The Grace Year(59)

“How could I forget.” I wince as he smears a dark green poultice over my wound. “You nearly smothered me to death.”

His eyes turn cold. “That would’ve been a pleasure compared to what he would’ve done to you had he discovered you here.”

Staring past him, at the empty glass bottles lined up on the table, I think about Tamara and Meg. The horrible things they did to them. A shiver runs through me.

“We need to get this dirty ribbon away from—”

“No.” I reach up, tucking the braid behind me. “The ribbon stays. The braid stays.”

He lets out an irritated sigh. “Suit yourself.”

“Who’s Anders?” I ask, trying to soften my tone.

I can tell he’s reluctant to talk, but I just keep asking until he gives.

“We grew up together,” he says as he wraps a fresh strip of linen around my shoulder. “Last hunting season, the prey tried to take him over the barrier, bit him, cursed his entire family. Everyone died, but your father was able to save him.”

“My father saved a poacher?” I ask. “But he would be exiled if anyone found out about that, and my mother, my sisters, we would be—”

“Of course that’s your highest concern,” he says, tying off the bandage tighter than need be.

“I didn’t mean … it’s just … why? Why would he risk it?”

“You still don’t get it,” he replies.

A caw echoes through the woods, making us both flinch.

“I don’t underst—”

“I made a deal,” he says, pushing away from the bedside, strapping on his knives. “In exchange for Anders’s life, I promised that I would spare you if given the chance.”

“But you stabbed me through the fence.”

“I barely nicked you. You were getting too close … too comfortable.”

“That night on the trail … the day I went over the barrier to help Gertrude,” I say, getting short of breath.

“Honestly, if I’d known how much trouble you’d be, I would’ve thought twice,” he says as he tosses a cold wet rag in my direction. “But now he and I are even.” He blows out the candle and pulls back the door covering.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“To do my job. What I should’ve been doing all along.”

As I sit alone, shivering in the dark, I can’t help thinking about the hurtful things I said to my father before I left the county, the pain in his eyes when he entered the church with the veil. “Vaer sa snill, tilgi meg,” he whispered as he pressed the flower of my suitor into my hand.

I always thought he taught me things because he was selfishly practicing for a son, but maybe it was for this, so I could survive my grace year. Maybe he did all of this … for me.

Tears sting the back of my eyes. I want to get up and run, anything but sit here with my feelings, but as I get out of bed, my legs wobble as if they’re made from straw and putty. I stagger forward, grabbing the edge of the table to try to catch myself; it begins to tilt; the tiny glass bottles roll toward me, the knives begin to slide. I right it just in time before everything goes crashing to the floor. As I’m leaning over the table, trying to catch my breath, I spot a small notebook, wedged behind the worn leather satchel. I open it to find sketches of muscles and veins, skeletal structures, similar to the field notebooks my father keeps on his patients. But when I turn to the last entry, I see a diagram of a girl—every mole, every scar, every blemish marked in great detail, from the brand of my father’s sigil on the bottom of my right foot all the way to the smallpox mark on my inner left thigh from a vaccination my father gave me last summer. This is a map of my skin, the small dashes indicating where he’ll cut. There’s even a detailed log planning out each piece of me that will go in each corresponding bottle. One hundred in all. A deep chill runs through my entire body.

The poacher kept his word to my father. But like he said, they’re even now.

Looking at the knives, the metal funnel, the pliers, the hammer—it turns my stomach.

It’s entirely possible he’s simply preparing, just in case the infection takes me, but there’s an undeniable part of him that wishes me dead. I run my finger along the dotted lines of the sketch, and I can’t stop thinking about the fundamental rule of poaching, why they skin us alive instead of killing us first. The more pain, the more potent the flesh. I look down at the fresh blood seeping through the bandage. Maybe he hasn’t been helping my wound at all. Maybe he’s been making it worse so I can suffer as long as possible.

I think about grabbing my cloak, taking my chances in the woods, but I’m in no condition.

If I’m going to survive this, I need for him to see me not as an it, not as prey, but as a human being.

But I’m not so na?ve as to think I don’t need a backup plan.

With trembling hands, I put back the bottles and the notebook and grab the smallest knife from the table. Dragging myself back to bed, I pull the thick pelts over me and slip the knife beneath the mattress, practicing pulling it out again and again, until I can no longer feel my arm. I want to stay up, wait for him, make sure he doesn’t get the jump on me, but my eyes are too heavy to hold.

“Vaer sa snill, tilgi meg,” I whisper on the breeze, hoping it will carry my message straight to my father’s heart, but that’s magical thinking, something I don’t dare dabble in anymore.