by Kim Liggett
As we clear the last of the trees, we keep our heads down, bodies hunched low. Moving in the open like this is dangerous under any circumstances, but I can see the shore. I can feel the sun on my face.
Hearing a noise behind us, the rhythmic crunch of leaves, a clipped huffing sound, we both freeze midstep. Slowly, Ryker peers over his shoulder and holds out his hand, signaling for me to stay put. Still.
The rhythm is getting closer, so close that I can feel it pounding up from the earth. I’m about to dive for cover when I see the rise of Ryker’s cheek. The start of a smile.
Glancing back, I see a deer running straight toward us. A young buck. I’m thinking we should move out of its path, but Ryker stands his ground, watching in awe as it thunders past.
And I know exactly what he’s thinking—it’s just like his dream, only the stag didn’t run right through him.
Smiling back at me, he reaches out for my hand, but before I can grab on to his, I stagger forward to my knees, as if I’ve been shoved from behind. I look over my shoulder to see a dagger embedded in the pelts.
“Ryker?” I whisper.
He has the strangest expression on his face. His skin has turned to ash; his breath is coming out in short bursts. “Run for the gate. Head straight south, follow the barrier.”
His words … his face … nothing makes sense … and then I see the hilt of a blade protruding from his stomach.
“I’m not leaving you,” I say as I start to get up.
“Then stay down … close your eyes,” he grunts. “But if something happens … I need you to run.”
I nod. I think I nod. I know he told me to close my eyes, but I can’t do it.
Grabbing the hilt of the blade, he pulls it out, blood dripping from eight inches of etched steel. That’s when I hear the caw. It’s more than a warning. More than a call to run. It’s the sound of death.
“They’re coming,” he says, his eyes focused somewhere behind me. Holding the blade to his side, he widens his stance and takes a deep breath through his nostrils.
Two sets of heavy footsteps approach. “We only want the prey,” one of them says. “Leave right now and we can forget all about this.”
“We’ll even cut you in,” the other one says.
Ryker doesn’t answer. Not with words.
Tightening his grip on the blade, he starts swinging.
There are boots stamping all around me; I hear a scream, the slicing of flesh, the grinding of bone. I’m praying that it’s not Ryker when a body slams to the ground, one hazel eye locked on me, the other with a dagger pierced right through it.
“Stop,” I hear someone call from the distance.
Beyond Ryker fighting the other poacher for control of the knife, there’s a third poacher coming toward us. I have to do something. I can’t just lie here and play dead, no matter what I promised.
Slipping out of the pack, I grab the knife embedded in the hides and get to my feet. I want to help, I’m trying to help, but they’re moving so fast. The last thing I want to do is hurt Ryker even more, but if I don’t do something, we may never make it to the shore. I’m on the verge of throwing myself into the fray when the poacher kicks Ryker’s legs out from under him, holding a knife to his throat. Ryker’s eyes land on the knife in my hand, and I know what he wants me to do—toss it to him, the way we used to pass the time last winter.
With trembling hands, I lob it toward him. I’m thinking I didn’t use enough force when he manages to snatch it right out of the air, swinging his arm back, plunging the steel into his assailant’s ribs, but not before the poacher drags the knife across Ryker’s throat.
There’s a moment of complete and utter silence.
The world stops turning.
The birds stop singing.
And in the next breath, everything seems to speed up, faster than I can even process.
“Run,” Ryker manages to get out, before he crumples to the ground in a sea of his own blood.
I’m standing there, frozen, not knowing what to do, how to breathe, when the third poacher reaches us. He takes one look at Ryker, the two poachers lying on the ground, and lets out a horrifying growl. “It was only supposed to be you.”
It’s enough to snap me out of this … enough to run.
Taking off toward the south, I’m scrambling past the poachers’ abandoned blinds, following the barrier the best I can, but tears are stinging my eyes, clouding my vision. I hear fast footsteps behind me, but I can’t look, I can’t bear to see Ryker’s body. The place of his death. A knife slices through the air right next to my head, nicking my ear. I weave between the trees trying to lose him, but he stays right with me. Diving for me, he manages to grasp my cloak, ripping half of the wool from my body, but I kick him as hard as I can and keep going. I keep striving. For what, I have no idea, but Ryker told me to run and that’s all I can focus on right now.
“Open the gate,” I yell as I get closer.
I hear the girls arguing, but I don’t have time for this. I’ll never be able to scale it like I did before. Not now.
“Please,” I scream as I bang against the wood. Tears are streaming down my face; my entire body is trembling. Pressing my back against the gate, I’m trying not to think of Ryker, the look in his eyes when he told me to run. The blood. The bodies. As I stare down the long path, I get the faintest glimpse of the vast lake in the distance, and I can’t help wondering if this is punishment for believing I could somehow escape this … that I could be happy. After everything that’s happened, surviving the woods, being stabbed with an axe, being hunted by a guard, having my heart broken into a million pieces, I can’t believe this is how it ends. On the final day of my grace year, hunched outside the gate of the encampment, condemned to death by my own kind.
I close my eyes, finally ready to accept my fate. Then I’m pulled inside.
Covered in blood and filth, my torn cloak exposing my body for all to see, I sink to my knees before them.
They stand there in shock, staring down at me.
Gertie is reaching out to comfort me when Kiersten screams, “Don’t touch her … she’s a whore.” She’s dragging a rain barrel to a huge pile of supplies in the middle of the clearing. Everything I built to keep them going this past year. “We need to burn everything … burn her with it,” Kiersten says as she hacks into one of my barrels, splitting it into pieces. “Get the torches,” she yells.
“You can’t be serious,” Gertie says through her split lip. I’m sure it was a fight to even get them to open the gate.
“She can’t go back with us,” Kiersten says, taking out her rage on my cooking stand. “Not after everything that’s happened here. And if we don’t burn everything, the next year’s grace year girls will never suffer, and if they don’t suffer, they won’t be able to get rid of their magic.”
“Haven’t we all suffered enough?” Gertie says, her voice trembling.
“Shut up,” Kiersten says.
“No … she’s right.” Jenna steps forward. “My little sister is in the next year. Allie. She’s never done anything wrong … been good her whole life … followed all the rules. Why should she have to suffer for something that’s not even real?”
“The magic is real,” Kiersten screams. “Jenna … you can fly, Dena … you can talk to animals, Ravenna … you can control the sun and the moon.”
But the girls just stand there in silence.
“Fine,” Kiersten says as she stomps toward the gate. “I’m putting an end to this right now.”
“What are you doing?” Jenna asks.
“I can prove the magic is real.” Kiersten yanks open the gate. “Watch. No harm will come to me,” she says as she steps over the threshold.
I know most of the poachers have already left the island, but there’s at least one more out there.
Counting her steps, Kiersten seems to gain confidence with each stride, and when she reaches ten, she turns to face us, spreading her arms out wide. “See. I told you. N
othing can touch me. My magic forbids it. Come, join me and you’ll see.”
A few of the girls are edging closer when a dark figure stumbles from the brush.
The girls freeze at the sight of him.
Kiersten glances at him over her shoulder and laughs. “Look, he’s trembling. He can’t come any closer.”
The poacher stands there, eyes darting wildly around the scene, trying to decipher if this is some kind of a trap or madness. Tentatively, he takes a step toward her.
Kiersten’s manic smile begins to waver, but she stands her ground. “That’s as close as my magic will allow. Watch.”
Slipping the knife from his sheath, he takes another step.
“Stop. I command you. Don’t come any closer … or else,” she says, her voice starting to betray her.
Lunging forward, the poacher grabs her from behind, holding a blade to her throat, so close that when she murmurs, “What’s happening…,” the steel bites into her skin.
With blood trickling down her chest, her confusion swiftly turns to terror.
There’s a part of me that should feel satisfied—Kiersten’s finally getting what she deserves—but I only feel tired. Tired of hating each other. Tired of feeling small. Tired of being used. Tired of men deciding our fate, and for what?
Picking up a shattered piece of the rain barrel, I hold it in my hands, feeling the weight of the solid wood.
“Enough,” I whisper.
The girls look at me, then look at each other, and without a word, they pick up whatever they can get their hands on—rocks, buckets, ribbons, nails.
As we step over the threshold, I feel something swell inside of me—it’s more than anger, more than fear, more than anything they tried to pin on us, it’s a sense of belonging … that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. And isn’t that what we’ve all been searching for?
We may be without powers, but we are not powerless.
As we march forward as one, the poacher digs the knife in further.
“Come any closer and I’ll skin her right in front of you.”
“Please … help me,” Kiersten whispers, a fresh trail of blood seeping down her neck.
The girls are following my lead, waiting for a signal, but as the poacher’s eyes scan the crowd, I recognize something. I’ll never forget those eyes, the ones I saw when he climbed the ladder to Ryker’s shelter to threaten me.
And suddenly, I don’t see a poacher, I see a boy, who lost his entire family, whose eyes are still wet from witnessing the death of his best friend. We have that much in common.
It’s not just the grace year girls that are victims of the county. It’s the poachers, the guards, the wives, the laborers, the women of the outskirts … we’re all a part of this. We’re the same.
Lowering the wood plank, I say, “Go home, Anders. There’s a family that needs you.”
He looks at me, all of me, and his eyes seem to soften.
As he lowers the blade, they grab Kiersten, carrying her inside the encampment.
Anders and I watch each other until he backs away into the foliage, until all I can hear is his heavy breath … until all I can hear is my own.
Huddling on the floor of the lodging house, I realize we’re right back where we started. But that’s not entirely true.
“What do we do now?” Kiersten asks, wiping away her tears, and I realize she’s looking to me. They all are.
There’s a part of me that wants to tell them they’re on their own, this isn’t my fight anymore, but I promised myself that as long as I had breath in my body, I would strive for a better life. A truthful life. Looking around at the empty iron bed frames stacked up around us, I think about Betsy, Laura, Ami, Tamara, Meg, Patrice, Molly, Ellie, Helen, and so many others.
“We can start by leaving this place how we would’ve liked to have found it.”
Whispers erupt among them.
“Despite everything that’s happened here, I’ve seen glimpses of strength, mercy, and warmth from every single one of you,” I say as I meet their eyes. “Imagine if we were able to let that shine, how bright the world could be. I want to live in that world. For however much time I have left. My father always told me that it’s the small decisions you make when no one is watching that make you who you are. Who do we want to be?”
A hush falls over the room, but as I look around, I realize it’s a good hush. A necessary hush.
“But what about you?” Gertie asks, her chin quivering. “You can’t go back … not now … not after everything that’s happened—”
“You’re right. I can’t go back to the county to be a wife, but I can tell the truth. I can look them in the eyes and tell them what the grace year really is.” It takes everything I have not to lose it right then and there, but I have to stay strong. One crack in the veneer, one chink in my armor could dismantle me completely, sending me crashing to the floor. I’ll let myself feel, I’ll let myself grieve when they light the match for my pyre. But not until then.
No one says a word, but I can tell they’re worried about being punished themselves—guilt by association. And I don’t blame them.
“I’m not asking you to join in. No grand gestures,” I assure them. “When we reach the gates of the county, I want you to step away from me, pretend you don’t know me, but I will say my piece. I owe it to every fallen grace year girl. I owe it to myself.”
* * *
We spend the last night doing what we should have done all along.
After washing out the privy, cleaning the larder, tidying the clearing, we get to work untangling the bed frames. The girls decide to set up the beds in one large continuous circle. There’s something about it that gets to me. I think about Ryker telling me about the women in the outskirts who meet with the usurper in the woods, how they join hands and stand in a circle. It’s easy for the men of the county to scoff at such things, the silly work of women, but they must not think it’s all that silly or they wouldn’t be working so hard to stop the usurper. I hope they haven’t caught her—I hope she’s still out there.
Someone tugs at my cloak and I flinch.
“I just want to mend it for you,” Martha says.
Taking a deep breath, I let it go, laying it in her hands as if it’s made of gold. And for me, it is. It saved my life more than once out here. “Thank you.” I squeeze her hand. I’m grateful she thought of mending it. I want June to see that it survived. That I made full use of her gift.
As I walk around the camp, taking it all in, I see they managed to bind together enough timber to cover the well. They even scorched POISON into the wood for good measure.
The only thing left hanging over us, hanging over the entire encampment, is the punishment tree. Forty-seven years of hate and violence dangling from its limbs.
“Maybe we can strip the branches. Bury the offerings,” Jessica says.
“We can do better than that,” Gertie says as she pries the hatchet from the chopping block. Back home, vandalizing the punishment tree would be sacrilege, instant death, but who’s going to tell, who’s going to see? Kiersten was right about one thing—we are the only Gods here.
Taking turns, pouring all of our sadness and rage into each swing, we hack into the trunk. Braids, toes, fingers, and teeth rattle in the trembling branches, and when the tree finally drops, I feel the weight of it in every inch of my body. Even though I won’t be here to see the ramifications of this, it’s enough to witness its demise. I know I’m a far cry from the girl from my dreams, but I want to believe there’s a part of her that lives in me … in every single one of us.
After burning the hacked-up tree and everything it stood for, we bury the ashes and decorate the stump with weeds—clover, wood sorrel, and buttercups. They’re low flowers, seldom used anymore in the county, but they once symbolized fragility, peace, and solitude.
Just seeing the display makes me realize how much we’ve lost out here, but maybe we had to destroy everything in order for somethin
g to be born anew.
From death there is life.
* * *
Just before dawn, we cut a fresh trail to the ridge, setting up markers as we go, so the next year of girls will be able to find the spring … June’s garden.
When we reach the top of the incline, Martha begins to hum. The women of the county aren’t allowed to hum—the men think it’s a way we can hide magic spells—but maybe that’s exactly what we need right now, a spell to make this okay.
Taking off our clothes, we lay them on the rocks and beat out a year’s worth of dirt and blood, lies and secrets. The girls try not to stare, but I can feel their eyes on my skin.
As we step into the cold water to bathe under the waning moon, we open up to each other, giving voice to every fallen girl’s name, telling stories to remember them by. Maybe it’s the moonlight or the gravity of going home, but it feels pure. Like we can finally be clean of this. It makes me wonder if Eve is looking down at us now with a benevolent gaze. Maybe this is all she ever wanted.
When the sun rises, mellow and hazy on the eastern shore, we sit on the edge of the ridge and braid each other’s hair, tidy up our rags, shine our tattered boots.
It may seem futile, a lost cause, something the men will never notice, but we’re not doing it for them. It’s for us … for the women of the outskirts, the county, young and old, wives and laborers alike. When they see us marching home, they’ll know change is in the air.
THE RETURN
As the guards approach the gate, clubs in hand, their thick-soled boots heavy against the earth, we don’t wait for them to come knocking. We open the gate wide, filing out in silence.