“I beg to differ,” I mutter bitterly. Especially if that seed steals your precious life while it grows.
She turns her back on me and stalks through the shadows to another massive beech. Placing a hand fondly on its broad trunk, she aims a final piercing glare over her bony shoulder.
“Take heed, young one: a figment created for good will collect less from the maker, but one born of dark purposes always takes more. Sometimes much more.”
“But what—”
The old creature vanishes into the bark like a fleeing vapor, leaving me full of questions and emptier than ever.
CHAPTER 15
I WAKE AT DAWN TO A PILE OF COLD ASHES IN THE FIRE, A DAY drizzly with mist and fog. As I sit up and look around, I rub my eyes to make sure I’m not hallucinating. Overnight, the two halves of the dead branch the old woman stuck into the earth grew covered in buds, fat and ready to burst. Winter is just around the corner, but here they are, growing right from where she’d grafted them to the forest floor as if it’s the first day of spring. Her message is not lost on me; a reminder that impossible things can happen, that even dead and broken things find a way to grow.
The two new trees growing from the broken halves look as if they’ve been here all along, and weren’t remnants of a dying season just hours before. I can’t stop examining the waxy buds that hold within their grasp flags of green ready to unfurl as soon as the sun reaches them. The tree woman is a strange magic all her own.
I reluctantly clean up my little camp near the beech tree, using an evergreen branch to scatter the remains of my fire and sweep away my footprints. I wish it to be like I was never here at all, as if a girl named Pirouette never came to seek solace among the trees, never met a dryad with a blue moon premonition on her lips. Also, I’ve run out of food.
I am resolved to return to Curio, back to the makers who will be trying to piece together the remnants of our little family, now without the puppetmaster or the clockmaker. Though I’m sure I will have to keep my mouth shut more than I’d like to survive, I will keep the shop going, if only for my father’s sake. I owe it to him to try. He lost his strength because of me, so at the very least I can keep him from losing his legacy in Tavia, keep his name from fading like a memory.
Before leaving the shelter of the wood, my feet carry me a few moments’ walk away in the gloom. Early fog swirls through the forest like a cat wrapping itself around cold ankles. At Papa’s grave, the lumberjack marionette’s legs dance in the breeze, swinging from the wooden cross marking his head.
I stoop down, sinking my fingers into the soil, just knuckle-deep. Closing my eyes, I pause a moment, just to breathe. And to … talk? Think? Pray? I don’t know how to describe the torrent of feelings surging against the walls of my heart. The trees are silent around me, for once.
With tears rolling down my cheeks, I find myself taking out my bundle of splinters and unwrapping them for the last time. Near where my father lies I dig a few shallow scoops of damp earth and drop the remains of my lies into a grave of their own. I don’t need to keep or carry them any longer. According to the old tree woman, someday I might be free of them completely.
Before I leave him, I settle for simply saying, “I love you, Papa. A maker will always prevail.”
He would understand this is the best I can do right now. I will come again, when I can.
I leave feeling a little lighter, though the air this deep in the wood gathers thicker than Gita’s pea soup. I can scarcely see the next tree in front me. From time to time, the split of a twig or the crackle of leaves shifting sends a jolt down my neck. My fingers tighten around the handle of the axe hanging at my belt. I turn to look behind me, staring blindly into the fog.
I am being followed. I am sure of it. But my eyes see nothing. Nothing but trees and haze.
I hear whispers, the old trees fretting and shushing, “Shadows are on the move.”
The same warning they gave the night Emmitt died.
I half expect to see the tree woman emerge from the mist, but when I look again, still nothing. I plunge on, unable to ignore the feeling that someone is near. Fear coats my palms with an inescapable itch.
I stop to rest, leaning back against a halsa to draw some strength from its deceptively solid trunk. I close my eyes a moment to rid myself of the dryness plaguing them after days spent crying. Even then, the sensation of being watched raises the hair on my arms to gooseflesh. I open my eyes, straining into the fog. Still nothing.
Suddenly, from behind, soft as a breath, I feel a tap on my shoulder. Stifling a scream, I force my eyes downward. A trio of fingers rests on the exposed skin at my collar. Spruce and ash!
It is a hand I know well. I created it.
The masked face of the saboteur stares unblinkingly at me from behind the tree. Out of habit, my fingers clutch at my axe, trying to squeeze some comfort from its blunt edges. I squint and blink again, sure the fog is playing tricks on me. With little rest and even less breakfast, no doubt I am prone to seeing things in my state of grief. Especially things that cannot
