The monster shook its head, but not in answer to Conor's question. It is most unusual, it said. Nothing I do seems to make you frightened of me.
"You're just a tree," Conor said, and there was no other way he could think about it. Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree. Conor could even see more berries growing from the branches at its elbows.
And you have worse things to be frightened of, said the monster, but not as a question.
Conor looked at the ground, then up at the moon, anywhere but at the monster's eyes. The nightmare feeling was rising in him, turning everything around him to darkness, making everything seem heavy and impossible, like he'd been asked to lift a mountain with his bare hands and no one would let him leave until he did.
"I thought," he said, but had to cough before he spoke again. "I saw you watching me earlier when I was fighting with my grandma and I thought..."
What did you think? the monster asked when Conor didn't finish.
"Forget it," Conor said, turning back towards the house.
You thought I might be here to help you, the monster said.
Conor stopped.
You thought I might have come to topple your enemies. Slay your dragons.
Conor still didn't look back. But he didn't go inside either.
You felt the truth of it when I said that you had called for me, that you were the reason I had come walking. Did you not?
Conor turned around. "But all you want to do is tell me stories," he said, and he couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice, because it was true. He had thought that. He'd hoped that.
The monster knelt down so its face was close to Conor's. Stories of how I topped enemies, it said. Stories of how I slew dragons.
Conor blinked back at the monster's gaze.
Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?
from A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
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