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When the atmosphere around me changes, I think I must be dreaming.
This isn’t the kind of thing that happens in real life. At least, until recently.
One minute, I was sleeping peacefully in the arms of the man I love and the next I’m being jerked into awareness by the sudden feeling that something is wrong. Very wrong. It’s in the way his chest stiffens and Blaste crushes me to his body, like he’s scared I’m going to disappear. But I’m not the one who is disappearing.
He is.
His arms become less substantial around me. A wind whips up around us, blowing my hair, the grass and our clothing in all directions. It’s loud. A choir of desolate sounds. Above us, the sky begins to darken and waves appear on the lake, whitewash crashing violently onto the shoreline. I scream, attempting to cling to Blaste, but the edges of him are dissolving into gray matter. He’s scrambling to keep a hold of me, terror twisting his features, but I can’t feel his touch anymore. I can’t grab hold. There’s nothing but air, an outline of where he used to be.
“No! Shiloh!”
His anguished voice cuts through the screaming wind like a knife, echoing over the water. I’m so horrified and shell-shocked, that all I can do is stare at the indent of his body in the grass and shriek at the top of my lungs, tears pouring from my eyes.
Gone. He’s gone? He’s gone!
“Blaste?” I sob, scrambling to my feet and turning in a haphazard circle, as if I might find him standing behind me, reassuring and full of affectionate humor, but there is no one. Not even the old man. He’s gone, too. I’m completely alone under the apocalyptic sky. Even that is beginning to fade, though. The wind is dying down, the water calming. It’s unacceptable that the birds are beginning to chirp again, the sky transforming into a serene blue, when I feel as if Armageddon is happening in the center of my chest.
What happened?
How…what…
And then I remember. I recall what my mother said to me this morning when Blaste was hiding in my closet.
A time traveler’s time runs out if he comes across someone from his own time.
That old man was Jim, Blaste’s brother.
There’s no other explanation for his sudden disappearance.
Blaste has been taken back to nineteen forty-nine.
I collapse into the grass, boneless, a scream lodged in my throat. My bones shake, misery threatening to capsize my brain, my thoughts. To take hold of me and drag me into madness, but I have to think. I have to think—
The Wanting Tree.
I have to get to the tree.
There is no guarantee I’ll be able to reconnect with Blaste through its magic again, but I will try and try and try again until I’m dead. And I know that if he can be waiting for me on the other side, he will be. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind. My heart is already beginning to die without him by my side. I’m gasping for air as I stumble to my feet, my limbs weak from the agony of loss, of fear that I won’t be able to reach him. His voice still echoes in my head, his touch still warm on my skin. How can he not be with me?
I demand my body to operate correctly—and I run. I run so hard my lungs begin to ache halfway home, tears burn my temples and dampen my hair, but I don’t stop. I run harder.
It takes me twenty minutes to make it home, but it feels like forty days have passed. My legs shake as I round the corner into the driveway. There is an unfamiliar sound in the air, a buzz, but I attribute it to my heart ripping itself in half and keep going. I keep going…
And almost tumble to my knees when I enter the pasture behind the house.
My mother is standing beside the Wanting Tree.
There are three men there, too. Men I don’t know.
Two of them operate an electric saw.
They drag it back and forth against the trunk of the tree.
Denial spears me in the middle. “No!” I scream at the top of my lungs, running in the direction of my mother and the three men. It’s too late, though. The Wanting Tree is pitching sideways more, more, a little more and then it groans, toppling to the ground in a rustle of leaves. “No! Mom! What are you doing? What did you do?”
She looks almost annoyed at my arrival, flicking me an exhausted look over her shoulder. “It was so out of place, Shi. Smack dab in the middle of the field. Now that your grandmother has gone, it was time to get rid of this eyesore.”
My ability to breathe is gone. I’m ice cold.
Everything around me blinks in and out, like I’m on the verge of losing consciousness.
