by M Sawyer
Nolin sprinted. Wind blew and the ground swelled again as the woods breathed. Her legs wobbled. The Claw Tree shifted slightly, or was it just Nolin’s eyes?
Alexa progressed farther up the tilting trunk. Nolin reached the edge of the tree and leapt onto it, groping the deep grooves in its bark for handholds. She dug her toes in and pulled herself up, climbing as fast as she could. Alexa scaled at almost superhuman speed. Melissa’s legs flailed; she kicked, screamed, bit, scratched, but Alexa didn’t slow her ascent.
Nolin didn’t realize how high she was until she looked down. She was nearly thirty feet in the air. She tightened her grip on the bark until her hands ached.
Melissa screamed above her. They’d nearly reached the canopy. The tree sloped enough that Nolin could now crawl up the trunk. Ahead of her, Alexa stood and wrenched Melissa to her feet.
“Let’s see how you like being thrown off something!” Alexa snarled, and she shoved.
Melissa screamed and fell backward onto the trunk before slipping over the edge. Her hands just caught a trench in the bark and she dangled by her thin fingers fifty feet above the ground.
Alexa sighed, obviously irritated, and stepped toward her.
Nolin got there first.
She slammed into Alexa. The wind blew and the whooshing sound filled Nolin’s ears. The ground heaved again, rattling the leaves of the canopy. They both lost their balance.
Nolin grabbed at the edge of the tree, its rough bark scraping and shaving off skin as she fell, but Alexa’s weight pulled them over the side. Time froze. Nolin locked eyes with Melissa, who let go with one hand to reach for her.
Nolin fell.
Alexa let go. They hit the ground with a thud and a chorus of cracking bones.
Nolin screamed as pain tore up her side, shot down her leg, and wrapped around her neck. It hurt to move, hurt to scream. Each breath burned as something in her side raked along her lungs.
Her vision was painted red when she opened her eyes. A few feet away, Alexa struggled to her feet, arm hanging limply at her side, shoulder strangely deflated. Her left leg bloomed blotchy and purple. She stared at Nolin, her face placid as a porcelain mask, then she looked up at Melissa dangling above them. Alexa smirked and hobbled forward.
“Nolin,” she said hoarsely. Nolin tried to push herself up, but a riot of pain wracked her body. “I’m so sorry about this.” Alexa winced as she leaned down to pick a rock out of the dirt. She raised it over her head while Nolin frantically tried to crawl with her good arm and leg.
Suddenly, the ground gave an almighty lurch. The trees groaned. Above them, the Claw Tree swayed. Melissa screamed, holding on for dear life. There was an earsplitting groan, and the gigantic tree began to sink into the ground from the base.
Alexa froze, her wide eyes fixed on the sinking tree. Then she looked at her own feet. The ground beneath her swelled, the dirt shifting around her toes. She looked back up at Nolin with sad eyes, opening her mouth to speak. Then the ground cracked.
A dark, yawning hole opened in the earth, and Alexa fell. Her pleading eyes never left Nolin’s as she was swallowed.
Nolin lay still, stunned.
Then she realized that the edges of the hole were spreading.
Panicked, she scrambled away.
“Nolin!” Melissa cried. Nolin looked up. Melissa still clung to the tree that was sinking like a ship. Nolin frantically tried to stand. The ground was collapsing everywhere; the entire clearing would be swallowed in moments. Nolin dragged herself as quickly as she could, her broken limbs flailing uselessly and sending fireworks of pain through her body. She kicked her good leg against the ground and pulled herself forward with her arm. In the briefest moment, she noticed her foot had nothing to kick off as the ground collapsed beneath her. Instinctively, she dug her fingers into the soil.
At the edge of her fading vision, Nolin saw the top of the Claw Tree sink into the ground. The clearing was now nothing but a massive hole.
Somehow, Nolin didn’t fall. Her fingers held to the ground like roots and, within seconds, she felt cold hands close around her wrists.
Nolin looked up and saw Melissa’s blurry face. Melissa tugged. Nolin tried to pull herself up, but she was too weak.
“Don’t let go, I’m going to get you out!” Melissa cried. Even as she fought to stay conscious, Nolin could hear the panic in her voice. Melissa’s wasted body couldn’t lift her. The bones in Nolin’s broken arm pulled apart as she held on. She felt sick, dizzy. She was going to pass out and fall, probably taking Melissa with her.
Then another set of bigger hands wrapped around her forearms. She was moving upward, out of the hole, then laid gently on the ground.
Two hazy faces above her: Melissa, pale and exhausted, and Drew, wide-eyed and horrified.
“Mom,” Nolin said faintly.
“I’m okay,” Melissa breathed. “We’re safe.”
Drew’s warm hand cupped her face. Nolin felt herself smile. A drop of pleasant warmth slipped into the mass of her pain, spreading gentle ripples to the edges.
Drew and Melissa were talking to each other. Nolin couldn’t understand them. They were saying something about her, she thought.
Pain twisted and roared through her body. Time escaped her as she floated in and out of a lake of flames, each breath burning her throat and lungs as her ribs stretched and shifted.
At one point, she was aware that they were moving, and she even caught a glimpse of clear, dark sky ringed with pointed trees and studded with twinkling stars. Someone was crying, talking to her. The words swam in her mind as though she were underwater.
“I’m sorry,” they said. “Stay with me.” Someone kissed her forehead, and then she was being carried. There was screaming, moaning, crying, and she realized those inhuman sounds were coming from her.
Sometimes there were hands on her face, the small ones or the large, warm ones. They were so gentle.
A fleeting thought crossed her pain-wracked mind: I’m home.
Chapter 48
EVERYTHING WAS WHITE through the shroud of her closed eyelids. She felt heavy as cement, but at the same time, she was flying. Tiny bubbles filled her limbs, making her giddy. The pain was still there, but she didn’t care as much. She hadn’t felt so good in years.
Something warm was wrapped around her right hand. Her fingers twitched. Whatever it was moved, squeezing gently. It was another hand, she realized, warm against her cold fingers. She squeezed back.
“Nolin?”
Her eyes cracked opened. Light blinded her. Her eyes immediately pinched shut before slowly blinking open again.
The room swam. Blocks of white and gray bled into each other, moving around her. Her head felt so heavy, yet at the same time light, unattached to her body.
“Nolin,” the voice said again.
Nolin turned her head, or rather, let it fall to her right side.
Drew’s face, out of focus, yet unmistakably Drew. Soft golden warmth swelled inside her.
“How is she?” Nolin asked. Her voice sounded funny, high and breathy.
“She’s here,” Drew said, nodding at something on the other side of the bed. “Asleep. She had a heart attack out there, and she really did a number on her hip. It might not ever heal fully, but she’ll be okay for the most part. They’ve got her feeding tube back in and her heart seems to be working.”
Relief washed over Nolin. She tried to roll her head to the other side to see her mother. It felt like a giant rock.
Drew lifted her hand and gently pressed his lips to her fingers. Nolin giggled. She felt stupid, slow, giddy. There was something in her body that wasn’t her, something pumping in her veins that was making her dizzy.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you giggle,” Drew said.
“I feel weird,” said Nolin.
“The painkillers. You’re probably super high,” Drew said. “They gave you all kinds of good stuff.”
Nolin’s head rolled to the side, and she struggled
to lift it. Drew’s chin was covered in day-old stubble. His usually sparkling eyes were flat, tired, circled with shadows.
“I know you aren’t up to it at the moment,” he started, “but I want to know what happened out there. You’ll tell me sometime, won’t you?”
Nolin remembered Melissa suddenly, and then she remembered the woods, Alexa, the Claw Tree sinking into the ground, everything. Another fit of dizziness seized her, and she pinched her eyes shut.
“That was insane, what I saw,” he continued. “I don’t understand it. I don’t know why you went out there. You and your mom almost died.” He chewed his lip. “When you disappeared and I couldn’t find you, I was asking myself why I got mixed up with this in the first place. It doesn’t matter, though. When the girl you love is in trouble, you go after her. That’s all there is to it.”
The soft warmth flickered in Nolin’s stomach, and a smile played on the edge of her lips. “You love me?” she said, almost teasingly.
His face swam in her giddy haze. He looked straight at her, not blinking. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“Aw,” Nolin giggled. “So are you my boyfriend then?”
Drew smiled. “You are high as balls right now.”
“I’ve never had a boyfriend before.”
“What a coincidence, me neither,” Drew said, grinning. “But if we’re going to be a thing...I need you to be honest with me. No more weird secrets.”
He was right. Nolin’s head throbbed. “Okay,” she croaked.
Drew nodded, then closed his eyes. He looked exhausted. Nolin’s fingers flailed, and his hand gripped hers tighter.
“Promise me you’re not going to do something stupid like this again,” he said. “Okay?”
Nolin closed her eyes and breathed evenly, letting the dizziness and nausea wash through her and retract in waves. “I promise.”
She needed to sleep, but memories leaked back into her stupor. The tree, Alexa, everything.
And Drew. He was closer to all this than he realized.
“How did you find us?” she asked. He rummaged through one of the pockets of his jeans and pulled out a piece of paper.
“This,” he said as he unfolded Alexa’s map. “I don’t know what it is. I went back to your house to see if you’d gone there and I found it in the entryway.”
“It was in my pocket,” Nolin said. Drew turned the map around and looked at it.
“Oh,” he said. “I thought I felt something come out of your pocket when we were...anyway, I had a feeling it would take me to you. I don’t know, once I got in there, I seemed to know where I was going.”
He leaned forward and kissed Nolin’s forehead. Nolin realized her head was wrapped in gauze. He kissed her between the eyes, just below her bandages. Then, he softly kissed her on the mouth.
“You drive me nuts, you know that?” he whispered.
Nolin giggled again as a bubble of dizziness burst in her head. “Drive them where?”
Drew rolled his eyes, but he smiled. “I’m going to get some coffee. I’ll be right back, okay?”
“’Kay.”
He stood to leave, then turned, “Oh, your friend Rebecca is on her way,” he said. He pulled Nolin’s cell phone from his pocket. “I found this across the street. She tried to call you.”
Nolin smiled. She missed Rebecca.
“Drew?” Nolin said, holding out a shaky arm. He took her hand, and leaned in to kiss her again, longer this time. Nolin’s mind couldn’t form the words she wanted to say, couldn’t phrase how grateful she was or tell him how she’d seen his thoughts and felt his feelings through the tree, and how that pulled her back, anchored her to this world where she’d belonged all along. Instead, she kissed him and hoped he understood what he meant to her.
“You’ll come right back?” Nolin whispered when they broke away.
Drew nodded, touching his forehead to hers. “Just to the coffee machine and back.” He smiled, his eyes twinkling for the first time since Nolin had woken up. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to sneak away.” He raised his eyebrows pointedly. Nolin stuck out her tongue. Drew smiled, rolled his eyes, and left.
“He’s cute,” said a voice on her other side.
Nolin rolled her head to see her mother in the next bed. A feeding tube threaded through her nose. She smiled weakly.
“I like him,” Nolin wheezed, struggling to return the smile.
They looked at each other for a moment, each too exhausted to speak. Faint spots of color blossomed in Melissa’s cheeks. Though she was cut, bruised, and full of hoses, she was more radiant than Nolin had seen her in years.
“I’m sorry,” Melissa said. She opened her mouth, maybe to say something else, but then closed it. Her gray eyes were soft.
Nolin’s chest tightened, and her head felt heavier than ever. For years, this was all she had wanted in the world: an apology. Now that it was here, she felt oddly empty, tight. There were wounds that were too deep, scars that would never heal.
But Melissa had saved her. She could have run. Despite a healing hip, she’d ripped out her tubes, snuck out of the hospital, and come to the Claw Tree. She’d faced her worst fear to save her daughter.
Tears burned Nolin’s eyes. Her mother loved her.
Melissa reached out. Nolin stretched her good arm to take her mother’s hand, which Melissa squeezed gently.
A wave of heaviness washed over Nolin again. She dropped into the abyss of sleep that ate the exhaustion from her bones, slowly mended her mind.
***
She didn’t hear Drew return, sit beside her, and quietly sip his coffee. She didn’t hear Rebecca outside the room snapping at the nurse who insisted that there could only be one visitor at a time, or hear her walk into the room anyway, promptly introduce herself to Drew, and then sit on Nolin’s other side.
Nolin slept deeply and the golden warmth inside her grew, spreading from her chest to her limbs, healing years of aches, scars, memories. She was home, surrounded by home, dreaming of swaying treetops, and the whispering of soft breeze through leaves.
Epilogue
Eight years later
NOLIN DREW THE BLANKET tighter around her swollen belly while she settled into her desk chair. It was already dark outside, though the clock above the fireplace read 3:26 p.m. The temperature hadn’t risen above zero in weeks.
The fire and laptop screen were the only sources of light in the tiny cabin, illuminating shelves stuffed with books, squashy secondhand chairs, and their little kitchenette. Everything they owned. Nolin fiddled with the Ethernet cable, hoping for a solid connection, just for a few minutes.
The familiar sound of a truck rumbled outside. Nolin listened for the crunch of his boots in the snow, the sound of his key in the lock. Warmth fluttered inside her as Drew opened the front door and rushed in, a gush of freezing air accompanying him. That thrilling cold. He stomped the snow off his boots, pulled off his coat and knit hat, unwound his thick scarf, and finally stepped out of his boots and snow pants.
He startled slightly when he saw her in the desk chair.
“Hey,” he said, flipping on the light. “Why you are sitting in the dark?”
“I didn’t bother to turn on a light when it got dark,” she said simply.
Drew crossed the room and leaned down to kiss her, his hand finding its way to her round belly before playfully squeezing her breast. “The girls are getting sassy,” he whispered in her ear. He planted a kiss on the side of her neck. “I love you.”
Nolin smiled and turned to kiss him again. His hair had gotten long, covering his ears with soft brown waves. He’d let his beard grow. She’d worried he wouldn’t like Alaska, but her lanky runner had transformed into a rugged mountain man in no time.
“I’m going to shower,” he said.
“Okay.” She watched him strip off his sweatshirt, jeans, then his thermals. His clothes fell into a pile at his feet and he kicked them into the bedroom before walking naked into the bathroom, mischievously gri
nning at her over his shoulder and clicking the door shut behind him.
Nolin smiled and looked at the clock again. Three-thirty.
She opened Skype and clicked the number in her contact list. The call icon flashed on the screen.
Melissa appeared on the screen. She looked different. Her hair was cut smartly to her chin and she wore glasses with purple frames. Her face looked fuller, healthier.
“Hi,” Nolin said.
“Hey there,” Melissa responded, her voice slightly garbled. “How are you? Is it cold up there?”
Nolin smiled. “A balmy ten below.”
Melissa shuddered, shaking her head.
Nolin smiled awkwardly. They spoke infrequently, saw each other even less. Nolin found she liked her mother more and more each time they met. Nolin realized Melissa was slowly morphing into the woman she was always meant to be, the fiery creative she was all along.
“How’s the drawing?” Nolin finally asked.
“Oh, very good,” said Melissa. “I just signed on to do a new children’s series, five books total. They want covers, chapter headings, and a full-page illustration for each chapter! I can’t wait to get started.” Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses, and Nolin noticed she was also wearing earrings, dangling chains of silver rings. Nolin wondered when her mother had gotten her ears pierced.
“So, how’s the little one?” Melissa asked eagerly.
Nolin pushed the blanket aside and sat up straight so Melissa could get a better look. “Healthy. The doctor says everything’s perfect.” A small bump rolled under Nolin’s skin. If she focused hard enough, she thought she could feel the flutter of a tiny heartbeat. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you because we found out the sex today.”
Melissa’s smile faded, but her eyes twinkled just as brightly. “Oh?” she said. She leaned closer to the screen, the glow illuminating her rosy face. Her cheeks had filled out. Nolin smiled again, for a moment just staring at her mother’s face and wondering at how she’d changed from the woman she’d been when Nolin was a child. Nolin rubbed her belly and swallowed.
