The Grace Year(43)
As Helen makes it through, the gate starts to close. I’m thinking it must be a mistake, they just don’t see me yet, but when the latch locks into place, I know this is Kiersten’s doing.
Between the poachers’ fevered calls and the girls’ screeching, I can’t think, I can’t breathe. I’m pumping my legs as hard as I can when a dizzy spell crashes over me, tilting the very ground I’m running on, but I can’t afford to give in to this. If I don’t make it back over the fence, the only way I’ll be going home is in a row of pretty glass bottles. Leaping onto the gate, I grab the dead girls’ ribbons, pulling my way up, and when I run out of ribbon, I dig my fingernails into the splintery wood and claw my way to the top edge. I’m kicking my legs up, trying to get a foothold, but my thighs feel like they’re made of lead. As one of the poachers gets within cutting distance, I exert everything I have, managing to pull myself over, but as soon as I hit the ground on the other side, Kiersten is on top of me.
Nostrils flaring, eyes raging, she pins me to the ground, the axe pressed against my throat.
“Why did you do that?” she demands. “Why did you interfere? You almost got her killed.”
“I saved her…” I strain against the force of the blade to get the words out. “If I hadn’t interfered she would’ve been—”
“Perfectly fine!” Kiersten screams, veins bulging in her temples. “And who do you think it was that saved you?” She thrusts the steel in a little deeper. “I did,” she says. “I’m the one who made the poacher stop. They all witnessed it.” She glances back at the crowd of girls. “Do you still deny our magic?”
I’m trying to speak, but I’m afraid. Afraid of the blade going in any deeper, but more afraid of my answer. “I … I don’t know what made him stop,” I whisper, my eyes tearing up. “But it happened before … on the trail.”
Kiersten shakes her head in disgust. “If you want to deny your magic, risk facing the gallows upon your return, be my guest. But don’t drag the rest of them down with you.” She pulls the blade back and I take a deep gasp of air, clutching my throat.
Kiersten stands to face the crowd. “We’ve tried to help her, but she’s lost to us now. Anyone caught consorting with this heretic will be punished.”
As I lie on the ground, watching them walk back toward the camp, I can see it in their eyes. This is the final bit of proof they needed, when all I could offer them was a secondhand dream.
But I know what I saw. I know what I felt.
They can call it magic.
I can call it madness.
But one thing is certain.
There is no grace here.
Just before dawn, a sickening wave of caws echo through the woods, and when the sun rises, slow and thick over the eastern fence, Ami isn’t sitting by the gate anymore. I hear the girls whispering, saying Kiersten made her do it so she would stop singing that song, but I saw it in Ami’s eyes long before our grace year. She was always far too delicate for this world. And now she’s gone.
No one speaks to me anymore. No one even looks at me.
With all of the rain barrels destroyed, I have no choice but to drink from the well, but every time I get near it they chase me off.
Crawling along the perimeter, I lick the morning dew from the leaves, but it only makes me crave water all the more. My tongue feels thick, like it’s taking up all the room in my mouth, and there are times when I think I can feel it swelling, like it might choke the life out of me.
Walking the fence, in a half-moon shape, from the very edge of the clearing on the west all the way to the edge of the clearing on the east, I listen to the lake rush in and out with the tide, but that’s not all I hear. There’s breathing. Heavy. Constant. Like a living shadow. Sometimes, I convince myself that it’s Michael walking beside me, but Michael always talked my ear off. Or maybe it’s Hans, but it doesn’t feel like a protective presence. It’s the silence that’s killing me. Silence, knowing in my gut that it’s the poacher.
“I know you’re there,” I whisper.
I come to an abrupt halt and listen, but there’s no response.
I feel like a crazy person, and maybe I am. I think I crossed that line the moment I arrived in this cursed place, but I want to know why he didn’t kill me on the trail, why he let me go when I went after Helen. I know it wasn’t Kiersten’s magic, because she was nowhere near me the first time. So, what stopped him?
* * *
In the early evening, lured to the fire by the smell of burning stew, I take my place in the back of the line. I know I’m taking a risk, but I’m too famished to care. Without food or water, I won’t last long.
As I reach the front, I hold out my bowl. Katie scrapes the bottom of the kettle for the last scoop and pours it onto the ground. My stomach lets out an angry growl, but I can’t afford to be picky right now.
I’m leaning down to scoop it into my bowl when Katie presses her boot into it, the gravy gurgling around the edges of her muddy sole.
I look around at the other girls, waiting for someone to speak up for me, but no one does. It hurts. Especially after everything I’ve done to try to help them … to help the camp.
Taking in a steeling breath, I walk past their glaring eyes into the lodging house to find dead space where my cot used to be, my belongings gone. I could get another dead girl’s frame from the corner, drag it over, have them cackling at me behind my back, but I’m too tired. Tired of fighting, tired of caring, tired of everything. Curling up on the floor, I’m trying not to cry, but the harder I try, the worse it gets.