Page 7 of Sweet Silver Bells
She wasn’t singing anymore.
“Stop. Please stop,” she begged.
But the vines had made up their mind.
“Father!” she cried. She threw her arms toward him.
Fight. Please, fight.
He was bound too tightly.
The vines climbed higher. Thorns slashed his face. Forced his mouth open. His eyes widened. His gurgles were low. He choked.
Olivia could hear her heart shatter. Her father’s skin turned white, then red, then gray.
He suffocated.
I murdered him.
The branches didn’t stop. They arched up over his head until she couldn’t see him at all.
He was gone and hidden inside. The forest had claimed him.
Her breath came in gasps, fast and shallow. She nearly collapsed.
It was done. The very thing she had tried to prevent.
Her mother would never know what happened to either of them. Olivia would never face her again.
Grief surged. A sob broke free. Then a wail.
A sound she had never made before. Deep and raw, a siren’s song. A witch’s mourning.
Her song.
It rippled around her. The forest responded. Trees grew taller. The moon vanished behind their limbs.
What Olivia didn’t know was that sound traveled.
Miles away, her mother stopped along with the guests still around her. Eyes glazed and thoughts disappeared. Their still bodies moved, the song luring them.
Olivia’s wail ended. Their thoughts returned, and hundreds of people blinked. They were confused and all facing the same direction.
Like her father, vines surged around Olivia as she caved into herself, arms wrapping into a hug. The vines did not attack; they did not grow to kill. They grew to keep.
The forest encased her in bark and root. Her sorrow and song transformed into her tree.
She was safe.
Her mother would be safe, too.
As long as Olivia never left the forest, no one else would be harmed.
2
CHAPTER TWO.
Present Day
