When her mother dozed with the last doily of Kassia’s dowry half-done on her lap, Kassia ran barefoot to where wild thyme grew, and pine trunks cried resin.

You tend to the trees with stipulated grief. The living are there to weep and you are the keeper, so you guide the angry son; his white knuckled fists around an axe, unable to forgive, unwilling to forget, from the grave of his father where a coconut tree sprouted.

I nursed you on snowmelt and gutter run-off. Those hallmarks of spring, when dead things blink awake and the hard glint of ice begins to spoil.

You know me as the first tree regrower. We’ve repaired all the damage that has been done by the Evanescent City. Tomorrow, you will go there.

Didnthappendidnthappendidnthappen did not Hiding under the bed wasn’t working as well as it used to. Cade’s bed at home had been bigger and they could get all the way back against the wall and be blanketed in darkness.