Page 109 of When the Woods Go Silent

And I don’t care - she matters more.

THE WOODS

Human emotions have leaked down into our roots over the centuries, and now, the one we feel most is worry.

The ice-cold blood drips blackly from the building, through its cracks, down and down into the soil where our roots taste its foul ichor. So many are dead here, lives much more fragile than they thought. Even the weak one is dead, his dripping blood a reminder of how things are changing.

And toward our center, another man waits, biding his time. For what, we don’t know. But his magic is strong. He can’t call our vines and branches, but we feel him playing with the breeze, tugging at our leaves and testing our trunks. He could rip us from the ground we live in, snap our roots like dry twigs. Toss us aside like we are nothing.

Will he?

We worry.

We worry about ourselves, about the humans we’ve watched for ring after ring. And we worry about the girls who live now with the remaining records of rings. So much knowledge, sliced and stacked in their building. Yet they seem to know nothing. Not so different from us, or from any of the other magical beings suddenly walking our trails.

Why does the knowledge hide itself?

What will these human girls do, once they find it?

We worry, and we watch. Following the man and the girl along the curves of the road until they stop at the building ofrings. Watch as the midnight-haired girl looks at the building with more emotions than we have collected, yet.

Watch as the fire-haired girl steps out of the building, the two staring at each other. They worry, too. They wait, each for the other. They watch, and the man watches, none of them moving. They stand still, while we flex our branches and wriggle our roots.

Everything is changing.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ROSE

I watch Ruby turn and speak to Torrence, and I wonder what she tells him.

In this moment, bent over his open car window, she feels like a stranger to me. Or maybe someone I used to know so well, but have lost touch with. Maybe I feel the same to her. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until Torrence rolls up his window and drives away.

I push away the fear and the strangeness that has entered our friendship today, relying instead on the foundation of years behind us. We’ll find our way through this. We have to.

“Ruby,” I gasp as she faces me, regret etched on her face. I clatter down the stairs as she climbs, the two of us meeting in the middle in a fierce hug.

And just like that, the fear of becoming strangers dissolves, and I know everything that what we’ve built together is going to weather this storm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, too,” I answer, feeling the edge of a sob swelling against my chest, from both relief and the sorrow of fighting with a friend who’s more like a soulmate than anyone I’ve ever met.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Ruby adds, and even though there’s an edge of irony to her tone, I don’t hear any anger.

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