Eyes of the Woods

by Eden Fierce

  Copyright © 2014 by Eden Fierce

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Designer: Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations, www.okaycreations.com

  Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Visit my website at www.facebook.com/AuthorEdenFierce

  To Mikey

  You’re everything that’s right with the world.

  And to Papa

  I love you, a bushel and a peck

  A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.

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  acknowledgments

  about the author

  THE PRIORY WAS ALL THAT WAS FAMILIAR TO ME. No matter how much blood we shed, how many lives we watched slip away, or how many mornings I spent wondering if I would go to Hell for what I’d done, it was my calling.

  The sunset before me was beautiful, unlike any other. Without knowing why, I took a moment to appreciate the orange and pinks swirling in the sky as the burned circle sizzled against the horizon. Our lands were the most beautiful of the six territories the Priory guarded, and also the most dangerous. My father led the people of Ona, the oldest of them all.

  Glass clinked together downstairs, and the noise snapped me back to reality. It was likely Father, already awake and organizing supplies. Father was respected, admired, and feared, and as many nights as I had spent watching him slay monsters, I didn’t question the devotion that Onans felt for him. After all, I felt the same.

  My father was the strongest man I knew, and often I wondered if he would live forever. Nearly seventeen, and standing five foot eight, I was strong and tall for a girl. Father still towered over me, his burly arms thicker than my waist.

  The sun slipped behind the snowcapped mountains in the distance, and my fingers began to twitch. Sunset meant time for hunting—a duty I tried to love but secretly despised, almost as much as the extravagant red gown worn by the metal dress form in the middle of my bedroom. The layers of scarlet fabric had been taunting me for weeks, creating a fury inside me that multiplied every time I laid eyes upon it.

  Seventeen meant many things. More freedom, more respect, but it also meant the announcement of a young Onan woman’s betrothal, and there was a loathing inside me that I had never sensed before. As was customary, Father hadn’t yet told me whom he’d chosen. His faith to the tradition was just as well; knowing would make me dread it all the more.

  I had as much enthusiasm for being promised to a man as I did for killing.. It all felt like chains, weighing me down and holding me back from being whom I was meant to be—whoever that was.

  I crept from my bed and padded down the hall in my bare feet to wake my brothers. They more than accepted our station, relishing the advantages that being Priory brought, and who could blame them?

  Everyone who lived in the clearings along the edges of the vast forests that made up our lands daydreamed about what it would be like to be a Prior. Old women wished for their daughters to marry into our family, and young men sang songs about dreams of being born into the Priory. They all sought to be one of us. Everyone but me.

  I passed my parents’ chamber. Father’s half of the bed was empty as I suspected, the linens pulled back and bunched along the curvy silhouette of my mother, who was sleeping peacefully.

  The rooster crowed just as I passed through the doorway of my brothers’ chamber. Our home was large enough for each of them to have his own room, but the boys had always insisted on sharing the same sleeping space. It was normal for children of the Priory to suffer nightmares. The boys slept best when they were together.

  “It’s time,” I whispered, grinning as three pairs of green eyes blinked. The boys stirred, and then one by one, they sat up.

  “How many do you think we’re going to catch tonight?” Jonathan asked, his crooked teeth gleaming in the moonlight that peeked through the window. He had just turned twelve in the spring and was allowed to train a night or two every week.

  “I remember being twelve,” I said, tapping his nose. “I had that same look on my face when I woke up, knowing I might join Father on the hunts.”

  Clemens sat on Jonathan’s bed and ruffled his little brother’s wild, brown hair. “I’m going to catch at least two. You’ve got a Post.”

  Jonathan whined.

  The children of Dyre and Ingrid Helgren were a mess of boys and one girl. Clemens was the oldest. Tall, flaxen-haired, and gallant, he was a replica of our father, only lacking Father’s thick, red beard. After Clemens was born, Father and Mother worried they couldn’t have more children, until I finally came along three years after. Father always called me their good luck charm, because Lukas arrived just a year later, and Jonathan surprised us all three years after that.

  Lukas hopped up without a word and hurried out the door and down the hallway.

  “Where’s he off to?” I asked.

  Jonathan stretched and yawned. “Probably to gather the equipment with Father. I should have known I was back at Post. He barely slept today. He was too excited.”

  “It is his turn, isn’t it,” I said, less of a question than a statement.

  Jonathan didn’t pretend to be happy for his brother. As the youngest, he was committed to a Post. Lukas had worked in the bakery the past two nights so Jonathan could train with Father, but he was only allowed a couple of nights per week, and then Lukas would return to the hunt, and Jonathan to his post at the bakery.

  “It’s not fair,” he grumbled. The splash of freckles over his nose bunched together as he wrinkled it.

  “It’s the law,” I replied, patting his back. I remembered my days committed to a Post before Lukas was old enough to take it over, and I sympathized. I may have not agreed wholly with hunting, but it was certainly more exciting than a Post, a designated job for every child in the village, even a Prior, until they were old enough to hunt.

  Ona was dependent on two things: the Priory, and the Onans committing their youngest to work in the stores and warehouses to provide food to eat and wool for clothes. Even the Priory had to lend their youngest to a Post.

  Posts had been around longer than my grandfather Jed could remember. As long as the Priory—the families who more than six generations before had chosen to hunt the nightwalkers.

  “We shouldn’t have to follow the law,” Jonathan said. “We should all be out there. Father is having trouble keeping up with the Vileon demand as it is. If there were more of us out there, taking more of them down, there would be more to produce, and—”

  “Jonathan, if Father heard you talking this way, he’d have your hide,” I warned.

  Clemens chimed in, still fussing with his hair in the mirror. “You know Father doesn’t worry with the Vileon demand. That’s not the true reason behind the hunt.”

  “They would change the law i
f the Vileon runs out,” Jonathan said, slowly climbing out of bed. “Maybe we should let it, and then I could go every night.” He pulled his nightgown over his head, stepping into a pair of pants and then buttoning up a freshly pressed shirt, clearly sullen about putting on regular clothes instead of what he might wear for a hunt.

  “You’ll be out there, trying not to die, soon enough,” I said, only half-joking.

  The Priory’s primary function was to safeguard its territories by controlling the population of the nightwalkers—the monsters that prowled the Glades between the territories at night. Not only was Ona the first to form a territory, but our family was also the first to learn about and produce Vileon.

  “I’m going to help Lukas,” I said, not in the mood for an argument.

  Clemens waved to me absent-mindedly, too busy making sure his leather guards covered any weak spots that the nightwalkers typically targeted during a hunt. The leather was thick and helped prevent a bite.

  Only one Prior had ever been bitten, and that was Father’s great-uncle Gavin. He had four daughters, and once the hunt was over and the girls realized what had happened, they promptly ended their father’s life. Father called it mercy, like he did every time he downed a nightwalker. Unlike the other Priory, Father pitied the nightwalkers and saw their deaths as an end to their suffering.

  “Maybe I’ll get to go the night before your birthday!” Jonathan said.

  I frowned. I would turn seventeen soon. It was unlikely Father would replace me with Jonathan. After a night of hunting, I would be expected to spend the day celebrating something that didn’t deserve to be celebrated, instead of doing something I enjoyed very much: sleeping. Mother would have me put on the ridiculous red dress that had been hanging in my room for months, and I would stand next to my father as he announced to the entire territory my betrothal.

  Refusing to dwell on the cursed occasion, I returned to my room and slipped on a gray wool sweater and pants. Thick wool socks would keep my feet and legs warm up to my knees, and I made sure to knot my bootlaces twice. Father taught us many seemingly insignificant things that had proven to save lives. In my family there were a hundred ways to die. An untied lace was only one of them.

  I yawned several times as I slipped the leather over my limbs and tied a thick piece around my neck. The night before had been a busy one. Father had stumbled into a nest, and it had taken teamwork and persistence to get us all home alive.

  “What’s for breakfast?” Clemens asked as he walked down the hall to the kitchen.

  I followed. “You’re asking me?”

  Ursula hadn’t arrived yet. Even so, Clemens had been practicing his cooking skills for weeks.

  “Eggs,” Clemens announced with confidence.

  Jonathan was already sitting at the table waiting patiently, but his shoulders slumped. “Why? Why must Clemens have to cook? Isn’t that making Ursula useless?”

  “She has plenty more to do than cook. Clemens really is trying. You might like his eggs today.”

  “I’m suddenly not hungry,” Jonathan said.

  I chuckled and smoothed down a piece of hair standing proudly at the crown of Jonathan’s head. His cheeks were still full with his remaining baby fat, and his sapphire eyes sat atop his round nose. He would be as handsome as Clemens one day, but now he as cute as a plump puppy.

  Grease popped from the skillet, and Clemens pulled his hand back. He was known to be agile, but apparently he wasn’t fast enough to save the burned finger that went straight into his mouth.

  “Eggs not cooperating this evening?” Evening. The Priory lived in a world opposite from everyone else’s. Breakfast for dinner. Sleeping during the day. Once I compared our lives to those of the nightwalkers, but quickly learned what a mistake it was to compare the Priory to savages. My father walloped me and sent me to bed before sunrise and without dinner.

  Clemens laughed once. “They will one of these days. I refuse to starve to death if I’m ever stuck in the Glades for more than a night again. I’m learning to cook if it kills me.”

  “If you’re starving, you won’t care if it tastes good.”

  “I happen to know for a fact that you’re incorrect, dear sister,” he said. Clemens was the oldest at nineteen. He was weeks away from marrying Emelen, one of the most beautiful girls in all the six regions of our island. She was from the Toruna territory, mountainous and rugged. Like all young women who lived within the protected borders of the Priory, she was betrothed to my brother on her seventeenth birthday. By law they had courted all year. By choice they had courted a year before that.

  Emelen was looking forward to her next birthday, which would also be her wedding day. I didn’t share her enthusiasm for the laws, although I could see why she was eager to marry my brother. Clemens was a good man: kind, patient, and as brave and level-headed as my father.

  I left Clemens in the kitchen and made my way to my parents’ room. The bed was empty, and I could hear Mother humming in the bathroom. Out the window I could see Father below, checking and rechecking the weapons. Killing was a precarious occupation, especially if you brought your children along with you.

  Anyone else’s children would have been a burden, but the offspring of Dyre Helgren were bred and born with strength and skill. Clemens was lethal with a sword. Lukas, when his hair wasn’t in his eyes, was frighteningly accurate with a bow, and Jonathan could pin a firefly to the bark of a tree with his daggers. I was astute in all three, but I prided myself on tracking and strategy. I had a knack for keeping us out of a corner, and when it was time to harvest our kills, I was the best at that too. Being the best didn’t mean I enjoyed it, or even had a desire to do it, but what else would a Helgren daughter do, if she didn’t hunt and process nightwalkers?

  I smiled. Jonathan watched Clemens intently as he set the steaming plate of eggs on the wooden table. Just when he moved to stab his fork into the yellow heap, Clemens grabbed his wrist.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry?”

  Jonathan grinned. “I was kidding. Do we all lose our sense of humor when we get married?”

  Clemens laughed once and released Jonathan. “I’m not married yet.”

  “Practically,” Jonathan said, shoveling a forkful into his mouth.

  Lukas wandered in and sat down, piling eggs onto his own plate. He was taller than I, but favored our mother. His cheekbones were high, his lashes thick, his lips plush, but he was broad shouldered and exhibited plenty of lean muscle. Already the girls of Ona were clamoring to catch his eye.

  Jonathan elbowed his brother. “How many do you think you’ll down tonight?”

  Clemens crossed his arms and rested his elbows on the table, watching the younger boys eat. “If we find another nest, maybe we’ll all get as many as last night.”

  “I don’t know,” Lukas said with a smirk. “You’re moving awful slow today, old man.”

  Clemens rubbed his shoulder. His cheek was still purple from the blow he took from behind. The nest we found was particularly vicious. It was the first time I’d seen young ones, and the adults had fiercely protected them. Father and Clemens didn’t hesitate, but I did.

  It only took those few seconds for the nightwalkers to flank us. Our bows and daggers only slowed them down. Nightwalkers were only vulnerable to three things: separating the head from the body, engulfing them in fire, or Eitr, a second special serum our family had developed over the generations.

  On my list of things I hated most, collecting for Eitr was second only to harvesting Vileon.

  Clemens groaned, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Still hurts?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t like what we did. Maybe we should have—”

  “Eris?”

  I looked up at my eldest brother.

  “Don’t.”

  I nodded.

  If the people saw what we saw, maybe they wouldn’t wish for the lives we led. The nightwalkers we downed and harvested every night were all shapes and
sizes—and ages. I’d heard about the young ones from Father, but hadn’t seen them until the night before. The old ones kept them hidden away. It was Father’s theory that the young ones were being kept like cattle, fed on when the adults had been too long without food, but that didn’t make sense to me.

  The old ones were definitely protecting their young last night. Once, when Father downed a small one, I saw a female nightwalker writhe in pain, and she howled in a way I never wanted to hear again.

  You don’t risk your life for food unless you’re starving, and they weren’t, especially after the raid four nights before in Jergden, a tiny settlement two valleys over in the Gilsan territory. Every villager had been wiped out overnight.

  Especially after massacres like Jergden, Father was proud to release the nightwalkers from their miserable existence. He often made us promise that if he were ever bitten, we would save him from such a horrendous fate. Clemens promised without hesitation. The younger boys and I had yet to agree, but Father trusted that we would.

  “Did you need help with the equipment, Lukas?” I asked.

  Lukas took a bite and shook his head. He was generally a happy child, so the absence of his laughter was always noticeable. His green eyes matched Father’s, but he had Mother’s golden locks, except his were unkempt and not nearly as shiny.

  Mother stopped fussing over us after Lukas was born, and the boys ran around looking like heathens, with dirty faces and straggly hair. To see them, one wouldn’t know they were of Priory birth except for their pale skin, which was caused by lack of exposure to the sun—a symptom of our lifestyle.

  Lukas offered me a half smile and spoke with his mouth full. “Thanks, though.” He was loyal and dependable, always quick to take my side, and there for me when I needed him.

  Clemens ate what was left of the eggs, and then rushed out the door so he could see Emelen before we began patrol. She and her mother had traveled to Ona the month before in preparation for the upcoming wedding. No one spoke of it, but it was common knowledge that not everyone was happy with their betrothal. Clemens and Emelen had fallen in love, though, and she would meet him halfway each night before he left for a hunt.