Page 13 of The Light Between Worlds

He drifts back through the gathered Woodlanders, heading away from us and into the trackless depths of the wood. I drop to the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees and letting what I have seen and heard sink further into me, fixing it forever in my heart and mind until I’ve reoriented myself, like a spinning compass that finally finds north.

“The singer is one of the great trees that were planted when the Wood was founded,” Vaya chimes softly. I don’t know how much time has passed, but away eastward the sky is growing grey. “There are very few of them left, and this is her last year. She won’t live to see another summer. When winter comes, she will drop the few leaves she has and die, and be felled to warm Woodlanders who have blood and not sap in their veins.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Vaya rustles, the edges of her scattering into leaves once more. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry. Be bold, and remember—a Woodlands heart always finds its way home.”

I swallow and look down into the valley.

“What is it?” Vaya asks.

“Were they from my world? The first of the Tarsin Imperials, who founded the Empire?”

“No.”

Relief warms me from my head to my toes at that simple word.

“They were the last left living on their world, Heraklea, after a thousand years of war turned it to ash and ruin. When there was nothing left, they came here, to begin that war again.”

I pick up a mossy pebble from where it lies, nestled in the undergrowth, and weigh it in my hand. “Their world sounds like mine. Terrible things are happening where I came from.”

With a gust of wind, Vaya bursts apart into a joyous swirl of leaves. Taking shape again, she leans in close to me.

“Terrible things happen in all worlds, little one. But every tree and every leaf in the Great Wood would have to burn before we allowed such things to break us.”

9

ON SATURDAY IT RAINS, AND MY MOOD IMPROVES. I’VEalways loved the rain—the way it sang against the leaded glass windows of Palace Beautiful, the way the beach and the sea and the sky went grey, until the whole world was a blank canvas waiting for color.

I wade out to the gardener’s hut in my galoshes and borrow an oversized mackintosh. Though I’d never say it and risk hurting his feelings, St. Agatha’s groundsman, Hobb, really ought to take on help. He must have fallen behind on things the week after I went home.

Weeds choke the school gardens, grown up in my absence over the summer and reluctant to surrender their place. It was Philippa who first suggested garden work here at school might do me good—in the Woodlands I liked nothing better than working on the castle’s farmstead with Dorien.

The smell of damp earth and green things growing reminds me overwhelmingly of home. The Great Wood is so near to me, in the sound of wind whispering by, and the chill taste of rain runningdown to the corners of my mouth. If I could shut my eyes and open them just so, I know I’d be back. St. Agatha’s would vanish, replaced by a birch ring at the heart of the place I love best.

I spend an hour on my hands and knees with a trowel before reaching a patch of nettles. Rocking back on my heels, I swallow, setting the trowel down.

I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. Philippa would be so disappointed. She’d fuss and cluck and lecture. She’d tell me we all have to do better, we all have to cope.

Glancing over one shoulder to ensure the quad is empty, I peel off my gloves. Just a touch. Just one more memory of home.

I take a saw-edged leaf between my thumb and forefinger and draw in a breath at the sharp, stinging pain. Pulling my hand back, I look at the place where the nettle kissed it. Red welts are already forming—the very skin of me is angry at what I’ve done.

Stop, Evelyn. Stop now.

But I am greedy for pain that hurts my hands more than my heart. With another furtive look over my shoulder, I reach out and tear up a fistful of nettles, then another, dragging them from the earth in great bunches.

When they all lie on the heap of weeds next to me, I bury my hands in the mud, not to dull the fierce burning but to hide what I’ve done. I don’t want anyone to see, but at the same time I’m calmer now than I have been all week. Taking a deep breath, I straighten out the kinks in my neck and relax into the pain.

I don’t know how long I crouch there in the downpour, languidly thinking of the day I burned my hands on priest’s thistles in the Great Wood. Finally, a voice cuts through my reverie.

“Evelyn Hapwell?”

I turn as best I can and blink raindrops out of my eyelashes. Oh dear. I’d forgotten I was expecting a visitor. Tom Harper stands a few feet away, properly equipped for the weather in a mackintosh that nearly matches mine, but with the sensible addition of an umbrella. I realize for the first time that my skirt and wool stockings are soaked and muddy. The mound of weeds beside me is as high as Tom’s knees.

“What are you doing?” he asks. His eyebrows are pulled together and he’s squinting because of the rain. In spite of his height, he reminds me so strongly of a puzzled stonewarden that I purse my lips to keep from smiling. I want to be angry with him for intruding, but I can’t—not when I gave him permission and when he looks so befuddled.

“What does it look like? Pulling weeds. Sorry, I forgot you were coming.”