by Shade Owens
When I didn’t say anything, she let out a forced laugh. “What? Did you think it would be simple? Do you honestly think you’ll show up at the Cove before Zsasz, warn everyone, and save them all? For all we know, Zsasz is already there. We have no idea what happened. Or, maybe she never found the place. Either way, we need to be prepared to fight, and to do that, you need us.”
I wanted to tell her to shut up, but I couldn’t. She was right.
“Who’s us?” I asked reluctantly.
“The gang, Brone: Me, Coin, Johnson, Arenas, Quinn, and whoever else you know for sure is on our side. Probably Sumi, too.”
“That’s exactly it. I don’t know who—”
“We are.” She jabbed the log’s cracking bark with her finger. “So is Quinn. Just look at her.”
I peered over at Quinn, who still refused to talk to anyone, then over at Johnson, who was now sitting alone at the edge of the water playing with river stones.
“I know it’s hard to trust anyone right now,” she said, “but you can’t go around doubting everyone, either.”
I closed my eyes and sucked in the hot air around me.
“How many more weapons did you make?” I asked.
Without breaking eye contact, she said, “I have us covered.”
“Okay,” I breathed. “And what are we supposed to tell everyone else?”
Hammer suddenly smacked me on the shoulder and I flinched. “Don’t push your luck, Brone. You’re the leader here. You figure it out.”
CHAPTER 6
By the time the sun began to lift the morning fog, I was nauseous and unrested. Had I even slept? I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning over a pile of freshly plucked banana leaves, debating whether or not to take off in the middle of the night.
The truth was, thinking with my emotions was making me entirely reckless. The jungle was no place for one person to venture. There was a reason Trim used to banish women from the Village—solitude was a death sentence.
Hammer was right; I needed my team, same as Trim had needed us.
I sat upright but almost fell back into a lying position when Arenas’s face appeared right beside mine.
“Mornin’, chica,” she said. She held a spear in her right hand, its shaft jabbed into the jungle’s moist earth by her feet.
“Where’d you get that?” I groaned.
“Same place you got yours,” she said, wiggling a finger at my funny-looking bow that lay in the dirt.
Then, another spear shaft stabbed the earth and I followed it up to Coin’s face. She grinned from ear to ear, revealing that shiny gold tooth I hadn’t seen in a while.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Then, Johnson appeared beside Coin with two arms crossed over her chest. She wore some kind of mesh belt with two stone daggers attached to it. I stared at her a bit longer than the others, wondering if she still held on to any resentment for my having lied to her.
But, a sly smirk curved the corner of her freckled lip. “Knew something was up.”
Hammer stomped her way over—a habit she hadn’t given up despite all the weight she had lost—with another handful of arrows and shivs, and I glowered at her.
Her eyes popped out at me and she opened her mouth as if to say, What?
I lunged up onto my feet. “You told everyone?”
“Not everyone,” she said, almost sarcastically. “Like I told you last night—you aren’t going alone.”
“Who’s not going alone?” I heard.
It was Quinn—she was standing behind me with her hands on her waist and her light eyebrows so close together they looked like a unibrow. I shot Hammer a quick glance, but all she did was shrug and look away. Why hadn’t she told Quinn?
“I’m going after Zsasz,” I said, matter-of-factly.
A heavy silence weighed down on us. Was Quinn upset? Would she feel betrayed? Would she ask to come with us? I trusted Quinn, but I didn’t trust her girls—I didn’t know them.
What came out of her mouth next was the last thing I’d have expected to hear.
She let out a loud, broken laugh and patted a hand on her chest. Everyone’s attention fell on her. Even the women who sat in the near distance rubbing their aching feet and stiff muscles perked up.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
The smile on her face disappeared almost instantly. “Fuck, Brone, I thought you were joking.”
When I didn’t answer, she took two brisk steps toward me. “Are you out of your mind? You know how Zsasz is. If she sees you, she’ll tear you to shreds.”
“And if she finds the Cove,” I said, “she’ll kill everyone in there.”
“I thought you said your friends were coming for you,” she said.
I thought back to the city and to the woman inside the bamboo cell that night. She’d held her fingers through the holes of the prison’s bamboo gate, her orange, fire-lit eye floating in the darkness.
“We’re alive. Fisher made it. We’re coming for you.”
That was what the woman had told me, only more choppily. I hadn’t seen her since that night. Had the Northers taken her behind the wooden gates? Had they taken her to where Murk and other prisoners sat in cages, undoubtedly being beaten or tortured?
“That’s what someone told me,” I said, returning to reality. “That my friends were coming back. That they were going to get us out.”
“So, what if this Cove you’re talking about is empty when you get there?” Quinn asked.
I slapped the air in front of me. “I don’t care about the what-ifs. They didn’t come back in time, and I’m happy they didn’t. The Northers would have killed them. All I can do now is make my way toward the Cove and try to reach them before Zsasz does. If you want to come, Quinn—”
“I do,” she said, “but I won’t.”
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
“I can’t leave my women behind,” she continued. “Not after everything that’s happened.”
And then, it hit me.
“How do you feel about leading more than just your women?” I asked.
“What?” she blurted.
Quinn not coming with us may have been what everyone needed. She was the kind of leader the women needed—all of the women, not only her own. I parted my lips to say something along those lines, but someone’s boisterous voice exploded behind us, waking women from their sleep.
“Fuck off, you half-brained twit!”
“You fuck off!”
Leaves shuffled, and branches snapped as two women started pulling at each other. From where I stood, it looked like a tug-of-war competition, only with hateful scowls rather than competitive frowns. What were they fighting over?
They both appeared to be of the same age—somewhere in their early thirties with smooth skin but mature features. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have presumed them to be related. They both had golden-brown hair that looked like thousands of little wires atop their heads and they both wore the same clothing—ragged scraps made of old cotton. The only difference between them was that one was short with her hair tied in a messy bun, and the other was a few inches taller and her hair formed wings at her shoulders.
The taller one seemed to have the advantage. She tugged back so hard that the short one scurried toward her in an attempt to remain on her feet.
I took a step forward to intervene, but Quinn beat me to it.
“Hey!” she shouted, her big voice masking theirs.
She grabbed the tall one by the collar and pushed her back, then stuck out an arm toward the short one, which was a translation for, Stay back.
It was obvious Quinn had done this before—broken fights apart. I wondered how many times she’d stopped her own women from killing each other.
“That’s fuckin’ mine!” the short one yelled.
The taller one, looking a bit smug now that she held whatever it was they were fighting over, pulled her shoulders back. “No, it isn’t.”
“You’re not goddamn animals,” Quinn snapped. “There won’t be any fighting here.”
The shorter one fell into a lazy stance, almost as if completely forgetting why she was even fighting in the first place. It looked like she was amused by Quinn. She cocked her head to one side and gave Quinn a nasty, yellow-toothed smile.
“You don’t dictate what I can or can’t do,” she said.
“This isn’t about dictating—” Quinn tried, but the short woman scoffed in her face and gave her the middle finger.
“Hey!” I shouted, and everyone turned toward me.
An uncomfortable silence filled the space around us as women’s eyes shifted between the woman who’d flipped Quinn off and me. I walked toward her with my fists clenched. Old Brone would have remained quiet somewhere at the back of the crowd. New Brone, however, didn’t give a shit about confrontation anymore. If someone was out of line, I needed to say something.
The woman must have sensed that I wasn’t in a playful mood, because she immediately broke eye contact.
Although it wasn’t my intention to intimidate anyone, there was something satisfying about the amount of respect I was receiving. I’d always been the new girl—little Brone—who’d been given a bow and arrow because of her perfect vision.
But now, as I walked forward, women took a few steps away from me and aimed their gazes at the ground.
It was the strangest feeling, yet I couldn’t help but enjoy it.
“What Quinn says, goes,” I said plainly.
I sensed Quinn’s stare. She hadn’t expected this, which was why she was so deserving of it. Quinn had a big heart, and although seemingly loud and obnoxious at times, she was the right choice for this group of women if they were going to survive.
“Her?” the woman sneered, waving a finger in Quinn’s direction.
I stared at the woman but didn’t say anything. There was something about her childish attitude that made me want to either slap her across the head or point an arrow at her face. I was so sick and tired of snide remarks from grown-ass women.
The short woman, obviously uncomfortable by the length of my stare, threw both hands into the air and said, “Okay, whatever.”
It looked like she was about to turn around, when the tall one let out a short, condescending laugh and said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
Even if I had known what was about to happen, I wouldn’t have had the time to stop it. Within seconds, the shortest of the two lunged backward with such force that Quinn was pushed out of the way, arms flailing and septum ring flopping up and down on her face. The women around us screamed and stepped back as the two enemies came crashing down onto the jungle floor.
I ran toward them, expecting to see a struggle—dirt flying up, legs kicking out, and loud grunts—but that didn’t happen. In fact, the tallest one wasn’t fighting back at all. She lay underneath her attacker, her limbs twitching. The short woman made jerking motions with the upper half of her body.
“Enough!” I shouted, but it was too late.
I heard the sound before I saw the body—an all too familiar gargling sound that immediately brought me back to the day we were captured by the Northers.
Trim.
* * *
I watched as she stood calm, her dark eyes almost smiling. It was as if she knew what was about to happen but was at peace with it. She glanced at me one more time, and though I may have imagined it, it almost looked like she gave me a brief nod—a wordless goodbye that told me to stay strong.
Then, in one swift motion, Zsasz’s knife slid through Trim’s throat like a freshly sharpened knife through a sweet, local strawberry. Dark blood came oozing out, and at first, panic spread over Trim’s dirt-stained face—an instinctive reaction to the fact that she was about to die—before her eyes glazed over and she collapsed onto the river stones.
* * *
“No!” I shouted, and suddenly everyone’s eyes were on me as I was drawn back into reality.
I stood at the center of the crowd as the short woman continued her struggle atop her victim. Beastly grunts escaped her lungs, and she muttered things I couldn’t understand. It almost sounded like she was swearing to herself.
I aggressively reached down, grabbed her messy bun, and tugged back as hard as possible. I pulled her up into a standing position, her swinging arms and cotton-covered chest stained in blood. In her fist, she held what appeared to be a shiv made of either bone or wood.
Was this one of Hammer’s weapons? One I’d asked her to carve for protection during our first escape?
The woman on the ground lay still, her face pale and lifeless. What remained of her throat was nothing more than a wide gash flooded with dark red, almost black, blood.
Gasps erupted around us, followed by whispers and pointing fingers.
“What the fuck did you do?” Quinn snapped.
Then, as the killer’s eyes turned on Quinn, I reacted without thinking and swung a closed fist to the side of the woman’s head. She fell like a pillar—flat on her side, face-first in the dirt.
“Stell? Stell?” came someone’s voice. “Oh my God,” said the woman, who I could only assume was friends with the dead one. “Oh God, no,” she whimpered. She grabbed her friend’s head and kissed it hard, then with two fingers, closed the dead woman’s eyelids.
“Fight, fight, fight,” the crowd started to crescendo.
“Quiet!” I shouted, and the cheering stopped.
With my fist still held tight, I glared at the crowd around me, seeing nothing but shells. Though I knew they’d been programmed—trained, if you will—to behave like this, it still made it nearly impossible to imagine integrating them into a society without constant fights and violence.
I couldn’t think like this. The truth was, these women were still human beings. They needed guidance, and they needed to be taught that a life without constant fighting and suffering was entirely possible.
“We aren’t prisoners anymore,” I shouted, my voice carrying over their heads. “If you want to survive this shitty island, you’d better get used to being around each other. You won’t survive on your own!”
I didn’t mean to sound so angry, but I realized by the look on Arenas’s face that I was coming across as hateful. She stood at the back of the crowd, her head bowed, almost the way a bullied child tries to evade their bully.
“Quinn here”—I pointed at Quinn, who looked more confused than anything—“is in charge until I return.”
I pulled my shoulders back and the arrows in my newly constructed quiver slid to the other side. God, I missed that sound. Wood scraping wood.
“Until you get back?” someone asked, and voices erupted around me.
“Back?”
“Where’s she going?”
“I thought she was guiding us somewhere.”
“Some leader she is.”
Stiffly, I raised a hand and everyone went quiet. It would probably take me a while to get used to that, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed it. It made me feel important—valued.
“The Northers—the Beasts,” I corrected, “are on their way to kill my friends. I know where they’re going, and I have to stop them.”
I realized as the words came out of my mouth that I probably sounded like some cheesy superhero, like some too-good-to-be-true woman willing to risk her life to save the day.
“Why don’t we come with you?” someone shouted. She had paint markings across both her cheeks and teeth so rotten it looked like they were missing entirely upon first glance. She punched a solid fist in the air and added, “’Cause I’d like to fuckin’ hit ’em where it hurts!”
“Same here!”
“Let us at ’em!”
I fought the urge to smile. They weren’t Battlewomen, but I was willing to bet the anger they carried was enough to take on Zsasz and her crew.
“I can’t be held back—” I started.
“I won’t hold you back!” the woman shouted, a dirty smile stre
tching her blotchy face.
“Me neither!” someone else said.
“Me n-n-n-either!” came a familiar voice.
I caught sight of Tegan’s messy hair, and then her big eyes appeared over a woman’s shoulder. She was smiling—something I hadn’t seen her do since the Village. It wasn’t a shy smile either. It revealed sheer excitement and anticipation.
“Tegan!” I said, but my voice barely carried over the shouts of enthusiastic women. They started stomping their feet and punching invisible targets, and as they did, Tegan was shoved backward and forward until she disappeared, blending in with the crowd.
“I’m in!”
“Me too!”
“Let’s fuckin’ kill them!”
I turned my attention to Coin, then Hammer, who both shrugged at the same time. What was going on? This wasn’t the plan. It was only supposed to be me and my women. And what about trust? How was I supposed to trust a bunch of strangers? I’d already explained to Hammer that I couldn’t risk a traitor entering the Cove, our safe haven.
But, maybe this wasn’t about protecting the Cove.
The Northers would never stop hunting us until they killed our people, all of our people. And they’d try time and time again until they succeeded.
Rainer’s hatred couldn’t be eliminated.
Instead, we had to eliminate Rainer.
What we needed wasn’t a safe haven—we needed an army.
CHAPTER 7
“What’re you gonna do with ’er?” asked the rotten-toothed woman. “Name’s Jack, by the way.” She stuck out a brown-nailed hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to grab it. Not on this island. Not in a place without hand sanitizer. Her short hair appeared as dirty as her grimy face—an ash brown that looked oil black. Hundreds of dandruff specs sat on her head, and every time she talked, I worried one of them might come flying into my mouth.
“Brone,” I said simply.
“Oh, I know who you are,” she spat. “Everyone’s been sayin’ yer name all damn day. If ya ask me, all I’m startin’ ta hear is bone.” She humped the air with a nasty smile on her face, and I grimaced. “If ya know what I mean.” And she burst out into a barking laugh.