The Burning Tree

one

day you

grasp my hand

as if we will leap out

beyond all these clouds

and branching stars and

meander our slow way

amid the many

limbed

sky

—Christine Switzer

1

It was almost a perfect afternoon. Even in Oakbend Woods, the sun struggled through half-bare branches, lighting up Drew’s face when he turned to look at me. We tramped through thousands of brittle leaves, bound for the flat stones. For once I’d remembered my scarf, the red one with soft tassels, the one that made me feel like a picture of autumn from somewhere else. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine the scorched smell in the air was from hundreds of chimneys all going at once, not drifting from the center of the woods.

Hey, Ellie, look, Drew said, stepping off the path and stooping under a knobbly tree. Baby pine. You sketched these yet? He rubbed a few needles between his fingers and handed them over, his palm brushing mine. Their bruised tang cut through the ash, and I breathed it in, reaching in my backpack for my notebook, loving the new branches with their hundreds of soft green spikes.

Looks like you’ve got this patch down, Drew said, bending to look over my shoulder at the page filled with trunks and ivy, spotted mushrooms and pines. We’ll find a new spot tomorrow. But there weren’t many places left in these woods I hadn’t sketched. Except, of course, the center. As soon as I worked up the courage, that’s where I’d go, though it would have to be alone. Even Drew would try to stop me from heading there.

His eyes were on me when I closed the notebook, and there was something in his gaze that set my heart hammering, though he didn’t say another word. I slipped the needles into my pocket, and we ducked under the tree to the flat stones on the other side, two of them, like they’d been set there just for us. Like we were the only people left in the world and there was nothing outside this place. Drew leaned back against one of them, muscles taut, his sky-blue eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. All around us, the trees creaked a protest at being interrupted in whatever trees did when they were alone.

Come back, I said, from your million miles away.

He smiled his slow grin, and it melted me. I mean, I almost slid straight to the ground. Guess I was somewhere else, he said. Sorry.

Take me there?

He shrugged, picking at the sleeve of his navy pullover.

Come on, Drew. That’s the pact.

Okay. All right. He leaned forward, put his hands on his knees, and took a breath. It’s just—I’m not sure how to ask this.

My heart stopped. Even the woods held their breath.

So, I was thinking—maybe we could bring someone else in here. You know, so they could see what it’s really like.

I jerked upright, the moment shattering. You know we can’t.

He sighed. I’m not talking the whole town—just one person.

I stared at him, dread twisting my stomach. Who?

Look, I know how things are for you sometimes. He didn’t meet my gaze. I thought—it might make it easier if—if you got to know her better. And if she got to know you.

The woods pressed in until I could hardly breathe through the stink of ash. Drew had seemed off the last few weeks, distracted, but so was everyone else with the tension rising in our town. I’d never imagined this. Not this. You mean . . . Charlotte?

He looked up, then nodded.

"You’re kidding, right? Charlotte Levy?"

His hands tightened on his knees. Yeah. But it doesn’t have to be here. We could go—I don’t know—wherever you want.

Charlotte was the last person I wanted to see in these woods or anywhere else, and he knew it. She’d turned on me in kindergarten and kept me out of every circle ever since, all the way to Bishop’s Gap High. The girl looked like she didn’t have a thought in her head except glossy hair and strappy shoes, but underneath, she was a snake. All week she’d been watching me with triumph under the usual disgust, and now I knew why. She’d taken Drew, just because she could. And he’d fallen for her, that was clear. Not me, her.

Yeah, well, I already know her as well as I want to, I said, trying not to give myself away. She’s best in small doses.

He flinched. Don’t do this.

I’m not the one who started it. My voice came out too high, on the verge of tears, and then anger swallowed everything else up, turning the sunlight red. You realize, right, you have to choose? I’m Caster and she’s Levy. You know that.

He stood, paced briefly in front of the rocks. That’s history. Ancient. Done. Like his words could stop the feud. Then he paused, turned to me. You have to let it go. Ellie, you can’t keep pushing people away.

I jumped up to face him. It’s not over, and it’s not done. Not what the Levys did to us. Or what they still do. And the marks that come on people’s doors? How do you explain that?

He took my arm like he could fix everything just by being there. But you and Charlotte—you’re just two people. Can’t you see that?

Drew was a Finch, which meant he’d never get a mark on his door, never have to march up to the Burning Tree in the middle of the woods. Finches could take any job they wanted, rise to judge or mayor, even. The only thing Casters had going for them in Bishop’s Gap was the right to a Caster sheriff every other term. Grandad had won that for us in the last Unsettling. There’d been a truce since then, but that still didn’t mean Drew could have us both.

When I shook my head, he laid his hand on mine, just for a second. He’d never done that before, and my heart turned over at his touch.

I hope you’ll change your mind, he said. Because . . . I can’t change mine.

I ran from the woods in a blur of tears, crossed the fields without seeing them. Once home, I stashed my sneakers under the porch, my wandering shoes that would give away where I’d been. Then I hurried through the kitchen, where Dad’s oranges stood fresh and unspoiled in their patent-pending container, six weeks and still going strong, like the world hadn’t just turned sick. Mom was at the stove, stirring her first-day-of-cold-weather pumpkin soup in the silver pot. Good day, Ellie?

Sure.

I ran up the stairs before she could ask anything else, ripped off the scarf, stuffed it in the trash can, and spent the afternoon working through quadratic equations to keep from thinking about how Drew had just picked Charlotte over me.

Charlotte. Levy.

I kept tapping all the wrong numbers into the calculator while the walls closed in, but there was nowhere else to go. Not the abandoned Esso station where the other Casters massed before they headed out for dirt biking and messing around on go-carts. Certainly not the bougie malt shop the Levys haunted. Drew was probably there now too—with Charlotte. And I didn’t belong anywhere but in the woods with him.

The calculator flashed Error for the thousandth time.

At supper in the yellow dining room where Mom’s oil paintings lined the walls—sun-drenched visions of fields and bright flowers in a world without woods, without any trees at all—I couldn’t eat a bite while my little sister Jean rattled on about some fort she was building with her friends.

Dad tensed. Which friends? Before Jean could answer, he looked to Mom. Casters? When she nodded, his shoulders relaxed.

Jean looked from face to face. What’s going on?

For a second, the table went dead quiet. For my sister, the fairy-tale veneer hadn’t yet rubbed off Bishop’s Gap. She didn’t see it for what it was—a place that should only exist in books, its own little pocket of insanity in the twenty-first century. Insanity with no cell reception.

Then Dad skewered a piece of roast beef. Nothing, baby. We just have to be a little careful right now, that’s all.

Mom put down her spoon. What’s happened, Jamie?

He smiled, but the tension hadn’t left his eyes. Oh, nothing.

His unspoken yet hung in the air. We all knew the town was heating up, just like it always did when the mark came on someone’s door. Two months ago, the mark appeared on a Levy house. Just a week later, it hit a Caster door. Now Levy deputies were pulling Casters over left and right, and Casters wouldn’t buy from Levy stores. If nothing changed, we were heading straight for another Unsettling. And so, feuding hung in the back of everyone’s mind, though there hadn’t been a feud death here for a hundred years.

They’ll be looking to you, Mom said, and Dad answered like he always did.

Let’s hope it won’t come to that.

Mom picked up her spoon again, stirring her bowl of soup like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. We’ll weather it. Always do.

So, anyway, Jean went on, we’re going to paint the fort pink.

Good for you, Mom said. Then she sliced apple cake and everyone went back to dinner as usual, except for me. I couldn’t choke down a single bite. If the town blew up, Drew would be standing with the Levys now. With Charlotte.

I pushed my chair back, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else.

Mom glanced at me. Ellie, I haven’t seen your sketches lately.

My sketches were leaves and vines and secrets. I kept my head down so she couldn’t read my expression. Oh, I’ve been busy, you know. Homework and . . . my voice trailed off. If they knew I’d been going into the woods, sketching those woods, I’d be grounded for eternity.

Mom’s gaze stayed on me a few seconds too long. When I finally looked up, worry flickered in her usually calm eyes.

After dinner, Dad snagged me in the hall. Hey, you okay there, Els?

I nodded.

Want to help me open up those oranges, see what we got?

No, thanks.

He wavered like always when he wasn’t sure what to say. Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me. And, hey, if you need ‘em, I’m all ears.

But he wouldn’t understand. Not about Drew or Charlotte, and certainly not about Oakbend Woods. We never talked about the woods. My parents just pretended it wasn’t there, like silence could make it disappear.

And upstairs, there was nowhere to hide. Jean was in our room, scribbling in her journal, the one with poetry and scratch-and-sniff stickers. Her limericks always smelled like pizza.

She looked up, eyes bright with inspiration. What rhymes with muffin, Ellie?

Shut up, Jean.

Come on. You always know.

I just don’t want to do this right now, okay?

Her eyes clouded. What’s wrong with you?

I shot her a look. You know, it doesn’t matter anyway. No one wants to read what you write. You really don’t matter that much, Jean.

As soon as I said the words, I ached to snatch them back. I don’t even know why I said them, except I was losing Drew and Jean would never lose anyone. She danced through life like it was one of her poems. Now she flopped down on her bed as if I’d snatched the floor out from under her, pulling her unicorn bedspread over her head, which meant she wouldn’t listen to another word. She tried to hide that she was crying herself to sleep, but her shaky eight-year-old sobs gave it away.

In the morning, the air outside hung thicker than I’d ever seen it, so ashy I couldn’t even see our yard through the window. Something must have happened in the woods. I pushed away the stab of waking up to a world without Drew, slipped into the fraying pants I refused to outgrow, and tiptoed past Jean, who was still lying face down on her pillow. For a second, I considered waking her to apologize. But then she’d come after me, her hair a mess of tangles, clutching her ratty velvet squirrel. Can I come, Ellie? she’d say. Can’t I come? And keep it up till she woke the house, which meant I wouldn’t be able to get to the woods. It was forbidden to enter them except for the ceremony, let alone go all the way to the center. But Drew wouldn’t keep me from the heart of the woods anymore, or my own fear, either. Nothing would.

I snuck outside, gasping for breath through the smoke, grabbed my red sneakers and my notebook from under the side porch and took off for the woods. Something was making the air worse this morning, so this might be my best shot at figuring out what the woods were hiding. For months, they’d been changing. I’d sketched the weirdness in my notebook when I was alone, patches of plants growing too large, swelling, sick. There had to be a reason, a connection to the Burning Tree at the center. I’d never shown those places to anyone, not even Drew, and I’d never mustered up the courage to go straight to the Tree. It haunted us, both Caster and Levy, kept our town stuck in the past, in the curse, while the rest of the world rocketed on.

But today, since nothing mattered anymore, the Burning Tree was exactly where I’d go. I ran down my worn path in the woods, refusing to look at the flat stones where Drew and I had been just yesterday. All this time I’d thought he saw through Charlotte. He’d certainly seen what she’d done to me. One day she and I were friends, sharing a kindergarten cubby, and the next she was shouting in the playground that I was a dirty Caster, that anyone who wanted to play with her couldn’t talk with me or sit by me or get close enough to breathe my air. Kids stopped swinging to stare, or cackled from the jungle gym, and I ran into the woods so no one would see me cry. That was the first time I’d come in here. The trees wrapped their arms around me and never told my secret. That afternoon Drew found me, walked me home, and made me laugh until almost all the sting went out of dirty Caster. Almost.

People talked to me now—other Casters mostly, and some of the Finches who weren’t in Charlotte’s orbit—but I couldn’t get myself to trust them, not after they’d turned on me so quickly for so long. And besides, until yesterday, I always had Drew.

Well, if he wanted Charlotte Levy, he could have her. I was good at alone.

When the path ended, I picked my way through fallen limbs and undergrowth to the clearing in the center where the Burning Tree stood, old and bent and scarred. Behind it, the Oakbend River raced by. Here it was really more of a creek, but it ran like it couldn’t wait to get past, and no wonder. This ash tree was where it all started, the trouble between Levy and Caster, the curse the Levys had brought down on both our families.

I’d only been here for the ceremony, never by myself, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe, like the Tree had closed its ancient branches around my throat. Its leaves rustled in a wind I couldn’t feel, its branches flaming reddish in the smoky dawn light, and I was tempted to run when I saw the ivy. Just off the path, bloated leaves wound around a rotting stump. This was why I’d come, and I made myself stay, sketch everything I saw.

I forded the river on a rickety branch, and by the time I’d worked my way around the clearing, I’d sketched a pattern. The odd growth radiated out from the Burning Tree through the woods like spokes in a wheel.

Or an ancient eye, staring straight through me.

I took off for home without looking back, my lungs aching in the ashy air. I’d figure this out somewhere the Burning Tree wasn’t looking over my shoulder. I only slowed down when I reached the fields behind our house. The kitchen curtains were open, so someone was awake, getting the Saturday pancakes started. I’d been gone much too long, and I was about to slip off my shoes, trying to think up an explanation for what I was doing outside in my socks at this hour of the morning, when I saw our door. I’d been in such a hurry when I left, I hadn’t checked it.

A chill crept up through my legs and wormed its way right into my heart. Because there, in the bottom corner, a scorch in the shape of a crescent moon was seared deep into the wood. The shape we saw in our nightmares. The mark. On our door.

On the other side of it, my family were probably all gathered around the kitchen counter, Mom spooning pancake elephants with fantastical trunks onto the griddle for Jean while Dad boiled water for his banged-up French press, an old tin contraption that produced sludge only he could drink. But the coffee smell would shut out everything else, wrap them up in an island of being okay.

I wanted one more glimpse of them like that, before they knew about the mark. But when I pulled the door open, I was already too late.

2

Inside, our house smelled like the place had been burning for days, though—except for the mark on the other side of the door—there was no sign of fire. Just plates laid out on the oak table for breakfast, a pool of butter cooling on the griddle, and a whisk trailing a Morse