The Poison Season(10)

Ketty didn’t reply.

Outside, Leelo was surprised to see Isola trudging down the trail ahead of them. She had assumed Isola wouldn’t come today, given the fact that her family was being shunned, as her aunt foretold. Ketty had forbidden the girls from going to visit their friend, but Isola was here now, and Leelo wasn’t going to ignore her. She noticed with a start that Isola’s long, dark hair had been cut almost to her chin.

“Isola,” Leelo called, trotting to catch up to her.

The girl gazed at her with empty eyes. “Leelo.”

“Are you... How are you?”

Isola turned back to the trail ahead. “I’m fine.”

Leelo thought of offering some kind of condolence for what had happened to Pieter, but what could she possibly say? He was gone, and Isola must feel partially responsible.

Sage strode up next to them, oblivious. “I can’t believe it’s finally our turn,” she said, twirling as she skipped along the trail. “Seventeen years spent watching other people participate in the ceremony, and now we get to do it.”

“Congratulations,” Isola muttered. “You both look nice.”

Leelo glanced down at Isola’s dress, a simple cream-colored wool embroidered with flowers. Her mother had made it for her, but it wasn’t nearly as fine as Fiona’s work.

“What happened to your hair?” Sage asked. Leelo shot her an admonishing glance, but Sage didn’t notice.

“My mother cut it.”

Sage frowned. “Why?”

“Because I stopped brushing it.”

Leelo could feel the sadness coming off the girl in waves. Hesitantly, she put her arm around Isola’s waist and drew her against her side, and Isola let her head fall on Leelo’s shoulder.

Leelo bit her lip and glanced behind her. Rosalie and Fiona were walking together, talking in hushed tones, no doubt about Pieter and how badly Isola was taking his death. Ketty tried to urge her sister on ahead, but Fiona ignored her.

Leelo realized her shoulder was wet, that Isola was crying. “Why did you come today?” she asked gently.

Isola sniffed and wiped her face on her sleeve. “The council said we had to, that it was important to make an example of me to the new Watchers. But I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk to me. You could get in trouble.”

Sage winced and trotted ahead to join some of the other villagers, and a part of Leelo—the part that followed rules, that would never betray Endla, especially if it meant bringing shame on her family—longed to join her. But instead she let herself feel the dampness on her shoulder, the tangible reminder of Isola’s suffering, and stayed.

They had finally reached the far side of the island from where Pieter had died. They came here for the spring ceremony and little else. The opposite shore was clearly visible from here, but there was no nearby village on the mainland this side of the island, so the threat of outsiders observing them was lower. The Watchers were sometimes told to patrol this area, but Leelo and Sage hadn’t been here since last year’s ceremony, when one of their distant cousins had been celebrating. It wasn’t mandatory for Endlans to attend, but as one of the island’s ten elected council members, Ketty went every year.

This year, twelve adolescents had become Watchers, and most had already arrived with their families. They greeted each other with barely contained excitement, the six boys gathered in their own cluster. Leelo knew them all, of course. They’d played with each other growing up, and on an island this small, there were no strangers. But the Watchers were always teams of two, and with so much of their time spent on duty, they rarely saw each other anymore.

“Your dresses are so beautiful,” a girl named Vance breathed, touching the soft trim on Leelo’s sleeve and nodding toward Sage. Vance was wearing a crown of owl feathers, adorned with dried thistles and dark purple berries. “You’re blessed to have such a skilled seamstress in the family.”

Leelo smiled and glanced behind her at Mama, who had joined the other parents at Rosalie’s insistence. Isola’s mother didn’t want the stain on her family to bleed onto Fiona’s. Vance had an older sister without magic, but Leelo could barely remember her. She’d left when the girls were still small. Leelo wondered if Fiona and Vance’s mother were talking about what it was like to say goodbye to a child.

“How is Isola?” Vance asked, gesturing to the girl. She had wandered off and was standing at the lake’s edge, staring blankly into the water, her muddy hem nearly touching it.

“Not well.”

Vance pursed her lips, and the expression, paired with her large yellow-green eyes, made her look very much like an owl. “I just can’t understand what she was thinking. Risking everything for some boy. An incantu boy.”

The words rankled Leelo. She loved Tate just as much as she loved Sage; magic had nothing to do with it. “She must have really cared about him.”

“If she had, she wouldn’t have let him come back,” Sage said.

Leelo waited with her mother after that, until everyone who was coming had assembled. Ketty had been speaking with the other council members, each of whom represented roughly thirty islanders, but she approached the girls now.

“The ceremony is about to start,” she said to Sage and Leelo, squeezing their shoulders. “You should go down by the water.”