And behind them I see another boat. A canoe, pursuing the people who matter to me most to an isolated place where they are unseen and unprotected.
I think I know the answer even before I ask the question. “So who were you following? Who was following Chev?”
I drop my spear to my side as Morsk answers, as he names the paddlers I see in my mind’s eye. “The Bosha. Dora and her daughter, Anki. And the elders who spoke at Mala’s meeting. Thern and Pada.”
I knew. Somehow I knew not to trust them. When I saw them in Kol’s camp, something cold and dark seemed to cling to them. Now I know what that something was.
Revenge.
Morsk’s gaze sweeps down the length of my arm to my lowered spear, then springs back to my face. “So you believe me?”
I don’t answer. I can see that Morsk is suffering, and I know that if I said I believed him, it might lessen his pain. But I don’t want to lessen Morsk’s pain. Not yet. I’m still not sure if I trust him.
“Then where are they?” I ask. “If you didn’t kill Chev, where are the people who did? Why didn’t they kill me too?”
“I think they saw me. Maybe they thought they were outnumbered or had lost the chance to surprise you. I didn’t see them, but I heard them running away.”
I think back to the moment I heard Chev call my name. Hadn’t I heard footsteps, too? If Morsk is telling the truth, could his presence have actually protected me from Chev’s killers?
I drop onto my knees beside my brother’s body. I tighten the laces of his parka, tugging the collar up and over the gash that circles his throat. His blood has a thick, dark scent, like damp clay. His skin is cool, though it still holds a hint of warmth. I could almost fool myself into believing he’s still alive, if his eyes weren’t open in a lifeless stare.
I can’t help but wonder what they saw last—Dora standing over him? Or her daughter, Anki? Did the person who cut his throat do it with his own knife? Did she gloat when she killed him? Did she mention Lo or Orn?
I drop my head to Chev’s chest, my body shuddering with sobs. I don’t know what to do now, and I don’t care. I can’t imagine a world without my brother in it. I don’t want to know that world. I want to stay here by his side. “I love you,” I whisper again. “For all the times I didn’t say it, I hope you knew it to be true. I love you.”
I kneel like this for a long time, until finally my sobs slow. Morsk doesn’t speak, though I know he is still there. I hear his feet crunching over the leaf litter on the ground, pacing in an ever-widening circle. Finally, I sit up. I look down on Chev’s face—his eyes still wide, his tan skin dulling to gray. I touch his left eye and then the right, pressing his lids shut. “I love you,” I say one more time, knowing I can never say it enough. Then I look around for downed limbs that might be nearby, anything usable for lashing together a travois.
“Do you have twine?” I say, not even looking up at Morsk.
“Mya . . .” My hand falls on a long branch, and I lift it to check its length. One end is rotted, and I let it fall. “Mya, we can’t take the body with us.”
I let these words wash over me, still reaching around the underbrush. “If you don’t have twine, we may be able to find vines. Otherwise we’ll need to carry him—”
“No. Mya, we can’t.” And there it is in his voice again—the urgency of the oncoming storm. “The people who did this to Chev—they have other targets. They didn’t come here just to kill your brother. You’re also a target. You need to move—to find your sisters and warn them. You need to help the living—”
“But if we leave him . . .” I break off. I can’t say it. If we leave him, his body could be eaten by scavengers. Dire wolves. Even buzzards. “I can’t leave my brother behind,” I say, but even as the words pass my lips, as quiet as a whisper, I know it’s what I have to do.
Because Morsk is right. I have to help the living. My sisters. Any of us could be the next victim. Even Kol. I have to warn them. That’s what my brother would want me to do.
“Not out in the open. He deserves better than that,” I say. I think of Noni’s mother, covered in small stones. It felt almost like decoration as we placed them on her body. “We need to cover him. I want to feel like we’ve done a sort of burial. Something . . .” My voice breaks, and I go quiet. I don’t want Morsk to try to comfort me.
I get up from the ground and begin to walk farther into the trees, off the trail, until I find a depression in the ground—a place where the terrain naturally dips. I hear Morsk walk up behind me. All at once I realize that I may not be safe with him, and I turn, my heart beating in my chest like waves crashing in a stormy sea.
Morsk returns my gaze. His spear is at his side. His cheeks are stained by tears.
A flicker of understanding lights his eyes. “I’m not creeping up on you,” he spits. For the first time since I found Chev, I see anger in Morsk. “I only came to offer help.”
“Thank you,” I say, a note of reconciliation in my voice. “Could you help me move Chev here? I think if we lay him where the ground naturally drops down, we could cover him with branches.”
Together, Morsk and I lift Chev from the ground. I try, but fail, to look away from the pool of blood where he fell. Anger rises in me and burns my throat. I taste it in my mouth. Not just anger, but more than that. A longing for revenge.
Morsk helps me gather branches, twigs, and leaves, to camouflage my brother as best we can. It won’t make much of a difference—we can’t camouflage the scent. But it makes me feel a little better to give him some sort of burial. Each twig, each leaf, each handful of grass is another silent good-bye.
We leave his face uncovered until the end. Morsk steps away to give me some privacy, and I’m grateful. I want to make my brother one last promise before I walk away. As I drape each eye in pale green leaves, as I cover his face in moss, I whisper to him. “I will make you proud of me,” I say. “The Olen clan will not weaken. We will thrive. And you will always be remembered.”
The first few steps down the path to the beach are terrible. The next few are even worse. I force myself to keep moving, but the lack of Chev follows me like a shadow that has weight. Like a burden too heavy to carry.
It’s strange to travel over this trail with Morsk—this same trail that I traveled over alone this morning, when I was still excited about the island and the elk I thought I was tracking. We are almost to the spot where I first realized that what I thought was an elk was not an elk at all, when something—or someone—rustles in the woods to our right.
We stop, ducking into the shade of the trees that edge the path. We’re closing in on the ledges above the beach, and the breeze has picked up. It churns the leaves, masking all other sound. But there is sound within the sound—measured and even steps within the random and swirling wind.
Someone is walking nearby.
The steps grow louder, closer. I drop onto one knee, my spear shouldered, my head swiveling in every direction, waiting to see that flash of Dora’s white hair. Shadows weave between shadows, and finally I see a figure.
I loosen my grip on the spear. It’s not Dora. Not Anki. Not Thern or Pada. The girl moving toward me wears a betrothal tunic, and the sight of her face floods me with relief.
Seeri.
She walks side by side with Pek. Kol walks behind them, his steps a bit too uneven, every second step a shuffle as his left leg drags along the ground. His wounded knee. It must be causing him pain.
Seeri runs toward us, expecting to see Chev. When she notices Morsk with me instead, her steps slow. Her eyes widen as her gaze sweeps the path. “Where’s Chev?”
She drops Pek’s hand and steps toward me. I know she will see the answer on my face, so I fold my arms around her and hide my face against her shoulder. Behind her back, Kol’s eyes meet mine, and I can see that he knows why Chev isn’t here. A hollowness opens in his eyes—the same hollowness I saw there when his father died.
When I see that look in his eyes, the tears com
e. I sob against Seeri’s neck, but I still don’t answer her question. I don’t know if I can say the words.
“What happened?” It’s Kol, his voice. I open my eyes, but he isn’t asking me. He’s asking Morsk.
“We found him. It was already too late—”
“Too late?” Seeri asks. “You mean he’s dead? But how?” Her voice is soft—a mere whisper—but then she swallows a sob and her voice is almost a scream. “Who did it? How? Did you see? Did you see anyone?” Seeri raises her tear-soaked face and drags the backs of both hands across her eyes. “Because we did. . . . We saw two people. . . .” Her words get caught in her throat, garbled by tears.
Pek wraps an arm around her. “We saw two people who shouldn’t be here,” he says. “We went to the camp on the beach—”
“Wait.” I swing around to stare into Pek’s face, afraid of what he might be about to say. But I have to hear it. I have to know. “Who did you see?” Fear falls down on me like cold rain. It soaks into me, chilling me to the bone. “Dora?” I ask. “Anki?”
“No.” Kol answers. His eyes are still trained on Morsk, like a hunter’s eyes trained on his prey. His voice holds a question. No, not a question . . . an accusation. “We saw the other Bosha elders. Thern and Pada.”
He steps forward, and I notice the limp even more. Morsk seems to notice it too—his eyes drop to the ground near Kol’s feet, then flick back to his face. Morsk’s weight slides away, a subtle step backward. He is afraid of Kol. I can feel his fear. The ground crunches beneath his foot. His heel is coming down on the path.
“Don’t,” I say, more to Morsk, but in truth the word is meant for both of them. “Don’t step into the open—”
“Are you hoping to be seen?” Kol asks. His spear flicks up from the ground as he flexes his wrist. The point comes so close to Morsk’s cheek, it’s a wonder it doesn’t cut him. Morsk flinches, but he does as I say—he doesn’t take another step away. “Are you hoping to signal your partners? Did you lead them all here? You knew that they would find Chev here—you were the only one he told. The only one he trusted.”
Kol swallows, and I see pain in him. Not just physical pain, though that is clearly part of it. But it’s more than that. He thinks Morsk killed Chev. He thinks the man my brother trusted most betrayed him.
“And not only Chev, but all his sisters are here, too. Even Seeri, since she came with us. Did you plan with the Bosha elders to turn the Olen leaders over to them? What are you getting in return?”
“I did not lead them here! I followed! I followed so I could help. So I could warn Chev and Mya—even you. I swear it—I did not bring anyone here. Why would I—”
“Because Chev told you that you had lost, that he’d changed his mind. That you would not be betrothed to Lees . . .”
Kol takes another sliding step forward, and though his presence is threatening—the raised spear just an inch from Morsk’s ear—I see the sweat on his brow. His hair sticks to his skin at the temples and a heavy bead runs down the side of his neck below his ear. His teeth are clenched in pain.
“Stop,” I say. I want to say that I know his wound from the bear and the lacerations across his knee need attention. I want to tell him to sit down and rest. But I don’t. His expression is as hard as stone and just as shut off. He would not listen to me. So instead, I ask about the only other thing that matters at this moment. “You say you saw Thern and Pada in the camp. But did you see Lees? Or Noni?”
“No,” says Seeri. She looks at me, her eyes a pale gold, as if they drained of color when she learned of Chev’s death. Her face is pink from the sting of the cold breeze against her wet cheeks. “The way Thern and Pada moved in and out of the tent—it was clear no one else was there.” Seeri casts a sideways look at both Kol and Morsk. “We’ve got to get moving, looking for them. If Dora and Anki killed Chev—”
“If . . . ,” Kol says. He turns to me, and I realize that this is the first time since he found me with Morsk that he has looked me in the eye. “You didn’t see them, Mya?”
“No.” I know what’s coming next before he says it.
“And you didn’t see Morsk before you found Chev dead?”
“No,” I say. For just a moment, the world around us dims. A cloud must be passing in front of the sun. And at that moment, I feel Kol draw closer to me. The stark outlines and bright contrasts fade. Light softens on his face. I hold his gaze as I shake my head. “I didn’t see him, but I believe him. I believe he came to warn us.” Kol flinches, and I remember my own sense of disappointment when I realized Morsk wasn’t my brother’s killer. The disappointment of not being able to avenge Chev so easily.
Yet Kol doesn’t drop his spear.
“Don’t you trust her?” Morsk asks. I notice his weight shift again. He leans in toward Kol—toward me—ever so slightly. “Because her judgment is the only one that matters to me. She is my High Elder now.”
She is my High Elder now.
These words roll through my mind like an echo as the cloud rolls away from the sun. Stark white light reflects from every surface. The words roll outward, then back in. But it’s not Morsk’s voice I hear, or Kol’s, or even Chev’s. It’s the voice of my father, as if he stands behind me at this very moment, one hand on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. She is my High Elder now.
The sensation of my father’s presence is so strong, I reach up and touch my shoulder, expecting to lay my hand on his. My fingers brush across my tunic—it’s warm from the heat of the sun.
Seeri’s right. We’ve been standing here too long.
“I trust that Morsk has come to help us,” I say. “And now we need to do all we can to find Lees and Noni before anyone else does.”
Seeri strides forward, her shoulders swinging as she steps around Kol and Morsk. She may have been patient during their standoff, but she is ready to move. Pek, always aware of her needs, stays close by her side. “Where do we go from here?” he asks.
“Noni—the girl we found here—told us of a lake to the south of the cliffs. She was anxious to take Lees there.”
And so we cross the path and step into the woods—woods that grow thicker and darker on the southern slopes of the cliffs, protected from the north wind. We cannot trust the trails. We need to stay out of sight.
The farther we travel under the trees, the more the island seems to belong to the Spirits—a place where they dwell between the shadows and sunlight, rustling in the canopy with the wind. We hurry along a swath of brush that’s been laid flat, maybe even by the bear we faced earlier.
If I’m leading, Seeri is just beyond my shoulder. I can feel her presence, hear her strides in time with my own. It’s a comfort to me to know she’s there. Because in this moment, Morsk’s words still ringing in my ears, I feel strangely alone. Kol chooses to stay behind—to let me take the lead—and I want to look back, but decide not to. Not yet.
Maybe it’s best if for a little while, we are both alone with our thoughts.
How could this have happened? How could Kol and I have both become High Elders so soon after becoming betrothed? And how can I marry the High Elder of the Manu and still lead the Olen? This was never meant to happen—Chev was to lead the Olen. It was never to pass to me.
But now that it has, can I step aside? Can I let the role of High Elder pass to Seeri or to Lees? The forest shivers with each step I take, as if a crowd is parting. I feel a crowd of Spirits pressing around me—Spirits of all the living things within this forest, but also the Spirits of the dead—my father, my mother, my brother. I feel them gathering around me now, watching me, coaxing me to act.
But what would they have me do?
I know what Chev would have me do, and I feel the weight of the responsibility that he must have felt himself, responsibility to ensure the future of the clan. I know that my father would remind me that I owe loyalty to my family. But what about the loyalty I owe to Kol, my betrothed?
This thought of Kol slows my steps, forcing me to turn around. S
eeri and Pek are over my right shoulder. Morsk is close on my left. But Kol is far behind, his movements labored.
I realize, all at once, that it was more than the need for solitude or the desire to give me time with my own thoughts that has kept him hanging back from me. And it was more than anger on his face when he confronted Morsk. It was even more than pain.
It was illness.
The clenched jaw, the sweat on his forehead, the limp in his gait. He is ill, and I failed to see it. I was too caught up in my loss of Chev and my fear of the Bosha to notice how much he needed help.
As soon as I see him—struggling over the brush-covered ground, laboring to lift his left leg high enough to clear the undergrowth—I hurry back to him.
But as I rush back the way I just came, Kol motions to me. He raises a hand—he’s warning me to stop.
I slow, turning to follow the line of his gaze out of the trees, over the trail that leads farther downhill toward the lake. Voices float toward us, weaving through the woods. Someone is approaching.
I signal Seeri, Pek, and Morsk, who seem to have heard the voices too. I wave a hand away toward the deeper shade, motioning for us all to move farther from the trail.
Then I turn back to Kol. Our eyes meet just before his lids fall shut. He drops his spear, his knees buckle, and he collapses to the ground.
SIXTEEN
A hum fills my ears, drowning out the footsteps, the birdsong, the sound of Seeri, Pek, and Morsk moving under the trees. My gaze sweeps the ground all the way back to the spot where we entered the woods. The shaft of light that fell across Kol’s face now shines empty, illuminating nothing but a crumpled shadow on the ground.
I stiffen. For just a moment I hesitate, questioning my eyes.
Then I am running toward him.
If the others see me, they pay no attention. They keep one eye on the trail while fading farther into the dense growth, sliding between the lower branches of trees so thick with dark leaves, they block out the sky. Only thin threads of light filter through to the ground.
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