Chapter Four #3
Jiro frowns, obviously unsatisfied with her answer, but doesn’t push.
Anna suspects it’s only because he doesn’t have a better explanation.
Three days later, when Khiran brings home a tteokbokki—boiled strips of rice cake served in a spicy red sauce—he makes no comment.
Even though Anna can see the questions in his eyes.
Then spring arrives as it has a habit of doing—seemingly overnight and far before Anna feels prepared for it.
Most days are spent between the garden and the greenhouse as they fold small plants into the earth and sow new seeds into the tiny pots they’ve left behind.
In the meadows, flowers carpet the landscape in shades of purple and orange.
Seeds that laid dormant revitalized by the heavy rains brought by winter.
When the weather is especially welcoming, they picnic among the blossoms and watch the clouds move across a crystalline blue sky.
Today, Anna cuts thin slices of cured ham for their sandwiches.
Khiran looks through a newspaper in a language she’s unfamiliar with at the kitchen table.
In front of him are the tiny cucumber finger sandwiches she had put him in charge of.
Jiro had snickered at how messy they look—the cucumber sliced in a variety of different widths and the bread trimmed in lopsided triangles.
Anna just hopes he followed the recipe card she gave him.
The last time he helped in the kitchen, he had put so much garlic in the spaghetti sauce it burned.
Anna frowns, looking out the window. “Jiro has been gone for a while.”
Khiran turns the page, his face growing darker with every article he scans. “There’s more propaganda in here than news,” he grumbles. “It’s no wonder nobody ever knows what’s happening.”
Shaking her head, Anna dries her hands on a dishtowel. “It shouldn’t have taken him this long to grab some oranges.”
A whispered rustle of paper, another page turned. “Perhaps he got distracted.” He sets the newspaper down, folding it carefully, before meeting her eyes. “We would know if one of the others was here.”
“How?”
“Those with power rarely wield it quietly.” There’s a bitter edge to the words. It matches the sneer teasing the corner of his mouth. When she still looks concerned, he sighs, standing. “Very well. Let’s have a look.”
“You think I’m being silly.”
“I think you worry because you care,” he counters, placing a kiss at her temple. “It’s an admirable quality.”
The moment they step outside, Anna knows there’s something off.
It’s a feeling on the back of her neck; the emptiness of the garden.
She and Khiran share a look. She can tell he feels it, too.
Then, she sees the tail end of a path trailing just behind the apiary.
It isn’t of her making, but she recognizes it instantly. “Khiran?”
“I see it,” he mutters.
She looks up at him, a sense of foreboding making her mouth go dry. “Do you think—”
“Everything’s fine, I’m sure. Last I visited her, she mentioned wishing to see you. I’m sure that’s all this is.”
“You’ve been visiting?”
“I always do, from time to time.”
Anna stares down the trail, a thought winding around her ribs like a noose. “Jiro’s not in the garden.”
One moment, two, and Khiran curses.
Eira’s home is, as always, the same as the last time Anna left it. Smoke curls up from the chimney, the meadow grasses tall and peppered with flowers nurtured by spring rains and budding warmth. Decomposed leaves from seasons past slip, still wet from the morning mist, under Anna’s heel.
Jiro is at the edge of the forest, his brows drawn tight as he stares at the house.
Hearing them approach, he allows them a quick glance before returning to the meadow—as if it being out of his sight risks it disappearing.
“You don’t have any neighbors,” he says, a tremor of nervousness making his voice shake.
“I’ve been back here with you gathering firewood dozens of times.
There’s not supposed to be a house here. ”
The sigh Khiran releases sounds like both defeat and acceptance. “Come on, then. It’s too late to hope for discretion now.”
Anna winces, watching his back as he follows the trail without them.
This wasn’t part of their plan. Jiro wasn’t supposed to know about this side of their lives.
Doubt chokes her, curdling in her gut like old milk.
Maybe Khiran was right. Maybe she should have let him find someone to take Jiro in before he could have the chance to get wrapped up in their mess.
“What’s he talking about?” Jiro asks.
Anna hates the suspicion in his eyes.
She breathes around the weight on her chest. “You’re right,” she says, swallowing. “I don’t have any neighbors.” Because it is far too late to keep this secret.
Jiro studies her. His favorite mask—the one of cool, stubborn indifference—slowly fades into one of wonder. “So this place is…?”
“Magic.” The word tastes strange in her mouth. Like it somehow says too much and not nearly enough. “Come on. I’ll tell you more once we’re inside.”
He follows her, his gaze flitting over the meadow as if every facet of it is something to be studied. Khiran has already gone inside without them, but it’s just as well. It gives Anna more time to think of how much and how little information she’s willing to part with.
“The sun is in a different position,” Jiro notes, his eyes wide with fascination.
“We’re not in California anymore.”
“Where are we, then?”
Anna doesn’t have an answer for him. Eira’s home has always been a place that folds itself between nowhere and everywhere all at once.
It’s only the length of the trails and the flora that give her the sense that it lies somewhere on the European continent, but she can’t even be sure if that’s entirely true.
“The Meadow,” is the only answer she can give him that feels like truth.
When Anna opens the door, Eira’s cornflower eyes immediately go to the extra person in her threshold, frowning. “Well, this is a surprise.”
Anna flinches. There is a word hiding between the others, silent but somehow ringing through her chest with the clarity of a bell. Unwelcome. “He found your trail before we did.”
Eira hums, studying the boy with the same calculating gaze she once pinned on her. Anna remembers the feel of it, the way she wanted to curl into herself in hopes of hiding the worst parts of her.
Eira sighs, turning to Khiran with a scowl of disapproval deepening the wrinkles around her mouth. “I expect this from her, but you should know better.”
When he says nothing, she shakes her head.
Her gray hair, twisted into a braid at her back, moves with her.
“Never mind. I should have known. Of course, you couldn’t say no to her.
Lovesick fool that you are.” She pins Jiro with a hard gaze.
“Follow the trail back home, boy. I’m afraid this conversation isn’t for your ears. ”
He looks ready to argue, but Eira’s stare sharpens before he can voice a complaint and his outrage quickly sobers into resignation. Still, he glances to Anna first.
She offers him a fragile smile. “We’ll be home soon. Would you mind getting dinner started?”
Hesitantly, he nods, giving them all one last parting glance before leaving.
Eira barely waits for the door to close behind him.
Her sigh is like leaves on gravel. “Sit. I wish the issue of the boy was my greatest concern, but it isn’t.
” She pins Khiran with a meaningful stare. “There’s news from Edun.”
The change in him is instant. His spine straightens, tension plucking at his shoulders, but it’s the way his attention sharpens—as if Eira’s every word could spell out their future—that alarms Anna the most.
“Edun?” she asks, carefully sinking into one of the chairs. The word somehow sounds both foreign and familiar at the same time. She thinks of the stories about a garden and a serpent, of golden apples and eternal youth.
Khiran wets his lips. He has yet to sit. “It’s where The Tree grows.”
Anna doesn’t need to ask which. When it comes to them, there is really only one.
Eira’s scowl could curl paint. “I thought I said to sit? I won’t have my neck suffer because you can’t be bothered to take your seat.”
There’s a retort teasing his tongue, Anna can see it in the way his eyes narrow and his lips thin.
He manages to chew on the words until they leave him as something different entirely.
“Very well,” he says, complying to her demand and sitting in the chair opposite of Anna’s.
She can feel his boot gently toe hers beneath the table. “What news?”
“It’s about The Tree,” she starts, suddenly looking unsure. Anxious. “They say it’s dying.”
Khiran’s denial is immediate. “Impossible.”
“I believed so, too. Had it not come from someone I trust, I might have written it off as a rumor.” Her eyes meet Anna’s. “But the word came from Silas.”
Anna inhales sharply. “You still see him?”
Eira nods. “We’ve come to an understanding, him and I. We save more together than we do alone.”
Khiran laces his fingers, resting pale knuckles against his mouth. “It can’t be true. Those were his exact words?”
“He says its limbs are barren of the leaves to shade it. That it looked more skeletal than alive.” She leans back into her chair, fingers drumming on the tabletop. “There have been rumors circulating for centuries, but I never paid them much mind. Now, I’m not so sure.”
His face darkens. “About the fruit?”
“So you’ve heard them, too,” she hums.
Anna frowns, her brow creasing as she looks between them. “What about it?”
Sighing, he runs a hand through his hair. “I had heard whispers that the fruit was tainted in some way, but it could still just be that. Whispers.”
Anna has heard several stories about the tree from which her immortality stemmed.
Sometimes Khiran tells it like that—a story.
Other times, it will feature in a memory he recalls for her.
He has always described it as mighty, but she’s never thought to wonder about the logistics. “Does it not have periods of dormancy?”
Eira shakes her head. “Never. Not in all the thousands of years I have seen it.”
The silence that falls between them is heavy with questions. Hesitantly, Anna gives the most pressing one a voice. “What does it mean?”
The look Khiran and Eira share, the quiet searching, answers her question before he can. “I don’t know, but it has to be a sign that something has changed.”