Stolen (5 page)

Lock’s lips were still wet with water when she kissed him. He sat there a moment afterward, stunned. His gaze trailed over Bree. Her eyes and her lips and her neck and her lips again. And right when she was certain he’d leap to his feet and tell her she’d ruined everything, he slid a hand behind Bree’s neck and pulled her mouth back to his.

This kiss was nothing like the first. He leaned into it. He led with his chin. He opened his mouth to hers. Bree was suddenly back in the lake, drifting, floating, weightless. Even when his lips left hers, she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her. Because he was kissing her neck now, and her shoulder, and a school of minnows had taken up residence in her stomach. Her hands were everywhere—she couldn’t control them. She touched every inch of skin she’d once cursed for being so distracting. His collarbone, the curve of his chest, the muscle of his arms, one half of the V that disappeared beneath his shorts.

He hummed at that, his lips against her neck. Bree traced the line again, and the hum became a moan. Lock’s hands found the hem of her shirt and peeled it over her head.

This is actually happening
, Bree thought. Would it have happened ages ago had she only been bolder? Was that all it took, unapologetic confidence?

His hands on her skin. His mouth against hers. She could barely think straight, and the minnows in her stomach were moving into every last inch of her body: her hips and toes, shoulders and spine.

“We don’t have to do this,” Lock said.

“I want to,” she said.

“You don’t.”

Don’t have to do it, or don’t want it to happen?

Bree didn’t ask.

He’d be gone in three days, and right now they could be together. Maybe that would make it harder to lose him. Maybe it would all hurt that much more when he was Snatched. But in the moment, Bree didn’t care. She was drunk on the taste of him, and the feel of his body pressed against hers, and he saw her now. He saw her and she wanted the moment to never end.

She leaned back in the grass and drew him closer.

POLLEN DANCED ON THE THICK summer air. Crickets sang. Dusk was falling.

Dusk
.

“Shoot!” Bree gasped, rolling out of Lock’s arms. They’d fallen asleep, right there in the grass beyond the lake. The heron hadn’t come, or she’d missed it altogether. “I need to check the snares. Keeva’s going to kill me.”

“Do you need help?”

“No, I’ll meet you in town.”

Lock nodded. He seemed almost shy as he found his shirt in the grass, hesitant to make eye contact.

“Lock, are we okay?”

“Yeah. Course,” he said, nodding again. “See you at dinner.”

As soon as he ducked off, Bree hurried to her traps. She hurt. It had hurt during, too, but
after
. . . Was it supposed to hurt after? She pushed on. Found two of her ten snares full.

She couldn’t get Lock’s expression out of her head. The way he’d stared at her following that first kiss, the way he regarded her after it was all said and done. He was looking at her differently now, but it still wasn’t as she’d imagined. Something was missing, and she didn’t know what. She’d finally done it: demanded he see her. All she’d had to do was reach out and take it. Why did that victory feel like a burden?

And right then she realized her mistake. Because no matter what, she was pretty sure it shouldn’t feel this way—like she’d stolen something. Like she’d
won
.

Keeva was satisfied with the rabbits and didn’t order Bree to swim toward the setting sun, although Bree almost wished she had. Afraid of returning to the hut after dinner, she lingered along the shore. What would she say to him? Should she act like nothing had changed even though everything had?

She needed her mother. She needed someone to tell her what came next.

Beyond the curve of the island, where the steep rock cliffs met water, a loon call pierced the twilight. Still as stone, Bree listened. The bird wailed again. Its song sounded how she felt—uncertain and lonely. Regretful, even.

She cupped her palms and blew on her thumbs. The whistle she produced was nearly as convincing as the one her father used to make. She had few memories of him—all vague and blurry—but she remembered his loon calls.

“It’s in your hands, B,” he’d explained.

Bree couldn’t recall him saying these exact words, but her mother had told the story so many times, Bree could almost picture the entire evening.

They’d been sitting on the jetty, him just hours from a Snatching, her a still-chubby toddler. He was nothing but a boy, really, but Bree thought him a man; burly, strong. To her he was the size of a giant, with shoulders as wide as Crest and hands that never faltered. He’d pick her up and toss her toward the clouds, never letting her land anywhere but in his arms. Those same hands hauled nets of fish from the ocean and set the nimblest of snares. They combed her hair out of her eyes—hair that was as brilliant and pale as his—and they made the most beautiful loon calls she’d ever heard. So pure and clean you might mistake him for the actual animal.

“Pretend you’re holding the bird. A baby loon. Cup it right in your palms like
this
, and then fold your thumbs over.”

But she’d been so young, with little coordination and even less patience. The sun had set. Her father put her on his shoulders, and hiked to where her mother stood watching. The woman walked Bree home, and her father drifted back to the shore.

That was the last Bree ever saw of him.

She turned three that winter, and forgot all about loon calls. It wasn’t until several summers later, when she heard Conner blowing into his palms and trying to teach Lock the call, that she remembered. She’d spent every evening of that season teaching herself. She refused to ask Conner or Lock for help. She just sat on the jetty where she used to sit with her father until she managed a wispy whistle, and then a mediocre one, and finally, a convincing—maybe even flawless—call.

Bree sat there now and did the same. The loons sang with her until they didn’t, at which point the sun was gone and the world dark. Bree turned her back on the shore. She hiked to town with a pinching sensation in her stomach. There were a few minnows in there still, only now they made her feel ill instead of alive.

As she stepped into the village clearing, Bree caught sight of Lock on the opposite edge of town. He was walking into the woods. Someone was with him. Ness.

Bree jogged forward a few paces.

“Lock,” she whispered, but not loudly enough for him to hear. Not loudly enough for anyone to hear. They were gone before the first choked sob worked its way into Bree’s throat, before she even truly registered what she was seeing.

She retreated home, collapsed on her bed, and couldn’t unload her tears fast enough.

“Bree?” Heath asked in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“You’re a liar.”

And an idiot. And one of his girls. I’m one of his girls now
.

Heath shivered despite the heat of the evening. “I don’t feel like it’s getting better, Bree—my leg.”

She forced her breathing steady, forbade herself to continue crying. Tears would change nothing, and this was what mattered: Heath. Not the problems she brought upon herself, not the hurt that she reached out and took. Bree rolled from bed.

“Scooch over, bug.”

Heath complied, and Bree lay down beside him. The dried leaves and grass of the mattress crinkled as she settled in. Heath’s bandage scratched against her knee. He was clammier than yesterday.

“Sparrow said she can’t do much else—that it’s my blood’s battle now, whatever that means.” He paused a moment. “She thought I was sleeping when she told Ma that, but I heard.” Another lengthy pause. “Bree, am I going to die?”

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“How can you know?”

“Because I’m not going to let it happen.”

“Some things can’t be controlled. Like the Snatching.”

Bree let out a shaky exhale. “I got you into this mess, and I’m going to get you out of it. That’s a promise.”

“I never blamed you, you know.” He angled his head toward her. “Not even the littlest bit.”

“I promise,” Bree said again. “I promise I’ll fix everything.”

SPARROW WAS THERE WHEN BREE ducked off to hunt the next morning. The healer stood beside Heath’s mattress, Chelsea’s hands scooped up in hers. She patted them reassuringly. A condolence. An
I’m sorry for your loss
. Like it was already done. And maybe it was. The bandages had been soaked through with pus and blood, a wet rag. Flies buzzed around Heath like he was food. Lock would be gone at midnight the following evening, and it was looking more and more likely that Heath would beat him to an exit.

Everyone has to die eventually.

Bree tightened her grip on her slingshot and hiked faster. She would not lose them both in the same breath—Lock and Heath. She would not.

Before reaching the lake, she slowed to a crawl. The wind rustled the leaves. Hair stood on Bree’s arms. Despite the already sweltering heat, a coolness spread over her limbs. The bird was here. She was sure of it. Bree slid a stone into the slingshot and took her next steps carefully. Over a fallen log. Choosing moss-covered rock instead of dry grass. Silent, invisible.

At the foot of her tree, she peered around the trunk.

And there, in the shallows, no more than a stone’s throw away, was her heron. Her beautiful, flawless, breathtaking heron. He stood on his spindly legs like a graceful sentry, neck extended, wings tucked in at his sides. His bill twitched, then drove into the water, pulling out a small frog.

Slowly—painfully cautious—Bree moved into the tall reeds beneath the tree.

Her fingers itched to loosen the stone. Her heart hammered.

She stood only when the heron turned to focus on another portion of the shallows. She took aim as the breeze blew, so the whisper of her clothes and the stretch of her slingshot would be covered by the rustling reeds.

The bird spread his wings to take flight, and Bree let her stone free.

She did not strike the head as she’d hoped, but the body. The bird screeched, flapping a now broken and useless wing. Bree tore through the shallows, grabbed the bird by the neck, and twisted her hands. Its beady eyes went dull.

Bree scrambled from the water and set the bird on the bank. It was larger in death than it ever seemed while hunting or flying. White feathers blanketed its belly and wrung neck, but across the back and wings the plumage darkened like the sea before a storm—salty, gray, regal. An even darker gray—nearly midnight black—ringed the creature’s eyes, drawing back toward the crown of its skull like war paint.

Bree wrung out her wet pants and slung the bird over her shoulder. Its neck flopped, its legs dangled. It looked so ridiculous now. So pathetic.

Bree hiked to town at breakneck speed, shocked at how little the dead bird weighed. Alive, it had stood well past her navel, with a wingspan wider than she was tall, but in her hands it felt no heavier than the two rabbits she’d pulled from her snares yesterday.

Hope is heavy,
Bree thought,
but this bird weighs nothing.

Long before she reached Mia’s, she feared it wouldn’t make a difference, and yet she refused to slow.

Mad Mia tore into the heron like a starved savage. She hacked off its bill and ground it beneath a stone, sprinkling the dust into a shallow bowl. She plucked feathers like flowers, then slit the bird’s chest open, letting the blood spill. It overran the dish, flooding the table with red.

Bree watched from the doorway, motionless.

Mad Mia moved like she was dancing, which she may have been, given the constant hum at her lips. An upbeat, staccato chant. She added to the mixture. The roots of some plant on her sill. The crushed residue of seaweed. The pollen of the island’s wildflowers. When the heat of the hut was finally getting to Bree, the woman stood and shoved the bowl into her hands. A small portion of the liquid sloshed onto the front of Bree’s shirt, staining it deep auburn.

“The whole thing,” Mad Mia said. “He drinks every last drop or it will do no good.”

Bree nodded.

“By tomorrow, the fever should break.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Do I look like a seer of the future, girl? A gifted eye?” She batted a hand at Bree’s frown. “If it doesn’t work, I’ve done all I can. As Lock became lucky, Heath will be hopeless. I seem to wield complete successes or utter failures, nothing in between.”

You’re a complete failure in nearly everything
, Bree thought.
Rain dances and moonlit chants. Burnt fish and bone decor.
But she just nodded at the woman and said, “I’ll be back for the bird. It belongs to the island now, to the dinner table.”

Mad Mia adjusted one of her mobiles, side-eying Bree. “That scrawny thing would barely feed a toddler. Little to no meat on the bones.”

“I’ll be back for it,” Bree growled. “Don’t move the carcass.”

With that, she stepped from the hut and into the blazing afternoon.

“It worked for Lock,” Bree insisted. Chelsea and Sparrow wrinkled their noses at the bowl now sitting on Heath’s bedside table. “‘Lucky Lock,’” Bree continued. “All because of Mia.”

“She also poisoned Bay’s son to death two years back,” Sparrow said.

“He was approaching an end anyway,” Bree said, remembering the fever the young man had come down with. “Just weeks from eighteen. Maybe she put him out of his misery.”

“And maybe she’s trying to do the same with Heath.”

Bree turned to Chelsea. “Please. You’ve seen his leg, the infection. It’s going to claim him, Chelsea. If this doesn’t work, he’s sailing for the same horizon either way.”

Chelsea worried the inside of her lip.

“I can’t condone a treatment from Mad Mia,” the healer said. “You know I can’t.”

“Sparrow,” Chelsea said. That was it. Just her name. Her name like a crack of lightning.

The healer fell silent, backed away. “He’s your son to lose. I can’t make this call.”

Even after she left, the house still seemed crowded, cramped. Chelsea’s gaze was locked on Heath, and when it finally drifted from the unsteady rise and fall of his chest, it fell on the bowl of heron blood.