“If you didn’t have to give half your kills to the Forest, wouldn’t your lives be easier?” he asked her, genuinely curious. It was several days since she’d come to see him in the middle of the night, and their visit had to be kept short, since Leelo’s family was now suspicious of where she’d been disappearing to. Jaren felt terrible that she’d been caught sneaking back into the house and wished they hadn’t fallen asleep, but he wouldn’t change anything else about it. That night had been the best of his entire life.

“Not really,” Leelo said. “Because the Forest provides more for us than a normal forest could.”

Jaren wasn’t sure that was true, but it was clear Leelo believed it. “And the other Wandering Forests? Why does this one stay in one place, while the others didn’t?”

“Because they didn’t have us, I suppose.”

Jaren glanced out the window toward the trees. From what he’d seen of the island, it didn’t have more game or resources than any other wood he’d been in. But he had noticed that the Forest changed in odd ways from one day to the next. A fallen tree would be on its side one day, covered with moss as though it had been that way for ages, only to be upright a day later. At first Jaren just thought he was getting himself lost, but he’d taken to leaving markers for himself, and the Forest was definitely changing.

Once, when Jaren was whittling with a little knife Leelo had given him so he could skin his own game, should he actually catch anything, he’d clumsily nicked himself attempting to make a...well, it was supposed to be a squirrel, but it was turning out more like a beaver. Blood had poured from the wound into the ground by the little stump where he sat.

Before he could staunch the bleeding with his tunic, he’d watched in horror as the earth itself began to churn, consuming the blood within seconds of it falling.

Jaren didn’t want to tell Leelo all the things he thought were wrong with her home. If he did that, he knew she’d be hurt and angry, and she would never agree to leave with him. So he was gentle, listening with genuine interest when she spoke, and never pushing back when she defended something about Endla.

He kissed the top of her head, breathing in her warm lavender scent. If she wouldn’t agree to escape with him, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He knew he had to get home, but the thought of losing her was unbearable. “When is your next day off?” he asked her. “I was thinking we should go to the boat, make sure it has been repaired.”

She sat up and looked down at him. “We?”