Chapter 20 : Tree
"May I speak with you a moment?" Auntie Whispers asked the Woodsman before leading him outside, leaving the girls around the table inside her house.
"I wanted to ask her something"… Beatrice muttered.
After noticing the curious looks from the other two, she added : "I mean, she knows stuff, right?"
"It's about the other world", Clover guessed.
"I was… like a ghost there. And I found a grave with my family's names on it. I think we just might… be all long dead."
"Then how come people can die in the Unknown?" the Woodsman's daughter asked. "I mean, if everyone's already dead…"
"…You're really calm about it", Beatrice observed.
"We all know something's not right about this world and how we all ended up here. If death is what brought us here, it would explain a few things, I guess."
"Auntie Whispers told me about all this", Lorna spoke.
The other two turned to her, eager to hear an explanation for everything.
"Souls from the other world can enter the Unknown when they're close to dying. When they die in the Unknown, they also die in their world. But she wasn't sure whether the reverse was true."
"You mean I'm dead in the world we're from, but maybe not here for some reason", said the girl in blue.
"I'll take this explanation", Clover decided. "The idea that we can die twice is still weird, but then again, this whole world is weird."
"That's really the only explanation we have?" Beatrice asked Lorna.
The latter nodded.
The Woodsman's daughter stood up and went to the window to check what her father and Auntie Whispers were doing. The other girls soon joined her.
"I wonder how different things would have been had we known back then…" she thought aloud.
"…Speaking of death, we haven't checked Aileen's grave in a while", Beatrice remembered. "With all these spirit chasing and travelling to other worlds and…"
"We'll visit her tomorrow", Clover decided.
Surely enough, the following day Beatrice and Clover (Lorna hadn't been able to accompany them) went back to where they had buried Aileen's body.
Most of the turtles seemed to be gone, and an Edelwood tree had grown on the unmarked forest grave. It was about as tall Clover was.
They stared at it in silence for what felt like an eternity.
"…These things grow fast", Beatrice whispered, finally breaking the silence.
The other girl slowly walked to the Edelwood and lightly touched the bark with her fingertips.
"I'm sorry Aileen…" she said, looking into the hollow eyes in the tree trunk.
"We had no choice", her girlfriend reminded her.
Clover nodded slightly.
"She already was an empty shell of her former self before… before becoming a hollow tree", she thought aloud. "Before we blew out the lantern."
The redhead said nothing ; however she walked to the other girl and put her hand on her shoulder.
"We should check the lantern now", Clover said.
They both said goodbye to Aileen before walking away and towards the place where they had buried the Dark Lantern. It felt strange to see the place with so few black turtles now. Sure, some were still here, but most were gone.
Neither teenager was sure whether this was a good or bad omen.
And when they reached the place, all they found was a hole someone had dug without bothering to fill up again. And no more turtles.
Clover crouched down next to the hole to examine it more closely.
"What happened?" asked Beatrice. "The only other people who knew it was here are Lorna and Whispers and they were busy with the evil spirit problem too!"
"And they'd know better than to touch it. Someone else must have noticed something and dug up the lantern. Let's hope they don't light it up…"