Orla blinked hard once, then again, willing it to be another part of the illusion. If only the king moose had come forward as her executioner, the one summoned to impale her. But there astride its muscled back sat her daughter, bow in her hand, a smile on her face.
“Eleanor Queen…”
Her daughter gripped a tuft of fur behind the moose’s head. She looked so small atop the beast, like a character from one of her favorite books who rode a polar bear. The herd appeared quite docile, unlike what Orla had heard about stampeding moose. A single moose could trample a person to death, according to a dancer friend who had grown up in Alaska. But that was in real life, and they weren’t in the real world anymore. Little girls rode giant moose—tame and friendly, like the stuffed animal Tycho had cherished.
“She wouldn’t let you go…” Snow seeped through her pants, but she couldn’t get up.
“It’s okay, Mama.”
Orla shook her head.
“They’re very gentle.”
“But they wouldn’t let you go.”
The king moose bent its knee, lowering itself regally so Eleanor Queen could slip off its back. It stayed down, transforming into a misshapen lump of ice before melting into the ground.
As Eleanor Queen approached her mother, the rest of the herd turned in unison and evaporated into the fog. Orla let out a vicious cackle of laughter. “You should have shot one of them while they still had a shape. If we can’t get out of here, we’re going to need something to eat.” But lost hikers, stranded mountain climbers, died from eating snow; it lowered their body temperature. No, snow animals, even while they looked like real ones, couldn’t feed them. This is what hunger—delirium—was doing to her. I’ve lost it.
Eleanor Queen dropped onto her knees beside her mother—her braids, her bow and quiver of arrows, her smile. Orla couldn’t help it; she flinched from her reaching hand, just for a second, convinced her daughter had become someone else.
“No, it’s good, Mama. I learned something—something so important!”
“Did you?” Orla sounded exhausted, half dead. The failure weighed on her. The spirit didn’t want Orla, even to talk with; she was out of options. And she already knew what her daughter was going to say. “She wants you.”
Eleanor Queen laughed. “We did it backward!”
Orla burst up from where she’d crumpled to the ground, manic with a new resolve. “No! Absolutely not!”
“Mama—”
“Come on, we’re going home.” She grabbed Eleanor Queen’s coat, and when the girl resisted, Orla hauled her away from the tree.
“Mama, you don’t understand!”
“No, you don’t understand!”
“She doesn’t want to hurt me, She feels connected to me—like I feel connected to Her. I understand now. And that’s why She wants us to live together—”
“Live? As what?” Orla yelled in her face and didn’t care when Eleanor Queen shrank from her. “You don’t understand what She’s asking—”
“I know more than you! She was a girl once, but now—”
“Whatever She was once, She’s not that girl anymore. Look at Her power. You can’t…if She were inside you, where would you be?”
“She won’t hurt me! And Mama—”
“She will replace you!”
Eleanor Queen glowered at her with her too-wise, too-old eyes. The starvation that had settled in her face, forming ridges of her cheekbones, made her look even older. “You’re wrong, Mama. She didn’t replace the tree. The tree’s been alive this whole time, doing fine. Maybe it’s the reason the tree lived this long—you’re still not listening.” Scorn and pity oozed from her words.
Orla grabbed her daughter’s arm and continued marching back toward the house. Violent thoughts stormed inside her, none of them directed at her daughter. Get the ax. Chop the tree down. The thing had lived long enough. She didn’t deserve another chance. “Old things die, Eleanor Queen. It’s the way things are.”
“But then we can leave. I’m trying to save you, Mama!” She shook herself free from her mother’s grip. “You and Tycho.”
Orla stopped. Gazed at her daughter with a look that blended terror with revulsion. Was it too late? Had the spirit already corrupted her daughter’s mind, made a trickster and liar of her to get what She wanted?
“Tycho’s dead, you know—”
“No, Tycho’s gone. But I think we—I—can get him back.”
“How?”
“I’m not…not completely sure yet. But it’s part of…if She makes me Her new home, then…”
As if She were trying to prove how far removed She was from human—did She really think Orla would bargain one child for another? She rested her hands on her daughter’s narrow shoulders, her anger gone. She couldn’t fault Eleanor Queen for wanting to save her brother.
“You don’t owe Her anything. You don’t owe me anything, or even Tycho. I knew…I offered Her myself. That was a fair compromise. I’m an adult, I can make that decision. What She’s asking of you is not something a nine-year-old can decide. I explained that, and She didn’t listen. She can’t be trusted. When She was a girl she practiced witchcraft, or believed in something…dangerous—that’s why this happened. She transferred Her soul into a fucking tree!” Orla took her daughter’s hand and resumed the trek home. “We’re done now—we’ll wait it out. The tree will die, or She can choose another damn tree. Or a fox, or a rabbit—it’s not our fucking problem. We shouldn’t have come here, but I’m getting you out, not the other way around.”
“I just wanted to help,” her daughter said in a small voice.
“Of course you did, because you’re a brave, smart, strong girl. Trust me, not Her. Whatever She’s become, She’s not your friend.”
Eleanor Queen gazed up at her with keen, evaluating eyes. Slightly distrustful eyes. Orla wished she could read her daughter’s mind, desperate for the thoughts she kept to herself.
They strode the rest of the way home in silence. Sometimes Orla shook her head. This could’ve been finished. The spirit was too stubborn for Her own good. Or maybe…she shuttered the thought. Didn’t want to remember the way Eleanor Queen had stood in the yard, receptive since the beginning to something the rest of them couldn’t see. Maybe it was Eleanor Queen She had wanted all along. The familiarity of a girl. Shaw might have been aware of something he didn’t want to understand. But their daughter had always been the more susceptible one. Fireworks of impossibilities, regrets, exploded in her brain. Appearing as Shaw had been the ultimate attempt to influence her. No, well, presenting Herself as Tycho would have been worse. But she wouldn’t be fooled; She couldn’t be trusted. And yet…
What special connection—what magic—did Eleanor Queen inherently possess?
Maybe that’s why everything with the move fell into place; maybe we were fulfilling some preordained destiny and my daughter belongs…
No.
Because she also remembered her daughter’s fear. That plaintive question as she’d gazed at the windowless windows: “Are we going to die?”
Eleanor Queen didn’t want this. Had never wanted it. She wanted a house on a residential street and children to play with. A normal life. She wanted to practice a musical instrument too quietly for anyone to judge her.
Waiting for a tree to die wasn’t the most proactive operation she could undertake, but keeping her daughter alive was her calling above all others. Keep her from starving. Keep her from giving away any more of herself.
Orla wished she could flee on her own, run for help. But if she left Eleanor Queen alone—or even turned her back—the girl would run into the woods and offer herself. And then the last quadrant of Orla’s heart would wither; the Moreau-Bennetts would be gone.
Shaw’s brother’s family would be home in a few days. Their inability to reach them might not cause immediate concern, but they would come. One week, two weeks. She just had to keep Eleanor Queen safe—alive—until then.