by H G Lynch
Then, in a very soft voice, he said, “Sit down a minute. You’re shaking.”
I did as he said and sat down, slowly, watching him the whole way to the ground. He lowered himself down with me, keeping his eyes on mine, and then we were sitting together on the grass, his knees almost touching mine but not quite. The woods had gone still, as if they were holding their breath.
Spencer held out his hand to me, uncurling his fingers to show the pretty white stone I’d picked up gleaming on his palm. I hadn’t realised I’d dropped it. Hesitantly, I reached out and plucked it from his hand, curling my own fingers around it so tightly my knuckles turned white.
“Thank you,” I murmured, not sure if I meant it for more than just the pebble. The half-smile, genuine and not in the least sarcastic, on his face made me think he understood that.
“So,” he said quietly, leaning over to reach into the stream, “are you still planning on leaving?” His tone was carefully neutral. When he took his hand out of the water, he was holding his own pebble between his fingers; an irregular grey stone with speckles of white and silver in it.
I thought about it for a moment, chewing my lip, and then nodded slowly. “Yes….” I said.
Spencer’s eyebrows drew down. He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.
“But not yet,” I added, allowing myself to give him a tiny smile.
He relaxed a little, almost imperceptibly, and I had to wonder just how neutral he really was about the idea of me leaving. Tipping his head down, so his inky hair flopped forward and hid his eyes, he watched the grey pebble as he rolled it from palm to palm as if it were mesmerising.
For a while, we just sat there in silence, him rolling his pebble around in his hands, me listening to the cool shushing of the stream. The sliver of the moon moved across the endless blackness of the sky, tugging the stars along with it. A leaf fluttered down from a nearby tree, spinning and twirling until it landed in the stream and was carried away on the gentle current. The trees hummed in their silent way, calling the night-creatures slinking through the shadows and vines. I didn’t realise I’d been meditating until Spencer’s voice broke me out of it, snapping me back to myself.
“Why did you save that wolf today?” he asked, and I blinked. For a second, his shape was a blurry shadow and his eyes shone gold out of a morphed face. I blinked again and my vision cleared. He was looking at me with blue eyes in a handsome, pale face. His expression was blank, uncurious, but his eyes…there was something sharp and serious enough to cut in the blue orbs. It took me a moment to process his question, and then I frowned.
“How did you know I…?” I couldn’t finish the question.
His eyes flickered, though he didn’t look away or blink, and my throat closed up for a moment around an inexplicable second of panic. I breathed out, letting the moment of fear pass. Even though he hadn’t moved, there was suddenly something in Spencer, in the intensity of his gaze and the coiled way he was sitting, that made me feel like...like prey.
He was waiting for me to answer, and for a minute, I wasn’t sure what to tell him. Why had I save the wolf? Because…it was just a wolf. It was an innocent animal, it didn’t deserve to die. More than that, it was a wild animal. It was free, the way I was trying to be. It was strong, beautiful, and free to run as far and as fast as it wanted. The wolf could run the way I wanted to run. I couldn’t explain that to Spencer, not really.
“I saved it for the same reason you saved me,” I said softly, meeting his clear blue eyes, “I’m not a monster.”
The next day, Dom and I went for another walk along the other side of the stream. I liked hanging out with him without the clamour of a dozen other people around us, and it felt good to get rid of some of the pent-up energy that had been building in me over the last couple of days I’d spent mostly sitting around camp. Staying in one place, while knowing the witches were looking for me, was making me agitated. I thought again, very briefly, of leaving. But I discarded the notion quickly, telling myself that Spencer had been right. I had nowhere to go, no food, and no money. Even if I could go to Tamara, I wouldn’t, because that would risk bringing them down on her head, and she didn’t deserve that. She knew what they were, but she was purely human. No way could she fend them off if they wanted answers from her about where I’d gone.
Also, a little part of me—okay, a pretty big part of me that was growing even as he grinned at me and chased me through the trees—didn’t want to leave Dominic. He was my first real friend, aside from Tamara, and as much as I didn’t want to bring the witches down on him and his friends and family, I found I wanted even less to leave them all. What they had there, what they had brought me into willingly and kindly, was the closest thing to family I’d known since my parents had died.
After walking up and down the stream, Dominic and I were almost back to camp. The dull green of a tent came into view beyond the shielding leaves of the trees, and he pulled me to an abrupt halt, cutting off my joke midsentence. I jerked when he grabbed my arm, his fingers surprisingly tight, and turned to face him, scowling.
“Dominic, what is—” I didn’t get to finish my question.
He held up a hand for silence, and I bit my tongue. His head was tilted as though he were listening to something I couldn’t hear, like when Desmond had been following us the day before, but his narrowed eyes were directed toward camp.
My heart hiccupped nervously. Did something happen in camp? I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear…wait, yes I could. Voices. Not just the normal mutterings and laughter of the camp, but a new voice—male, loud, and strong. I couldn’t make out words, but the tone was unmistakable: The guy was in charge somehow, and he wasn’t happy.
I looked at Dominic again, opening my mouth to ask who it could be, but he’d gone very pale, and his grip on my arm was tightening almost painfully. He’d become very, very still. I touched his hand on my arm gently, not trying to pry it off, but trying to make him aware of how hard he was gripping— possibly hard enough to bruise. Not that I couldn’t handle it. The witches had left me plenty of bruises before, but I thought he might feel bad about it later.
“Dom? What’s—” I murmured softly.
He whipped his head round, fixing his green eyes on me. He put a hand over my mouth, glanced toward camp, and then took his hand away carefully.
He leaned in very, very close, so close I could smell the fresh, musky scent of him like leaves, dirt, and salt. My stomach jumped into a knot, and I felt his breath tickle the hair by my face as he whispered in my ear.
“Stay here. Don’t make a sound. Don’t move until I come back for you.”
Before I could ask questions, he loped off toward camp and out of sight. Mildly stunned, and extremely confused, I leaned against the nearest tree and waited for my stomach to relax. Chewing my lip, I wondered who was in camp and what was going on. The man was angry about something.
About me? I wondered. About me, an outsider, being in their camp? The thought made me feel guilty and nervous. I should have just left the previous night, instead of listening to Spencer. Even if he was right, I should have stuck to my principles and gone before anyone could get into trouble for their misguided altruism.
Thinking of Spencer, I hadn’t seen him all day. Maybe he was avoiding me. Maybe he’d known the man was coming to camp and knew he’d be angry if I was there. Maybe he’d been hoping I’d be in camp when the man arrived and he would kick me out on my ear. So many maybes, and I couldn’t get answers without knowing what was going on in camp.
Biting my lip, I peered around my tree, eyed the distance to camp, and stepped out carefully, wishing I had Spencer’s ability to creep around silently like a cat. My first step was silent, so I took another, and another, and then…snap. A twig I hadn’t noticed cracked under my foot, and I froze, holding my breath. The voices in camp paused for a second.
Please don’t let me get caught, I thought, half-praying to the woods. Thankfully, the voices resumed, and I let
out my breath slowly, heart jumping. I couldn’t go any closer without risking standing on another twig or getting caught in a branch, but I still couldn’t make out what was being said properly.
Cursing mentally, I tried to strain my hearing, desperate to know if they were talking about me. If I closed my eyes and tilted my head the way Dominic had, it helped a little, but I still couldn’t— Pop.
“…can’t be here, Jane, you know that! You’d risk our safety to protect one little girl?” The angry man’s voice, the voice I didn’t recognise.
I almost gasped, but clapped a hand over my mouth. I could hear them perfectly, every word as clear as if they’d been standing five feet in front of me, not twenty-five feet. It was as if someone had burst a bubble around my head, and I could hear better, much better.
Then I realised what was happening. The energy of the woods was shifting, it had pushed its way into my power, but somehow not into my body. Pulsing close to my skin, like an aura, it was amplifying my hearing. I listened to what was going on in camp, trying to pick out the voices.
“…doesn’t belong here! She has to leave!” Angry man yelled.
I sensed more than heard others shifting in discomfort, and wondered how many of them were there. Maybe the whole camp was gathered.
“But Frank, she has nowhere to go. We can’t just send her packing and hope she can find her way out of the woods. She was running away from something… someone. Whoever they are, she’s running from them for a reason–”Jane’s, airy voice was compassionate and pleading.
Frank—I assumed Frank was the angry man—cut her off. “Even more reason she needs to leave! If whoever she’s running from comes looking for her, we’re in trouble, and I won’t have this family in danger just because one silly little girl ran away from her mummy and daddy.”
“Frank, the girl…she’s alone, and scared, and she hasn’t noticed anything strange so far. I think if she did, she’d turn a blind eye to it, convince herself it was her imagination. She’s a teenager, not a little kid. Too late to change her worldview now without some serious proof,” Graham’s gravelly voice insisted patiently.
I wanted to snort at his logic. My worldview? So what if they had some weird cult thing going on? I had magical powers, and I could summon demons. If anyone’s worldview was going to be disrupted, it would be theirs, but I hoped to avoid that at all costs.
There was a pause, a sense of uncertainty, and then Frank spoke again, sounding much calmer. “Who found her? Who brought her to the camp?” he asked.
His question was met with an uneasy rustling of people who didn’t want to answer. I could imagine the nervous glances flitting around the crowd of gathered campers. Then, just when I was beginning to be sure that nobody would tell him, someone finally spoke up.
“I did. I brought her to camp.”
Spencer. It wasn’t hard to recognise his voice. He still spoke quietly, his voice low and dark, but there was no nervousness in it and no pleading like in the other voices. He sounded as if he was issuing a challenge, and I felt the awkward, anxious tension from thirty-feet away.
“You,” Frank said, his voice scarily flat. “I should have known it’d be you.”
I could have sworn there was a note of disgust in that flat tone, and I remembered what Dominic had told me.“Our dad…he really is great, but he doesn’t always treat Spencer the same way he treats me and Des… I think my dad sometimes forgets it isn’t Spencer’s fault his mother ran away.”
Oh. Something in my brain clicked, and I finally understood. Frank was Dominic and Desmond’s father—Spencer’s father. He was in charge of the…group, cult, whatever. That explained everyone else’s nervousness…except maybe Dominic’s. He’d looked downright scared before he’d taken off toward camp. But then, I could understand that too. Nobody liked getting in trouble with their parents…or adoptive family. I just hoped Frank didn’t punish his kids anything like the way the witches had punished me. It hadn’t always been the Dark Room or starvation, they had a birch cane that worked just as well.
“Well, explain yourself, Spencer. Why did you bring the girl to camp?” Frank’s tone was still flat, but even I could hear the anger under the surface.
I flinched at the question. It was almost the exact question I’d asked Spencer the night before. Why did you save me instead of leaving me there?
I expected Spencer to give Frank the same answer he’d given me, to tell him that he wasn’t a monster and couldn’t just leave an injured girl in the mud, but he didn’t. There was just silence.
“Speak up, boy! Come on, answer me,” Frank snapped, his voice no longer flat, but energized with something like cruel amusement. As if he was enjoying Spencer’s…what? Fear? Anxiety? Discomfort? I couldn’t imagine Spencer scared or anxious.
“I don’t know,” Spencer said, his voice even quieter.
Somehow, the quieter he spoke, the darker he sounded. Not scared, not ashamed, but not openly hostile either—just a chilling kind of calmness. I was glad, right then, that I couldn’t see his face when he used that voice. He was intimidating enough when it was just the two of us talking by the stream, when he was relaxed.
His father didn’t seem too worried about his son’s shadowy tone. “You don’t know? You’ve endangered us all, and you don’t know why you did it?” the man’s voice rose almost to a roar.
I heard one of the kids—maybe Annie—squeak fearfully. Meanwhile, the practical part of my brain was ticking over Frank’s booming words. Endangered them? Endangered them how? Did he think I was secretly an escaped lunatic with a knife and a box of matches in my back pocket? Or maybe he meant I would endanger their…way of life, or whatever.
“Frank, please—” another voice, male, maybe John spoke up.
“No, I won’t have her here. It’s too dangerous for us,” Frank insisted.
“But she’s only—”
“It doesn’t matter who or what she is. If she finds out—”
“But she won’t!”
“And if she does? What then? She’ll run screaming and tell the whole town—”
“No, she won’t,” Spencer’s smooth, quiet voice sliced through the louder ones like a knife cutting warm butter.
Things went silent again for a moment, and I found myself leaning toward the camp. My feet were rooted to the spot, but my eyes desperate to see what was happening, see everyone’s expressions, see Spencer. I couldn’t tell from his voice if his words were a threat or a promise.
Sounding curious, Frank asked, “And how do you know that?”
There was a tiny pause in which I just knew Spencer was shrugging. His tone when he answered seemed to confirm it—casual and disinterested, to match the shrug I couldn’t see.
“Just a feeling. Call it…instinct.” He weighted the final word with some meaning I couldn’t understand.
Someone cleared their throat, and I recognised Dominic’s voice next.
“Dad, I agree with Spencer. I think we should let Tilly stay. I don’t think she’s any danger to us.”
He sounded much less certain than Spencer had, but coming from Dominic, it seemed to convince Frank. His next words, at least, weren’t a command for my removal. Quite the opposite.
“Let me see the girl,” he demanded.
I snapped upright, no longer swaying toward the camp and the drama unfolding there. A moment before, I’d been dying to see what was going on, but now I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to face the angry man who wanted me gone from his camp, because he thought I was dangerous somehow. What if he took one look at me and booted me out, and told me never to return and never speak of his family and friends to anyone? What if Dominic and Spencer got into trouble for defending me?
“What?” Dom sounded confused, as if he couldn’t understand why on Earth his father would want to see me.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It probably wasn’t a good sign, and it certainly wasn’t reassuring.
In a gentler tone, Frank s
aid, “I want to see the girl for myself. Bring her out of wherever you hid her. Yes, I know you, Dom. It’s okay, son. I just want to see her.”
The way he spoke to Dominic was so different from the way he spoke to everyone else, especially Spencer, that I thought I might be starting to understand why Spencer was so distant from everyone. If his own father treated him like an unworthy misfit all the time, of course he’d want to hide out from everybody. I could sympathize with him. I’d spent most of my time at school trying to blend into the shadows, covering the bruises on my legs the cane had left and hiding the bags under my eyes, put there by nights made sleepless by nightmares and worries. When you felt like no good, you didn’t want to face people you thought were better than you.
“Tilly!” Dominic’s voice called into the trees.
I heard his crunching footsteps coming toward me. With a pop, whatever bubble of force that had been allowing me to hear the voices in camp abruptly burst. I sank back against a nearby tree, leaning against it, trying to look casual, and picking at the leaves on the branches as if I was totally bored. By the time Dominic found me, I was certain that my expression betrayed nothing of what I’d overheard.
I looked up curiously as he walked toward me and smiled at him. “Hey, you’re back. I was starting to think we were playing Hide and Seek again, only you weren’t looking for me very hard.” I managed to sound just a little bit hurt, and I pouted sulkily to add to the effect.
My heart was hammering on my ribs, and I had the sudden urge to flee as he reached out a hand to take my elbow, but I stayed put and let him tow me away from the tree. He was smiling, but I knew it was only for my benefit, so that I didn’t worry. I was worried anyway.