Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
With Liam gone and the loggers stalled, the forest sunk back into the quiet monotony that Iona had grown familiar with over the decades. In the valley, little tended to change, and the days were steady and predictable. Iona returned to her routine, spending her days tending to the trees and the undergrowth near her maple.
As October wore on, the leaves deepened in their orange and red hues, preparing to fall in earnest. As sad as it often made her, Iona knew that the leaves were important—they would break down over the winter months, creating the energy for new life to sprout when warmer days arrived. The autumn months were bittersweet, and Iona could feel the energy in the maple she was tethered to dwindling.
Like most deciduous trees, the maple was less active in the winter, conserving energy and entering a state of relative dormancy. Iona herself did not hibernate in this way—there was far too much to do—but she did feel the drain of the cold and quiet months.
Each morning, she stepped out into the misty, damp forest and went about her duties.
She made sure to check each one to ensure it was healthy and strong. Many afflictions could plague the trees and it was important to protect them when possible. Several of the younger trees, most vulnerable to the icy weather, needed protection for their roots and trunks to insulate their vulnerable hearts from the cold. The fallen ones, downed in the storms that picked up in the autumn and continued on the rest of the year, would need to be populated with the mushrooms and mosses that helped to break the wood down to feed future growth.
It was tiring work, and by the time her tending to the forest was complete, she was drained. Some nights she visited with the others, who gathered in their little hideaway to drink the beer that Liam and his friends had left behind, or play games amongst themselves. Some nights she was simply too tired and preferred solitude.
Her kin had accumulated a stack of old novels in the hideaway, which Iona liked to smuggle and read with the help of firelights in the evening darkness. Among the books collected, there was a secret Iona kept from the others—one book tucked in the shelves that she’d taken without asking.
When she’d been in the cabin, surrounded by Liam’s old things, she’d taken one of his sketchbooks.
It was a terrible thing to do, since they all likely meant a lot to him… but she could not help taking the sketchbook she’d found with the drawing of her maple. After all, she should have some small token by which to remember him, since she was unlikely to ever see him again. It was only fair.
Iona sat in the crook of her tree, the spot where Liam had, as a child, spent countless hours sitting and drawing. He would not sit in that spot again, but Iona often did, and that was where she found herself in the cool night air, running a finger over the leather bound sketchbook.
Firelights drifted aimlessly, circling the crown of her head, lighting the pages of the book so she could admire the sketches. Each of them was imbued with a spark of latent magic that flowed through Iona’s hand as she ran it across the page. It seemed unlikely that Liam knew he was capable of such things, but the mark was unmistakable. A sketch of a fox seemed almost alive as it leaped across the page, and as Iona watched it, it did in fact move. It was a magic unlike anything Iona had ever seen, and only made her more curious as to what Eli had said about Liam being special. It was a mystery she would never be able to solve, however .
Vall had not brought him up again. As much as it frustrated Iona, it was also secretly a relief. Better to imagine Vall’s comment about it being love was a joke in poor taste than to hold out hope for something she knew better than to long for. As much as, against her better judgment, she did long for it.
She pulled the sweater tighter around her to shield against the cold. The wool helped to warm her, and the scent of the cabin filled her senses. She needed to put Liam from her mind, though, it did no good to dwell on his absence.
Iona wasn’t one to mope. The fact that he weighed so heavily on her mind was beginning to annoy her.
She focused her attention instead on one of the fern fronds that jutted from the moss-covered tree trunk. Heavy patches of clubmoss formed a comfortable cushion, and the ferns shot outwards and sagged along the outstretched limbs. She took one of the fronds in her hand, a young shoot that had yet to unfurl. With a dull hum of magic that pulsed in the palm of her hand, she gave it a small burst and encouraged it to stretch outwards alongside the rest.
She watched it sway in the evening breeze, before her attention was drawn to a presence nearby. Not a malicious one, the way Andrew and his cronies had felt, but it was powerful. And familiar.
Curious, Iona slipped from her perch and went to investigate.
***
Liam’s week passed slowly. The fallout from leaving early had been more brutal than he’d anticipated. The work continued to accumulate and the team showed little sign of catching up. He never managed to leave quite so early as he had that first day, but he did make it a point to get home earlier than he had in the previous months. Sarah was displeased, and made her sentiments known, but Liam tried to ignore them.
Later in the week, he pulled up the spreadsheet used to track the processed samples and reports to see just how far behind they were. As he skimmed through the results, a discrepancy caught his eye.
The report he’d filed some days ago, with the elevated chromium levels—it had been reported as acceptable.
“Hey Sawyer,” he said, puzzled. “Take a look at this. You double checked that result for me, right? My report didn’t look like that. ”
Sawyer frowned, looking over his shoulder. Liam opened the report to find it was not his work—one of the other lab techs had entered the data, and it was quite different than what Liam had seen with his own two eyes.
“Huh,” Sawyer said as his eyes skimmed down the document. “Maybe they redid the sample. It could have been a faulty one. Sometimes the analysis gets ran again.” Liam knew such things did happen. Perhaps the calibration was off on his ICP machine? He’d have to double check it after lunch. But Sawyer was quick to put his suspicions to rest. “It’s not worth worrying about, not when we have plenty of new samples to get through this morning.”
Work had kept him busy after that.
Despite his effort, it had been impossible for him to sink into his tasks. The job itself was not fulfilling to him as it had been.
Outside the walls of his concrete office, beyond the boundaries of the city, there was life. He’d never felt so removed from it until now. The fake plants sprinkled around the office felt hollow, like dark pits that sucked the life from the room. An unwelcome reminder of how sterile the building was. He didn’t even have a window to stare out of.
Even the bus rides to and from work had lost their charm.
They had always been the highlight of his day, the few moments he had where he wasn’t working, didn’t have to feel guilty about anything—he just got to exist. The music in his headphones couldn’t drown out the growing discontent. After spending more time at the apartment, out in the valley, he realized the toll the job had taken on him.
City streets flew by, cold and gray and void of life. Even the trees weren’t enough to ease his growing misery. Planted in the sidewalk gaps, they grew scraggly, their roots straining against the concrete. Bare of leaves, they only reminded him of the fir and hemlock evergreens of the valley. The places where nature grew wild, untamed. Not tucked in where humans had made space for it.
At least, when the weekend came, he had time to himself. Well, most of it, aside from the gathering at his sister’s house to meet the new baby.
She lived a few miles away from his apartment, a fact which Liam often forgot. They didn’t see each other much, mostly because of Liam’s preoccupation with his career and Rebecca being busy with her family and her own life.
It was drizzling when he left. He’d forgotten to deliver his mother’s guitar when he’d seen his parents the previous weekend, but they’d be meeting him there, so he grabbed it from its place near the door as he left.
Rebecca’s house was a small but quaint craftsman-style, common in the northern neighborhoods of Seattle. It sat along a quiet street lined with cars. Although the little yards gardens now withered with the cold, the overall effect was still sweet. Rebecca worked in real estate, and made significantly more money that Liam could ever hope to. The market had been kind to her over the past few years and she could afford luxuries like a house and a yard.
Liam arrived in the early afternoon. His parents’ sedan was already parked out front. His mother had kept it, insisting that stranding them alone in Bremerton would cut her off both from her trees from her children. She was still fit to drive, so there had been no arguing about it.
Opening the door, he was greeted by excited voices talking all at once. The group was gathered by the sofa, where Liam’s father sat gently cradling the small bundle of blankets Liam could only assume was the baby. To his right sat Rebecca’s wife, Lynn.
Lynn was Asian American, with short cropped hair and a wiry frame. Liam felt guilty that he didn’t even know her well enough to know her heritage. He’d met her several times, on holidays mostly. He was not close to Rebecca, so he never got the chance to know Lynn better. She hovered over the baby, and Rebecca stood behind the sofa chatting with Maggie.
Rebecca rushed over the second she noticed Liam, throwing her arms around him despite the bulky guitar case he carried. “Look who finally made it,” she teased, then pulled back, allowing Liam to step inside. She looked exhausted, her skin dull, with heavy bags below her eyes. Her long blond hair, which was usually neatly curled, now sat in a tangled mess on top of her head. “We would have had you all come sooner, but we’ve just been so tired.” She pulled Liam toward the sofa to meet his niece. “Come meet our sweet girl—Liam, this is Iris. ”
Lynn greeted Liam with a tired smile and helped John hand the baby over to him.
“Oh, well hello,” he told the baby in his arms. She stared up at him, her oversized eyes widening for a moment. Her tiny hand reached up at him, and he placed a finger there, which she gripped tight. He stood, gently rocking her as he hummed. A grin spread across his face, one that Iris mirrored. The sweet moment burst when the noise in the room picked back up.
Liam’s parents greeted him, asking his opinion on how sweet and perfect their grandchild was. Rebecca was yawning loudly and Lynn was correcting Liam on how to hold the baby. She took Iris back from him quickly, unwilling to let her go for long.
It became overwhelming, so many people in the small house.
The living room was just big enough for the sofa and an armchair, with a coffee table squarely in the center. The kitchen opened into it, with a small table for eating at, and two small bedrooms down the hall. It wasn’t much larger than the cabin, really.
Liam couldn’t help the pang of jealousy at the life that Rebecca had built for herself. She was only a few years older, but it seemed like she had figured it all out. He glanced at her, with her arm around Lynn, both brimming with love as they stared into the eyes of their newest family member, in the house they’d bought. Everything had seemed so easy for her, where Liam had never felt like he’d gotten anything right. Always he’d felt like he was out of place.
Liam was crushed by the realization that he was lonely. And his time in the quiet, still forests had made him realize that the life he’d built in Seattle was far lonelier than he’d ever felt out amongst the trees.
A hand on his shoulder broke him from the thoughts. He plastered on a smile as he turned, only to meet the worried face of his mother.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Liam answered hastily.
Maggie eyed him for a long moment, but didn’t push the matter. Instead, she drew her gaze to the guitar case, propped up against the wall of the entryway.
“Is that my guitar? ”
“Yeah, I meant to bring it last weekend, but forgot it in the car,” he said, and went to grab it for her, grateful for the change in topic.
The others were still sitting on the couch, chatting among themselves and fussing over the baby. Liam took the opportunity to ask something he’d been wondering about since he’d laid hands on the guitar back at the cabin.
“Mom…” he started, but trailed off. What was he even going to ask? Why does the guitar tingle when I touch it? It sounded insane. No, he’d have to be more subtle about it. “What’s the deal with this guitar, anyway?”
Maggie smiled at him and set the case down on the coffee table. She pulled out the instrument, cradling it as gently as Rebecca cradled the baby, and stroked a loving hand down the heartwood of it’s hollow body. Liam wondered if she felt the same thing he did.
“It was a gift, from my mother,” she said simply.
Liam’s breath caught in his throat and prodded a bit more. “You never talk about her.”
Her eyes shuttered and she looked back at Liam with a pained expression. When she spoke, she kept her voice low.
“I supposed I never really knew her all that well. You know my father died, just after I’d turned eighteen. Well after he passed, my mother just kind of… drifted away. I never saw her again, after that.”
Liam eyed the guitar again. “Why do you keep it, then?”
“She made it. And it’s a beautiful instrument, don’t you think? Made from maple. She wasn’t a bad person, Liam. Grief… it has the power to ruin people.”
“Maple?” Liam asked, his eyes snapping back to the guitar. He reached out, and that same strange sensation licked at his fingers. He withdrew them, rubbing them until the feeling went away. For a moment, he hesitated, afraid speaking the words out loud would make him sound mad. But she was his mother, and if he could trust anyone with this, it would be her. “It’s a strange feeling, touching the wood. It keeps happening lately.”
Maggie stared at him, and he could see something working in her mind. Then, her gaze drifted over to where John sat with a sleeping Iris in his arms. Lynn and Rebecca both seemed not far behind, their eyes drooping with exhaustion .
“Looks like Iris is due for a nap,” Maggie announced. “We’ll put the baby down, and let the moms get a little sleep as well—John will keep an eye on her.”
Rebecca’s eyes shot open, passing a skeptical look to her mother, as if asking if John could handle it. Maggie only raised a brow at her, the gesture overly stern on her happy face.
“He can handle a crying baby. Besides, she’s fast asleep and you’re in no state to argue.” That made Rebecca bite back whatever argument she’d been preparing. Then Maggie turned back to Liam. “You know, I could use a stretch of the ol’ legs. Won’t you accompany me, Liam?”
He nodded, sensing it was a rhetorical question and there was no point in saying no.
As soon as they’d closed the front door behind them, Maggie spoke.
“There is a little more to the story, you know,” she said as they walked along the streets, quiet in the Sunday afternoon. She looped her arm around his. “And it’s about time I finally told you all of it.”