my own.
The forest is in me. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out. Maybe it’ll take me over, bit by bit, a virus eating its way through every cell.
That doesn’t mean I can’t make sure there’s a piece of me invading the forest.
Irene is off to find her peace. Brooke and Violet are seeking their families. Jane is building a school and a home. The little twins are preparing themselves to be mentors for new witches.
They’re all finding their way, figuring out who they are, and I think I know what my role is, finally. I’ll do what I’ve always done. I’ll keep protecting my siblings. I’ll try to accept the times I can’t protect them, and I’ll try to ask for help when I need it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t focus on the protection I can provide, doesn’t mean I can’t hone that skill. No more accidental casualties, like the hiker. That was panic. That was badly placed instinct. I’ll always regret that. I’ll always wonder what I took out of the world when I killed him. But I know there are going to be other threats. Even if Frank was lying about how much everyone hates witches, I don’t think Frank can be unique. He can’t be the only person looking to exploit our power.
Someone else came out of the forest the day I killed Frank. Someone with a purpose outside of fueling another person’s immortality. Someone who knows what difficult things need to be done for the safety of those she loves. Someone who will do it.
That’s the witch I have to learn to be.
Acknowledgments
When I was young, acknowledgments might as well have not existed. As I got older, they became a little peek into the author’s world and the people who helped them. As a debut, they became study material. And now, as the person writing them, they’re a place to make my friends and family cry.
Thank you to my incredible agent, Thao Le, who believed in this book and believed in me, and who always has my back.
Thank you to my editors—to Nicole Sclama, who saw what this book could be. To Lily Kessinger, who became my guiding light to release day.
Thank you to the entire team at HMH, who put passion and love behind my book—Helen Seachrist, Mary Claire Cruz, Alice Wang, Samantha Bertschmann, Anna Ravenelle, Zoe Del Mar, and Taylor Navis. Thank you to Kim Ekdahl, the artist who brought Derry to life for the cover. Thank you to my sensitivity readers, Isabelle Felix and D, for their insight and honesty.
A Dark and Starless Forest Page 25
