Into the Heartless Wood - Joanna Ruth Meyer Page 0,1
trots up to the wall and stretches up her tiny hand, reaching for a low-hanging branch.
Panic jolts through me, and I leap up from where I’ve been sprawling in the grass. In another heartbeat I’m at her side, grabbing her wrist and tugging her back to the safety of the open sky.
She screams at me and wriggles loose, but I catch her again and twirl her around and around until she laughs, forgetting her desire to run back to the wall and that devilish branch. I don’t dare fetch the axe from the shed and hack the branch off. Not even Father would dare. I try to forget my own uneasiness, try not to hear the faint thread of a song coiling out from the depth of the wood.
“Time for a bath, little one,” I tell my sister.
“No bath!” Awela shrieks.
But she trots along after me as I fetch the wash basin and fill it from the pump in front of the house. When it’s full, I put the basin by the garden—the flowers and vegetable seedlings will appreciate the water Awela is absolutely going to splash out.
I strip her of her grimy dress and plunk her in, grabbing a bar of soap and scrubbing vigorously. She shouts and laughs and splashes, thoroughly enjoying herself. I finish scrubbing and let her play in the water, my eyes wandering sometimes to the wood beyond the garden and my father’s wall, and sometimes to the house I’ve lived in for as long as I can remember.
It’s a small stone house, ordinary except for the tower that serves as my father’s observatory, the silver dome closed until evening, the telescope safe inside. Flowers wilt in the bright blue window boxes, like they never did when my mother tended them instead of me. I’ve tried to keep all the pieces of her alive. I’ve tried not to surrender the whole of her memory to the Gwydden’s Wood.
Everyone says we’re fools to live on the border of the wood itself. Maybe we are.
But there was nowhere else far enough away from the village for my father to observe the stars in solitude. Few people know he’s an astronomer. No one knows he charts the stars for King Elynion himself, on the king’s coin no less. Father works as a day laborer at Brennan’s Farm to keep people from asking questions about how he earns his money and adhere to the king’s condition of secrecy. Brennan is our closest neighbor, a three-mile walk northeast of our house. The village is another five miles north, and even that’s considered perilously close to the wood.
It grows chilly as the wind picks up. Clouds knot dark over the sun, and it smells suddenly of rain. The music is stronger now, loud enough to hear clearly over the rising wind. It pulls at me. I shudder, clench my jaw, steel myself against it.
“Time to go inside, little one,” I tell Awela. I pour a pitcher of clean water over her head and she screams like I’m murdering her. I just tickle her chin and scoop her out of the basin, wrapping her in a large towel and carrying her toward the house.
The music follows, sinking into me with invisible barbs. The same music that lured my mother into the wood, where she was lost forever. I wonder if anyone heard her scream when the Gwydden’s eight monstrous daughters fell on her and rent her to pieces. I wonder if any part of her remains, or if she is nothing more than dust now, strewn about the forest floor amongst the molded leaves.
I carry Awela up the two steps to our front door in a hurry, reaching for the handle.
“Is Calon Merrick at home?”
I jump at the overloud voice, turning to see what is obviously one of the king’s men striding up, his long cobalt coat fixed with gold-plated buttons, his smart blue cap trimmed with gold to match. A tall oilcloth satchel hangs over one shoulder, and he’s somewhere between my father’s age and my own seventeen years. He has dark brown skin, which speaks of Saeth descent.
“I’m Owen Merrick,” I reply. “My father isn’t here right now. You’ve come for the star charts?”
The king’s man’s eyes flick between me and my baby sister with obvious distaste. He taps his ears, and I realize he must have put wax in them, to protect against the tree sirens’ song—he can’t hear me.