The Poison Season(31)

At the time, the boat had seemed like the only option. Jaren had found himself between the wolf and a lake full of poison, and while the wolf hadn’t advanced on him, it hadn’t retreated, either. It sat there, staring with eyes made yellow in the moonlight, and let out three long, hair-raising howls.

Swimming was clearly not an option. Jaren thought of the rose turning to ash in its vial and shuddered. He liked his odds better with the wolf, even if the old man had been right when he said it was the size of a cow. Where had this monster come from, and why had it chased him here, of all places?

Even now, in what were inarguably very unlikely circumstances, he still wasn’t convinced this was magic. The wolf was enormous, but not impossibly enormous. And if a wolf wanted to corner its prey, what better place to flush it than here? He had to admit, however, that the fact that the wolf wasn’t trying to eat him was perplexing.

They stared at each other for a long while, before the wolf rose and advanced with one large claw-tipped paw, then another, and Jaren found himself unconsciously backing toward the water. He wasn’t sure he’d have caught himself in time if his foot hadn’t met with something solid. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw it, hidden among the rocks. A boat. The wolf must have seen it at the same moment Jaren did because it rushed forward suddenly, causing Jaren’s body to make a choice his mind hadn’t yet been willing to face.

The next thing he knew, he was in the boat, and the sudden movement had lurched it out into the open water. Into the poisonous lake.

Jaren didn’t know enough about Lake Luma to be certain that a boat couldn’t make it across, although he could deduce as much given what he’d seen with the rose. Still, he thought he must have at least a little while before the boat began to erode, and in the meantime, perhaps the wolf would tire of whatever game they were playing and leave. But the wolf only paced up and down the shore, as if to tell Jaren that it was pointless to come back, that they’d only end up right where they were now.

Jaren could just make out the island in the moonlight. It looked innocent enough from here, covered in what appeared to be ordinary trees, aside from a copse of tall pines peeking above the rest of the Forest in the center of the island.

A breeze traveled over the water, like a long, languorous sigh, and the bare skin at the nape of his neck prickled with fear. He remembered what Lupin had told him about Endlans and tried to take comfort in it.

“Are they a cruel people?” he had asked as they walked back toward the market.

“Not as a whole, no,” she’d said. “My parents were wonderful, loving people, and I know it broke their hearts the day they sent me away. I was the only incantu that year, and the ride across the lake in the Endlan boat was particularly difficult for me, as I’d never rowed before.”

This boat must have taken incantu children to the mainland. From what Lupin had told Jaren, the poison in the lake destroyed outsider vessels. Why this boat hadn’t been pulled back to the other side of the lake, he couldn’t say. He had drifted to the center of the lake now, and if there had been oars in the boat at some point, they were gone. He was entirely at the mercy of the wind, and it seemed to be nudging him toward Endla.

A sudden gust jostled the boat even more, and that was when he heard a sound that chilled him to his bones: sloshing. The boat must have scraped the rocks when he shoved it back into the water. And now it had sprung a leak.

Jaren peered through the waning darkness to the shore, wondering if someone was waiting for him even now. Would they spare him, if he somehow managed to make it across? He doubted it.

He glanced down to see the water level rising in the floor of the boat. He lifted his feet onto the bench where he sat, then looked back to the shore. He wasn’t going to make it, he thought hopelessly. The water was rising faster than he was traveling. He tried not to think of the rose, of his sisters, of his poor father, and failed.



Chapter Nineteen


Leelo knew she should be sprinting toward home, not the shoreline, but her only coherent thought right now was of Tate. If there was a wolf across the lake in the woods where her brother and the other children had landed, he was as good as dead.

He has to be far away from here, she told herself as cold tears of terror streamed across her cheeks. Because what if this was her fault? What if her assault on the pine tree had somehow caused the Forest to retaliate?

She hadn’t brought her bow and arrow with her; all she had was the knife, which she’d finally managed to dislodge from the tree by bracing her foot against it and pulling so hard she’d gone flying backward when it came loose. But just as it had been worthless against the tree, she knew it wouldn’t help her fight a wolf. Still, she had to try.

When she finally reached the shore, she froze among the trees, listening. The wolf had howled intermittently as she ran, but it was silent now. The only sound was the wind whipping through the trees. It had picked up again, blowing from the mainland toward shore. She couldn’t see the wolf from here. All she could see in the moonlight was the dark expanse of the lake.

There was no way to know if her brother was safe. Not from here. She glanced at the rock where the rope was tied. If she pulled the boat back, she could row over to him and check for herself. If she was fast enough, she could do it before dawn. How could she ever sleep again, not knowing if Tate was safe?

But when she went to the rope, prepared to do whatever it took to check on her brother, she noticed with a gasp that it was slack. She looked out at the water, her heart pounding. The boat was no longer on the shore. It was in the middle of the lake.