The Grace Year(75)

Taking the dusty lamp from the hook in the corner, I turn it up so I can take a look. The sight turns my stomach. I want to throw up, but I can’t let her know how bad it is. “Does this hurt?” I ask, pressing on the red swollen flesh edging the wound on the back of her skull.

“No. But I seem to have lost my braid,” she says, moving her hand down an imaginary line where it once lay.

And I realize that’s when time must’ve stopped moving for her—the day her braid was severed from her body. The day I was banished to the woods.

“Where is she?” Kiersten’s voice ratchets up my spine. I could try to hide, make her come in and get me, but Gertie’s been through enough.

“I’ll be right back,” I whisper as I pull a blanket over her and slip through the larder door to find Kiersten heading straight toward me from the eastern barrier, a swarm of girls hovering around her.

She moves like a wounded predator, her steps are slow but calculated, a rusty hatchet at her side. It takes all of my nerve to hold my ground.

“I have something for you,” she says as she swings the hatchet in front of her.

Instinctively, I flinch, but she only drops the blade at my feet.

“We need firewood.”

I look up at her, really look at her—the dull-yellow matted hair, sunken cheeks, sallow skin, her once-clear blue eyes completely swallowed up by her pupils—and I realize it’s not just Gertie … Kiersten doesn’t remember. None of them do.

As I lean down to pick up the hatchet, she places her foot on it. “Hold it. You’re not allowed to take out your braid unless you’ve embraced your magic.”

Everyone in the camp seems to snap to attention, as if they can smell the venom in the air.

“I have,” I reply, a fresh surge of panic bubbling up in my chest. “You helped me. Remember?”

Her eyes narrow on me.

“You dared me to go into the woods. I was lost for a long time … near death—”

“You survived the woods … the ghosts?” Hannah asks.

“Yes.” I glance back at the trees, remembering the ghost stories they used to tell around the fire. “They spoke to me … saved me … led me home.”

I’m hoping my face isn’t doing what my insides are doing. I feel like a coward for lying, but it’s better than losing a tongue.

Kiersten reluctantly takes her foot off the blade.

I grip the hatchet. The handle is still warm from her touch. The heat moves through me, something I haven’t felt in a long time. There’s a part of me that wants to return the kindness, an eye for an eye, but I have to remind myself that it’s the water making them behave like this. They’re sick.

“Are they with us now?” Jenna asks, her eyes darting around the clearing like a scared animal.

Searching the camp, I’m trying to come up with something that might appease them when I see Meghan standing by the gate, who might as well be a ghost with that complexion. “There’s one over there,” I say, pointing in her direction. “But she’s harmless. She’s just trying to find a way out … she just wants to go home.”

As they stare at the gate, I know they’re thinking the exact same thing.

Kiersten steps close to me, so close that I can feel her breath on my skin. “How did you survive in the woods without food or water?”

I’m grasping for answers, trying to figure out what to say, when I think of the truth. Maybe there’s a way I can use this to get them to stop drinking from the well of their own accord. “The ghosts … they led me to a spring in the woods. I was very ill, but the water healed me.”

There are whispers buzzing all around me, like an agitated hive.

I’m thinking she’s going to call my bluff, strike me down, but instead, she nudges the cauldron toward me. “Prove it.” Roaches come skittering out onto her bare feet, but she doesn’t even notice. “Bring this back full of ghost water, or don’t bother coming back at all.”

“Sure.” I swallow hard. “I just want to check on Gertie first,” I say, moving toward the larder.

Kiersten steps in front of me. “I’ll take care of Gertie until you get back.”

I know Kiersten well enough to know it isn’t a kindness. It’s a threat.

Taking the hatchet and the kettle, I back away into the woods. I don’t dare turn my back on them.

It’s not until I’ve been safely swallowed up by the foliage that I sink to the forest floor and finally let it out. I’m not sure if I’m crying for them or for me, but I have to find a way to make this right. To fix this.

I may have broken my vows, shamed my family name, but I’m still a grace year girl.

I’m one of them.

And if I don’t help them, who will?





Tucking the hatchet into my skirt, I find the faint remains of the trail I made all those months ago. As I’m hacking my way through vines and hanging moss, a needling thought creeps in. What if I can’t find the spring? What if it’s been swallowed up by the forest or dried out? If I don’t deliver the water, they’ll never believe a word I say. Quickening my pace, I pull myself up the steep incline, relieved to find the spring still there. Collapsing beside it, all I want to do is strip off my clothes, jump in, cool off, but I need to get back to Gertie. I don’t like the way Kiersten said she’d take care of her until I returned.