I looked at Millie one last time.
She was still looking at me with those waiting, pleading eyes.
I turned and walked through the gate and down the track and didn’t look back, and with every step the green leached out of the world around me — the colour going from the grass, from the leaves, the trees thinning and greying, the light flattening to nothing. Behind me the sounds of the yard faded and Millie’s voice faded with them. The leaves fell from the trees like softly falling snow, piling up in grey drifts.
The dead forest waited, colourless and still and mine.
I walked into it and kept walking. Behind me the stone house was silent, the windows dark and lifeless.
Something changed, I felt it and I stopped walking. It was like color and warmth had suddenly bled into the edge of my dr
