The Hawkweed Prophecy (22 page)

The woman screamed when she saw her and hid under the covers. Her dad looked shocked but, to his credit, more at his daughter's cuts and bruises than at his own predicament.

“Poppy, my God. Who did this to you?”

“Who is she?” Poppy heard herself ask.

“Poppy?” he pleaded, but Poppy was in no mood to be merciful.

“
Who is she?
” Poppy heard herself scream without realizing she'd raised her voice. Pain seared through her ribs and she clutched her arms around her chest. She could feel her cheeks red and hot and the blood dribbling down the side of them.

“John, you need to call a doctor.”

Poppy couldn't look up and see the woman's face. It was impossible to straighten. But she detected the kind, sensible tone and felt strangely grateful for it.

“Now,” the woman added firmly.

Poppy needed X-rays. She'd cracked a rib and had a mild concussion. The doctors said she needed to stay overnight in the hospital for observation. She didn't have the strength to argue. She dozed off, and when she awoke, her father was sitting in the chair next to her, the pale blue curtains pulled around them.

“What time is it?” Her mouth was dry and it was hard to form the words.

“It's late,” said her father. He poured some water from a pitcher by her bed into a plastic cup and passed it to her. She sipped slowly. Even that was painful. “Are you going to tell me? . . . Who hurt you?”

Poppy shut her eyes as the irony struck home. “I can't.”

“You can and you will. I'm your father. The police—they need to catch this person. Was it a boy? That boy I saw outside the house?”

Poppy's eyes shot open. “No!” Her father stared at her suspiciously. “No, I promise. Not him.”

“Who then?”

“I don't know. Honestly. I didn't see them. It happened so fast. I'd tell you if I knew.”

Her father hung his head defeatedly. Poppy felt a moment of sympathy, then steeled herself and went for the knockout.

“Don't you trust me?”

Their eyes met and a lot was said silently.

“I was going to tell you. Donna wanted me to but . . . ” He shook his head like it ached. He sounded worn out, spent, so different from the man she'd heard as she'd climbed the stairs.

“Did we move here for her?”

“Yes.” He said it quickly, relieved to get it out.

“But you let me think it was because of me, because I'd been bad?”

He paused this time before answering, looking out the window, thinking how best to answer. “I did. I'm sorry for that.”

“What about Mom?”

Her dad lifted his head and looked her directly in the eye, and Poppy knew to brace herself. “There's a kid,” he said. “A little boy. Your half-brother.”

Poppy suddenly felt so tired, like she hardly had the strength to care.

“You'll meet him. Meet both of them.”

“I have to sleep.”

“I've told you now. Will you tell me?” Poppy felt herself sinking, her heart beating slower, her eyes drooping. “It's my job to protect you,” she heard her father say.

You can't
, she replied in her head.
No one can.

Leo heard them before he saw them, the three rough voices grating against one another, mixing with the traffic, yet still so recognizable. He almost didn't want to turn his head to see them. He just wanted to run. But he kept himself still, his back against the doorway, trying to meld into the corner.

He thought he'd never see them again after he'd run from that apartment he had once called home. Yet here they were, as big and nasty as he remembered. Ever so slowly, he looked around to check. Their limbs were thick, hands solid and craggy like they were made of rock, bodies of stone chipped away by a clumsy mason, necks as thick as boulders holding up heads of cement. Their boots thumped onto the pavement, and Leo winced inwardly as he recalled the feeling of those boots thumping into his ribs and those fists knocking into his jaw. Only when they opened the door of the bar and barged inside, slamming the door behind them, could Leo breathe normally again.

Keeping close to the wall on the far side of the street, he crept away, wanting to walk right out of town, hitch a ride and get as far away as possible. He got as far as the circle road when a truck stopped for him. He wanted to climb on board. There was so much to run away from—not just them but Poppy too. He thought of her face looking down on him from her window as he weathered that storm, her eyes thunderous with accusation, as though she had known about Ember, about the kiss. It made no sense. Nothing did anymore. But just one step up into the truck's cab and he could leave it all behind him.

“You coming or not?” the driver barked impatiently.

Leo exhaled slowly, then shook his head, knowing all the while it was a mistake to stay, especially for her.

Sorrel, watching, had felt Leo's fear as the men appeared, just as she'd felt it so many times from a fox's or a falcon's prey. Leo was well practiced at hiding, Sorrel noted. He knew how to hush his breathing and turn his emotions inward. When he made his escape, he trod lightly for someone so tall.

The men Leo feared were wider than he, built like the bulls in one of the hillside fields. They had flame-colored hair on their heads and chins and red skin to match. They radiated heat and Sorrel longed to snuff them out. They were ugly, angry beasts, just as the coven's elders had taught her males would be. Sorrel yearned to use her magic but resisted until she could get closer.

She had never entered a chaff building before but now found herself following the men into a large room that was filled thick with noise and the heat of breath and sweat and the sour scent of hops and grapes. Her nose twitched at the stench and her tongue lapped against the roof of her mouth as she tried to rid herself of the taste in the air. She reached for a half-empty glass on a table, took a sip of what she thought was water, and nearly spat it out. The vile liquid fizzed in her mouth and burned her throat as she swallowed. Suddenly she wished to be home in the coven with her mother and friends close by. Then she saw the men, and the reason why she was here in this hole of a place came retching back to her.

She followed as the youngest, most pig-like of the three went out to go to the bathroom around the back of the building. A torrent of foul-smelling urine splattered onto the pavement and wall. Sorrel's lip curled in disgust and then she made her move.

“Pig!” she called.

He turned and looked straight at her, confusion flashing into fury. But she held him in her sights as she drew nearer, focusing her pupils on his, chanting her magic under her breath. When his eyes had gone misty, she pointed a finger at him and poked him hard in the chest.

“Tell me,” she commanded.

He blinked but then he answered. “He's my stepbrother.”

“Go on.”

“He ran away. My dad—he wants to find him.”

“To hurt him?”

“To end him.”

“Why?”

“He had a knife. Tried to kill me.”

Sorrel's eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why?” she asked again.

“To stop us from killing him.”

Sorrel shook her head at this typically senseless chaff aggression. “His mother?”

“Dead. But Jocelyn weren't his mother, not for real.”

“More.”

“His real ma gave him to her, made her promise to look after him.”

“Who was she?”

“No one knows. She never came back.”

“What about his father?”

“Even Jocelyn never knew nothing about him.”

The exit door flew open with a clang and a man stumbled out, hardly able to stay on his feet. Sorrel tried a smile, not wanting
to alert the man to any danger, but the drunk's face sobered up instantly and he hopped back inside like a rabbit into its burrow.

Sorrel released her finger from the other man's heart and brushed her hands against her skirt in distaste. She sensed there was no more she could learn from this pitiful creature. He swayed on his feet, still in a trance.

“I'm a brainless, useless fool,” Sorrel instructed.

He repeated the words.

“I know nothing. I am nothing,” Sorrel added, and he parroted the words back. Sorrel shook her head in disgust, then headed home, back to where the air was fresh and the women had their wits about them.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
WO

I
t was the lights that struck Ember the most. How bright the town was, as though day and night were one. The chaffs who had no knowledge of the craft had somehow conquered time and banished darkness. There were people up and dressed and full of life despite it being well past dusk. She had seen the lights from a distance once or twice and marveled at their prettiness, but now she was walking beneath them and Ember felt like a star was shining directly upon her, revealing her difference for all to see.

They'd tamed nature too, these ignorant chaffs. Trees planted one by one in neat, long rows; grass set in oblongs, short and trim; flowers running in strips; hedges shorn smooth and flat. Dogs on leashes and cats in collars. Ember felt awry and disordered in such a mathematical landscape of straight lines and pointy corners. The houses were tall with windows up high and roofs you couldn't see the tops of. Overhead, wires sliced the sky into parallel lines and many-sided shapes. Traffic followed the dashes in the road, car after car, stopping and starting and turning.

Ember had heard the tractors rumbling in the far meadows
and seen planes flying through the clouds, but this was the first time she'd set eyes on the cars that she'd been taught were so beloved by the chaffs. They puffed out acrid fumes that stung her eyes and left a strange residue in her throat, but there was something rousing about the roar of their engines and the sheer speed they traveled at. Even if she ran her fastest, she could never keep them in her sight.

Ember glanced at Leo, and he sensed it and looked back at her reassuringly. “Okay?” he asked, and she nodded, not knowing how to say all that she was thinking.

He had come to the dell again to ask her—it wasn't so much asking, more telling, like it was already decided, that he would meet her later by the gap in the thicket and take her into town.

“Show you the bright lights,” he said as if he were joking, and Ember smiled, pretending to understand.

She had always thought Poppy would be the one to show her the place where she and Leo came from. But Poppy's time was taken up with magic now, and her once-daily visits to the dell were becoming fewer and further apart. So Ember didn't hesitate in accepting Leo's plan. She had to wait until her mother was soundly asleep, until her eyelids were sealed and sleep had eased the lines of age and lifted her face back into youth. And when Charlock's breathing was soft and quiet as mist, Ember tiptoed out, carrying her boots and putting them on her feet only once she'd left the camp.

As Ember darted through the forest, she kept expecting a hand to grab her and pull her back. She hardly dared believe she
had managed to slip away undetected, and she couldn't let herself think what might happen if her absence were discovered. She accelerated, brushing through the ferns and ducking under the low branches, the holly and the thorns scratching at her clothes and skin. Whatever happened, it would be worth it, Ember told herself. She couldn't not go. To do nothing—that would be the worst fate of all.

Leo was there in the thicket already, and Ember felt a thrill of happiness that he had arrived first and been waiting . . . for her. She wasn't sure how to greet him, but he put his arm around her and roughly pulled her along.

“Come on. I've got it all planned.”

He walked fast, faster than she, and sometimes she had to skip between strides sometimes to keep up with him. The moon and stars shone vivid and bright, lighting their way, and under her breath Ember sent a message of thanks to them. As they reached the town, it became harder to see the constellations, and nearing the center, Ember forgot to look upward. There was too much happening around her.

So many people. So many men. None like Leo, though. Ember felt foolish for expecting them all to be similar. They were all different shapes and sizes—some hairy, some hairless, voices high and low, some you could hardly tell were men at all. Ember clung tightly to Leo's arm and he looked at her comfortingly, like she was a child. She wanted to let go and show that she was like the other teenage girls she saw, with their high heels and short skirts and brightly painted faces. But her fingers wouldn't release their hold. She needed that contact with the one thing she already knew.

The town was loud and dirty and it smelled. Trash cans overflowing, writing on the walls, buildings black with dirt—Ember couldn't imagine having to clean this place the way she scrubbed the caravan steps with a brush in one hand and a bucket in the other. Ember had waited to come here for so long, wondering if the day would ever arrive, and now that she was here, she felt overwhelmed. How could she tell Leo she wanted to go home where it was small and quiet and where night was night? Then, as they passed a store, doors open, heat blasting, she heard it. The song she had learned from Poppy's headphones. And suddenly Ember felt like she belonged.

“I know this one!” she cried out.

“What?” Leo said over the noise.

Ember pulled him inside the store and looked around at the walls, seeking the source of the music.

“I know this one,” she said again, and as if to prove it, she started singing the words, not caring who could see or hear, all inhibitions swept away by the melody.

It took Leo a few moments before he could let go of the embarrassment he felt as Ember began to sing so loud and free. Then his body relaxed and the tension left him as he realized nothing bad was going to happen. He didn't have to protect Ember from humiliation or teach her how to behave in public. People might stop and look, but no one was laughing or calling out names. And so what if they did? Ember looked happy, truly so. Nothing mattered to her right now but the music. The sense of joy and liberation
was infectious, and soon Leo found himself smiling and wishing the song would last and last and the moment wouldn't end. But of course it did, and Ember turned to him and hugged him and he allowed his arms to wrap around her and squeeze her back, lifting her off her feet.

Leo felt glad, then, that he'd brought her. It had been a decision made in anger, and all the while since, he'd been regretting it. Rejected by Poppy, he'd felt furious at himself for feeling guilty when he had done nothing wrong. As if to prove his innocence, he had decided to do something good for Ember, something open and unselfish. So he had gone to the dell and told Ember of his plan. She had shown him the countryside, and in return, he would show her the town. It had sounded so simple and he had felt so sure. But then the evening came and she had seemed so nervous and out of place that his certainty had begun to crumble. Suddenly it all felt complicated, and Leo knew that he'd been kidding himself before about his good, unselfish deed. Then, just as he was trying to figure out how best to turn back, Ember had heard the song and started to sing and it all became worth it.

Now, as they walked around the town center, Leo felt like he was seeing it anew through Ember's eyes. The raucous voices and garish lights, the grumbling traffic and all the people in their many costumes—it felt like a performance staged and choreographed for their benefit and Leo wanted to applaud. Ember too seemed struck by the theater of it.

“Nothing's ever going to be the same again,” she proclaimed, and instantly Leo felt the weight of what he'd put in motion. “You've changed my life,” she added, and the burden of responsibility pressed down harder on him.

“You think that now,” Leo replied, trying to make it lighter. “It's not such a big deal. Just a trip, a holiday.”

Ember shook her head. “The dell—it's all different now. I understand it. I know where it all came from.”

“It doesn't mean the dell's not a special place. I mean, I see that and I come from here.”

“But I have to go back,” she whispered. “How do I do that?”

Leo took her to the movies. He'd been saving it until last. They came in through the fire escape, and Ember gasped when she saw the screen with its giant super-race of people looming over her.

They sat on the steps in the aisle and watched until the hero and heroine kissed and the closing credits began to roll. Ember took Leo's hand, lifted it to her mouth, and rested her lips there. No sparks of electricity, just warmth.

The whole place emptied and the lights came up and Ember let go. A second later and she had grabbed a half-finished bag of popcorn and tried some. It startled Leo, how she flitted from one moment to the next.

“You like it?” he inquired.

“I know what it is, silly. We have popped corn where I come from. Not quite so salty, though.” She offered him the bag. “Supper?”

He smiled and took a handful. “Not much of a meal,” he apologized.

“What do you mean?” she said, getting to her feet. “There's tons of it here.” And she collected more bags and poured them together to make two full ones.

Leo walked her home all the way to the edge of the woods, both of them munching on the popcorn. Then she gave him back the bag.

“No clues,” she said. “We're not allowed into the town without permission.”

“Will you get into trouble?” he asked.

“Not if I don't get caught,” she smiled.

Leo looked at the trees thickening the dark woods. “How will you see your way home?”

Ember shrugged. “I could do it with my eyes shut,” she replied confidently, but then she looked for herself and Leo thought he caught a hint of apprehension flicker across her face. Before he had time to question her again, Ember was putting her hands on his shoulders. “Thank you,” she said.

“Anytime,” he replied flippantly.

Then she stretched herself up onto her toes and kissed him. “You're supposed to kiss me back,” she smiled gently. “Like the man in the movies.”

Leo felt his face flush and his heart pound with panic, but Ember grinned, dimples appearing in her cheeks.

“Please,” she said, fluttering her lashes like she'd seen the actress do.

Leo's mind scrambled for what to say, but then Ember was reaching up again and he found himself sweeping her into his arms, her back arching and her head tipping as his mouth covered hers. For a moment Leo even felt like a film star with his leading lady, like it wasn't real but a perfect act. And then, when he lifted her back to standing, Ember started to laugh with delight and he did too and it all seemed so effortless.

When Poppy's next session with Mrs. Silva was canceled, she knew immediately. The school secretary explained that Mrs. Silva was off sick and wouldn't be coming back for a while, but Poppy understood all that and far more. The baby was no more and Mrs. Silva would never be coming back. This would be the last loss Mrs. Silva could endure without losing herself. She would stop trying for a baby and instead try to live without that hope.

Poppy sat on the floor, in between the rows of books in the library, flicking frantically through her book of spells to find the one she'd used to keep the baby alive. She scoured the ingredients, the method. She had done everything it said. No mistakes. And she'd known it had worked. She'd felt it, seen it. The baby had been strong. It had been destined to live. Everything had been right. So what could have gone wrong? The book stated the spell could be reversed, but only by an even stronger, darker magic. Who would do such a thing? Why?