There was still bread on the kitchen table, half sliced, remaining from the night before. Sage stood with his hand on the doorframe, staring at it from the hallway. He had eaten it twice. The bread was still there. Is that how it was going to go? Just an endless loop of eternal breakfasting—Sage eating the bread, the trees eating him.
Sitting down with his back against the wall, Sage fisted his hands in his hair. He knew enough about magic to know that this was weird. He knew enough about magic to know that weird was not impossible. The guard was supposed to come from the capital and take care of these monsters. They might come tomorrow.
Tomorrow was never going to come.
"What are you doing?" the girl asked. She was there again, standing on the other side of the hall with her head tilted.
Sage took a deep breath, and then another one, trying to bring the air back under his control. It kept moving in bursts, erratic.
"Sage," the girl said. She stood closer now.
He looked up at her, trying to decide if he should console her or leave her in ignorance, when he remembered. He had never told her his name.
The girl sat down, facing him.
"Are you with them?" Sage whispered, "With the trees—are you a dryad, or something?"
She shook her head, curls bouncing with the motion.
"Do you—remember?" he asked. He had decided not to tell her if she didn't. Why should he let her be crushed by the despair that had fallen on him? The Sleubuk's house was in a grove. The forest surrounded it.
"Yes," the girl said, "I remember you."
"Then you know that we're trapped. It keeps happening over and over and—"
"I'll always remember you," she said.
Sage blinked and looked away. Something had come into her eyes just then, like the shadowy shapes of ordinary things in the night. It made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
"What do the trees want?" she whispered, each consonant sharp.
"I don't know," Sage said.
"Yes—I think you do."
Sage thought of the compost pile where they tossed scraps of old food, how they turned it in with the garden dirt in the winter. He thought of the chunk of bread, golden brown in the sunlight, like his own flesh. "They're hungry," he said at last, "They want to eat me."
"And are you eaten?"
He nodded. His head knocked against the wall.
"Try again," the girl said, rocking forward, "Think—I didn't ask if you were eaten. I asked if you are."
Sage turned his palms up, spread his fingers. She was right. After everything, here he was—whole.
"So who does the happening help? The trees want to eat, and you want to not be eaten. If time had gone on like always, which of you would have won?"
A piece of the wall burst behind him, and a thick tendril snaked out. Sage did not move. He was thinking just now.
"You were right," the girl continued, "It is a trap. But the trees are not the trapper."