Page 10 of Consumed
“The sun is rising,” he said, each word clipped and breathless. He raked his gaze around us, settling on his discarded clothes and axe. “I should go. The day’s nearly upon us. Someone will come looking for me if I don’t return soon.”
The day. As though our time together were nothing but a dream in the wee hours of the morning. Would I only have him while he was entranced? Never a full life. Never real.
A spark of wrath roared through my chest, and I had the sudden urge to abandon him in the grove—simply melt into the foliage. If he truly held the rarity that I fawned over, then he could wander the forest until he was part of it—until he was begging for me to save him, voice ragged and echoing through the woods.
It would be easy to forget him for a few days, I thought cruelly.
But I couldn’t do that. Not to my Eoin.
Early golden light painted the sculpted muscles of his back as he bent to gather his things. He dressed, tuckinghis tunic into his still-wet trousers. I supposed he would simply explainthataway by claiming he took a fall into the creek. Erasing me yet again.
While Eoin was still fastening his cloak around his shoulders, I picked up his axe, weighing it in my hands. Its worn iron blade glared up at me in silent threat. I angled the heavy tool a little further from my body, all too happy to pass it into Eoin’s grasp.
My smile was as passive as a doe’s as I took his free hand and led him back the way we had traveled. When the towering oaks became sparser and more sunlight penetrated the canopy, he wheeled us to a stop and took care in selecting his tree.
“What is it you’re tasked with making this time?” I asked.
“Bedframes.” Eoin circled a modest birch, its trunk not much larger than his forearm. “More mouths to house and feed every day, it seems.”
He ran his hands over the bark, tipping his head back to survey the tangle of leaves that vanished toward the heavens. My breath caught when his hands brushed over the bark—I felt the caress of his calloused palms over the small of my back. I swore I could sense the heat of his touch.
Could he see the grass at his feet stretching upward, yearning to reach him while I held my breathto keep from sighing?
Eoin turned over his shoulder, scrutinizing me with a shadowed look on his face. “You’re sure it doesn’t hurt you when I do this?”
“I feel it,” I said. “But the forest is too vast and strong for me to call it pain. You have my permission.”
Eoin nodded reverently before kneeling at the tree’s base, reciting a blessing over it. My sisters appeared in my peripheral—nearly twelve of them, their pale faces stoic. They perched in branches and peered around the sides of oaks, watching with their silent, piercing opal eyes. I was not particularly surprised to see them crowding us, drawn by his blessing and the sharp tang of iron. We always came to mourn the loss of one of our brothers.
Eoin rose to his feet, unaware of the many eyes on him as he raised his axe and swung hard. We all flinched together as the axe swung down again,again.It was seven impacts before the birch surrendered and fell. He moved with the practiced ease of someone who had done this a hundred times, and I tempered my expression in front of my sisters—if not for myself, then to not give away to Eoin how many eyes were truly upon him as he labored.
Eventually, I too let myself vanish from his sight. He chopped the wood into workable pieces, loading as much as he could carry in his arms for the first journey. He turned to say farewell, only to find I had melted into the forest—standing right before him, yet invisible to mortal eyes.
“Goodbye, Róisín,” he whispered, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
The sun was full overhead, basking in a blanket of scattered grey clouds. I followed him to the edge of the forest, guarding him from the wolves that eyed him hungrily, the stinging nettle that rose toward his heels. I was the shadow he could not see, the wind at his back.
When his boots hit cobblestone instead of packed earth, I hit resistance. The hum of energy deepened as I raised my hands toward the very edge of the forest. My ears rang with the silent warning.
Go no further.
Rocking back on my heels in the dirt, I watched Eoin until he vanished from sight, another figure in the maze of houses, taverns, and stables.
Soon, I thought.Soon he will choose me.
Soon, the forest whispered, blossoming around me with the excitement of accepting a new denizen.
4
Timemoves
differently
when
he’s not here.
5
