“Go?” Jace’s eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about? Go where? We’re twenty-five miles from town! It’s snowing outside! And there isn’t anything around but forest!”
“I have to go,” she repeated, yanking off her seatbelt. As she shoved the spiral notebook in her backpack, she let her hair fall across her face to hide the fresh tears that were sliding down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I never should have dragged you into this.”
“Lilah, please, let me take you home—” he protested as she opened the door. But she hopped out of the truck and immediately started trekking through the grass and snow, not stopping to turn around until she was halfway between the truck and the forest.
“I really am sorry,” she called. Her voice sounded far away – much farther than it should have sounded. As she pulled her gaze away from Jace’s stunned expression, she could feel her right eye begin to twitch. “But it’s for the best.”
With that, she turned on her heels and walked into the forest, cradling her backpack in her arms like a child. Jace fumbled with his seatbelt, then leapt out of the car. “Lilah, wait!” he called, flinging the door shut behind him. But as he tore around the other side of the truck, she was already gone.
Chapter 22
Into the Forest
Lilah fumbled through the trees, furiously blinking away the tears that were pricking her eyes and blurring her vision. Her clunky snow boots connected with upturned roots and sharp rocks, causing her to stagger from tree to tree in a disoriented stupor, but she barely registered the sting of branches against her face, the sharp bite of her ankle rolling against a hard clump of dirt. The forest itself was shifting around her as both flora and fauna shimmered in and out of existence; giant pines became spindly saplings or disappeared altogether, huckleberry bushes grew and shed thick clusters of purple berries, and a few feet ahead of her, a tawny rabbit leapt up from the dirt itself, only to become a pile of bones mid-leap, then swiftly regressed to a tiny tuft of downy fur with tiny little ears that wiggled between budding blades of grass. Lilah had to fight back the growing urge to vomit, though her empty stomach churned away at nothing but acid.
She whimpered as another sharp pain cut across her eyes and all at once strange-looking mangroves replaced evergreen pines, rising up out of shallow, blossoming pools of water like twisted skeletons. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a yelp as a massive horned creature resembling an ox emerged from the mangroves scarcely an arm’s length ahead, dipping its prodigious snout in one of the swampy pools to steal a drink. Hairy mouth dripping, it cocked its head at her before loping away. A green dragonfly larger than Lilah had ever seen fluttered over her head to land on the rump of the great horned creature. But in the blink of an eye, both the insect and the animal vanished into thin air as warm rain began to patter against the shallow ponds, which stretched across the strange, alien-looking landscape for as far as Lilah’s eye could see. Sulfur and steam rose from the pools, evaporating into the yellow-tinged sky above. A plop sounded just a few inches from Lilah’s ankle, where two scaly eyes popped out of the murky water and blinked at her.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” she yelled, clutching her head. “Take me back to today!”
When she opened her eyes a few seconds later, the pools had all disappeared and a layer of snow blanketed the ground from whence towering pines sprouted into existence once more. Lilah rubbed her left temple gingerly, but the headache that raged there just moments ago was scarcely a throb. With a relieved sigh, she plopped down on a nearby tree stump, balancing her backpack on her knees. Slowly, she could feel her wits returning, and her stomach settling.
“So long as I can control it, it can’t control me,” she muttered to herself. As she spoke those words, a feeling of resignation washed over her. It wasn’t a comforting feeling – not even close. But there was an undeniable truth embedded within that realization, and that, in and of itself, was some small consolation. With one final scan to make sure no one else was around, Lilah stared at the tree that was directly in front of her, a young pine that was only about ten feet high.
“Backward,” she whispered, squinting her eyes at the craggy bark. In less than an instant, the tree disappeared, leaving nothing but a sprout in its wake. A tiny tuft of green pines stuck out from the top of the twig like a dandelion’s crown.
“Forward,” Lilah said, this time a little louder. The sapling shot up into the sky, thick branches sprouting from its gnarled bough in every direction. Over the course of an instant, its clusters of green pine needles grew brittle and brown, raining down on the forest floor below as the desiccated trunk began to splinter and crack. From the safety of a neighboring tree, a fat squirrel started chittering in agitation.
Lilah blinked, and the dead pine needles that were scattered across the ground flew back to their respective branches, alive and deep green once more.
She touched her forehead in wonder; every last vestige of the storm that had been raging inside her head had quieted. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so clear-headed – with or without medicine. With a shaky sigh and a firm hand on her backpack strap, she climbed on top of the stump she had been sitting on, surveying the forest around her.
“Backward,” she shouted, and the snow was gone, replaced by a thick carpet of bright green grass and violet bluebells. A woodpecker hammered away at the top of a nearby tree.
“Forward!” The bluebells and woodpecker were gone; a chill settled into the air, bringing the crisp smell of decaying leaves and damp earth to Lilah’s nose.
She stood at the top of her stump for over an hour, watching the trees disappear and reappear, observing the snow fall and melt and the flowers bloom and wither as she guided the seasons. Animals reappeared from the soil and momentarily lived again, only to return to the ground where their bodies disintegrated into mushrooms. It was thrilling and disturbing all at once. From her overgrown podium, Lilah felt like a conductor, leading the cadence of time in a temporal accelerando and adagio – and as she did, her mind felt clear and calm for the first time in her life.
Eventually, she hopped down to lean her head against the moss-covered stump in the center of her springtime bubble, enjoying the warmth and the sound of finches, breathing in the smell of flowers and fresh grass as snow continued to fall upon the rest of the forest. When she reached into her backpack to pull out one of the articles about her missing family, she felt completely at ease. She ran her finger across the faded text, looking for the number she had seen the night before – the mile marker where her grandmother’s van had been found. Once she found it and checked it against the map, she let the bubble around her evaporate and made her way due south, enjoying the feeling of fresh snow melting against her sun-warmed cheeks.
The last place her mother had been seen alive was less than a mile away.
· · ·
Jace had searched everywhere for Lilah, calling her name until his throat was sore, but she was gone. It was as though the forest itself had swallowed her up. After combing through the woods for the better part of an hour, he did what he knew he needed to do: he fled, giving his old truck a run for its money as he rammed his muddy boot against the accelerator. Every mile he put between himself and Lilah felt like a series of betrayals. But he was in way over his head – and he needed help.