The Poison Season(33)

I should have killed him, she thought bitterly, but she couldn’t get the image of the young man’s panicked face out of her mind. She resented him for putting her in this position. He must have heard tales of Endla wherever he came from. What reason could he possibly have for coming here, other than to cause harm?

Leelo sobbed as she ran, her lungs burning. She couldn’t risk running into Sage in this state. She needed to calm down and come up with a plan.

She left the trail and headed into the Forest, which would at least help her avoid her cousin or a council member. She would skirt the pine grove and set a less direct course toward home. It would take longer, but it was her best option. When she was deep enough into the trees, she stopped to catch her breath and attempted to calm her racing thoughts.

The situation was bad; there was no denying that. But she had gone to the lake tonight for a reason: the wolf. Others must have heard it howling. And maybe it wasn’t her attack on the pine that brought it. Maybe the Forest had used it to alert the Endlans that danger, in the form of an outsider, was nearby. She should have woken her mother then, not come out here on her own. But her intentions had been pure, at least.

She sighed. Deep down, she knew that reasoning would never hold up under Sage’s and Ketty’s scrutiny, and certainly not the council’s. What kind of Endlan saved an outsider?

“Not an outsider,” she said out loud, trying to drown out the voices in her head. “A human being.”

After she’d collected herself, she resumed jogging at a more maintainable pace. She couldn’t call attention to herself, and she couldn’t be in a state of panic when she made it home. She would tell her family she’d heard the wolf, that she’d gone out to investigate and hadn’t found anything. A rabbit darted across her path, making her gasp, but aside from that, she saw no living creatures in the Forest. Most of them knew to stay away from the pine grove, at least the ones that had survived long enough to learn.

A bird flapped from a tree suddenly. Leelo froze, and in the silence, she heard the faint sound of someone talking.

Two someones talking.

She dropped down behind a bramble bush, listening. She must have veered closer to the trail than she realized.

Leelo would know her cousin’s voice anywhere, but it took her a moment longer to recognize the second voice.

Hollis.

“It’s quieter without her there. I guess I should have expected that. Violet was always complaining about something. She was small for her age, you know, so she couldn’t do what the other kids could. She was always falling behind and yelling for me to wait up.”

“And did you?” Sage asked.

“Only if my parents made me...” His words faded as they disappeared farther into the woods, and Leelo realized she’d been holding her breath to hear him. She exhaled raggedly and sat down all the way. Hollis must have taken over her Watcher shift when Sage woke up and found her missing. Leelo had never lied to her cousin before, and now she could see the lies she’d have to carefully weave together multiplying.

What she really wanted to do right now was go home and climb back into her bed. Mama would come and look in on her, pressing her cool palm to Leelo’s forehead to check for fever, the way she always did when Leelo was ill. She would bring warm honey-lemon water and a hot stone wrapped in a knit cover for her feet. She would sit by Leelo’s bedside and stroke her hair and sing something soft and meaningless, not a true Endlan song, just something she’d made up to soothe Leelo as a baby.

Leelo longed for those early days, before Tate was born and her father was dead, before Aunt Ketty’s meanness crystallized into amber, when she and Sage were two girls in pigtail braids with no cares in the world.

She couldn’t do any of that, but she had nowhere else to go.

As she approached her cottage, Leelo felt a moment’s relief. It looked peaceful and safe amid the greenery of late spring. Her mother had planted red geraniums in the window boxes, their color bright and cheerful against the blue-and-white trim. She pulled off her leather boots and left them by the front door, relieved that only Mama’s were there. Ketty must be with the sheep.

Inside, Leelo found her mother sitting near the fire. Normally, they wouldn’t heat the house at this time of year, but she was always chilled lately.

“Ketty?” Fiona called when she heard the door open. “Oh, it’s you, dear.” Worry flickered across her brow. “Did something happen on duty?”

Leelo desperately wanted to tell her mother everything. She of all people would understand why Leelo had been unable to kill the outsider.

But she also knew she would be making her mother complicit if she told her about the young man, and whatever happened from this moment, she wouldn’t let her take any of the blame. Leelo wasn’t sure Mama’s heart could take it, and she couldn’t bear the thought of being shunned like Isola.

“I never made it to my Watch this morning,” Leelo said instead. “I missed Tate too much. I went into the woods, to be alone.”

If Fiona didn’t accept the lie, no one would, but she nodded and smiled gently. “I understand. Your aunt and Sage were already out when I came downstairs, but I suppose they noticed your absence.”

Leelo twisted her braid between her fingers. “Do you think I’ll be punished? I know it’s terrible to miss my Watch.”

Fiona patted the arm of her chair, inviting Leelo to sit. She wrapped her arms around Leelo’s waist and kissed her shoulder. “We’ll tell them I couldn’t sleep last night and I sent you out early this morning for some foxglove on the far side of the island. Ketty will still be angry, but she’ll forgive us.”