Page 29 of Losing Wendy

“How do we see? We see with our eyes,” whispers Michael, and the words are so familiar, I almost hear them in my father’s voice.

But then, slowly, the tendrils of the tree multiply. They slip over Michael’s hand, consuming it like a disease.

Michael’s shriek is the most horrible sound ever to reach my ears.

Panic strikes my brother’s sweet features. He begins jumping up and down, slamming his open palm against the tree in an attempt to break free.

“No,” I whisper, wishing to yell but afraid to spook Michael further. Tears sting my eyes as I watch my terrified brother struggle. I go to grab him, to yank the horrible flora off of him, but Peter’s shadows restrain both me and John.

What have I done?

“Bad bad bad bad bad!” screams Michael, now clutching at his hair and attempting to rip it from his head.

“Please,” I beg Peter. “Please, let him go.”

If Peter’s listening to me, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he dips a finger into the pouch at his hip and presses the faerie dust to Michael’s lips. Michael must have bitten him, because when Peter withdraws his finger from my brother’s mouth, a droplet of blood wells at its tip. At least some dust must have made it into Michael’s mouth because a palpable calm comes over him, and his poor little body goes still as the branches overcome him, wrapping him in their dreadful cocoon and drawing him into the base of the tree.

“What did you do?” I cry, but to my surprise, John takes my hand, his voice rather devoid of the rage I would have expected.

“It’s a reaping tree,” he explains, as if that’s supposed to comfort me after just having watched it consume our little brother. “It provides shelter to those it deems…” He stops, glancing toward me, then at Peter.

“It’s not going to take me,” John says matter-of-factly.

Peter cranes his head to the side, back to leaning against the tree with his arms crossed like he enjoyed watching our panic, enjoyed drugging my little brother to calm him down. “Is that so?” Peter asks, scanning my brother like he sees something in him that’s surprising.

“Well then,” says Peter. “If you’ve educated yourself about thereaping tree, then I’m assuming you know what must be done to win its favor once you’ve lost it.”

For the first time tonight, I glimpse John tremble under Peter’s gaze.

“Sure you don’t wish to turn back?” Peter asks.

John glances between me and the tree, but I know he’s looking at where Michael just disappeared. He bites the inside of his cheek. “No. Family sticks together,” he says, echoing a sentiment of Mother’s.

My heart aches, but dread is brooding in my stomach.

“What does the tree want from you, John?” I ask.

John blinks, hesitating. “The reaping tree accepts those it perceives as having something…missing. Michael has his difficulty communicating.” A pang strikes my heart. Part of me resents the tree for believing there’s anything lacking in my brother. The other part of me considers my father’s blatant refusal to acknowledge my brother’s struggles by making light of them or pretending them away. I’m not sure which mindset hurts Michael more in the end. If there’s an in-between to be had that accepts him as he is while still acknowledging the invisible challenges he faces in the world he lives in. “You have—” John blinks, and my chest tightens. There are several wounds to which John could be referring, though I’m unsure which ones he knows about. “Unfortunately, I’m painfully normal.”

“Then what does the tree want from you?”

John shrugs. “It wants something to be missing, I suppose.”

Peter’s brow raises, like for the first time my brother has actually succeeded in sparking his curiosity. I don’t realize what John is planning to do. Not until Peter laughs and tosses John an object.

John places his hand flat upon a tree stump nearby, and before I realize what’s happening, slices his pinkie finger at the knuckle.

I hardly register it.

Not until the bulb of his finger hits the stump, blood spattering across the moss.

John doesn’t even cry out. He just clutches his hand to his chest,his eyes rolling back in his head, the sight only magnified by his thick-rimmed glasses.

“John.” I call out my brother’s name, but he puts out his other hand to stop me. Like he doesn’t want me taking on his pain, lest I make it my own. Slowly, I back away, at a loss of how to help as my brother wraps his wounded hand in a strip of cloth he’s ripped from his coat, before stumbling over to the tree trunk.

When he unwraps his wound and spreads his blood across the ripples in the bark, the tree itself seems to drink it in, absorbing the scarlet liquid. Slowly, the vines come and consume John, until it’s just Peter and me left in these forsaken woods.

Peter cocks his head to the side, examining where the tree is knitting back together in the shape of John’s absorbed body.

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