Tree of Matchsticks by Elisa Downing

Author:Elisa Downing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Window Books

In the mines, Jack forced himself awake, pinching his arm.

The memory dissolved, leaving him alone in the present. He collapsed against a rough stone wall. The hole in the workshop had led into a featureless rock passage leading off into darkness.

He was finally away from Cameron. He could stop and think—but as he unhitched his belt from the rope, another memory began to surface, eating hollows in his vision.

“Wait,” he said aloud. Adrises was listening—she had to be listening. “Just wait. Give me a minute.”

The memory receded. Jack’s legs wouldn’t hold him anymore. He slid to the ground and clutched his knees to his chest, lungs tight as iron, breaths coming in hoarse wheezes.

Cameron had betrayed him. Cameron had deceived him. Beyond finding the House of Matchsticks, Cameron had never spared him another thought.

Only now, out of the sight of his companions, could Jack let himself feel how much that hurt.

The expedition, Cameron had said, brandy on his lips in Jack’s room at the Harper and Cup. What happened to us was just gone, but it wasn’t meant to be gone.

Everything he had said was an omission or lie. Manufactured words to get close to Jack and to keep him close. Their exchanges in the grotto, in the Harper and Cup, in the mill—they had been fake. Cameron had woven a thread to make it seem like they had something in common, a thread built to snap at the smallest tug, lightning-quick.

But the link had felt real. Jack’s chest ached. Something inside him had been ripped away.

Stop. Stop it. Jack thumped his forehead with a closed fist. He retrieved Ancient Benemournian Rituals and Their Uses and picked through the warped paper. The book opened to the page he had written on as they had traveled to the mill aboard Captain Knots’ ferry. There it was, scribbled in his own hand, blotted ink in the margin:

Bring the girl into the mines. Find the House of Matchsticks. Uncover the memory.

Don’t let him distract you.

Jack lifted his head and gazed into the blackness of the tunnel. His next step was obvious. The House of Matchsticks was somewhere inside that darkness, his goal closer than he dared dream. Why was he sitting here paralyzed? Was it his memories, returning at a pace he could no longer control? Or was it the look in Cameron’s eyes?

Don’t let him distract you.

The memory he had pushed away began to surface again. Jack stood on shaky legs, blinking spots from his vision, and widened the slats in his headlamp. The light illuminated nothing but a tunnel, nothing but a lone walk into the deep.

“Nothing is nothing, Jack,” Adrises said. Her voice echoed in his mind, setting his skin alight. It was deep as splitting rock, vibrant as a hornet buzz. “There are no choices when my handprint is on your heart.”

Jack pressed a hand to his chest, where the pull shook, turning his blood to tar and his heart to stone. He took three heavy steps down the tunnel.

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