The Girl Beneath the Moon | ✓

Chapter Forty Five

Song: Hopeless Wanderer (by Mumford & Sons)

*

Angela didn't know whether the erratic pounding of her heart was due to the unusual amount of exertion her body had been subjected to in the past hours, or if it was due to some wholly new emotion -- one connected with the substance of Scott Hemmis. The treehouse grew nearer and nearer in her vision, and as she continued to walk, she found that her thoughts of Eric and Leena and her parents dissipated away. She was going somewhere where they could not follow; even the thoughts of them did not belong in this place.

Noah did, though. Noah was connected to Angela in a way even she did not understand, and as her feet took her inevitably closer to the tree house, she dragged the remembrance of Noah Mason along with her.

It was as she remembered it; it was as it should be. The wooden slats were new and firm, the tree itself in its prime of adulthood. This was the treehouse she had met Scott in with childish innocence and ignorance -- two things not necessarily good, but always reminisced about in a bittersweet fashion. For so long Angela had become used to the memory of the treehouse as she had last seen it: old, decrepit, and something worthy of being torn down. She had forgotten how fresh and clean it had once looked, and how very much it had been the treehouse of her childhood dreams.

Angela stood at the base of the trunk and looked up. She started to climb, and like the other night, her long limbs awkwardly wished the slats were further apart. When she hauled herself up into the room, Angela wasn't surprised at all to see Scott Hemmis, sitting against his usual wall with his legs outstretched. They seemed a lot shorter now that Angela had so much height on him. No books surrounded him, but as Angela lowered herself into her old position against the opposite wall, she finally felt something inside of her settle. Maybe it was her soul -- or maybe she simply felt twelve years old again, before the supernatural realm plagued her with uncertainty.

Scott's eyes followed her. When she had sat down, he said, "This will be the last time you're in this tree house, Angela."

"I know," she responded without thinking. There was no shock in this alternate dimension, but Angela acknowledged she would usually feel shock at her answer. What's more: Angela did know -- she knew everything. She could extend her thoughts in any direction imaginable and meet no resistance, but there would be consequences for that exploration when she was ejected from this strange spirit world.

"This is my last time here, too," Scott said. For a brief moment, Angela saw the tree house through Scott's eyes: She saw the old posters and drawings, the food tossed in the corner, and the stacks of books. Then the vision faded, and all that remained was the bare bones of a structure in a tree, without the personality of a young boy to give it heart.

"I will miss it here," Scott said, and he looked back at Angela. Even as he opened his mouth to elaborate, something almost imperceptible changed. It was like a cool breeze blew through the treehouse, except there was no such thing as wind in this strange setting. Angela suddenly knew where she was, who she was, and the unusual circumstances of what was happening. With this awareness came the loss of that omniscience. She was left confused and frightened. The difference in her attitude was so stark she wondered if her first few moments in the treehouse were real or if she had dreamt them.

The fear originated from an unknown place. She wasn't scared of Scott, even knowing that both Scott and the treehouse they sat it wasn't real. Who was to say it wasn't real in some astral place? She wasn't scared because Scott was dead either. Somehow he had ingrained himself in Angela's mind as harmless, and that impression had never changed.

Scott paled when he felt the breeze. "Come on, Angela," he said, and even though he was now younger than her and Angela tended to rank authority based on age, she followed him without question.