The Grace Year(24)

And I know this is it.

The beginning of the end for some of us.





We’re assigned to canoes, but given no oars.

Only the guards get the privilege of steering us to our prison. Maybe they don’t want us going feral and knocking them out. Maybe Laura Clayton has been gathering stones for that exact purpose. I keep my eye on her, ready for the slightest hint of a revolt. I don’t know where we’d go, what we’d do, but I think I’m willing to find out.

No one says a word as they begin to row us over the glasslike water. Each stroke of the wood carving through the deep blue feels like someone’s gutting me. Piece by piece. Stroke by stroke, stripping me of everything I’ve ever known, everything I thought I believed in.

Midway across the great lake, I see Kiersten reach her hand over the side, skimming her fingertips along the surface, creating long sensuous trails—it does something to me. Does something to all of us. The only person not looking her way is Laura Clayton. She’s staring straight ahead, clutching the heaviest stone in her lap. Her lips are moving, but I can’t make out what she’s saying.

As I lean closer, she gives me the queerest look.

“Tell my sister I’m sorry,” she says, right before she slowly keels over the side of the canoe.

“Laura—” I call out her name, but it’s too late.

As her black wool cloak envelops her body, she quickly sinks to the depths.

And I realize the only rebellion she had in mind was her own.

No one moves. No one even flinches. If this is what we’ve already become, it makes me shudder to think what we’ll be like a year from now.

Kiersten pulls her hand back into the boat, and the girls give her knowing glances. They think she made Laura do it.

And maybe she did.

A wave of panic rushes through me.

Two down, thirty-one to go.





Sunburned and weary, our bodies still swaying from the lull of the water, the emptiness of Laura’s escape, we watch the awaiting guards pull the canoes onto the muddy bank. The scraping of the hulls against the rocky beach is like a razor to my frazzled nerves.

“The perimeter is clear,” I hear one of the guards say. “No breaches to report.”

I know that voice. Looking up, I see that it’s Hans. I start to stand, but Martha, who’s sitting behind me, yanks down on my skirts. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. You saw what happened to Laura.”

Hans steals a glance at me. A look of warning. Martha’s right. No one can know that we’re friends. I could get him in serious trouble.

“I can’t believe you volunteered for this,” the older guard says, shaking his head, looking back over the great lake. “An entire year in that crappy little cabin. Just you and Mortimer.”

I wonder if that’s the shack we saw on the other shore. I heard there were two guards that live nearby to maintain the barrier of the encampment, but it always sounded like more of a punishment than a privilege. Is this what Hans was trying to tell me the other day at the paddock?

Without another word, the guards load the supplies onto rickety wagons, pushing them up a wide dirt path.

We follow. What else can we do?

But it’s more than that. We’ve been building to this moment our entire lives. The grace year is no longer a story, a myth, something that will happen someday.

That someday is now.

I take in every last detail of the terrain—just beyond the rocky shoreline, there appears to be a series of tall wooden structures in each direction. At first, I think maybe that’s where we’ll be living, but the guards continue to march us inland.

The sparse landscape slowly gives way to spindly white pines and ash. As I look ahead, the trees seem to grow thicker, in varying degrees of height, the tallest ones in the center of the island. I remember hearing stories from the trappers in my father’s care about the islands to the north. Pinnacles of land cut off from the rest of the world. Where man and animal alike go mad.

Hans looks back at me. I think he’s trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it could be. I’m too tired for subtleties right now.

Through the foliage, I spot a tight curved line of enormous cedars that seem to wrap their way around the entire island, but they’re too close together to be natural. It must be a fence—like the one we have in the county—but instead of the fence keeping us safe from the out side world, this is a fence to protect the rest of the world from us.

I have no idea what we’re capable of, how the magic will consume us, but we haven’t even reached our final destination and two of us have already fallen.

As my damp boots sink into the soft dirt, I think of my mother walking this path before me, June and Ivy, and Penny and Clara, who will be forced to follow in my footsteps.

There are deer tracks, and porcupine, fox, and fowl, but there’s another set of tracks that makes my blood run cold. Large flat-soled imprints, alongside two long rivets, as if someone had been dragged.

Searching the woods, I look for the poachers, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Eyes and blades, that’s all I have to go on. Have they camouflaged themselves? Are they perched in the treetops or below our feet in trenches waiting for us to make a false step?

I know the poachers would never cross the barrier for fear of being cursed, so what would draw the girls out? Do they try to run? Do the poachers sweet-talk them? Or maybe they’re forced out by their own kind?