There was still bread on the kitchen table, half sliced, remaining from the night before. Sage took a piece and went searching for the butter.
The floorboards creaked as he walked over them, and he stopped to look down at them. They were lying there, flat and innocent and inexplicably unnerving. It was probably just because the house was empty. He took a deep breath and started forward again.
The butter was sitting in the icebox, enclosed in a blue glass container with a fitting lid. Grabbing it, Sage went back to the table and set it down. Using his fingers, he broke off pieces to place on the bread. It was a delicious breakfast.
Something screamed in the distance.
Sage dropped the bread. He could not see anything out the window—there was a young tree there in the courtyard, blocking the view of the forest.
A chill ran down his spine. That tree—it hadn’t been there yesterday, had it? Was there someone Fey here, making trees grow? He thought everyone had left. What if a robber had come to rob the house?
Turning back to his breakfast, he carefully peeled his bread off of the table. It had landed butter side down, so now it was all crumby, and the table was sticky. He could deal with that later. For now, he stood still and quiet, listening for evidence that someone was breaking in. There were no footsteps, no breaking windows—nothing suspicious. The birds sang outside, and the house creaked gently. Sage supposed it must always do that, but with so many people at home it would normally be impossible to hear.
He folded the bread in half to keep the buttery part safe. There were cookies in the tall corner cabinet, placed just near enough to the counter that he could probably stand there and reach them. But he had not finished his real breakfast, and he did not want to walk any closer to the window. That tree was freaking him out.
The scream came again—it was that same sort of not quite human noise that coyotes and mountain lions made sometimes. Sage could not place the noise, but he was certain that he had heard it somewhere before. Hadn't Mrs. Sleubek mentioned a sound like that? It must have come up in one of the long and boring stories she told about her childhood.
Licking the last of the butter from his fingers, Sage took a deep breath. It could be a couple of days before the Sleubeks returned. He didn't want to spend all of that time afraid. So he walked forward across the kitchen, towards the window. As he passed the edge of the table, he grabbed the chair sitting there and dragged over to the counter. Then he stepped up onto it and opened the cabinet door.
There were squirming branches inside.
Sage slammed the cabinet door, jumped backwards off the chair and ran out of the room, heart beating wildly. He came out into the hall, rounded the stairs, and opened the door under them that led into the cellar. Darting in, he slammed the door behind him. That shut out all the light, but Sage was long past being afraid of the dark. He was much more concerned with barricading himself in. There was no bar or bolt—this was not the front door after all—so he reached out to his right and grabbed. He could not see anything besides the golden outline of the door, marked by the morning light from outside, but he knew well where the herbs hung. As soon as his palm brushed against a clump of them he snatched it off of it's hook and pulled it apart, hands shaking. That left him with the rope which had held it together. It was easy enough to fit this over the door handle, string it out and tie it to a nearby herb hook. Then he turned tail and ran down the stairs.
In the corner of the cellar was a small alcove, just big enough to fit a child. Sage darted to it and threw himself in. His pillow and blanket were there, still warm. That's right, he had been sleeping here not so long ago, too tired to hear that everyone was leaving. Why did it feel longer—what else had he done between walking upstairs and grabbing a piece of bread?
Sage decided that he did not want to think about it. He squirmed under the blanket, throwing it over his head like a shield. If he huddled here with no piece of his body showing, then the monsters would not be able to touch him. That was what everyone said about nightmares, and this could not be anything else. Yes, this had been a dream—he remembered the rest of it now. He had woken up twice. That was not possible, not unless he was still asleep. Soon the real morning had come, and maybe he would find that the Sleubeks had not left him alone.
The blanket moved.
Sage jumped out of bed, legs catching on the blanket. His feet did not hit the ground right and he stumbled. It was too dark to see clearly, but he felt his palms catch on the earthen floor. Something wriggled there, bulging under the surface. He pushed up from the ground, ran to where he thought the steps were. Instead he hit a wall at full speed and fell back down. Scrambling to get his feet back under him, he kicked a small protrusion. It was too flat to be a tree. He reached out to grab it and his hand closed over the right angle of a stair.
There above him, outlined in gold, was the door.
Darting forward, Sage crawled up three stairs before his hands slipped. He couldn't get enough grip to keep moving—there was something wrapped around his leg, pulling him back. Frantically, he clawed at the wall next to him. One of his hands found a hold on one of the wooden beams that reinforced the cellar. The root wrapped farther around his leg, yanking harder, but Sage twisted with the motion and caught his other hand in the gap. There was a big gap here—some dirt beside the beam was missing. And there was more—he could feel it falling against his knuckles, slipping off of some place above. That was when Sage understood. The movement of the floor, of his bed cubby, the crumbling of the walls that had been hard packed, it all led to the same thought. Trees grew down as well as up.
There was a part of him that was separate, like a third person standing and watching him gasp with fear. He could think clearly in that part of his brain, sit and puzzle out that this situation was in fact quite bad. The tree would kill him like last time—there would be nowhere to run for next time—and it did not quite make sense for him to be thinking of the future when he did not expect to survive. Was he dreaming? Would he keep on dreaming the same moment, dying and dying until someone came to wake him up?
Weakened by the ever growing frenzy of the roots, the cellar walls caved in and crushed him.