Page 9 of Until the Last Leaf Falls

And Niles’s mind had likened Orren to the spirit of autumn.

“Still a fanciful notion. He’s kind. He’s observant. He loves trees and hot chocolate and pizza. And yes, in the clothes he wears you wouldn’t find him in an autumn wood, but… many people have their colours done, and nobody can argue that autumn hues don’t suit him. Not with that hair.”

It didn’t answer the question of why autumn lingered in his glade, but that… could be studied.

Niles mentally listed keywords for a search for information: the metabolism of trees, soil composition, late onset of leaf-shed… This kind of work he excelled at. Finding information, repackaging it for use by others. Maybe he could build an app for gardeners to determine the best time to plant or harvest.

He walked home in a happy daze, strategising, imagining, planning. Until he saw Orren standing in the middle of the glade, arms stretched wide and head thrown back to soak up the sunshine.

Orren was gorgeous from his broad shoulders to his long legs, his autumn-hued garb and vibrant hair glowing in the sunlight. The trees seemed to think so, too, because Niles would have sworn they all leaned towards Orren, their crowns almost touching.

Goosebumps spread over Niles’s skin. He set the book basket down and scrubbed both hands over his face, as if trying to dislodge a dream. When he raised his head again, Orren stood in the glade, smiling at him as he did every morning.

No glow, no trees that bent towards him as if asking for a benediction.

But Niles knew what he’d seen, and for once, he didn’t shy away from a confrontation. He stepped into the glade, marched right up to Orren and met his gaze.

“Are you human?” he asked.

Orren’s smile was warm, and so bright Niles had to squint. He leaned and pressed a kiss to Niles’s forehead. A kiss that felt very different from the small touches Niles had become addicted to during the last fortnight. This kiss meant something, even if Niles didn’t know what.

When he straightened and stepped back, Orren was no longer smiling and he didn’t meet Niles’s eyes. “I think you have to decide that for yourself,” he said.

Listening

Unsure how to respond, Niles escaped to the library. Orren didn’t join him. He stayed in the glade, half-hidden amidst the leaves, and when Niles went outside with a mug of hot chocolate, he’d gone and the glade seemed bereft without him.

Niles shared the feeling. For once, he found no solace sitting in his glade. When he returned to the library, the silence enclosed him like a shroud. For want of something better to do, he took up a soft cloth and dusted the rows of books. Each step raised an echo in the vaulted room, as if Orren haunted his presence and not just his thoughts.

The dusting complete, his restlessness grew. He wandered the aisles, his fingers trailing over linen spines and paper. None of them snagged his attention until—driven by a disquiet he couldn’t name—he moved through the storerooms and arched doorway into his home.

Familiarity rather than attention guided his steps while he poked and worried at the riddle that was Orren. The man’s calm, observant manner, his strange pronouncements and need for small touches, the way the very air seemed to still around him.

Was he human? The question should have been alarming, but Niles found it sparked a fierce, intellectual curiosity.

“Would it bother me if he weren’t?”

The answer, he realised with a jolt, was no. It would, in fact, make the world much more interesting.

He went over their conversations, the cryptic words replaying in his mind: “You’re in constant conversation.” And, “When you listen to the trees, you are more connected to this town’s soul than those who chatter in its streets.”

Eventually, his wandering brought him to the oldest part of the house where a massive, age-blackened oak beam spanned the room. The carpenter who’d helped him renovate had gushed over this beam every time Niles was there to listen. How it had been in exactly this place when the posting house had been built. How much it would have seen over the years. And how much of a crime it would be to move or—heaven forbid—remove it.

Not that Niles had entertained the thought. He loved the old hall, from the wonky flagstones that made up the floor to the massive stone fireplace and the beams holding up the roof. He’d only had to whitewash the walls and add furniture to make it look as it had three hundred years earlier. He hadn’t even sanded the beams; just made sure they were sound and free of woodworm.

Niles pressed his palm to the rough wood of the beam in passing—and the world dissolved.

A flood of sensations washed through him. A dizzying vertigo of shivering leaves and the feeling of cool, damp soil. The dappled warmth of a thousand suns filtered through a canopy of green. A squirrel, digging its claws into bark as it scrambled upwards. A bird building a nest in the crook of a branch, and the patient creep of ivy.

Knowledge, joy, and pain, all shared without the need for words.

He felt the bite of an axe, the sudden ending of a long, slow life. Then, the smell of sap and human sweat, the shaping and moving, and the laughter of strangers in a new-built room. Lovers whispered secrets, tears were shed in silence, travellers shared songs and stories.

A cascade of moments and emotions spilled out of the wood—and into him until he overflowed with memories.

Niles resurfaced, sitting on the flagstones with his back against the wall, face wet with tears and his mind brimming with the echo of centuries.

Orren’s words hadn’t been cryptic pronouncements, but a breathtaking truth.