When we were seventeen, Eva had told me that home was simply wherever we put down roots and grew, but that was easy to say when you grew things just by existing. It was harder for me. I couldn’t stormproof my thoughts like people did their houses when the weather turned inclement. I’d tried. I’d taken Eva’s advice countless times and tried to let rainy thoughts pass through without judgment.
But it was hard. I’d never had a brick-and-mortar house, and my body was my only true constant. If I was my own home, I wanted to board up my windows and keep the monsters out, not let them in.
But you couldn’t keep out a monster that lived inside you.
The aspens seemed to undulate around us as we hiked, the dark knots in pale bark giving the uncanny impression of eyes watching in my periphery. They never moved when I looked at them straight, but I felt them watching, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Maybe I was being paranoid.
I tightened the straps of my pack and tried to ignore the ache in my plum-bruised knuckles. Before leaving the van on the side of the road, we’d wrapped my hands in clean white strips of linen from the first aid box. More bruises dotted my body in places I hadn’t really had the opportunity to examine, most of them scuffs and scrapes acquired in the jailbreak.
But the stitches were by far the worst of it. They ached with every step. The monster tried to help, but even it couldn’t numb all pain, and honestly, I didn’t want it to. Being numb too often meant I was slipping into the monster’s hold again. At least when I was hurting I knew I wasme.
The touch of wind curled through the trees, brushing my skin in a way that made me feel at once too cold and far, far too hot. I couldn’t tell Eva that after the stink I’d made about coming along. She might make me turn back, and I couldn’t do that.
There were so many things I couldn’t fix; I just wanted to do this one good thing for Jack. And then I would leave, since that was clearly what Eva wanted. If her sour response at the trailhead hadn’t made that perfectly clear, then her silence since had certainly done the trick.
The ghost of a song moved in the breeze. If I didn’t know better, I might have sworn it was a voice. I shucked off the feeling. Maybe I was truly, finally losing my mind.
“No,”the monster said.“I hear it too.”
That didn’t exactly comfort me.
The monster’s unease pressed against me like a second skin.“Maybe this was a bad idea.”It didn’t like how many places on our body were hurting. It didn’t like that we were headed away from civilization. Most of all, it didn’t like this forest.
But unsettling trees or not, I had to do this. We owed it to Jack to at least try.
“You could let me help you.”
“No,” I muttered.
A strange flicker of vulnerability entered the monster’s voice.“Why do you fight me?”
I didn’t answer. It knew why. My deepest regrets had been sown by the monster’s impulsive judgment. Its sense of justice lay on a monochrome scale of black and white, measured only by what hurt me, which was, objectively, a terrible metric.
“Stop.” Eva held up a hand, nose pressed to the atlas. I slapped a mosquito. The uptick of humidity was a beacon to the little vampires.
“What—” A tremor rolled beneath my feet, stalling my question and forcing me to step back. A root snaked out from the soil, flailing like a cut worm split by the blade of a shovel. I sucked in a breath and stepped back.
Eva turned. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed, mouth agape, to the wriggling root just as it slunk back into the dirt. “There. It moved!”
Eva squinted, following my finger. “What do you mean?”
“I mean itmoved,Ev!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, eyes widening in surprise at my vigor. Worry clouded her features, but I couldn’t tell if she believed me. I was sure of what I’d seen.
There was something wrong with this forest.
Or maybe… it was just her gift? Eva could be making the roots move without even realizing it. The moment I thought it, I relaxed.
We’d been able to do little to hide the trail of flowers that grewbehind her as we walked, leaving an irregular pattern of goldenrod, asters, and bright orange butterfly milkweed weaving through the aspen trees. Most likely, no one would even come up that road. And if they did, who would be smart enough to connect a trail of wildflowers to her anyway?
It would be fine.
I licked my lips, the skin so dry it had split. The subtle taste of blood mixed with the salt of sweat on my tongue.
