But Annie would merely close her eyes for a moment before predicting the weather, usually correctly. What happened to Jonathan had been something else entirely. It was almost like—
“Is practice over?” Jonathan asked.
“Yes.” She straightened, then offered him a hand. She would pull him to his feet, and that would be the end of it. She had fulfilled her neighborly requirement for today. She would get out of here, go down to the sheep farm, dye some yarn, and forget about this entire creepy scene.
Instead, she felt her mouth open and say, “What did you see?”
His expression drew inward. “What do you mean?”
She pulled him up. “Your father goes into trances. Mum’s told me about them. You were in one too. What did you see?”
“You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Why not? It’s not my fault you decided to do it right in the middle of practice.”
He grabbed her shoulders and Katie tensed, suddenly realizing that he was nearly a foot taller than she was. She reached for her knife, but before she could pull it free, Jonathan released her and backed away.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “But I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Why not?” Katie asked, bewildered. “I would love to have the sight. I didn’t get any gifts from the Crossing.”
Jonathan gave her a measuring look. “All my life, people have been watching me, waiting for me to become my father in miniature. And that’s fine; I understand why they do it. But dynasties are dangerous. Whoever they elect to lead this town next, it shouldn’t be simply because he’s someone’s son. They’ll make a better decision if they think I’m like everyone else.”
“Isn’t it a little hard to hide?”
“Not really. I spend most of my time alone.”
Katie looked down, embarrassed. She had always assumed that Jonathan’s isolation was merely a function of social awkwardness; it had never occurred to her that it might be self-imposed. Thinking of the snide comments that she and Row had traded back and forth about him, she felt ashamed.
“Don’t,” Jonathan said, making Katie jump. “It’s the impression you were meant to get.”
Katie retreated, frightened again. Had he heard what she was thinking? Several teenagers in town had a little bit of that talent; Katie had overheard Mum and Aunt Maddy talking about it once. Mum said that William Tear had ordered them not to talk about these things, not to make the Crossing children feel singled out. Row could do extraordinary things with fire; it was his gift, just as Ellie Bennett could find water and Matt van Wye could make things vanish. Row did not showcase his ability either; only Katie—and perhaps Row’s mother—knew that this skill was what made Row such a fine metalworker. Katie, who had been born nearly two years after the Landing, had no such gifts, and had often envied them. But she sensed that the Crossing children, with their little magics salted around the Town like hidden eggs at the spring festival, were very different from Jonathan. Power seemed to surround him. Katie looked down and found that the hair on her arms was standing on end. She kept her hand on her knife.
“I’m no danger to you,” Jonathan told her.
Maybe not, but there was danger in him, all the same, and Katie struggled to analyze it. Hadn’t she just been thinking that the Town was a place where everyone was equally valuable, where all of their gifts came together to make a tapestry?
Equally valuable? What about William Tear?
Katie blinked. She wondered what Row would say if he knew what she had discovered here, and the answer came back instantly.
We don’t need another William Tear.
Yes, that was Row’s voice, but Row hadn’t been there that night, hadn’t sat on the bench and felt Tear’s greatness, the majesty of him. Tear had arranged with all of their mentors to shield this time, to pretend that they were all working at their apprenticeships when they were not, and so far the story seemed to be holding. But secrecy from Row was a different story entirely; he knew that Katie wasn’t being entirely truthful, and it had created a tiny divide between them. Katie hated this divide, but could do nothing about it. Although she still chafed occasionally at the strictures of the Town, its innate hypocrisy, she knew that she could never go against William Tear. Tear didn’t want to be worshipped as a god, or even a king; there was danger there, something innately hostile to the democracy he prized. But Katie worshipped him, all the same. And now here was Tear’s son, the odd duck of Katie’s school, a boy she had always dismissed as utterly unimportant, standing here with William Tear’s power flowing off him in waves. A new thought occurred to Katie, one she had never considered: what would happen to the Town when William Tear was gone?
“Will you take your hand off your knife?” Jonathan asked.
She did. Jonathan relaxed, sinking to his haunches, and Katie suddenly remembered that he was only a year older than she was. For a few moments there, the gap had felt like decades.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.
He looked up and smiled. Katie had to look away, for the smile was brilliant, almost blinding in its goodwill. For a moment she wanted to beg his forgiveness. Again she thought of that night in her backyard, sitting beside Tear on the bench and realizing that she would do whatever he might ask. The Tears were dangerous people, but theirs was not a danger of knives.
“Thank you,” said Jonathan.
Katie looked at her watch. She should have been at the sheep farm long ago, but something in her still hesitated, and when she identified that hesitation, it stunned her: she was waiting to be dismissed.
“Go,” Jonathan told her, and Katie stumbled toward the edge of the clearing. Her mind would not quite focus, and her skin was puckered with gooseflesh. It was the way she imagined trees felt after being struck by a bolt of lightning.
She looked back, but Jonathan had already vanished. Katie turned and continued on her way, cutting steadily eastward, looking for the path that wrapped around the slope, the path that would take her back to the Hill Road. She eventually found it, but that lightning-struck feeling persisted.
What happened? she demanded, though she knew she would get no answers. What happened to me back there?
She didn’t know, but one fact, at least, had solidified in her mind: she now had another secret to keep. Not from the Town—that was easy—but from Row. Another secret to divide them, and Katie felt the wedge drive a bit deeper into her mind: Tear and Row, so distant now that they might as well have been on opposite sides of a ravine, and where did Katie plant her flag?
I can be both! she insisted, but even in her mind her voice was shrill, the high, anxious tone of someone covering a lie.
Tapping.
Katie woke abruptly from a dream of flight, and found herself in darkness. The tapping continued, and for a moment she felt her dream morph, smoothly and seamlessly, as dreams often did, into something new, a poem Mum had read to her when she was young. There was a raven outside, tapping away, and Katie could not open her window. Only madness waited there.
Another soft set of taps. She realized that she was awake, that the sound was real fingers on her window, a large board that Mum had built to swing outward on hinges. Unlike the glass windows in her books, this window was only opaque wood, and Katie could not see what was out there.
Nothing, her mind whispered. Nothing good. Ignore it and go back to sleep.
But the tapping could not be ignored. In fact, it was beginning to increase, both in speed and volume, and soon it would wake Mum. Katie took a deep breath, reminded herself that she was a fierce animal, drew the bolt, and cracked the window.
Row was crouched beneath the windowsill, his dark eyes peeping up at her in the moonlight.
“Bundle up and come on.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Out.”
“What time is it?” She fumbled on her bedside table for her watch.
“Two thirty.” Row held up a black, shapeless mass. “I brought us clo
aks. I figure in these, we should be able to pass as grown-ups.”
Katie didn’t move. Every instinct in her body told her not to go, yet there was a terrible fascination in the darkness behind Row. He could break the rules and not get in trouble. But Katie wasn’t as brave.
Row smiled. “Why not? You know me, Katie; I never get caught.”
She drew back, suddenly chilled, remembering the moment that afternoon with Jonathan Tear. Could anyone read her mind now? She looked at Row suspiciously, wondering if he had been holding back on her all these years.
“Did you—”
“I know you, Rapunzel. When have we ever needed magic to read each other’s minds?”
That was true. Sometimes the two of them achieved such perfect simpatico that they didn’t need to talk at all.
“What are you afraid of, anyway?” Row demanded, crossing both arms on her windowsill. “Me?”
No, not Row precisely, but Katie couldn’t explain. As always, what Row offered was dark and wild and off-limits: the night outside her window. If she got caught out after curfew, her punishment wouldn’t end with Mum. It would go all the way to William Tear. He might even take her off the guard.
“Why are you even here?” she demanded. “What about Mia?”
Row shrugged, an entire conversation that Katie read easily. He might be sleeping with Mia Gillon this week, but Mia would wait, just as all the women in town seemed to wait on Row. He had his choice of beds, and he made good use of them, but none of the women mattered. Katie found the idea comforting. The magic circle that had surrounded the two of them since childhood was solid, far too solid to be broken by anyone as ridiculous as Mia Gillon.
Row leaned in even farther, dangling the cloak in front of her. “Last chance, Rapunzel.”
With fingers that were not quite steady, she took the cloak. “I have to get dressed.”
“I’ll be out front. Hurry up.”
Trembling, Katie closed the window. Her stomach had twisted into knots, as it always did when she knew she could get into trouble. She felt as though she might throw up.
“What are you doing?” she whispered to herself, drawing on her thick wool pants and warmest shirt. “Why are you doing this?”
There was no answer. Katie thought again of Jonathan Tear, his father, Mum, books . . . but these were things of the daytime, and now it was night.
“So stupid,” she whispered, swinging a leg over the windowsill. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
She dropped to the ground and swung the window closed behind her. The hinges screeched a bit, making her wince. Without the bolt shot the wood would not lay flush, leaving a gap of perhaps half an inch, but there was no help for that. The grass under her window was wet with night dew, and she could already feel it beginning to soak through her thick wool shoes. But her feet seemed to carry her forward of their own accord, out into the lane in front of the house, where Row waited silently, cloaked and hooded. He took her hand, and Katie felt an odd thrill course through her veins.
“Come on.”
They hurried up the lane and then down, toward the southern end of town. Mist had covered the hillside, obscuring all but the occasional brightly lit lamppost. Everything was quiet, and the silence brought home to Katie, as nothing else had today, the strange hybrid status of her age, right on the cusp of growing up. All of the children were in bed, but here were she and Row, neither children nor adults, darting through the streets without permission, interlopers in a deep blue world.
After a few minutes the lane began to slope downward for good. Katie had lost her bearings in the mist, but Row seemed to know where they were going, for he tugged at her hand, leading her off the road and into the space between a cluster of houses. Katie didn’t know how he could be so sure of their path; she couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. Her shoes were soaked through, the tips of her toes going numb. The houses ended and they were into the woods now, trees and shrubs that Row darted around, pulling Katie with him. The mist began to clear as they continued downward, and soon Katie was able to find her own footing. They were in the Lower Bend, the last section of town before the eastern slope went back into forest. Row did his internship down here, at Jenna Carver’s metal shop, and Katie soon realized that was their destination.
“Row, what—”
“Shhh.”
Jenna’s shop was a rickety wood building, unprotected from the relentless wind that battered the eastern slope. Katie assumed that the door would be locked, since Jenna had many people’s valuables in there, but as they climbed the worn steps, Row produced a key.
“Where did you get that?”
“I duped it.”
Katie shook her head at the foolishness of her own question. Among many other metal items, Row and Jenna also made locks and keys. Not many people locked their doors in town, but all of them had locks. Katie suspected that this oddity, like so many others, had something to do with the pre-Crossing, but she could not be certain. All of the adults were the same: happy enough to talk about the Crossing itself—though they were maddeningly vague about geography—or about world history, but the period immediately before the Crossing, some thirty or forty years, was a dark hole in the Town’s consciousness. Whatever had driven them all here, they had decided to bury it.
She followed Row inside the shop, then waited, shivering, as he lit a lamp.
“This had better be good, Row. I’m freezing.”
“It is,” Row replied, rummaging through a drawer in Jenna’s desk. “Look here!”
He held up a dark gemstone, its many facets gleaming. Even in the dim light, Katie had no trouble recognizing this stone as William Tear’s, the same one she had held in her fist more than a year before, but she stared at it as though it was new to her.
“What is it?” she asked. Part of her felt sorrow, the same sorrow she experienced when she lied to Row about where she had been in the afternoons. There were so many secrets now!
“It’s William Tear’s,” Row replied. “He gave it to Jenna, wants her to set it in a necklace with a silver setting. I’m not supposed to know.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I eavesdropped,” Row replied, grinning. Katie knew that grin well, but in this moment it struck her as almost grotesque. She didn’t like seeing William Tear’s sapphire in Row’s hand.
“That’s what you dragged me out here to show me?”
“It’s not just any stone!” Row protested. “Here, take it.”
Katie took it. She felt none of the sensations she remembered from that night on the bench, only the cold heft of the thing, its many points biting into her palm. Row stared at her eagerly, but after a moment his brow quirked.
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Magic,” Row replied.
“Magic,” Katie replied, her voice laced with sarcasm.
“It’s real magic, Katie! I can feel it when I hold it!”
Katie threw him a disgusted look, but beneath the sadness at her own deception, she felt a sudden, deeper pain. Row’s enthusiasm wasn’t false; Katie hadn’t seen him this excited about anything in a long time. When he held the jewel, something happened to him . . . magic, as he put it. Why wasn’t anything happening for Katie? She squeezed the jewel tightly in her fist, but there was nothing, not even that warming tingle she remembered from the night on the bench with Tear. The jewel was an inert rock in her hand.
“What kind of magic?”
“It shows me things!” Row’s eyes were bright with excitement. “The past. The Crossing. I know what happened, Katie! I know why they kept it a secret!”
He paused, waiting for her to ask what, but Katie did not. Anger bubbled inside her, anger that began with a sickly, acid trickle she recognized as jealousy.
“Get real, Row,” she replied, turning away.
Row grabbed her arm. “I’m not lying! I saw it!”
“Sure you did.” Part of Katie felt sick at this exchange, at ly
ing, once again, to her oldest and best friend. But she couldn’t help it; the trickle of jealousy inside her had quickly widened into a raging river. Katie was the one who had promised, the one who followed William Tear, who killed herself to learn his lessons, and now she was even keeping Jonathan Tear’s secrets as well. Row hated William Tear. So why did he get to see?
Row stared at her, his face both angry and hurt. “You think I’m lying?”
“I think you’re having some sort of delusion.”
Row’s eyes narrowed. He held out his hand, silently, and Katie returned the sapphire, relieved when he tucked it back into the drawer. As the drawer was closing, Katie caught sight of something else there—a dull gleam of unpolished silver, almost circular—and then it was gone.
“I’m sorry I wasted your time,” Row said stiffly. “I’ll take you back home now.”
Katie nodded, just as stiffly. She wished she could just walk out, but the idea of going back up through town alone, in the dark, gave her the jitters. She waited silently as Row doused the lamp, then followed him out the door.
The wind had picked up again, hissing through the pines. Katie’s night vision was gone now, and she saw only a black world beyond the timbers of the porch.
The Town is darker now, she thought, but didn’t know what the thought meant.
Row locked the door of Jenna’s shop, and in each movement Katie sensed the sudden deep gulf between them, a gulf that had never existed before. They argued sometimes, certainly, but nothing like this. She felt an absurd impulse to take it back, tell him she believed him, but pride wouldn’t let her utter the words. What the hell was Row doing playing with William Tear’s sapphire anyway? He wasn’t supposed to know about it, he had said so himself.
Crap. At least admit that you’re just jealous.
Katie grimaced. She could admit it, but not to Row. She walked faster, overtaking Row and then passing him, following her breath in the frosted air. She wished she could just not speak to him until morning, when she would surely have calmed down. Why was she so jealous, anyway? She was content to be Katie Rice. She didn’t need to have magic, to be one of the Crossing children with their strange assortment of gifts. It was Row who couldn’t bear to settle for the hand life had dealt him, Row who wouldn’t rest until he brought down William Tear’s entire town—
The Fate of the Tearling Page 16