First he hit her, then he stabbed her with a small knife, but Lark didn’t die from this. She died from the cold. She was naked, and he tied her to a tree so she wouldn’t run away. He left her there uncovered, and the storm came and she died because it was too cold to live through the night. The police found her in the woods near my house. The story was in the paper. My mother took it away from me, but I found it in her desk cut out and folded under envelopes and string.
Since then I’ve had trouble sleeping. I keep the light on, but even then I’m still afraid, so my mother reads her book in the chair in my room. If I can’t close my eyes, she crawls into my bed and holds me till I sleep.
Lark wants me to see her. She needs me to see where the knife went in, because if no one knows what it was like for her, then her spirit will be trapped in that tree. I’ve read about girls like this, the ones who live in trees. Every part of them changes to wood but the heart. Their fingers and hair turn into leaves. Their arms become branches. There is not much time left.
Sometimes I hear her.
“Look,” she says, spreading her hands. The tips of her fingers are blue from the cold. Her hair glistens with ice. She starts to lift her dress, but I tell her to stop.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Oh,” she says, then turns away. It’s easy for her to come and go right now, but it won’t be for long.
She doesn’t want to scare me, but she can’t bear being trapped in that tree.