The Grace Year

by Kim Liggett

  To pass the time, keep our minds occupied, our curious hands busy, Ryker and I toss a dagger back and forth. At first, I could hardly bend my fingers enough to grasp the hilt, but I’ve gotten rather good at it. Quick. I’ve also taken to helping him rig up traps, fine finger work that takes a steady hand, using an entirely different set of muscles. Ironically, Ryker told me that I would make for a decent poacher.

  When he’s out hunting, I practice standing, walking, building my strength back in my legs, but it’s also an excuse to explore the space around me. He’s tidy, every nook seems to serve a purpose, but there are small personal touches here and there. A piece of driftwood in the shape of a swallow, a series of polished stones he’s collected from the shore. The small figurines that he whittles away at when he’s missing home. At the end of the hunting season he takes the figurines back to his family and then starts all over again to mark how much they’ve grown over the year.

  At night, we talk for hours about everything and nothing. He teaches me about herbs; I teach him about the language of flowers. He knows a little from Anders. That’s the one thing Anders’s mother hung on to from the county.

  There are days when it’s enough to stand beneath the open hatch in the roof, feeling the spring air sink deep into my bones, and there are others where I long to be outside, when the soles of my feet begin to itch with the desire to explore, to be on my own. To answer to no one but myself. But that was never really the case. We all answer to someone.

  We agreed that as soon as I was better, I’d return to the encampment.

  I’m better now, and yet here I stand.

  The second I hear his footsteps on the bottom rung of the ladder, I slip back into bed and feign weakness. I tell myself it’s survival—here I have a warm bed, food in my belly, protection, but I know it’s more than that. It’s about him.

  I don’t know what his favorite color is, his favorite hymn, if he prefers blueberries over boysenberries, but I know the way he clenches his jaw when he’s thinking, the rise and fall of his chest right before he drifts to sleep, the sound of his footsteps on the forest floor, the smell of his skin—salt, musk, lake water, and pine.

  We come from completely different worlds, but I feel closer to him than I’ve ever felt to anyone.

  We don’t speak of the future or the past, so it’s easy to pretend. When he leaves to hunt, I tell myself he’s simply heading off to work—maybe a neighboring island. Or sometimes I make believe we’re in exile, hiding from evil forces—which isn’t entirely off base, but even that feels too close. Dangerous.

  During twilight, that shadowy place between sleep and dreams—that’s when it hurts the most. When reality worms its way between us.

  In my weaker moments, I let myself fantasize that we could find a way. Maybe we could meet in the northern forest every year on the day of the unveiling ceremony, but it would never be enough.

  The fact of the matter is, if I don’t return to the county at the end of my grace year, my sisters will be punished in my stead, and if he goes missing, his family won’t receive his pay. They’ll starve.

  Ryker and I may be many things, but we could never willingly hurt the ones we love.

  This will have to end before it even begins.

  * * *

  Tonight, when he returns, he takes off his shroud, his boots, unstraps his knives, pulls his shirt off, hanging it by the hearth, and then pauses. He’s probably making sure I’m asleep before unbuttoning his trousers. I close my eyes, keeping my breath as even as possible. As soon as I hear them drop to the floor, I can’t help but look. I remember feeling so afraid when I saw him like this on the first night he brought me here. I saw violence in the scars covering his body, I saw brute force in the way his muscles moved beneath his skin, but now I see something else. There is strength, but also restraint. There are scars, but also healing.

  He kneels beside me, pressing the inside of his wrist against my forehead. Force of habit, or maybe it’s just an excuse to touch me. Either way, I don’t mind.

  I pretend to stir awake.

  Grabbing a pelt off the bed, he covers himself. “I hope I didn’t scare you,” he says, a beautiful flush covering his neck and cheeks.

  “You don’t,” I whisper.

  His eyes meet mine. And what should be an innocuous gesture feels entirely electric.

  “Ryker, you there?” A voice pierces the air between us.

  He presses his finger to my lips to keep me quiet, but I don’t think I’d be able to utter a sound even if I wanted to.

  It’s not until we hear a foot hitting the bottom rung of the ladder that Ryker reacts. Bolting to his feet, he says, “Anders, sorry, I was sleeping.” He gives me a look of apology before ducking behind the door covering.

  “You’re just wearing a rabbit skin now?” Anders asks, a lightness in his voice.

  “Guess so.” Ryker lets out a nervous laugh.

  “Ned got one by the eastern fence,” Anders says.

  I sit up straight, tight as an arrow. That must’ve been the caw we heard last night.

  “Hardly any meat on it, brains all scrambled, but Ned’s set for life. You’re missing out. That’s the sixteenth one you’ve slept through.”

  “Sixteen,” I whisper.

  “They’re going down a lot earlier this season. Martin says the magic is really strong this year.”

  “Is that right?” Ryker replies, but I can sense the uneasiness in his voice, which means Anders can probably sense it, too.

  I hear him take another step up the ladder. “How’d that wool work out for you?”

  “Wool?”

  My eyes shoot to my cloak, hanging by the hearth.

  “You traded me an elk hide for it?”

  “Oh, yeah, made a great herb satchel.”

  “Let’s see.” The poacher takes another step up the ladder.

  A surge of panic rushes through me. If he gets all the way up here, I need to be ready to run … to fight.

  “I haven’t started yet,” Ryker explains, “but I will as soon as the weather turns cooler.”

  Getting up as quietly as possible, I tiptoe across the room to fetch my cloak and boots. The floorboard lets out a deep groan.

  There’s an awkward pause. I’m waiting for Anders to come charging up the ladder to see what’s going on when he says, “You know it was a year ago today that I was cursed … when you brought me home.”

  “That’s right,” Ryker replies, a soft haze slipping into his voice.

  “I thought I was a dead man.”

  “But you made it. You survived.”

  “They owe me,” Anders says, his voice darkening. “They killed my whole family. All I need is one clean shot. We’d have a lot better chance if you were out here with me. All we need is one kill, and we can take your family and get out of this place for good. Just like we planned.”

  “Take a look at that sky,” Ryker says, clearly trying to change the subject. Or maybe he’s trying to buy me some time.

  Slipping into my boots, I grab a knife off the table.

  “Yeah. Weather’s changing fast,” Anders replies. “Birds are flying low. Better batten down the hatches, close off the flue. Spring is about to go out with a bang.”

  I let out a shaky breath when I hear Anders step off the ladder, his feet hitting the ground, hard. “Hey,” he calls up. “You know you can tell me anything. Whatever’s going on with you, I’m here. Whatever you need.”

  As they say their good-byes, I sit on the edge of the bed, boots on, cloak around my shoulders, my body covered in a sheen of cold sweat.

  “I’m sorry,” Ryker whispers as he comes back inside. It’s the first time he’s ever said he’s sorry to me.

  “I wonder who it was last night,” I murmur. “Could’ve been Nanette or Molly or Helen…”

  He takes off my boots.

  “Or maybe it was Ravenna, Katie, or Jessica.”

  He removes my cloak.

  “Becca, Lucy, Martha
… Gertie…,” I whisper, my chin beginning to tremble. “They don’t deserve this. They don’t owe him their lives.”

  Prying the knife out of my hand, he sits beside me.

  “I know this is hard, but you don’t know what the prey is capable of … I mean, the girls.” He corrects himself. “When I found Anders last year, he was near death. It started with a rash near the bite mark, and by the time I got him back to the outskirts, it covered his entire body. He was burning up, vomiting blood, white bumps bursting to the touch. And within a week his entire family was dead.”

  “White bumps?” I ask, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand. “The size of early spring peas?”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Does Anders have scars?” I ask, trying to control my breath.

  “Yes,” he replies warily.

  “Like the one on my thigh?”

  He thinks about it for a minute and nods; his cheeks flush.

  “It’s from the vaccination my father gave to me.”

  “I have one, too,” he says, pointing out a small spot on the back of his shoulder.

  “Did my father give you a shot?” I ask, running my thumb over his scar.

  “Yes,” he replies. “After we made the agreement.”

  The memory comes flooding back to me. The ear in that glass bottle at the apothecary—covered in pustules. My father wasn’t buying that vial for himself or even for my mother—he was buying it for this.

  “It’s not a curse,” I whisper, tears running down my cheeks. “It’s smallpox. A virus. I don’t know why I never put it together before, but my father had been working on a cure for years. You need to tell the others,” I say, shooting to my feet. “If you go to them and tell them the truth … they’ll stop.”

  Ryker shakes his head. “They’d never believe me, and even if they did … think about it…” A look of horror passes over his face. “If they think the curse isn’t real, what’s to stop them from crossing the fence and hunting them down? They’d all be dead by sunrise.”

  I sink back down to the bed. I don’t know how long we stay like this, sitting side by side, but the inch between us might as well be a mile.

  “Ryker,” I whisper into the dark.

  The fire has nearly gone out, the last of the embers barely clinging to life. For a brief moment, I wonder if he’s already left to go hunting for the night, but when I look toward the doorway, I glimpse the top of his head. He’s sitting on the floor next to me, leaning back against the mattress. I can tell by his breathing that he’s fast asleep.

  I know it’s wrong, but I find myself reaching out to touch his hair. Skimming my fingers over the twisted ends sends a surge of warmth rushing through me. I’ve touched Michael’s hair a million times back in the county and never felt anything remotely like this. I know I should stop, but instead, I find myself threading my fingers in deeper.

  Ryker sits up with a jolt.

  Clenching my hand into a tight fist, I try to get control of my breath.

  “Another nightmare?” I ask.

  “Try to go back to sleep,” he whispers, staring into the dark.

  “What do you dream of?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he replies. “They’re just dreams.”

  I know he’s probably right, but it hurts to hear him say that, especially after I confided in him about the girl from my dreams, everything it meant to me.

  As if he can sense my feelings, he forces his shoulders to relax and leans back against the bed, eyes fixed on the doorway. “I’m in the woods,” he says softly. “I see water. It’s close, but I can’t seem to reach it.”

  “What are you doing there?” I ask, taking in his musky scent.

  “I’m searching for something … waiting for something … but I don’t know what it is. I walk through the forest, but my footsteps don’t make a sound, they don’t leave a trail. A buck comes charging through the trees. I take out my best blade, but the animal runs right through me.” I watch his Adam’s apple depress in the firelight. “And when I wake, I have this horrible feeling, this ache in my gut, like I’ll never leave those woods. I’ll never reach the shore. I’ll be alone … forever.”

  I want to reach out to touch him again. I want to tell him that I’m here, that he’s not alone, but what good would it do? No matter the circumstances that threw us together, he will always be a poacher. I will always be prey. Nothing will ever change that. As soon as I cross back over the fence, all of this will be nothing but a dream.

  A great and terrible dream.

  I wake to find that Ryker’s set up a fishing line across a corner of the tiny cabin, draping pelts over it to hide a small metal tub, filled with steaming hot water.

  “I thought you might want a bath,” he says.

  Pulling the chemise away from my damp skin, I tuck in my chin and take a whiff. He thought right.

  As he tends to the hearth, I duck behind the pelts. There’s a small jar of tea tree oil and a teakwood comb waiting for me.

  I peek through the pelts. It seems silly. He’s seen me naked a hundred times; he has a map to my skin, for God’s sake, but everything’s different now.

  Slipping out of the chemise, I step into the tub. A low grumble of thunder rattles the tin beneath me.

  “Anders was right about the storm,” I say.

  Pulling the ribbon from my hair, I let out the longest sigh of my life. I feel bad for swatting his hand away when he tried to take it out when I first arrived. I’m not sure if it was tradition or the idea of magic that set me off, but it makes me realize how ingrained the county runs in me.

  Sinking into the water, it’s so hot, I’m afraid I’ll scald my skin, but it feels too good to stop. I can’t imagine how many kettles he had to boil to fill this.

  I’m rubbing the tea tree oil into my hair when I feel something brush against my leg. I’m about to jump out of the tub when I see it’s a flower petal. I take in a quick breath. Wild roses. In the county, bathing with flowers is a sin, a perversion, punishable by whip.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks. He’s so attuned to me now. He probably hears the change in my breath.

  “There are rose petals in the bath,” I say, trying to sound as calm as possible.

  “It’s called a perfume bath. I’m told it’s good for your skin. I thought it might help with your scars, but I can take them out if you don—”

  “No. Of course. That’s very kind,” I say, rolling my eyes at how stupid I sound—like I’m accepting the arm of a gentleman to escort me over a puddle that I could damn well get over myself.

  Sinking back into the water, I try to avoid touching the petals, but I have to admit, it’s nice.

  Another roar of thunder trembles beneath me, making me tense up. I remember the last time a huge storm came through. That didn’t end so well. Smoothing the rose water over the scar tissue on my shoulder, I try to think of something else. Anything else.

  “Do you have a nickname?” I ask.

  “What’s that?”

  “Like, Ry or Ryker Striker or—”

  “No.” He lets out a tiny laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh before. “Do you?”

  I shrug. The pain in my shoulder seems to have dulled to the point that I hardly wince when I move it anymore. “Some of them call me Tierney the Terrible.”

  “Are you terrible?”

  “Probably.” I smile as I sink further into the water.

  “Who gave you a veil?” he asks.

  The question catches me by surprise. “A very foolish boy.” I study him through the gap in the pelts, noticing the way he’s clenching his jaw. “Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “You didn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to give me a veil?” I say, twisting the water out of my hair.

  “I didn’t say that,” he replies, staring intently into the waning fire.

  “His name’s Michael,” I say as I comb through my hair. “Michael Welk. His father owns the
apothecary. He’ll be taking over as head of the council.”

  “You say this like it’s a bad thing.” He peers back at me. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with him,” I say as I start to weave the ribbon into my braid. “He’s been my best friend since we were kids. That’s why I thought he understood. He knew I didn’t want to be a wife. He knew about the dreams. When he lifted my veil, I wanted to punch him in the face. And then he had the nerve to tell me that he’s always loved me … that I didn’t have to change for him.”

  “Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he wants to help you.” He pokes at the logs. “It sounds like he could’ve turned you in at any point for having the dreams, but he chose to protect you. He sounds like a decent man.”

  I tie off the braid and glare at him through the gap. “Whose side are you on?”

  “My own.” He meets my gaze. “Always my own.” He goes back to the hearth, but I can tell his mind is elsewhere. “Maybe you have an opportunity to change things. Maybe you can help the women of the outskirts, too. Like the usurper.”

  “You know about the usurper?” I jump out of the bath, pulling on my chemise. “Have you seen her?” I join him by the smoldering remains of the fire.

  “No.” He takes me in, his gaze lingering. “But I hear they meet with her on the border, in a hidden clearing. They stand together in a circle holding hands, talking late into the night.”

  “Who told you that?”

  He reaches out to catch a drop of water dripping from the end of my braid. “Rachelle…,” he says, glancing up at me through his dark lashes. “A girl I know.”

  “Oh,” I reply, which comes off snippier than I intended. “Is that … do you have a … a someone back home?” I ask, tripping over my own words.

  He looks at me curiously. “We’re hunters. We live a nomadic lifestyle. We’re not allowed to form attachments … to spread our bastard seed.”

  I can’t stop myself from looking down at his trousers. “So, you’re like the guards, then?”

  “No.” He shifts his weight at the thought. “I’m all … intact.”