"Winter," Adam said.
It was impossible, of course, but again, so was everything that had come before it. It was, Gansey thought, like when he’d driven through the Lake District with Malory. After a while, there had been too much incredible beauty for him to process, and it had become invisible.
It was impossible that it was winter. But it was no more impossible than anything else that had happened.
They had come to a stand of naked willow trees on a gentle slope, and below them was the twist of a slow-moving, shallow creek. Malory had once told Gansey that where there were willows, there was water. Willows propagated, he said, by dropping seeds in moving water that then carried them downstream, allowing them to root on some distant shore.
"And," Blue added, "there’s water."
Gansey turned to the others. Their breath came in clouds, and they all looked badly underdressed. Even the color of their skin looked wrong: too sun-flushed for this colorless winter air. Tourists from another season. He became aware that he was shivering, but he didn’t know if it was from the newly winter cold or from anticipation.
"Okay," he said to Blue. "What did you want to say in Latin?"
Blue turned to Ronan. "Can you just say hello? That’s polite."
Ronan looked pained; polite was not his style. But he said, "Salve." To Blue, he said, "That actually means be well."
"Super job," she replied. "Ask if they’ll speak with us."
Now Ronan looked even more pained, because this made him look ridiculous, and that was even less his style, but he tilted his head back to the treetops and said, "Loquere tu nobis?"
They all stood quietly. A hiss seemed to be rising, as if a faint, winter breeze rustled the leaves in the trees. But there were no leaves left on the branches to rustle.
"Nothing," Ronan replied. "What did you expect?"
"Quiet," ordered Gansey. Because now the hissing was definitely more than a rustle. Now it had resolved into what sounded distinctly like whispered, dry voices. "Do you hear that?"
Everyone but Noah shook their heads.
"I do," said Noah, to Gansey’s relief.
Gansey said, "Ask them to say it again."
Ronan did.
The hissing rustle came again, and now, it seemed obvious that it was a voice, obvious that it had never been leaves. Plainly, Gansey heard a crackly statement in Latin. He wished, suddenly, that he’d studied harder in class as he repeated the words phonetically to Ronan.
"They say they’ve been speaking to you already, but you haven’t been listening," Ronan said. He rubbed the back of his shaved head. "Gansey, are you messing with me? Do you really hear something?"
"Do you think Gansey’s Latin is that good?" Adam replied tersely. "It was your handwriting on the rock, Ronan, that said they spoke Latin. Shut up."
The trees hissed again, and Gansey repeated them to Ronan. Noah corrected one of the verbs Gansey had misheard.
Ronan’s eyes darted to Blue. "They said they’re happy to see the psychic’s daughter."
"Me!" Blue cried.
The trees hissed a reply and Gansey repeated the words.
"I don’t know what that means," Ronan said. "They’re also happy to once more see — I don’t know what that word is. Greywaren? If it’s Latin, I don’t know it."
Ronan, whispered the trees. Ronan Lynch.
"It’s you," Gansey said with wonder, his skin creeping. "Ronan Lynch. They said your name. It’s you they’re happy to see again."
Ronan’s expression was guarded, his feelings hidden.
"Again." Blue pressed her hands to her cold-red cheeks, her eyes wide, her face holding all the awe and excitement that Gansey felt. "Amazing. The trees? Amazing."
Adam asked, "Why can only you and Noah hear them?"
In stumbling Latin — even in class, he rarely spoke it, and it was strange to try to translate his thoughts from words he could see written in his head to spoken ones — Gansey said, "Hic gaudemus. Gratias tibi … loquere — loqui pro nobis." He looked at Ronan. "How do I ask why you can’t hear them?"
"God, Gansey. If you paid attention in —" Closing his eyes, Ronan thought for a moment. "Cur non te audimus?"
Gansey didn’t need Ronan to translate the trees’ hushed answer; the Latin was simple enough.
He said aloud, "The road isn’t awake."
"The … ley line?" Blue suggested. A little wistfully, she added, "But that doesn’t explain why only you and Noah can hear it."
The trees murmured, Si expergefacere via, erimus in debitum.
"If you wake the line, they’ll be in your debt," Ronan said.
For a moment, they were all quiet, then, looking at one another. It was a lot to take in. Because it wasn’t merely that the trees were speaking to them. It was that the trees themselves were sentient beings, capable of watching their movements. Was it only the trees in this strange wood, or did every tree observe their movements? Had they always been trying to speak to them? There was no way of knowing, either, if the trees were good or bad, if they loved or hated humans, if they had principles or compassion. They were like aliens, Gansey thought. Aliens that we have treated very badly for a very long time. If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.
It was happening. All of these years, he had been looking for this.
Gansey said, "Ask them if they know where Glendower is."
Adam looked startled. Without pausing, Ronan translated.
It took a moment for the hissing voices to reply, and again, Gansey didn’t need a translation.
"No," Gansey said. Something inside him had tightened and tightened and tightened until he’d asked the question. He’d thought hearing the answer would release it, but it didn’t. Everyone else was looking at him; he wasn’t sure why. Maybe something in his face was wrong. It felt wrong. He looked away from them all and said, "It’s very cold. Valde frigida. What’s the way out? Please? Amabo te, ubi exitum?"
The trees whispered and hissed, and Gansey realized he might have been mistaken; it might have been only one voice, all along. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d ever heard it aloud, either, now that he thought about it. It was possible that it had been said directly in his head this entire time. It was a disconcerting thought, and it distracted his listening. Noah had to help him recall everything that had been said, and Ronan had to think for a very long moment before he was able to translate.
"Sorry," Ronan said. He was concentrating too hard to remember to look cool or surly. "It’s difficult. It’s — they said that we need to go back through the year. Against … the road. The line. They said if we go back along the creek and turn left at the big … sycamore? Platanus? I think sycamore. Then we’ll find something they think we want to find. Then we’ll be able to walk out of the woods and find our way back to our … to our day. I don’t know. I missed parts, but I think — I’m sorry."
"It’s okay," Gansey said. "You’re doing really well." In a low voice, he asked Adam, "Do you think we should do it? It occurs to me they might not be trusted."
Adam’s furrowed brow meant that this had occurred to him as well, but he replied, "Do we have another choice?"
"I think we should trust them," Blue said. "They knew me and Ronan. Somehow. And the rock didn’t say not to. Right?"
She had a point. Ronan’s handwriting, with its great care to prove its origin to them, had given them the key to speak to the trees, not a warning.
"Back we go," Gansey said. "Careful not to slip." Then, louder, he said, "Gratias. Reveniemus."
"What did you say?" Blue asked.
Adam replied for him. "Thanks. And that we’d be back."
It wasn’t difficult to adhere to the directions Ronan had translated. The creek was wide here, the water cold and slow between white-frosted banks. Following it took them steadily downhill, and gradually, the air around them began to warm. Sparse red leaves spotted the branches, and by the time Blue pointed out a massive sycamore, the peeling white and gray trunk too wide for her to put her arms around, they were in the sticky grips of summer. The leaves were full and green, moving and rubbing against one another in a constant murmured rustle. If there was a voice now, Gansey wasn’t certain he’d hear it.
"We missed summer before," Adam pointed out. "When we came the other way. We went straight to fall."
"Magical mosquitos," Ronan said, smacking his arm. "What a great place this is."
Following the voice’s directions, they turned left at the massive sycamore. Gansey wondered what it was that the trees thought they would want to find. He thought there was only one thing he was looking for.
Then the trees opened up into a summery clearing, and it became obvious what the voice had meant.
In the clearing, entirely out of place, was an abandoned car. A red Mustang. Newer model. At first, it appeared to be covered with mud, but a closer inspection revealed that it was, in fact, coated with layers and layers of pollen and leaf litter. Leaves had caught in drifts in the cracks of the hood and under the spoiler, gathered over the windshield wipers and bunched around the tires. A sapling grew out from under the car, wrapping around the front fender. The scene was reminiscent of old shipwrecks, ancient boats turned into coral reefs by the wiles of time.
Behind the car stretched a badly overgrown track that seemed to lead out of the woods; this must have been the way out the trees meant.
"Bling," Ronan remarked, kicking one of the tires. The Mustang had massive, expensive wheels, and now that Gansey looked more closely at the car, he saw that it was covered with aftermarket details: big rims, new spoiler, dark window tint, gaping exhaust. New money, his father would’ve said, burns in the pocket.
"Look," Adam said. He rubbed a finger over the dust of the back window. Next to a Blink-182 sticker was an Aglionby decal.
"Figures," Blue said.
Ronan tried the driver’s side door; it came open. He laughed, once, sharp. "There’s a mummified hamburger in here."
They all crowded around to see the interior, but apart from the dry, half-eaten hamburger on the passenger seat, still sitting on its wrapper, there was not much to see.
This car, too, was a riddle, like Blue’s voice on the recorder. Gansey felt as if it was directed specifically at him.
"Pop the trunk," he ordered.
The trunk had a jacket in it, and beneath that, an odd collection of sticks and springs. Frowning, Gansey withdrew the contraption, holding it by the largest rod. The pieces swung into place, several sticks hanging and twisting beneath the main one, and he understood all at once.
"It’s a dowsing rod."
He turned to Adam, wanting verification.
"Coincidence," Adam said. Of course meaning that it wasn’t.
Gansey had the peculiar sensation he had first felt in the parking lot outside Nino’s, when Adam had warned him that he thought someone else was looking for the ley line. Then he realized that Blue and Noah were no longer in sight. "Where’s Blue and Noah?"