She had to return to her original plan: Lull Father Forest into complacency and convince him to trust her enough to let her outside. From there… She peered through the shutters at the trees beyond the picket fence. If she could outdistance the vines, she could disappear between the trees.
It could be weeks, though, before he trusted her enough. Or months. She did not want to think about the possibility of never.
She could do this, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she were afraid of work. She knelt again by the kitchen sink, tore open a package of sponges, and began scrubbing the kitchen floor.
After three hours, her knees, back, and shoulders ached. She was sweating, and her stomach felt like a furnace. Cassie sat up and rubbed her neck. She looked around her. For some reason, the kitchen had seemed larger while scrubbing.
She had to be patient, she told herself. She had to be more patient than she had ever been in tracking polar bears. She had to sneak up on her freedom. As she took her sponge and Spic and Span (pine-scented, of course) into the living room, she thought of her mother surviving for years in the troll castle. She wished she’d asked her mother more about it. She wished she’d talked to her more in general, about real things, “feelings” things, instead of the conversations they had had about station minutiae. She promised herself she’d rectify that someday—if she ever made it out of here. Gingerly, Cassie got back down on her hands and knees. She winced as her back twinged.
Father Forest hovered in the doorway. “Good girl,” he said.
CHAPTER 25
Latitude 63° 54’ 53” N
Longitude 125° 24’ 07” W
Altitude 1301 ft.
The long afternoon of summer slipped away. As the autumnal equinox crept closer, the stars appeared earlier, the sun rose later, and the aurora borealis rippled like a closing theater curtain over the northern forest.
Cassie pressed her cheek against the window shutters and peered up at a sliver of sky. She wrapped her arms around her broad stomach and felt her skin roll as the baby shifted inside her. Bear had said she was due in the fall. She was nearly out of time.
As she watched the sliver of sky lighten from deep blue to rosy pink, she tried to keep from screaming. She’d lost the summer to pointless chores. She was sure that Father Forest could have commanded his cottage to do them. His reliance on man-made plumbing and Spic and Span was an odd quirk, as if he’d forgotten a munaqsri’s powers could affect ordinary chores. But she had done it all without complaint. Still, she was trapped inside this wooden cage and was no closer to rescuing Bear.
Stepping back from the window, she checked around her to make sure she wasn’t crushing any vines. Father Forest would feel it. Four months of worrying about what Father Forest would think or feel, and still no opportunity to escape. She thought, as she often did these days, of her mother in the troll castle. Now Cassie sometimes woke screaming at night. But no one came to comfort her.
“Hellooo, little mother!”
Cassie looked out through the shutters. Outside at the gate, the aspen waved her twig arms over her head as if she were waving in an airplane.
Oh, not again.
The aspen skipped down the singing stones. “Tell Father Forest that I am here!”
Without fail, the aspen came every morning, but today Father Forest had other visitors too. Tree-people from the southern part of the boreal forest had come to the cottage to discuss placement and exposure and color of autumn leaves, as if they were artists participating in a vast art gallery. “He said he can’t see you today,” Cassie said through the shutters.
Racing at the window, the tree-girl hissed at Cassie—eyes wild yellow, sharp green teeth bared. In that instant, she’d transformed from a childlike tree spirit into something feral. Cassie instinctively flinched away from the window, and then the aspen burst into wailing. “Oh, my aspens! They suffer! It’s the spruces. Their roots spread—they steal soil from my aspens!”
“I’m sorry,” Cassie said, eyeing her through the shutters. No matter how cute the tree-girl could look, she wasn’t a child. The perky innocence was an affectation, as much as Father Forest’s Santa Claus image.
The aspen shrieked. Her leaves spiked, her eyes rolled, and her mouth widened into a gash across her bark face. “He must come see! Spruces crowd my aspens back into the valleys. My aspens lose mountain exposure. My aspens starve for sunlight!” Her stick body shook. “You must let me see him!” Launching herself at the window, she clawed at the shutters.
Cassie retreated fast. “I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said.
The aspen beamed, again a green child. “Goody.”
Cassie escaped into the living room. Phosphorescent moss lit the walls in a faint green glow. Open flames, Father Forest had said, made his visitors nervous. Six visitors, birches, sickly green in the moss light, had planted themselves into the wood floor.
Stepping over their roots, Cassie whispered to Father Forest about the aspen. Father Forest grimaced—an odd expression on a Santa Claus. “Can you tell her ‘not now’?”
“You know how she is,” Cassie said.
“Oh, dear,” Father Forest said. “I should go—”
“This is not acceptable.” One of the birch-men flopped the leaves on his head. Another birch frowned and said, “We have traveled a long way.” A third spoke up: “We have important decisions to make.”
“Oh, dearie dear,” Father Forest said. “Cassie, my child, can’t you pacify her?”
Cassie began to refuse, and then she stopped. Maybe this was her chance. If she could use the crazy tree-girl… Cassie’s heart thudded, and she tried to sound nonchalant as she said, “I could convince her to show me the spruces. Tell her that I will report back to you.”
He frowned. “Surely, she can wait a few—”
“She is seconds away from bursting in here,” Cassie said. “As you can imagine, I would prefer not to walk so far.” She patted her round stomach for emphasis. “But if it would help you…”
“Let the human go,” one of the birch-women said. Another birch said, “Yes, let’s get on with it.” Another added, “Please, we have limited time.”
Father Forest surrendered. “Very well. Go, then.” He waved his hand to dismiss her as one of the birches tapped Father Forest’s knee and said, “About that shade of yellow…”
“Golden tones are better, don’t you agree?” Father Forest replied.
Cassie backed into the kitchen, certain he’d change his mind. Any second now, he’d realize his mistake. Her hand shook as she laid it on the door latch. Always before, it had behaved like solid wood.
She squeezed the latch and pulled—the door swung open, and Cassie fell outside. Her knees shook. She leaned against the door frame. She sucked in oxygen. It smelled of spruce and soil. It smelled of shadows and sunlight.
“Little mother, is he with you?”
Cassie barely heard the aspen. She walked to the gate. Brown and brittle ferns brushed her skirt. She felt the warm crunch of spruce needles under her bare feet.
Run, her mind whispered, run.
“Little mother?” The aspen’s voice held a dangerous note. She stomped her twig foot, and Cassie focused on her. She had to keep the aspen pacified if her escape was to work.
“He asked me to observe in his place,” Cassie said. “I am to report back to him.”
“All we want is our due,” the aspen said, sweet again. “It is not fair. Other trees have much better exposure.” Cassie opened the gate. Legs shaking, she walked out as the aspen continued, “Some trees have such good exposure that they can speak to the winds. Never aspens, though. It is not fair at all. It is injustice.”
Just beyond the picket fence, the dark of the forest was primeval. Shriveled ferns shrouded the forest floor. Above, leaves and branches were knit so tightly that they choked light. She could lose herself in that darkness. She could disappear.