The Grace Year(54)

As if sensing my intentions, he holds his hands out in front of him, the way you’d try to calm a skittish horse before ensnaring it with a bridle.

I lift the axe. The moonlight glints off the blade, setting something off inside of me—a memory rising to the surface, something I thought I’d buried long ago: my mother standing over my bed, her eyes soft and moist, her metal thimble twitching in the lamplight. “Dream, little one. Dream of a better life. A truthful life.”

And I wonder if she can see me now, if she can feel me, from across the great lake, over treacherous trails of thorn and thistle, if she somehow knew how all of this would end.

With tears streaming down my face, I whisper, “Forgive me.”

Tightening my grip, I heave the axe into the ice.

At first, there’s nothing, only the shock of impact reverberating up my arms, settling in my wound, making it throb with every beat of my heart, but then I hear it, a dull pop followed by a long continuous crack, as if my bones are being split in two.

He lunges for me, but it’s too late. As the ice breaks beneath my feet, I plunge into the frigid water, a straight needle shooting toward the depths, but my skirts billow up around me, slowing my descent. Or maybe I’m not drifting down but up. Maybe it’s the wind filling my skirts, making me soar high above the earth. My lungs are burning to take a deep breath. Whether I’ll fill my chest with stardust or water, I cannot say, but I feel my body slowing down. My heart thrums in my ears, my throat, the tips of my fingers, like a funeral dirge.

Slow.

Slower.

Stop.

With the moon lighting the way, I drift under a sheet of glass. I’m watching the world pass me by. I don’t feel sad, I don’t feel lost, I feel a sense of peace knowing that I left this world on my own terms. This is one thing they couldn’t take from me.

I’m trailing my fingers against the surface when I hear a crash of thunder, a shattering of glass. Something tugs at my braid and I’m jerked toward the heavens. Jagged knots are being dragged against my back. There’s something beating on my chest—a soft warmth on my lips. A burning sensation flares in my lungs; I’m heaving up liquid. When I take in a deep gasp, it burns—the air feels alien going into my lungs, a betrayal of some kind.

I’m walking, but I have no feet. I’m drifting through the woods on a cloud of smoke. There’s a caw in the distance. A blood-drenched hand covers my mouth. My eyes focus on the one thing I can’t make sense of—two black orbs staring back at me, the eyes of my executioner. My enemy.

Straining my neck, I bite down as hard as I can.

And then the world goes black.

I am nothing. I am no one.

Only skin and bones.





The sound of a serrated blade tearing through cloth seeps into my senses. There’s blazing heat along my back, my spine. Long, even breath pulsing against the nape of my neck. A heavy weight on top of me, all around me. I try to stay disconnected from my body, unaware, the way I used to drift away during a punishment in the square, but as life returns to my limbs, so does the pain. A deep throbbing sensation on my left shoulder.

When the heat against my back leaves me, I see a man walk across the room, stark naked, pure muscle roiling beneath flesh. I want to scream, I want to wail, but I can’t find the air. Every bit of my energy is being taken up with violent shivering. My teeth are clattering so hard I’m afraid they might break. A blur of charcoal fabric swells in the corner of the room and the poacher is back. Black eyes boring into me from the void.

Hovering over me, he pours rancid liquid down my throat. I try to spit it out, but he holds his hand over my mouth, forcing me to swallow.

A flash of gleaming steel, followed by the sharpest pain I’ve ever felt.

The blade digs into my flesh. It feels like he’s tearing my arm off, but it happens again and again and again, more times than I have skin on my arm. I know they believe the more pain, the more potent the flesh, but it’s a lie. I want to tell him the magic isn’t real, that all he’s doing is killing someone in cold blood, but something tells me it wouldn’t even matter.

As the heavy liquid spreads through my chest, I know what this means. I know what this is. Death isn’t just coming for me … it’s here.





The wind howls around me, and with it comes the smell of witch hazel and rotting flesh.

Frantically, my eyes dart around the room. There are long strips of sinewy meat hanging from hooks. Tanned hides drying on a crudely made rack, and knives … so many knives, splayed across a rough butcher block table. My eyes quickly settle on a fawn-colored leather satchel, a series of small glass bottles lined up in front of it.

His kill kit.

The bottles are for me.

Panic courses through my muscles. My heart is beating so hard I’m afraid it will burst.

I try to get up, but I can’t move my arms. I can’t move my legs. The only thing I can move is my head, and even that feels so heavy, so bloated, that I can hardly keep it steady.

I look down to see what’s become of me, but my body is hidden beneath heavy pelts. I wonder if the skin is gone from my entire body now, if beneath the covers I’m only a tangled labyrinth of veins and severed nerves being held together by congealed blood.

I try to scream, but there’s something in my mouth preventing me from doing so. It tastes of cedar and blood. It makes me think of the horses from the county, with their braided manes, a bit inserted against the back of their jaw in order to control their movement. And I realize that’s what I am now. Under someone else’s control.