by Annie Cosby
“It’s not a little money, Rube,” he protested.
“Ah, then I’ll alert Sarah that you think you’re finally grown. She’ll have you washing your own britches and cooking your own meals in no time.”
He rolled his eyes. “But if we could take some of those gems with us … we could have a fortune, Rube!”
“I know,” I breathed. My eyebrows scrunched together – an unfortunate reaction to my mind trying to gather my thoughts into rational sentences.
“Nowhere else has mines like we do,” he barreled on. “Any gem would be worth a fortune.” He gestured toward my neck. “A simple ruby like that could get us … I don’t know, a house!”
“You are not selling my necklace, Edwyn Martin!” I sat like a sullen child, a protective fist over my ruby, so familiar it was like another limb. It had hung around my neck for as long as I could remember, the only remnant of a life I couldn’t recall. And Wyn had always respected that.
“A ruby for Princess Ruby,” he had said once when I was around ten. We’d been playing prince and princesses with another little girl in town, when Sarah came charging out of the house.
“That’s enough!” she had yelled, her face as white as a sheet. “Didn’t I tell you to take the sheep to pasture?” I hadn’t remembered being told to do that, but I did anyway. And later that night, I’d heard Wyn, a whole two years older than me, getting a lecture from his mother.
Old Bertha moved beneath me, bringing me back to the present. How could he even speak of selling my ruby? More than anyone in the world, he knew what it meant to me. “Don’t you even dream of touching my necklace,” I added darkly.
Wyn changed tack, and his voice softened. Now it was the same voice that had sung me softly to sleep when I’d first seen specters in the Haunted Wood. “We’re not getting any younger, Ruby. Are you really serious about going on this adventure with me?”
Oh, God.
It was as though he could sense my hesitation, my newly hatched doubt. Going away with Wyn had been a deep, lingering fantasy for so long now that I didn’t know if I could be happy here. I didn’t know if I ever had been. I wanted this journey – and all the things that implied. Just him and me alone, on the seas, on a mighty odyssey that would change us forever. But like a worm in an apple, there was a niggling misgiving in my heart now. What if I never saw Maisie again? Or Sarah? But admitting my uncertainty would only cause this boy hurt. This boy who had been my most constant companion and fiercest protector from my very first memory of him.
“Of course I’m serious about it,” I said without meeting his eyes.
His gaze made my face feel warmly sensitive. “Well, the amethyst mine is looking for men,” he explained. “I could have the money in no time at all.”
Something inside me quaked. Was The Great and Mighty Voyage worth him laboring in the mines? Killybeg had a huge, working amethyst mine that had gone untapped until recent years. A plethora of them, along with a few emerald mines, scattered the coast, giving rise to the area’s name. It was how most families kept their children fed. But that didn’t go without a degree of danger.
In fact, long ago it had been incredibly dangerous. Prior to the Dihari Siege, which happened before my memory, the mines had been property of the royal family. The people had worked like mad to quarry the wealth for the palace, their own wives and children going hungry. And mines regularly collapsed. “Slavery,” Pat Manor had once called it, before Sarah had swept into the house to chastise the old man for drunkenly “filling the child’s head with tall tales.”
But ever since the rebels from the town called Dihari sieged the castle and cast out the royal family, it had been the people who received the wealth of Lorrha’s mines. And if a mine was deemed dangerous, it wasn’t mined to the breaking point, it was closed, like the old diamond mine below Diamond’s Peak. It had been years since a mine collapsed, but it had happened. I remembered the sound of the alarm – the same that marked any injury, any drowning. The same that would have sounded in a village down south when my parents drowned, had anyone been around to see it. It was the deep, booming knell of an enormous bell that echoed around Killybeg and instilled fear in every heart in the area – young and old. Mining was safer now, it was true, but it was Wyn’s safety at stake …
“I have an idea!” I said, instilling as much brightness into my voice as I could muster. “We might already have enough to go east. If we don’t cross the sea, we don’t need so much. We could go to Kinscourt or –”
His face clouded over and I fell silent. “We’re going to cross the ocean,” he said simply.
Chapter Three
“I should get them home,” Wyn said absently, nodding vaguely toward a group of sheep. It was true, Maisie would worry if they weren’t penned up by nightfall. But he didn’t move.
The sun grew shorter as Maisie’s sheep cuddled their young and Felix ran in happy circles, while Wyn blew a feathery, blissful tune on his wooden flute. Old Bertha hadn’t moved an inch, and I felt eternally indebted to the sleepy new mother. For as the sun inched ever closer to the horizon, the light grew softer, and so did Wyn’s gaze.
I could see it in the way he looked at me, his eyes darting between my hair, spread across Old Bertha’s back, and my eyes and my lips. The long grass tickled my bare arms, sending a tingling sensation through my senses, but it was the way he lay, half-turned toward me, his eyes running up and down my face in an unpracticed trail, that made my stomach twist.
As much as I’d dreamed of it, Wyn had never kissed me. He’d held my hand, he’d slept curled around me a hundred times when we were little. But he’d never kissed me.
At fifteen, I was the last of the girls in the village to be kissed. And in a village the size of Killybeg – where no one ever came or went – my inexperience was common knowledge. As legendary as Oren’s murderous tendencies. But this hurt all the more because those boys and girls that kissed behind the barns weren’t best friends. Not like Wyn and me. Maybe, just maybe, if he kissed me now, all my doubts about going away with him would clear like an errant cloud in the summer sky.
As I lay next to him in that moment, a tiny burst of hope flowered in my chest. A herd of hummingbirds hatched in my stomach, their tiny wings feathering my insides. His brown eyes were softer than melted butter, and I knew. If it was ever going to happen, it would be a moment precisely like this …
Old Bertha stirred then, and Wyn climbed to his feet, pocketing his flute.
Blasted ewe!
Pressing my eyelids together, I willed the frustrated tears not to come. Then I sat up and let my ragged, defeated breath out.
“Help me get them home?” he said, holding his hand out to help me up.
I narrowly resisted rolling my eyes, and jumped to my feet without his help. He quickly withdrew his arm and we trudged silently toward the tall wooden fence that enclosed Maisie’s field. The fence had been built by Wyn’s father long ago, to keep the Martins’ cows in, but the sheep wandered pleasantly under it without any regard for boundaries.
As Wyn climbed over the fence, Felix squeezed below it, barking at his charges. Wyn paused at the top of the fence, perched like an awkward bird, and I climbed up beside him. The sheep knew their way home. Even when Felix stopped to look expectantly back at Wyn for directions, the sheep kept trotting along toward the small sky-blue cottage a few houses away.
“Ruby … you’re my best friend.” Wyn’s thick, dark-umber eyebrows were scrunched up in confusion, as if even he didn’t understand what he was about to say.
I dug my fingernails into the wood. If my heart failed me now I just might fall to my death – by broken head or broken heart. Maybe both.
“You’re my best friend,” I replied. Surely the pounding of my heart punctuated my words and would scare him away from whatever thought he was contemplating.
Willing my hands not to shake, I scooted closer to him, hoping to make the decision as easy as possible. If only my stomach didn’t feel as though it w
ould turn my breakfast to the ground. When he finally pressed his lips against mine, would he feel me shaking like a leaf?
He cocked his head ever so slightly, like a lost little lamb, and took a deep breath. In that infinite moment, my heart beat in time to his breathing, and I watched his freckles as he floated toward me. Surely I was no longer on the ground. I felt no gravity around me. Did everyone fly when they kissed? I squeezed my eyes shut, afraid of what stories they’d tell him, and –
“Good evening, children.”
We sprang apart, and the rough wood of the fence bit into my hands and the backs of my knees as I only just managed to keep my balance. Wyn wasn’t so lucky.
He tumbled backward and landed in the field with a soft thud.
“Wyn!” I cried as he groaned.
It would be just my luck that my first almost-kiss turned into a fractured spine! But before I could drop to his rescue, Wyn sprang to his feet, muttering curses. Eyebrows shrouding his eyes, he climbed over the fence to face the interloper.
A man stood in front of us. A stranger.
Wyn jumped to the ground in front of me and brushed grass off his wool pants before planting his fists on his hips. “Hello,” he said hesitantly. He whistled sharply and Felix quickly left the man’s boots, which he’d been sniffing excitedly, and reported to Wyn’s feet. “Now that you’ve given me a lump the size of Lorrha on my head, what do you want?”
I looked questioningly at Wyn. Should we run? We should probably run.
This couldn’t be a merchant or trader. They rarely made it past Kinscourt, and definitely not as far west as remote Killybeg. Besides, the few that ever had were familiar to everyone in town. This man wasn’t. And a lack of familiarity was the perfect guise for thieving.
My hand darted for my neck, but halfway there, I willed it to still. If he hadn’t noticed my necklace yet, maybe he wouldn’t.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt,” the man said in a gravelly voice. He didn’t sound sorry. He also didn’t sound threatening, but his appearance told a different story. An older man with close-cropped gray-white hair, he had a verifiable mural of scars across his face. He wore dark, weathered traveling clothes, and his leather boots were covered in a thick layer of mud.
And despite his apology, he didn’t appear to have any intention of moving on.
Wyn stood straighter, trying to draw his height up to that of an impressive warrior. “Well? Can I help you?” he asked crossly, folding his arms over his chest. Lean cords of muscle rippled in his forearms, and had I not been so frightened, I may have giggled at his peacock display.
As it was, I was terrified. So I scrambled down from the fence to join him at his side. My dress caught on a splinter of wood and I wrenched it free with shaking hands. A tiny rip joined the myriad of others in the hem.
“You can help me, young man,” the stranger said. And as he said it, his ice-blue eyes traveled across my face, leaving a trail of frozen skin, and came to rest at the bottom of my throat.
A thief indeed.
My hand flew to my neck against my will. I wrapped my sweating palm around the bright ruby, willing it to lose some brilliance, to fade into anonymity just this once.
“Well then?” Wyn prodded. He grabbed my free hand.
Felix must have sensed some nervousness in his boy, because he barked then, an angry, warning bellow. He stood in front of us like a pathetic steed in battle, his hackles lifted.
The stranger laughed, a brittle snicker. “You ought to teach your dog better manners, boy.”
“Your mother ought to have taught you better manners,” Wyn shot back. “We’re working. What do you want?”
A smirk spread from the sharp corners of the man’s mouth. “Yes, indeed. It did appear that you were … working.”
My cheeks blushed like wildfire, the kiss, broken and forgotten, sitting heavy in the bottom of my heart.
“What do you want?” Wyn demanded again. His mahogany eyes were lit with an anger I had never seen before.
“Simmer,” the stranger commanded, looking around him in a bored manner. “I’m simply in need of directions to the nearest inn. This tiny town of yours is hardly worth my time, but it’s also so very far from everything that I won’t be able to make it anywhere worthwhile in the next twenty hours.” He paused and a throaty chuckled escaped him. “Why, I’d be murdered in my bedsack.”
A chill crept up my spine.
“There’s a boardinghouse there,” Wyn said, pointing back toward the lane. Boardinghouse was a rather ridiculous term for it – even inn was generous – but it was where Pat Manor lived, and he had a barn set up with enough hay to sleep an entire fleet of trading ships just in case they ever deigned to stop in Killybeg. There were also plenty of pigs to keep you warm when the moon rose and turned everything bone-cold.
Wyn’s hold on my hand had instilled me with enough confidence to speak. “It’s the white house,” I said, clarifying, lest the man go wandering into someone else’s cottage.
The stranger tore his eyes away from where Wyn was pointing to look at me, standing confidently despite the way my hands shook. It was just as his eyes settled upon me that I recognized the feeling.
The feeling of being watched.
“Why, thank you,” he said, his eyes darting between my face and the gem around my neck. “Thank you very much.”
Chapter Four
I stepped hesitantly past the tree line of the Haunted Wood. I knew I shouldn’t be wandering with a stranger about, but after the man had disappeared toward Pat Manor’s and I’d parted ways with Wyn, I couldn’t help but take a peek, drawn to the woods by an invisible force. I’d been having my persistent dream again, and the Haunted Wood held a hope I didn’t dare put into words. A hope I’d harbored for years … a yearning for a mere glimpse of my past.
There was a spindly white tree just past the edge of the forest that glowed bright as a star at night. It was where I usually saw my specters. But tonight, the sun hadn’t set yet, and the tree was just a flat, chalk white. As soon as I touched a hand to its trunk, Zora appeared.
The only hummingbird I’d ever named, the little iridescent green bird whipped out of a hole in the tree as if she’d recognized my footsteps. This particular bird had been visiting me for as long as I could remember. Many hummingbirds flew down to follow me through the forest or the fields when they pleased, but this one sometimes swooped into my room to sit with me at night. In the hours I’d lain with her, dreaming and musing the thoughts of a lonely child, I’d named her Zora.
“Hello, there,” I cooed, extending a finger. The tiny bird’s wings hummed as she lowered to rest on my finger, her tiny feet grasping my skin with a scratchy squeeze. Her black feet were covered by two tufts of white cottony down, making it look like she wore little boots.
With a heavy heart, I gazed around me. I loved the tiny birds, and they usually lifted my mood, but that isn’t what I’d come to see tonight. No matter how many times I saw the strange, ephemeral little girls in the Haunted Wood, I would always trudge back, longing to see them again. To verify that it hadn’t been a dream. To wait for another ghost to appear. One I longed to see with all my heart – a ghost from the depths of my past. And also to assure myself that I wasn’t as mad as a meadowlark. Which is what Maisie called people who said they saw visions in the Haunted Wood.
“It’s the name that does it,” Maisie liked to complain. “If you called it the Flying Pig Wood, they’d be seeing flying pigs, wouldn’t they?” In fact, Pat Manor was the only one left in Killybeg who saw apparitions in the Haunted Wood. Well, besides me. But nobody knew about me. It was the kind of thing to solidify people’s opinion of you, and in the old days, people were known for sending away the “loons,” as they were still apt to be called. It was said there was danger in keeping the deranged around society, so they were sent off to fare for themselves in the wild bogs. Pat Manor had narrowly escaped that fate due to a slightly mad mother of his, but there was no telling how th
e townspeople would react to another.
So I kept my mouth shut.
When the girls had first appeared to me back when I was nine, I hadn’t told anyone. Even children knew it was dangerous to be deemed a loon. I’d eventually divulged what I saw to Wyn, but he’d urged me to tell no one else, and suggested that the moon was playing tricks on my eyes.
Tricks or not, with the sun still ruling the sky, my ghosts wouldn’t appear today. I’d never seen them in the daylight. And I didn’t dare wait here until dark. Not with a stranger in Killybeg.
“There’s danger afoot, you know,” I whispered to the little hummingbird on my finger, smiling as she cocked her head at my words. Her tail was long and forked, each half ending in a shiny black spade-shaped feather that flowed like waves through the wind when she flew.
“Do you want to come home with me?” I asked. “I’d hate for you to be out here with the stranger.” I turned to leave the Haunted Wood and the little bird settled on my finger comfortably. Unlike the spectral girls in the woods, the hummingbirds were something I could share with Maisie.
When I reached the little azure house, I paused. Maisie was framed in the front window, which sported a splintery crack clean across it. She was washing dishes, but her head didn’t move pleasantly from side to side as she hummed. Not anymore. It had been a long time since Maisie hummed or sang or danced while she worked. Now she rubbed one lumpy hand, twisted with pain, against the other and lamented the way her knees ached. It sent a worry through me that I didn’t know how to cope with.
Maisie had been old for as long as I could remember. She’d come to Killybeg around the same time I had. And while she was leaving the bigger cities in the East, looking for a quieter life, my parents disappeared at sea together in a town down South. I’d been swept into nearby towns by neighbors looking for someone to take in the orphan, and in Killybeg, the kindly old maid, new to the area, had taken me, only a toddling child then, into her home without a second thought. With Sarah and Vill Martin next door, and their little boy, Wyn, I’d had a family. A real family. When Vill was crushed by his horse in the fields, I’d mourned as his own daughter. When Pat Manor had given Wyn one of his dog’s pups, I’d helped Wyn pick out the name Felix. When I’d grown up and yearned for a job to make my own living, Sarah had given me a job in the bakery. When I outgrew my dresses, Maisie sewed me new ones. They were my family, and I was part of theirs. So every time Maisie complained of an ache or a pain, my own heart skipped a frantic, desperate beat.