The pecan glints in Autumn’s hand, and Lil remembers everything. Sasha declaring that they would make their stand. Her own sour fear, Mom’s whisper in her ear, Maybe one day you’ll eat one…maybe one day I will…
And the taste of it, the best pecan she ever tried, crisp yet tender. A hint of honeyed delight. She hadn’t felt the sacred boundaries closing around them, but Lil knows them now. She’s felt them all along, in some small way. Every time Theon tried to step foot on Clearwater land, she’d felt it. How many times had Lil paced the fences, repairing and strengthening the heart of their territory? And how many times had Sasha unconsciously done the same, cruising in the riverboat along the outer boundaries of their little world? Driving into town to keep the lights on at the grocery, the library, the bakery?
All this time, they’d kept the candle burning in their home, enclosed inside. Preserved, sanctified, guarded.
One person could not maintain it alone. But two?
They’ve been cut off for so long, they forgot everything, even how they did it.
Sasha’s breathing is ragged and rattling. Autumn draws her head onto her lap, brushing back her hair, murmuring to her, the golden pecan still cupped in her hand. Wyn hovers at her elbow.
“What does this mean?” Autumn asks without looking at Lil. Holding their bomb, Autumn is painstakingly real. A solid person jolted into the misty two-dimensional watercolor that Lil and Sasha painted.
“It means…Theon didn’t do this to us. Sasha and I did it,” Lil answers. “It’s only been going on this long because of us.”
Autumn catches her gaze, then looks down at Sasha’s half of their bargain. “It’s not just a pecan.”
“No.” Running through her body, an electric current blares a warning. Sasha’s not awake to eat her pecan again. There is a crack in their foundation. Theon has never crossed the boundaries of the orchard, but that doesn’t mean he can’t now, not with Sasha brought to her knees, all of their facades falling away. He might be powerful enough to force it tonight. And angry enough, finally, to do it.
Lil pats Sasha down—thank goodness. The truck’s keys are caught in a fold of her sodden pocket. She wrestles them free. “I need you to stay here.”
“We need to get her back to the orchard,” Autumn cuts in. “It’s safe there, right? No one can—”
“It’s not safe,” Lil interjects. Sasha’s eyelids are pale blue under the moonlight. Lil stops. Presses a hand to the side of her sister’s neck. Reassures herself once again of her pulse, the living rush of blood under her skin before standing. “Stay here. Stay together.”
“What? Why?” Autumn’s eyes are narrow. She’s cold too, bare shoulders still covered in drops of water.
“This is my fault.” Lil turns from her. “But I’m going to fix it.” The cool night air tastes like dry leaves and smoke. The hook attached to him is buried in her stomach, wanting to pull her back to him. She ignores her heart, lying unconscious on the ground. Her truck is parked down near the docks.
“Hey,” Autumn calls, her voice turning sharp. “Wait!”
Lil walks away.
Autumn watches Lil vanish into the darkness and turns back to Sasha.
Nearby, Wyn shivers, and she takes his hand. It’s small but rough from survival, and strong, too. Stronger than a five-year-old hand should have to be.
“I don’t know what to do.” She’s drenched. She could follow Lil in the ancient tractor she and Wyn seem to have driven here. Only she won’t leave Sasha. Clearly, Lil knew this when she left. Autumn keeps holding the gory hunk of pecan. It seems like maybe Sasha needs it. The night is cold, lonely, but quiet now. She can do nothing but sit. Nothing but wait.
The town is totally dark, not a light on anywhere near them, and the sky is bright and complex above. Total silence buries them. On the ground, Sasha is restless, but doesn’t wake. Autumn glances back at the tractor, considers how to get them onto it and back to her apartment. But before she can move, she hears something very close.
An old car drives slowly over the grass toward them, headlights blinding her. The driver cuts the engine and jumps out.
Autumn squints at the silhouette, disbelieving. The last ghost in a town out of time approaches. He’s very close before she catches sight of his face. “Lou?” she breathes.
“Hi, honey,” he says, his face grim as he takes in their little huddle. “I heard the shell crack. We better get inside.”
“W-what?” she stammers. “Lou, you…” He knows. Autumn holds back a sob and lets him help her lift Sasha and carry her to the car, laying her out in the back seat. Wyn clambers in and sits by her legs, and Autumn collapses into the passenger seat.
Lou smiles, relief clearing the clouds from his face. “You found him after all. What about the other boy?”
At the mention of Neel, Wyn goes utterly still. Autumn lays her hand on the seat between them, an offer. Rather than taking it in his, he lays down, pushes his head into her palm.
Lou glances between them, with quiet, tired understanding. “Nice to meet you, kiddo,” he offers instead.
Lou twists the dial to blast the heat as he makes the short drive to his junk shop. The town is empty now. Whatever power Lil and Sasha held, practically willing it to stay fresh and loved, is gone. The place is unmistakably a relic left to turn fallow. The buildings are faded with chipping paint and broken glass in empty windowpanes. A car with flat tires is absolutely buried in leaves and detritus. Lou slowly circles the square. The road is buckled and cracked, no one to keep up the care, and a stray dead power line sags to the ground, relieved of its burdens. Her bakery is different too. The awning is torn completely free, leaving black spokes behind, and the furniture she swore she left out just days ago, bright and shining red, is broken and gone to rust.
“How long have you known?” Autumn asks finally, to break the interminable silence.
“Oh, it took me a little while,” he admits, as they pull up outside his shop. It’s the only building that seems unchanged, its sign as fresh as it ever was, its toys and trinkets and dreams all in place. “We cycled four or five times before I caught on to it.” They heave Sasha through the narrow shop, her trailing legs toppling treasures as they push through to the back room, where the trains whir in their orbits. Wyn helps, keeping one of Sasha’s arms aloft. Lou busies himself, putting one of the many teakettles on to boil and gathering scratchy army blankets and a heap of old clothes from a half-blockaded closet.
They settle Sasha on a faded yellow love seat with a cigarette burn in the arm and what looks like cat scratches mucking up the leg.
It’s only later, after Wyn is transfixed by viciously taking apart one of the model train cars, and Autumn has changed into a sweater and Razorback sweatpants, that she is strong enough to broach the subject again.
“You didn’t say anything,” she murmurs to Lou. She holds Sasha against her stomach, the blankets wrapped around them both. “All that time? How could you bear it?”
“I’ve been saying something for years! And doing my best with it.” His eyes are fierce on hers. “I stayed for those kids out in the trees, because nobody else would lift a finger for them.” He scatters crumbly biscuits on a place. “I would never had realized this town was a trap in the first place if I wasn’t like them. Like you.” He turns to gaze at her, a little shyly, and nods at Wyn. “I remember when I found you out there, swaddled in the tree boughs. Just like that old lullaby…” He clears his throat and turns away again as the kettle begins to whine. “I came from those orchards myself. Long time ago. And I gave you to your mama and daddy, made sure you and lots of others had good families like I had.” Of course. It’s the only reason he wouldn’t be pushed out or faded like everyone else; the same reason Autumn was pulled inside the husk. The trees know their children. They were born hardy, built to survive. Lou doesn’t look it, but he must be very old, she calculates, more than a hundred years. Two hundred?
“Someone should have told me,” she says. “I spent so long thinking I was wrong and not knowing why.”
“You’re right.” He passes her a mug, his expression softening. “It just wasn’t how we did things. People just never know what to say, do they?” Wyn shies away from the cookie Lou offers him, so Lou just lays it nearby. “The Clearwaters’ protections are powerful. But they’ve got short memories. That’s the trouble with most folks. You and I, our memories are long.”
“What about the rest of us?” Autumn asks. “Where are they?”
“There never have been many. Used to be even fewer. It’s always been easiest to leave, slip out into the world and become a stranger. Maybe they’ll come back. They’re out there somewhere. Like you were.”
“But you want to stay when everyone is gone?” She wraps her hands around the mug, nearly cries at the warmth of the steam. “Why?” Sasha shifts restlessly against her.
Lou rubs at his face and folds into the chair across from her. He looks older, very tired. “Those kids are the closest thing you and I have to blood,” he says simply. “That’s what matters most to me. But for a long while, it was for Russ too.”
Autumn stares at him, uncomprehending. “But Russ is dead.”
“He’s alive,” Lou interjects. “At the beginning of each cycle. For a little while longer.” He shakes his head, staring into his tea. His eyes are the color of warm bark. “I love him. And each time he goes, and we have the funeral, again and again, I swear it’s the last time. That I’ll quit it. Because it hurts so much. But…knowing I can see him again, for just that little while…I never have.”
Autumn holds Sasha a little closer. Looking at her face, the tangle of her hair, a sharp, helpless need bowls her over. Can she blame him? “Is it over now?” Tears threaten at the edges of her vision.
Lou is thoughtful, watching Wyn gnaw savagely at the edge of his train car. “I’m not sure,” he murmurs. “Their husk only cracked. But—I think that was the last time. I don’t think that Russ will be back again.” His voice is rough with tears. “Thank goodness.”
Autumn feels Sasha jerk. She looks around, her heart pounding so hard Autumn feels it in her own body. “I—” Sasha’s voice sizzles out immediately, like an awful case of laryngitis. “What happened?” Her eyes roam around the dim space, panicked. “Where’s my sister?”
The orchard is quiet except for the crickets when Lil arrives and parks in the middle of the dark road. It isn’t like there’s anyone else here to inconvenience. Her neighbors have been shadows for a long time. She hops the gate and flips on the old searchlight propped over it, letting the glow bathe the old blessed trees, their mailbox, and their big wrought iron sign: CLEARWATER ORCHARD. She unlocks it from the inside and pushes the gate open a crack.
Amid gnats and mosquitoes vying for the attention of the light bulb, Lil waits. He’ll be here. There’s nowhere else to go.
In the back of her mind, she swirls like fog over the pond and the golden pecan tree that drops blessings and curses. She feels its calm chill in her body. Lil is its guardian. This is a duty only she can do.
Theon approaches from the tracks with a limping gait. He smells like smoke but not like Marlboro or Lucky Strikes. No, this smells like burning oil, like the blackened hull of a faithful riverboat, like ash on water. He is more ragged and less human than he’s ever looked, his semblance of humanity cast aside to reveal a cold hint of other. Blood slicks from a hole where his eye used to be, soaking all the way down his shoulder. He stops at the open gate, face in a pained snarl, and grazes his knuckles along the curve of the C in CLEARWATER. She feels each bump of bone along her cheek and refuses to offer him the satisfaction of a shudder.
“You win,” she says and pushes the gate open wide. “Come on in.”