The trees aren’t gleaming tonight. They’re just wet.
The GPS drones from my phone, “In eight hundred feet, at the stump, turn left.”
I accelerate on the slick asphalt, past the enormous base of what was once an ancient black oak. Two years ago, it was the last one in the area seen shimmering with pale starlight. Now, it hulks brown and dead at the roadside.
I didn’t even need directions until I moved to town with Malcolm. But that’s part of the protective magic: the way to Starwood gradually slips from your memory the longer you stay away. Thank goodness the shield around my parents’ school still allows Maps to chart the path for me. Even though I’d left wanting nothing more to do with it.
Malcolm’s words from a year ago knock against my memory. “We’ll go back someday, little brother. Just…not yet.”
The swaying sign, its silver letters still carrying a faint shine through the downpour, greets me as my car whips past. Starwood Academy. The place where my parents taught their handpicked students how to tend and guard each tree in its life and its death.
Crackling blue, the school’s magical shield flickers around my car. Its robotic voice fizzling, the AI British guy breaks its script. “Welcome back, Darren.”
Home sweet home. Or what used to be home.
Familiar scents squeeze through the car’s air filter and roll over me: the nuttiness of acorns, the mossy-ness of wild mushrooms, the tang of pines and firs floating from their drenched needles.
It’s like the smells that permeated my father’s office a year ago, drifting from all the bark he hoarded and tested over and over. Earthiness mixed with obsession.
But nothing could bring Mom back. Nothing could bridge the fissure Dad’s attempts carved between himself and his sons.
My eyes flit to the shades of glossy green branching over the road. None of the trees I’m passing are on their last bit of life. No chance one of them will form the starwood I need today.
But Malcolm can’t afford anything else. So I have to find some. Even if it means I need to return to the place I’d last seen Mom alive—and hope with gritted teeth the healing that forsook her won’t do the same to my brother.
I grip the steering wheel harder.
Drumming raindrops fuel the clamor inside my memory, everything from three hours ago sharp behind my eyes.
Metal screeching. My sneakers pounding against the pavement. Wreckage chafing my knees—glass pricking, oil staining, all innards of Malcom’s Forester littering the intersection. My older brother’s weak grip loosening. Machines beeping. Air stirring in Malc’s ICU room. The burning of sweat and antiseptic and fear. Town blurring behind my own speeding vehicle.
I glance at my phone, half expecting a message from the hospital saying Malcom’s not going to pull through. Saying he’s already gone. Like Mom.
Gravel jostles my tires as I pull under the trees overhanging the driveway of the old Victorian house. Even through the rain and swiftly darkening evening, I can glimpse the silver paint on the door, swirling into a design of three clustered stars resting atop chopped logs.
My jaw cramps, and I stare at the school’s blurred outline through the windshield. I’m a fool for trying.
Here I go, continuing to be a fool.
I jump out and slam the car door behind me, flicking my hood over my head. Not that a cotton sweatshirt will shield me from the clouds’ tears, but it’s better than nothing. I didn’t run to the apartment and grab a warmer jacket before taking off. Malcolm didn’t have that kind of time, so neither did I.
The house looms above me. Faded olive siding bears the sheen of racing raindrops. Lace curtains hang limp in the windows, lifeless instead of fluttering like they would be if people were breathing life into this old place.
Just as I approach the first step, the eaves choose that moment to dump water on my head.
Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.
But I drove all the way here. Farther than I’ve come in a year. No point in throwing that away.
Scowling, I throw back my now-soaked hood and step onto the wraparound porch, my sneakers printing puddles onto the panels. I pull the chain to jangle the brass doorbell and fiddle with my sleeve.
Footsteps hurry inside. The door creaks, revealing a drawn, bearded face behind smudged glasses. “Darren!”
“Dad.” It comes out hoarser than I intended. His hair is thinner and grayer than the last time I faced him.
He opens the door wider. “You’re soaked.” He’s already turning his back on me again, striding toward his office and calling over his shoulder, “Your text gave me the heads-up I needed. The bag’s almost ready.”
I clench my fists and follow Dad’s tweed-clad form down the familiar narrow hallway. Classrooms yawn along the paneled walnut walls, and I brush the eye-level frames holding pressed fronds and flowers. Whirring from the ceiling fan pings off the cedar floors and hangs in the air. The echoes flatten without the addition of students’ voices. Spring break has nudged the bright-eyed guys and girls back to their families and friends for the week.
Once, even a year ago, we would’ve had a similar spring break. The four of us. Before I can look away, the plaque on the office door snags my attention as I enter. Cornelius and Angelica Young, Principals.
He still hasn’t changed it.
I park myself beside the bay window in the office, averting my eyes from the family photo resting on Dad’s desktop.
Dad is pulling on his overcoat. “I’ve just got to grab a few more beakers and boxes.” He grabs a sheathed knife and clay container and sets them in the satchel on the desk. Tension knots his shoulders as he selects miniature glass jars from the hulking chest of drawers behind his desk. In the two minutes it takes, he casts approximately ten awkward glances my way, and the weariness woven there startles me.
Guilt pokes my chest, but right now, I don’t want to be sorry. I want to be mad. I know Dad was hurt when I moved to town with Malcolm. It made sense at the time. Malcolm was attending the college there, a good forty-five minutes from the school, and both my brother and I needed some space. I couldn’t be there. Couldn’t be at my parents’ beloved academy where Mom’s life dimmed and then winked out, just like the gleam of starwood faded from our region well before her illness.
Mom studied the beauty. Dad studied the science. Both of them believed in the miracle— the fact that the bark of dying trees sometimes transmuted into a healing, silvery core. A gift of God, who brings trees to life with only His words.
But when Mom was suffering, the miracle she cared for so well hadn’t come.
I bite my cheek. “Is there a chance?”
Dad hesitates, then grabs a slicker from the wall hook and tosses it to me. “Keeps the rain off better.”
I catch it. “He needs this, Dad.”
“I know.” He taps an absent rhythm on the desk as he stares down at the satchel. “I know. There’s one tree I’ve been watching. Just one. But I can’t make it appear, Darren. Even though I want to. So badly.”
“Any way you can want it harder?”
Dad removes his glasses. “Darren.”
“You sure thought you could before.”
“I can’t—”
“You can try, science guy!”
“I did!” Dad’s bark chills my nerves.
We glare at each other. Pattering raindrops fill the frozen sound bubble, and evening shadows reach further into the office.
Dad breaks eye contact first, frustration morphing back to weariness as he digs two fingers into the crease between his eyebrows. “That’s what I was trying to do after…you and Malcolm left. Find some way to keep my children healthy and whole. It led me to some…dark places.” He drags a hand down his face. “You can’t commodify a gift.”
“Malcolm and I left to get away from your obsession. At least tell me you found something in all that time.”
Dad huffs a humorless laugh. “So you want a workaholic bent on manhandling the supernatural.”
I look away, shoving my arms into the slicker. Rain weeps down the panes. Hope makes fools of us all. I tried to avoid it. My father buried himself in it.
Rationally, I know Dad’s right. We can’t make the starwood show up by sheer willpower. If we could, Dad and Malcolm and I would have created a surplus of the glowing bark when Mom was still here. If we could, Malcolm would have walked out of that ICU room an hour ago.
Glass clinks as Dad fastens the satchel. “Car’s ready.”
I zip the slicker. “Glad something is.”
“We won’t stop looking.” Red rims Dad’s eyes, but he holds my gaze. “Or hoping.”
A few minutes later, we’re in the van, pelting down the road. I glance over at Dad, his eyes straight ahead and one wrist propped on the wheel. I tear my eyes from him and crane my neck, seeking the telltale silver gleam that’d promise salvation for Malcolm. Trees blur in the rain, the cascade of drops racing each other down my window and reflecting the glare of our headlights.
“I know it was hard for you to come back.” Dad’s voice makes me jump. I twist my neck to stare at him. He’s still looking at the road. “I’m glad you did, though.”
I slump back in my seat. “I’m expecting nothing.”
“But if there’s a chance…” I feel Dad’s gaze flicker to me, then back to the asphalt. “Thank you for trying.”
My phone digs into my leg through my pocket. I check the screen. Nothing. Still time.
Dad nods toward the creek we’re approaching. “It’s up here. Might have something.” “Maybe.”
We both know the chances of a tree gracing us with starwood after two empty years are minuscule.
Another five minutes brings us to the spruce Dad mentioned, its bark sagging and needles yellowed. I jump out of the car and sprint to it, my shoes sliding on the wet ground. I scan it, circling it. Then again. Then again.
The trunk is starkly brown.
“I’m sorry, Darren.” Dad’s face wilts, eyes dull and sunken. It’s like the tree vacuumed every lingering shred of hope from him. Malcolm, after all, is his son just as much as he’s my brother.
If there’s anything my family doesn’t need right now, it’s another loss.
Jerkily, hesitantly, Dad reaches toward me, but I step back, shrugging off his hand. I stare at the trunk, jaw working, then spin to head for the car.
But the needles grasp at my sneakers, and the night closes around me with a halting weight. I can’t keep walking. Getting into the car and driving away is too…final. It’s admitting that Malcolm is going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.
The miracle isn’t coming.
I slam to my knees, holding on to the back of my head, pressing my face into my forearms.
I’ll be alone.
It’s all happening again. But this time Malcolm won’t be at my side.
I stare through my elbows at the tangled carpet of needles, mud leaching into my jeans. There’s no one else. Except Dad.
He’s here now.
He didn’t turn his back again.
Sucking in a gulp of air, I stand, turning to face my father where he’s planted, still looking at me, hands hanging helplessly at his sides.
He’s trying. Maybe it’s my turn to try, too.
I take a step forward. “Dad, I—”
Silver flares, the blaze reflecting in his glasses, and I wheel around. Tendrils of misty light drift toward me from behind the van. The scent of heat, sharp like smoke, explodes into the evening air.
I break into a run. Dad’s cry pierces the night. Narrowly avoiding clocking my hip on the front bumper, I round the van and skid to a stop on the needles carpeting the forest floor. Threads of silver wind through the fir from crown to roots. Veins of it stretch two yards from the base and sparkle beneath my feet.
The trunk gleams as I run my fingers over it. Smooth like pearl, fragile like moss, and here.
Malcolm won’t die today.
Dad’s hand grasps my shoulder. “Praise Him who calls all the stars by name and makes the trees to clap their hands.”
A lump threatens to choke my voice. “Amen.”
This time, I don’t pull away. I reach up and grip the hand holding on to me.
Fabric rustles against wood as Dad pulls the knife and a tiny oak box from his satchel. Words flow from his lips in a steady murmur, but I don’t think he’s talking to me. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Hand trembling, he offers me the knife.
I take it by the hilt, reaching to trim a piece from this dying, miraculous tree and lay it gently in the box.
Dad’s whispered repetition of thank you joins the rain like music.
Doing this with my dad is like I’m actually home again.
Snapping the lid shut, I zip the box into my slicker’s pocket and swipe a hand over my stinging eyes. Just the light. That’s all. “We’d better go.”
“Yes.” Dad’s voice sounds a little choked, too.
Five minutes later, the trees are mere streaks outside the van. One hand over the box against my side, I speed-dial the hospital.
“He’s still hanging on.” The nurse’s sympathetic soprano dips like she’s swallowing hard. “But try to get back soon.”
“We’re on our way.” I hit the red button. The box presses against my palm. Dad reaches across the console and gives my shoulder a rough squeeze. For the second time today, I don’t pull away from it.
The starwood didn’t save Mom. But today is not yet my brother’s time.
And the starwood is calling me home again.
Cover art by Levi Matthews
Connect on Instagram @levimatthews.artist or on his website, LeviMatthewsArtist.com.
Amelie!!! This is awesome!! When I read first it, I had no idea you were the author. I really enjoyed it! When I realized you wrote it, I read it again. I love the world-building and characters. Miss you!! <3