Only Maura, Calla and Gwenllian remained.
It felt like the end of everything.
Blue asked Adam, “Where’s Ronan?”
Adam led Blue and Gansey out of Fox Way into the chilly day, moving carefully to avoid unseating Chainsaw, who perched on his shoulder with her head hung low. Ronan’s car was parked on the kerb a few houses away.
Ronan sat motionless behind the wheel of the BMW, eyes fixed on some point down the road behind them. A trick of the light played over the passenger seat – no, it was no trick. Noah sat there, barely present, also motionless. He was already slouching, but when he caught a look at Blue’s stitches, he slouched down even further.
Blue and Gansey walked to the driver’s side and waited. Ronan did not roll down the window or look at him, so Gansey tried the door, found it unlocked, opened it.
“Ronan,” he said. The gentle way he said it nearly made Blue cry.
Ronan did not turn his head. His feet rested on the pedals; his hands rested on the bottom of the steering wheel. His face was quite composed.
How miserable it was to imagine that he was the last Lynch left here.
Beside Blue, Adam shuddered violently. Blue looped her arm around him. It was terrible to imagine that while Gansey and she had been having lunch, Ronan and Adam had been wandering through a hellscape together. Gansey’s gallant magicians, both felled by horror.
Adam shook again.
“Ronan,” Gansey said again.
In a very low voice, Ronan replied, “I’m waiting for you to tell me what to do, Gansey. Tell me where to go.”
“We can’t undo this,” Gansey said. “I can’t undo it.”
This did not make a dent in Ronan’s expression. It was terrible to see him without any fire or acid in his eyes.
“Come inside,” Blue said.
Ronan didn’t acknowledge this. “I know I can’t undo it. I’m not stupid. I want to kill it.”
A car groaned by them, giving the three of them a wide berth where they stood by Ronan’s open door. The neighbourhood felt close and present and watching. Inside the car, Noah leaned forward to make eye contact with them. His face was miserable; he touched his own eyebrow where Blue’s was scratched.
It wasn’t your fault, Blue thought at him. I’m not upset with you. Please stop hiding from me.
“I’m not going to let it get to Matthew,” Ronan said. He took a breath through his mouth, released it through his nostrils. Slow and intentional. Everything was slow and intentional, flattened into a state of tenuous control. “I could feel it in the dream. I could feel what it wanted. It’s unmaking everything I’ve dreamt. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to lose anyone else. You know how to kill it.”
Gansey said, “I don’t know how to find Glendower.”
“You do, Gansey,” Ronan replied, voice uneven for the first time. “I know you do. And when you’re ready to get him, I’ll be sitting right here, waiting to go where you tell me.”
Oh, Ronan.
Ronan’s eyes were still trained on the road ahead of them. A tear ran down his nose and clung to his chin, but he didn’t so much as blink. When Gansey said nothing else, Ronan reached for the door handle without looking, with the thoughtless stretch of familiarity. He tugged the door free of Gansey’s hand. It closed with less of a bang than Blue had thought Ronan was capable of.
They stood there outside their friend’s car, none of them speaking or moving. The breeze shuffled dried leaves down the street in the direction of Ronan’s line of sight. Somewhere out there was a monster eating his heart. Blue couldn’t think too hard upon the trees of Cabeswater under attack, or she became too restless to even stand.
She said, “Is that the language puzzle box in the backseat? I’m going to need it. I’m going to go talk to Artemus.”
“Isn’t he in a tree?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” Blue said. “But we’ve been talking to trees for a while.”
Only a few minutes later, she picked her way out across the exposed roots of the beech tree to its trunk. Gansey and Adam had joined her, but had been given strict orders to remain on the patio outside the back door and to come no closer. This was going to be about her, her father, and her tree.
Hopefully.
She could not count how many times she had sat beneath this beech tree. Where others had a favourite sweater or favourite song, a favourite chair or a favourite food, Blue had always had the beech tree in the backyard. It wasn’t just this tree, of course – she loved all trees – but this tree had been a constant her entire life. She knew the dips in its bark and how much it grew each year and even the particular smell of its leaves when they first began to bud in the spring. She knew it as well as she knew anyone else in 300 Fox Way.
Now she sat cross-legged among its torn-up roots with the puzzle box resting on her calves and a notebook resting on top of it. The jostled ground was damp and cold against her thighs; probably if she was being really practical, she would have brought something to sit on.
Or perhaps it was better to feel the same ground the tree felt.
“Artemus,” she said, “can you hear me? It’s Blue. Your daughter.” Right after she said this, she thought maybe it had been a mistake. Maybe he would rather not be reminded of that fact. She corrected, “Maura’s daughter. I’m sorry in advance for my pronunciation, but they don’t really offer books for this.”
She had first begun to have the idea to use this puzzle box of Ronan’s earlier that day while talking to Henry. He had explained to her how the bee translated his thoughts more purely than words did, how the bee was more essentially Henry than anything that actually came out of his mouth. It got her thinking about how the trees of Cabeswater had always struggled to communicate with the humans, first in Latin, then in English, and how they had another language that they seemed to speak with each other – the dream language that was featured on this translation box of Ronan’s. Artemus didn’t seem remotely able to express himself. Maybe this would help. At least it might look like Blue was trying to make an effort.