A World Undone

With one world ending, another begins.

short story

Artwork: Wall mural by Nean, *Four,* Mannheim, 2024

1

A world undone.

A sea wild enough to swallow me into oblivion—a sea of sky churning clouds, blackened with night, punched through with ice blue stars and lightning ripping streaks that fork the hills, rearing against the flash like cresting waves about to break.

No moon. No light.

A sea of wheat whipping to lash against my face and hands, my arms outstretched—a scrappy scarecrow warding off the elements. A wild, wild night…rain teeming, thunder cracking to split the earth shuddering beneath my bare feet.

Breathing iron soil, the new green of growing stalks, the flinty burn of air electrified by a storm.

Blood on my hands.

My world undone.

Soaked through, my clothes a pitiless defence. Cold—so cold. Bone and blood. There’s no one other than me. No one to anchor me in this thrashing night.

No harbour, no beacon.

Just endless night.

A fierce tearing of my heart. Terrified. It could all end here.

Or night would become day, bereft. No dark to blind what would be laid bare. The light tearing me asunder—again and again and again.

Her blood on my hands.

His promise to return.

My heart—theirs always.

One dead and one gone.

A wild night and a world undone.

I fell to my knees. I didn’t cry. I didn’t pray. A mere husk that could be torn away at the mercy of whatever current passed by.

2

My tale began as life does, with a birth, but not mine.

My mother’s.

And a death. Aidan’s father.

Miranda Carmine was born in the homestead with the Wildewood to the east. The very woods that generations of men in our family had acted as custodians. Guardians. At its heart was an oak tree of indeterminable age.

“Something changed that night.” Grandma Isa sat on the steps leading to the double front doors of the Carmine homestead. A two-storey construction that sat like a squat wedding cake in a sea of wheat and barley grass. Outer walls frosted white and that each year was coated with a lime-based paint, the formula handed down from the first Carmine who built it.

Her voice was rough with smoking cigarettes since she was sixteen. “A woman has to have a few vices,” she chuckled. She never elaborated how many she had. But the smell of rolled tobacco was as familiar to me as the burnt chaff in the fields come harvest.

“Perhaps,” her voice husky with smoke, “perhaps everything changed that night.”

“Mama says it’s plain superstition.” She had no time for Isa’s beliefs. “Paganism,” she’d scoffed, but quietly. She respected Isa above everyone, but to Mama, this was God’s country, a heaven and a hell combined. “You just have to choose which one you want to live in.” I wasn’t sure what to make of either Mama’s or Isa’s world view.

Isa took a drag and puffed a cloud of heather blue. “She doesn’t remember. She never lived with the time of the custodians. The Wildewood is a living shrine. People have been making pilgrimage and worshipping there for years. Ever since Arthur Carmine built this place. Before then.”

The sea of grass undulated, waves rippling with the breezes from the coast nearby. Hedged by the Razor Mountains so named as the ridge silhouetted against the sky as sharp as a blade, and a fringe of sandy coastline encompassing Khatoum Bay.

“What’s there to worship?”

Another puff that drifted to become a writhing vapour. In the fading light with the Evening Star bright in the sky, Isa’s voice and smoke twined with the distant sound of rolling waves and the sing of wind rustling the high grassy fields. For me it was peace.

“The old ways,” was all Isa offered. But what she didn’t say was the year of my mother’s birth there was no longer a custodian for the Wildewood. It ended with the death of Grandma Isa’s father a day to the year that Miranda was born. Isa was one of three girls. There were no sons.

“All that is living needs to be tended, nurtured. Defended.” As if I didn’t know that living on the farm. But the Wildewood was land belonging to no one. “You can’t own what belongs to everyone.” A typically cryptic comment from Isa when I asked why it wasn’t fenced in. The property line where the Carmine fields met the Wildewood was unguarded; anyone could breach the line and enter our territory. Strangely, no one ever did.

I grew up knowing never to enter the Wildewood alone. Before my sixteenth season, I rarely ventured into it at all. That is until Aidan’s father went missing.

3

“We’ll find him.” My words were meant to reassure, but they were not necessarily truth. And Aidan valued truth above all else, along with loyalty.

“Don’t Leila.” He pressed his own fingers to his lips to keep the words from escaping. Or a cry. His eyes were red-rimmed dry. I kept silent.

We sat in the shadow of the barn, which housed much of the farming equipment. A path led to a two-storey sandstone house where Aidan lived with his father. Tom Wolvern had been born in that home as had Aidan and his older brother, Beau. Their family had worked for the Carmines for as long as Carmines had been here.

A night and much of a day had passed since Tom disappeared. Aidan woke believing his father had gone out early into the fields, but as the day progressed, he’d seen no sign of him. Isa had only confirmed she’d seen nothing of Tom as well. The search began late afternoon. Locals from surrounding properties and the town of Inglesea had gathered to scour our farm and the surrounding area. Word flashed fire in town, with no sightings reported and the local authorities on alert. Their hands were tied until forty-eight hours for a missing person’s report to be filed, but in a town this size and with everyone knowing everyone, that didn’t stop people banding together to begin organising a search party. He was one of our own. That’s how it worked around here. The search included the Wildewood. Isa had wanted Aidan and I close to home in case Tom appeared. I didn’t like to think it was because she was protecting Aidan in case they came across Tom’s body in death.

Because that’s what was uppermost in my mind. Tom had never left the property unless going to town, hunting or fishing with friends, and he’d always let Aidan know of his whereabouts. It was the uncharacteristic absence that had my heart scudding, had Aidan’s mouth clammed shut and white with the pressure. No one who knew Tom—and many in the district did—thought of his absence as anything but bad news. As if the conclusion had already been reached.

The beach was being trawled with bloodhounds by men from the closest two properties who knew the tract of coastline well. A fishing boat owned by the Scotts was chugging close to shore, a deep-sea fishing net dragging in its wake. The knotted rope had large openings so much of the detritus could pass through. But large fish on the scale only found in open waters and the body of a man would not.

My hands were ice.

“He said we needed new hunting knives.” Aidan’s hands clenched into fists. He was sitting like me with his arms hooked around his legs. I wrapped one blood- drained hand on his forearm and squeezed. “We also needed groceries. Supplies.”

“Was he planning on going into town today?”

Aidan shook his head. “He would have said.”

We’d gone over this countless times already with Isa. Every possible speculation of what Tom might be doing, where he might have gone. There was simply no explanation for his absence.

It chilled every part of me. Knowing he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere but here, and yet inexplicably he was gone.

Aidan’s face was paper white. “I can’t think Leila. I can’t think.”

I squeezed my hand harder. The strength of my grip could cut circulation. But he didn’t care.

We were still there when dusk had settled and a cry from the Wildewood signalled a discovery. Aidan leapt to his feet and ran jackrabbit fast towards the tree line of the forest. My heart soared into my throat, but I followed.

What they found. By the very oak said to be the heart of the wood. A pool of blood. But no body. Sticky with the dirt it was sinking into. Fresh enough to cast doubt and fear because there was a lot of it. But no body and the leaf-strewn ground was damp with recent rain. Jed Scott who headed the small group into the Wildewood had to walk a distance to get any reception on his phone. It was one of the many irregularities—all electrical signals got skewed in this area. So if you got lost, it was all but impossible to call out unless you had a flare on you. I’d heard too many times over the years what kind of safety precautions were required to go walking here. Isa said never enter alone. Never.

But what would Tom have been doing here? He was just as adamant as Isa that neither Aidan nor I go into the Wildewood.

Aidan sunk to his knees. He could only stare at the dark bloody patch. Jed’s eldest son Draven squatted next to him, saying nothing. He was a bit older than Aidan at twenty, but he was probably the closest to a best friend as Aidan had other than me.

“Sheriff’s coming,” shouted Jed.

So it began. The Sheriff brought in the only forensics expert on his team who took samples to send back to the city for testing. Blood samples. The ground surrounding it was scrutinised and slowly, it was discovered how the leaves had been used to cover what looked like two sets of footprints heading in the opposite direction to the farm, and how Tom’s own footprints leading to this spot from the farm had been mostly covered as well.

The Sheriff said there was no evidence that a body had been dragged, and directed officers to scout to see where the tracks went, and for the surrounding ground area to be cleared to study further.

It was Isa who finally came to get us. Aidan hadn’t moved. The Sheriff had asked him the most rudimentary questions. He was the same age as Tom. Had a daughter Aidan’s age. They’d gone to school together. He and Isa shared a long look that spoke of too much they couldn’t say with us present.

Perhaps it was then that I began to suspect of what remained hidden despite growing up here and knowing all these people my whole life. Perhaps that’s when I truly felt scared. As the dark settled in the dense trees and we moved away towards the open fields, a sense of foreboding cloaked me even as we entered the sea of grass and open sky.

Something was being hidden and no one was saying anything about it.

4

“Stay with us tonight,” Isa said to Aidan, who had barely eaten the meal she’d prepared. But none of us felt hungry, stomachs tight with anxiety and dread.

Aidan shook his head. “I need to be home.”

Isa and I exchanged a heavy glance. What could we say?

“I’ll walk with you.” Aidan nodded as we rose to clear the table.

“I’ll clean up,” Isa shooed us away, her worry palpable as grief.

The night was so clear, almost balmy with the after-rain scent of soaked soil and ripened stalks. Aidan and I would take blankets and find a patch to lie on the ground, gazes shooting to the sky as our minds flew with the stars. And we’d murmur our dreams and thoughts, swimming in the sound of rustling wheat, crickets and the hoot of a lone owl.

Not tonight.

The silence between us, so cold and brittle. I wanted to reach for his hand, but the energy was sapped from him, I wasn’t sure he could hold on.

We stopped short, Aidan gasping softly as we saw the lights on in his house.

No one should be there, except…

Aidan ran and I followed.

“Dad!” Aidan’s shout echoed in the hall and surrounding rooms. I looked frantically, scanning the dining and lounge areas, finding no one.

“Aidan?” A voice from the kitchen, deeper than Aidan’s, but not Tom’s. A voice I hadn’t heard in years.

“Beau?” Another shock, this time at seeing what seemed a stranger walk into the lounge, taller, broader and with hair like bleached wheat, eyes as a clear as the sky.

Aidan’s body gave in, as if the pull of their shared blood erased the years of silence and absence. He closed the gap and they were hugging, hard. Beau was a head taller, and he enveloped Aidan who seemed to have shrunk as the day progressed, as if his life was being leached with each passing hour.

I took a step back, suddenly, what had always felt like home was no longer mine to share. Hearing me, Beau’s eyes lifted, seeking me out. And held.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to stay.

A flood of questions: Where have you been? Why didn’t you call? Why are you here?

All for Aidan who’d asked so many times why Beau had left so suddenly three years ago, while Tom had kept tight lipped as if to speak might open a Pandora’s box he could never shut again. Tom’s silence about Beau had only prompted me to ask Isa, “What happened?”

And Isa was almost as tight-lipped, but she said this, “Beau needed to leave. There are things he needed to deal with, away from here.”

Not much of an answer. Before I could ask for details, Isa had walked out the front door and into the fields, putting distance between us.

And here Beau was, as if the time between his leaving and now had disappeared.

I didn’t know what to think, except someone must have contacted him? But how close was Beau that he got here so fast? Or was he coming home already?

“I’ll come by tomorrow, Aidan.” I finally found the words, not knowing whether staying was right, when so much today had been wrong.

Aidan turned in Beau’s arms and nodded. Face streaked wet, eyes bloodshot and unable to speak. It was too much, and whatever the two of them had to say to each other, it was not for me to hear.

I was overwhelmingly relieved to see Beau, but I was wary of him being here. Leaving Aidan alone with him felt wrong in its own way.

“Leila?” Beau’s eyebrows hiked, as if disbelieving that the girl he’d left was not the same girl he was seeing now. I didn’t think I’d changed that much: dark brown hair and eyes; smattering of freckles across my nose and cheeks; skin that reddened easily, and a body that was always a bit thin.

I nodded. “Goodnight.”

Walking away into the dark, the unreality of the day hit so hard I sunk to my knees, fingers digging into the ground as if it could root me back into a life that felt changed forever.

5

That night I dreamed of Mama.

How she’d been before she got sick. How she and Papa would be the next generation to farm this land. How she’d carry me like a monkey on her back, walking across the freshly tilled and planted fields, her head tilted to taste the drops of rain as they fell, heavy to earth. The smile that would light her face, the joy of knowing the soil would be nourished and all that was growing beneath.

“Just as it should be,” she’d say in her lyrical way, her voice as clear as the rain.

How Papa would join us, taking his turn to carry me and how these evening walks became the marker of my days. That is until Papa was killed in a car accident that left such a wound in his absence and our hearts, that Mama did not survive much longer. As if the illness ravaging her body was a manifestation of the hollowing of her heart and spirit.

“He’s my soul,” she’d whisper placing flowers on Papa’s grave in our family’s graveyard, where generations of Carmines came to finally rest. I didn’t think of how the space beside him was to one day be where she would be laid as well. A place that never felt like peace or restfulness to me, but empty of life marked by headstones and the absence of too many people who I’d never known.

How each day after Papa was gone, Mama seemed to fade away, just a little, until one day, she too was gone.

And how I never recalled Mama ever venturing into the Wildewood.

When I woke, my cheeks wet from memories that only came in dreams, what stood out was how Aidan was always there, at my side.

And when my chest tightened, when the breath came shallow, it was at the fear of not knowing what today would bring and whether Beau’s coming home, might signal another leaving. That if he left again, would he take Aidan with him?

6

“Tom?” I asked Isa when I entered the kitchen, the scent of coffee pungent, even though it was tea I craved for breakfast.

Isa stood at the window, eyes fixed on the billowing wheat and a sky clear of clouds. “It’s how I ground myself each morning,” she’d once admitted. “Orient me to the tasks ahead.”

Isa shook her head. “Nothing new.”

I made tea, Ceylon, drinking it black and without sweeteners. There was thickly sliced bread, toasted and condiments on the table. Eggs on the counter near a skillet. Isa took her time, having waited for me. Silently she began the ritual of scrambling eggs for me, and an omelette for her.

“Beau’s back,” I said, sipping the hot liquid, warming my hands with the cup.

Her spine stiffened. I wasn’t sure she’d be happy to hear this. But, “Good. Aidan needs him.”

No comment on how long it had been, or the questions of where he’d been. Isa asked nothing as she placed a plate before me, and prepared her own meal.

Piling toast with eggs, I wondered for the hundredth time, why Beau left in the first place. No one could answer my question, but after yesterday, after seeing the look shared by the Sheriff and Isa, and the gut understanding that something wasn’t being said, I had yet another sense that maybe I’d been too young, too oblivious to the fact maybe Isa and Tom just kept the truth from us.

Which had me thinking that lies can simply be unspoken truths that reside in shared silence. All it takes is for enough people to agree to not say anything, and what is factual disappears from view.

Isa sat across the table, and with her economy of movement, focused on eating, her thoughts far from here, from me.

And for the first time, the companiable quiet that began my day felt stifling.

7

“Aidan!” I called as I approached his house. It was how we greeted each other, not bothering with the niceties of knocking on doors. He’d yell his arrival and I would do the same. As if announcing we lived in the same space, regardless of where we slept. This was our world, and all we had to do was call to each other, and no matter what we were doing, we’d come.

“Aidan!” I sung-called.

Standing outside I looked to his window on the second storey, facing towards the Carmine house.

The door swung open, but it was Beau who stepped onto the front porch.

“Leila?” Like yesterday, that quizzical way he said my name as if questioning whether it was really me.

“Yes,” I said simply. “Is Aidan home?”

Beau shook his head. “Draven came by and took him into town. Keep his mind off things.”

Things. As if all that had happened was a distraction.

“Any news?” Maybe I’d get a different answer this time.

Beau shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. His feet were bare, a simple white T-shirt hugged a body that was no longer a teen. He looked built from manual labour, not faux-muscles from a gym. His skin tanned, his wheat-blonde hair streaked from the sun. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, maybe answers to where he’d been, unsure if I asked, he’d be straight with me.

And he was staring back. As if searching for answers to explain how I’d also changed. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him, what I might have said. His friends were older back then, his interests, his life, outside of the sphere of Aidan and me. All I could think was how restless he’d been, like a runner before a sprint.

“Will he be back soon?”

Beau shrugged. “Not sure, but I’ll let him know you came by.”

And that annoyed me. Like I was a visitor and not Aidan’s closest friend, the one person who saw him every day other than his father.

I nodded, brief and dismissive, because I had an insane urge to yell that Beau was the visitor here, that his leaving disqualified this being his true home.

Turning I wanted to run, the pressure in my chest, from worry and fear and just wanting to see Aidan was making it hard to breathe.

“Leila?”

I glanced back. There was nothing relaxed about Beau right then, his arms corded and tense, his feet planted apart and his face creased, concerned.

“He won’t be long. He took his phone, though. If you want to check.”

Which I was going to do. I didn’t trust opening my mouth, whether anything would come out. Like being winded at the slightest effort. And being near Beau felt like effort. An unknown element in a world unhinged from its moorings. Too much to deal with right now. All the questions regarding Beau meant nothing with Tom gone. One of the true coordinates in Aidan’s life, and also, one of mine.

I nodded again, and walked away.

8

“I didn’t sleep.” Aidan didn’t need to say it, it was there in the grooves under his eyes and the too pale skin. In the drawn-out anxiousness of his body, every movement rigid, his eyes darting.

“I dreamed of Mama.”

“That’s rare.” And the Aidan who simply cared about everything about me overrode the fear. I didn’t want to make this about me, but any distraction for Aidan was worth it.

“More like memories.” He nodded, and I wish I could also take it back, because I didn’t want Tom to become for Aidan what Mama was now for me.

Sitting by the barn, the heat of the day warmed the corrugated siding. I’d called while Aidan was in town, only to let him know I’d stopped by. No mention of Beau.

“Draven said there’s been nothing. Those footprints led deeper into the forest. Tracking became hard with more rain.”

And washing away the evidence. I’d given up trying to make sense of it. To find logic or patterns or anything that led my mind to a conclusion.

Aidan closed his eyes, leaned back. The pulse at his throat fluttered. Not deep and steady. Not enough sleep, food, his body running on adrenaline. I wasn’t sure how long he could exist like this.

“He’s been living nearby.”

It took me a moment, my eyes fixed on the fields, the expanse of wheat for long as the eye could see. “Beau?”

Aidan nodded. “Town over. Sibley.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. Pretty much all this time he’s been close enough to walk to.”

It was a long walk, but yes. There was anger there, at the pit of my gut, like embers fanned to life. “Why? Why did he leave?” And why only go nearby? What was the purpose of leaving if you were close enough to stay?

“He said he found some things out that he argued with Dad about. He said staying was too hard.”

“That doesn’t make sense? What did he learn?”

The finest blue veins etched Aidan’s eyelids. The skin delicate, thin. They quivered, his eyeballs shifting beneath the lids. “He said it was about the Wildewood.”

The acid in my gut shot to my mouth. I could taste it. Fear. Again, that knowing that there were things we weren’t being told about. And somehow, Beau had figured it out.

“Did he tell you?” I almost didn’t ask; didn’t want to know. Because it couldn’t be good.

“He said he wanted to wait until we knew about Dad.”

Another evasion. But maybe, right now, that wasn’t unwelcome. Too much had already happened. Anything else might tip us both off the edge of the world we knew, but felt so fragile.

9

The truth came unexpectedly.

Beau found Aidan and me on the front steps of the Carmine house. We’d gravitated there as the sun moved across the sky, following the warmth like reptiles needing the sun to warm our blood, like the cold of dread had seeped deep into our bodies and wouldn’t leave.

“Is Isa home?” Beau asked and I blinked seeing him, the still unreal presence of Beau back in our lives.

As if she sensed him, Isa appeared at the front door. “Beau.”

No greeting. The tone of her voice resigned. As if Beau coming home had been expected. And I wondered: Did she know he was nearby? Did Tom?

10

When I was overwhelmed, I went to high places. Up trees, the roof of the barn, and out my bedroom window to a place on the roof that wasn’t too sloped.

Counting stars helped me sleep. Aidan and I would try, knowing it was futile. On clear night’s like now, the sky was thick with them. But I couldn’t sleep. My mind buzzing, words and phrases caught on loops. The images of Aidan, his face red with holding in the tears and anger. Beau, tense and focused. Isa drained and quiet. Competing forces, vying for the truth and for information. Because where was Tom in all of this?

Eyes shut; the air cool on my skin. The house felt cloying with pent up feeling. Beau kept pushing Isa, syphoning every drop he could of what had led to this nightmare. Blood sacrifices, but only animals she insisted. That she knew of, Beau bit back. But so much had been kept secret, that was the pact, giving the people who acted out this ritual a wide berth. Not participating, but allowing.

Covering it up. Keeping it secret. Those were my thoughts.

It got too much, Aidan shot up and bolted out the house. Beau stood, towering as he spoke, “Dad kept it quiet, just as his father and father before him, and so on. But he said he had nothing to do with it, didn’t believe in it. But for some reason, he went into the Wildewood and he didn’t come out. And I’m sure it’s his blood near that tree, even if the tests aren’t back yet. There’s a connection. And the truth of it all, it’s going to come out.”

Beau left, and yet something had been ticking over in my head. The day Tom disappeared. The night before Aidan and I had been lying outside on a blanket, staring at the sky alight with the small fires of stars. How Aidan murmured he couldn’t imagine leaving here, while I could, having dreams of distant cities that beckoned with promises of the unexpected, the strange and the new. Of a bigger world.

But it was the moon. That’s what I remembered. Half full.

“It wasn’t a full moon, Isa.” I spoke finally. Neither of us had moved after Beau left. As if the slightest movement would break us; shatter an already strained understanding of each other.

“I know. Beau’s got too much to think through as it is. Pointing it out might not matter much right now.”

I wanted to leave, to find Aidan. Seeing Isa sapped, not even reaching for a cigarette, or getting up to make tea which she always did when things got tense; leaving her didn’t seem right.

“And the pact?” I asked, not sure how much more I could take in.

“I don’t know.” Isa said. “I have no way of reaching out to these people to even ask what the significance might be. Sheriff might be able to. His family has known about this as long as we have. It might mean nothing, so long as no one intervenes.”

And then it hit. “But it might come out now. Too many people will want to know what happened to Tom.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And if more people know?”

“I don’t know, Leila. But maybe it’s time it came to an end. Beau’s leaving was a sign, I think. The old ways can’t live on if people don’t want them to. Either in secret, or in the open. Tom’s family has been here nearly as long as ours. His ancestors were in agreement once. But not anymore. It’s a different world now.”

11

I left the window open, that’s why I smelled it.

I was dreaming of the fields, newly harvested, the chaff being burned to feed the soil for the following season. Like an artist had smudged charcoal across paper, leaving a dark and blank space.

“Leila!” yelled Isa from down the hall.

I snapped awake, heart thumping. Isa flung open the door. “There’s fire. In the Wildewood.”

She was already dressed, racing down the stairs and out the front door. She was speaking on her phone, calling emergency services. I slammed the window shut and dragged on jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt. Whatever I could find. Hair scraped back into a ponytail.

Isa was running across the field towards the boundary. I ran towards Aidan’s.

“Aidan!” I yelled, breathless and desperate.

But like the day before, it wasn’t Aidan who came out, it was Beau.

“Leila? What…” He breathed deep, standing barefoot in jeans. Chest bare, the muscles moving with the inhale. Aidan said he was in construction work, and years of physical labour had shaped him into a man, not a boy anymore.

Beau ran inside, bounding up the steps as he yelled for his brother. I stood, fixed by fear and fright.

“He’s not in bed,” he said as he ran out of the house, desperation on his face, while pulling a sweater over his head, dragging socks and his boots on. “Come on!”

We ran back towards the Carmine fields, halting when we saw smoke and flames swirling in the air above the tree canopy. Isa was nowhere and I panicked, unsure whether to go back to the house or wait, years of not going anywhere near the Wildewood kept me still.

Beau was speaking into his phone. To Aidan. But he was leaving a message.

Where was he?

“Beau?” My voice quavered, unsure what to do next.

“He’s not answering.”

“He’s not in there, is he?” The horror of him being anywhere near the blaze spreading rapidly, clenched my gut to my throat.

Beau looked stricken. “He wouldn’t speak. After we left you, he said he couldn’t figure out his thoughts. It just didn’t make sense. And I get it. Then he walked off somewhere and he texted he’d be back later. I didn’t wait up for him.”

We were both trying not to breathe too deep, the smoke thickening the air. Calls from people shouting nearby, the sound of sirens in the distance. But to my senses, the fire was spreading fast.

“It rained not long ago. Shouldn’t it be helping it not spread?”

Beau shook his head. “It didn’t penetrate that deep. And there’s a lot of timber in there to burn.”

“What do we do?”

Beau was transfixed, as was I. Staring at the wall of trees and scrub that reared at the boundary line. Would the fire come this way?

Sirens sounded nearby the house. The flashing lights in the night, coming from the entrance gate to the farm.

“Go see what’s happening, Leila. I’ll go back to my place, monitor how the fire is moving from there. Keep your phone on you.” His eyes tracked my face. “Leila? If Aidan calls me or I see him, I’ll call. Immediately.”

His eyes, a magnetic blue, even in the dark.

“Okay.”

I ran back to see Isa speaking to Mick Burrell the fire chief. Trucks were pulling in, people getting out. So much movement, I felt lost, standing at the edge, having no place in what was happening.

“She’s here!” Someone yelled, and eyes turned my way.

“Thank goodness!” Isa strode over and pulled me into her arms. “I wasn’t sure where you went.”

“To Aidan’s house.” The words stuck in my mouth. Where once I would have blurted out that he was gone, something kept me quiet.

“They’re going into the woods from this side. Another team is coming in from the road and the other side of the woods.”

I nodded as Isa stepped away to talk to Mick. My phone. Beau said to get it. My brain was computing slowly, in sound bites, taking in words and phrases and commands, but not putting it all together.

Running into the house, upstairs to my room, the fear was lodged in my chest, making every breath laboured. Where was he? Aidan. I grabbed my phone scanning for texts or calls. Nothing.

Fire fighters were in and out of the house. Trucks were being moved closer to boundary line. I called Beau.

“He didn’t contact me.”

“I’ll keep trying, Leila. Looks like the fire is going south. Towards the sea.”

I was too scared to be grateful. It wasn’t coming towards the farm, but that wasn’t my worry.

“What do we do?”

Beau paused. “We wait. This needs to be put out. I’ll monitor the trajectory.”

“Aidan…”

“I know, Leila.”

What else could we say?

12

“Finally,” Isa said, slumped on the kitchen chair, having just spoken to Mick.

“It’s out?” I’d fallen asleep with my head on my arms at the table. Hours had gone by. No news from Beau about Aidan. Just a trickle of texts that the fire was being water bombed from a helicopter, and the fire fighters had penetrated into the forest, progressing towards the source.

“Yes.” The scent of her cigarettes clung to her clothes, even as the heavier smell of smoke from the blaze had permeated the house.

Isa was as exhausted as I was. Face creased and strained. Skin weathered and tan. Her tea-brown eyes glazed.

“It started at the oak tree, that’s what Mick figures.”

We stared at each other. Neither wanting to take this further, because of what had been revealed and what might now be the ramifications. Someone had to have started it. In all the years the Carmines had been here, Isa said there’d never been a fire in the Wildewood. As if it had been protected. Fires in summer were normal in these parts, but this seemed targeted, deliberate.

My phone rang. Seeing Beau’s name, I quickly walked to the back door and out to the porch. “Anything?”

“No. But the fire’s out. The woods are crawling with people. He’s not in there, Leila. No one has spotted anyone caught in there.”

Relief had my legs fold under me as I sat on the steps. “Isa said the fire started at the big oak.” We both knew the significance: where all that blood had been found.

And Beau voiced what had been uppermost in my mind. “If Aidan started it, he got out. Where he is I have no idea. He’s not answering and the location on his phone is off.”

“I know. I’ve tried.” The smoke was still thick over the forest canopy, the air hazy with it. “What do we do, Beau?”

“Keep quiet about Aidan for now. People are distracted. They’ll figure out how it was started soon enough. Whether they come asking, we’ll see.”

Too many unknowns: where Aidan was; why he’d do this; if he did light it, what would happen if he was ever connected to the fire. His anguish, rage even, I could understand. But starting a fire seemed so extreme for him. He’d never done anything so destructive. Except, Tom disappearing…I still couldn’t think of him as gone forever. This alone could tip anyone beyond what they’d ever thought they could do.

Beau seemed in tune with my thoughts. “People in pain do crazy things. But the main thing is we find him. That he’s alive.”

The rest would follow, he could have said. What happened next, who could know?

“I’ll keep trying,” I said.

“Same. And if Isa asks where he is, just say you last saw him with me.”

Technically not a lie. Yet, so far from the truth.

13

I slept dreamlessly, and woke to a world changed.

Isa was standing on the back porch, a cup of coffee warming her hands. The stench of burnt wood was everywhere. She was looking over the fields at the tree-line that marked the boundary. It still stood. But where a canopy rose beyond, the density was gone, and what was left I could only imagine was a cratering space, the ground blackened and now open to the sky.

And what Isa had spoken of, the oak as the centre of a living shrine. It was ruined. What had triggered this tragedy, it no longer existed. What had been indelibly a part of the Carmine history, it was severed.

I didn’t have the words to dredge up and interrupt Isa’s musing. I began preparing breakfast, hoping for a touchstone to normality when so much was still hanging in the balance.

I plated scrambled eggs and toast as Isa came inside. Seated at the table, we ate. Finishing, I rinsed the dishes and then filled the sink. My mind, blasted soot grey and cloudy.

“Perhaps this is for the best.” Isa spoke softly, putting the kettle on the stove, her eyes fixed again on the Wildewood.

“In what way?”

“Sometimes things need to be obliterated to begin anew.”

It sounded more ominous than hopeful. But that was my fear being triggered, because how much would we lose for that new beginning to occur?

14

Isa went into town for supplies, I went to see Beau.

I followed the sound of wood being split at the back of Aidan’s house where the wood shed stood, stockpiled even in summer months. Beau, bare chested again, swung the axe in rhythmic arcs, the muscles of his back bunching and stretching. The ease of his movements, more evidence of his days spent labouring. I sat on an old stump near the back steps. The silence in my head echoed now with the splitting wood.

“He called,” Beau said a touch breathless from the exertion.

“What?” I stood as a fire of neurons zapped to life in my brain. “Aidan?”

Beau nodded, placed another log on the stump, then swung the axe, a perfect split. “He slept over at Draven’s last night. He texted late last night. He’s there today.”

So much was being said, while barely giving details. Beau was silently papering over the gaps of Aidan’s time, as if getting it straight in his mind, what was necessary to say and what needed to be left out.

“Did he…”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Beau!” I walked to stand closer. I knew not to be near splintering wood. “What’s going on?”

Beau swung the axe but lodged it in the stump. He bent to grab his T-shirt, swiping it across his sweaty face. Then he pulled it over his head. When he looked at me, his face appeared devoid of emotion. Or, he was as tired as me.

“He wasn’t near here, Leila. Draven can attest to that. And he said nothing to me. I didn’t ask for specifics, because if he did do this, better I don’t know about it if anyone comes questioning.”

My mind fizzed with confusion. “What are you saying, exactly? That he didn’t do it?”

“Possibly. Not asking means he doesn’t have to confess or lie to me. He didn’t admit to it when it came up. I’m not going to push him on this, Leila. Honestly, I’m glad that forest got burned down. For everything it stood for, and for what happened to Dad.”

“We don’t know…”

“And maybe we never will. Unless they find his body or get evidence of any kind, Sheriff said they’ll keep looking. But unless Dad turns up alive, I think we know what probably happened.”

I could not believe Beau could ever be okay with this. Not knowing. This limbo. And what about justice? For Aidan? For him? For Tom?

Beau stood solid and tall. So much taller than I remembered. He’d hardened, and from his expression, in more ways than I could understand.

“Is he okay? Can I call him?”

“He’s staying in town for a while. He said he needs the space.” Beau was avoiding again. “Call him, Leila. If he answers, you can ask him yourself.”

The ground seemed to tilt; I was swaying. I went and sat back down on the stump. Nothing felt right. Beau was communicating, almost a silent plea, for me to keep quiet about what we both suspected. He was asking me to play along. To protect Aidan. To move forward knowing Tom was most likely dead, and yet, we’d never truly know?

I always believed the truth came out, that my desire for it was a guiding principle. Yet this felt more like existing in a grey zone, where ambiguity and near-truths were what we’d live with going forward.

For all of us.

15

Aidan didn’t come home.

He stayed with Draven, then he moved to Sibley to do construction work, just like Beau. All his dreams of college and engineering because he loved building things, for now, they were on hold.

“It’s temporary,” he said during one call. Less frequent as the days became weeks.

Beau stayed. He and Isa arranged for him to take over Tom’s work. It didn’t feel permanent. Like we were biding time while the investigation into Tom’s disappearance was still open. The blood tests finally came back; it was Tom’s.

Still, too many questions, like why did he go into the Wildewood? Did someone call him? His phone would have been with him, so there was no way to know. He’d been there, badly hurt, possibly killed, but without anything conclusive, it felt more like he’d vanished.

The fire in the Wildewood was attributed to no one. Some thought it was kids on a dare; or carelessness, but not deliberate. There was enough scrub and brush to act as an accelerant. The forestry never went in and cleared the undergrowth. There were no managed burns. Foul play, arson…perhaps. But nothing could be proven and any attempt to investigate was closed.

I never once asked Aidan. And maybe that doubt, it opened a space between us that his distance and leaving cemented. Like the burnt-out heart of the Wildewood.

“When will you come back?” I asked.

Quiet. Too much quiet when we talked now. “One day, Leila. But being there is just too hard. Even with Beau back. It’s not the same.”

I wanted to ask about me. What about me? But it sounded selfish in my mind and couldn’t reach my tongue.

School began and the classes and days melded together as distinct blocks of time. There was none of the lightness and fluidity, the playfulness and familiarity of being with Aidan, the seasonal work at the farm. My own dreams of leaving had evaporated like the smoke after days of the fire burning out.

The future was uncertain, unfixed. Life had a way of happening, even when I wasn’t noticing. Like going through the motions to survive, to find a way forwards.

But too much of what had been at the centre of my life, was gone.

16

With the end of summer came the storms.

Electric and thrilling and dangerous. As if the seasonal change triggered an almighty clash.

Often, I’d find Isa sitting on the back porch in her wing-backed cane chair, like a queen presiding, smoking with her eyes fixed towards the Wildewood. Like she was keeping watch, despite the wood no longer being what it was. I wondered if she grieved for its loss. I never asked, my own grief for Aidan weighed heavy enough, I couldn’t carry hers as well.

One day the Sheriff came and he and Isa stood out front. Only later did she mention how a number of people has been leaving Inglesea and also, Sibley. People whose families had lived here for generations.

Lying on the roof, the sudden pressure of the storms to come felt heavy in my chest. Did these people have anything to do with Tom’s disappearance? I’d asked Isa and she said anyone that might have kept to the old ways had been questioned. Very few knew who they were, but the Sheriff’s family was as old as the Carmines. He knew.

Yet, nothing.

There should be something. Something to point to what happened to Tom who meant everything to us, and to so many people in the district. Surely, he couldn’t just disappear without a trace? I turned this over so many times it was useless. I had no answers.

“Life isn’t neat, Leila,” Beau said when I took over some of Isa’s coq au vin. A dish she made rarely and in a large quantity. Delicious and rich and earthy.

Sitting on the front porch steps, I hadn’t been inside the house since Aidan left. “How do you live with it? Not knowing?”

Beau was whittling a piece of redwood. Where Aidan liked to build things, Beau was more artistic. Something I did remember, how he’d often go for long walks with a sketchpad, to draw. Tom had been so proud of his talent, framing several of Beau’s drawings and watercolours.

“Some days it feels like waiting. Others, I just get on with the work to do, make sure there’s a home to come back to.” For whom he didn’t specify.

“I miss him,” I didn’t say Aidan’s name. It kept getting stuck in my throat.

“I know. But he’s doing okay. Better there, than here. That matters, Leila. For now, that’s the best for him.”

17

It was a wild night.

Lightning ripping the sky, thunder rolling in from the sea. I could hear the waves crashing along the beach, against the rocky outcrops. Wind flattening the fields, making it appear like I could run across. The smell of salt and soil and burn. I stood waiting for the rain. Wanting it to pound and wash me clean.

Lights in the house, but no one home. Only me.

I waited for something, anything, to take away what had happened. To reel back time to before.

She was gone.

Isa was gone.

Coming home from town, I found her. Lying on the back porch, near the chair, so I wasn’t sure if she’d fallen from it. Blood from her mouth, so that I smeared it with my hands trying to find the pulse at her neck. Trying to find the life in her, when it was no longer there.

And I was holding her and rocking and praying. I never prayed, but the words came and I kept saying them because I didn’t know who could help me right then. To bring her back.

“No!” I wailed, the pressure too intense so that something had to come out of me, “No!”

I didn’t hear the running, the footsteps until Beau was there, and Draven’s older brother, Cal, who also worked on the farm. I could barely see them through my tears.

“Isa,” Beau said low and sad.

Turning to Cal he spoke, I didn’t hear.

Beau knelt beside me, carefully. I held her and rocked and he was quiet. A solid presence that kept me from flying apart completely.

The medics came, the ambulance. They gently pried my arms from Isa and I nearly fell back with her gone, but Beau held me in his arms.

She was gone. No attempt to revive her. No reassurance. She was gone.

And Beau held me and rocked me as I clung to him, crying, not knowing what else to do.

Where did the time go?

The Sheriff came, simple questions of how I’d found her. There was Cal and Draven and others who came and spoke words that I could no longer remember.

Beau sat beside me. He gripped my hand. And what I kept thinking, Aidan, Aidan, Aidan—like a heartbeat.

Where was he when I needed him?

There was just me and Beau. Shipwrecked survivors as our worlds got upended.

People came, and then left, their sorrow palpable. I felt numb. I felt raw, like every inch of skin had been scraped, and I felt everything: the air, the breathing, the tears, the hush of words spoken and lost. Isa leaving stripped me of what had cloaked me, given me a sense of being cared for, loved and held.

“I’ll be back, Leila. Promise,” Beau said, almost fiercely. He needed to shower from work, check his phone…every day actions that didn’t make sense.

I didn’t know what to do.

The door beckoned. I walked outside into the approaching night.

Breathed the air like it could fill me with the very energy I needed to keep going.

I kept walking. Into the fields, the stalks whipping against my legs. I wasn’t seeing, I just moved.

The streak of light, the slash of rain. At first, it drilled against me, then I was numb to it.

Drenched by it.

I fell to my knees.

And I screamed.

18

My world undone.

“Leila!”

A voice in the storm. It whirled around me, and I was lost in it. Like I’d given myself to it, uncaring of what became of me.

“Leila!”

I was empty. A husk. I had nothing left to give.

“Thank God. Leila,” Beau breathed heavy, his face and hair slick with rain, as drenched as I was.

He grasped my face in his hands. “Look at me! Leila, he’s coming home. Aidan’s coming home.”

Beau folded me into his body, pressing me into his warmth, my own body cold as if drained of blood.

“He’s coming home,” he said, rocking me as my arms clasped him against me with whatever strength I had left.

Needing him as much as he needed me.

“I’m not leaving,” Beau murmured against my hair. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”

We held on to each other. It seemed like forever.

A wild, wild night.

And our lives, all we had left, having to be made anew.