Stolen (7 page)

“So foolhardy,” Keeva said, gazing at the horizon. “Each thinks he will be the first to reach it, even though none before ever has.”

“Well, he
was
Lucky Lock.” It took Bree a moment to find the speaker. A boy named Kent just months from his own Snatching. He kicked a stone toward the corpse. “Not too lucky now, is he?”

Bree didn’t remember deciding to do it. One moment she was standing over Lock’s body, and the next she was towering over Kent’s, her knuckles throbbing from the punch she’d delivered right to his mouth. Like she could force the words back into his throat. Like she could make them unsaid.

She was winding up to deliver another when she was yanked away. Not knowing who held her, and not caring, Bree turned and swung. Keeva grabbed her wrist, cutting the blow short.

“Compose yourself, or you’re heading for the horizon next,” she spat. “This body needs burying. Earth, sea, or sky—you’ll decide with Chelsea.” She turned on Kent. “And have respect for our dead. You face the same fate come the new year, and I doubt you’ll be laughing then.”

“My lip!” Kent said, touching it and looking at his bloody fingers. “She split my damn lip.”

“You deserved it. Go cry to Sparrow if you need a bandage.” Keeva wheeled on the rest of the crowd. “Well? There’s work to be done!”

Bree watched them disperse. Ness was sobbing into her hands, and Bree hated that the tears seemed genuine. Lock sometimes felt like Bree’s whole world, like the sun and the moon and the star-pocked night sky, and now that he was gone all those things seemed to burn less adamantly. How was it possible he could have the same effect on someone else? He was hers. Bree’s. They were each other’s.

She grabbed Lock at the wrists and hauled him out of the surf. Heath would have to see this—Lock’s body, blue and bloated. The bastard. The selfish bastard, forcing this upon his brother.

Bree broke down again, a brilliant sunrise her only audience.

They sent Lock back to the sky.

Chelsea stood before the pyre, stoic. Heath sobbed, but from the comfort of his bed. He couldn’t sit up, let alone stand to walk into town. Bree watched the flames slowly devour the water-logged corpse. The smell was awful. The sun was angry. It was another hot day, and it unfolded even when Bree’s world had stopped.

She fished, and brought in a decent haul.

She ate with the town that evening, but tasted nothing.

As dusk fell, Bree found herself on the jetty, a bottle of Honeyrush clutched in her hand. Its flavor was nothing like honey now—not after fermenting in the sun for weeks on end—but after draining the majority of the bottle in under an hour, the Rush had certainly hit. Bree’s head buzzed. Her limbs felt distant.

Distant was good, though. Distraction was key.

She couldn’t be back at the hut. Not since the weight of Lock’s death had finally settled on Chelsea, rendering her a blubbering mess. Heath was hysterical, too, mostly on account of his leg. He was delirious—shouting about things he saw materializing in the room, only to collapse a moment later and lie unconscious until the next outburst.

Stupid herons. Stupid myths and magic and elusive hope.

Bree took another long drink, letting the Rush scorch her throat. Somewhere on the water, a loon wailed.

“Shut up!”

It didn’t. It called until another joined, and then the cries became a duet.

Bree drained the bottle, then threw it in the direction of the birds, wishing every last one of them dead. Loons, herons, gulls, it didn’t matter. She hated them all. Birds flew places she could not go. They reminded her of her father she’d never again see. They promised to save injured boys only to hoard away hope and deliver nothing but heartache.

Lying back on the jetty, Bree let the sky blanket her. The Rush raged in her core and behind her temples. She was a fish, swimming among the stars. She was an anchor, plunging. Her stomach coiled, and Bree rolled to her side, retching, emptying herself of the drink and even her dinner. Emptying herself of everything, it seemed, but the hurt.

BREE HAD A FIERCE HEADACHE the following morning, rivaled only by an even fiercer desire to never cry again. She was done being weak. She’d managed when her mother began drifting away, and even after she was gone, Bree had gotten by. She’d been strong on her own—lonely, upset, angry, but strong. There are people who drain you and people who raise you up. People who take and people who give. People who make you feel dressed in armor and people who actually provide it. Unless she was dealing with one of the latter, Bree decided she would never again expend her energies.

She climbed from bed, limbs arguing and headache a roar.

Heath’s skin was burning. Of course Mad Mia’s work had failed. Of course it had done nothing. Lucky with Lock and never lucky again. Bree had killed the heron for no reason, snuffed out a life just to spill blood.

She grabbed a rag from the bedside table and wiped the sweat from Heath’s brow. Summoning her courage, she lifted the sheets and unwrapped the soaked bandage on his leg. Dense and suffocating, the smell of rot hit her like a wave. Bree buried her face in the crook of her elbow and peered closer. Inflamed skin surrounded the wound, red and angry. The entry point was still oozing and festering. But worse still was the faint red discoloration on Heath’s skin that had spread from the wound and crawled up his thigh. It looked like a bad sunburn, and Bree wished it were that simple.

“It needs to be amputated,” Bree said, looking up at Chelsea. The woman sat on her bed with her knees curled into her chest, eyes vacant. “The blood poisoning.” Bree pointed at the red trail on Heath’s leg. “We need to act before it spreads farther. Before it’s too late.”

Chelsea’s gaze remained on Lock’s empty bed.

“Chelsea! You can’t just disappear. You can’t leave when he needs you.”

“He’s dead,” she whispered. “Gone.”

“Lock is, but not Heath. Not yet.”

Nothing.

“I’m getting Sparrow.”

“He won’t survive an amputation. He’s already so weak.”

“We still have to try.”

“Like you tried with the heron’s blood?” Chelsea lay back down on the bed. “I’ve already lost one son, Bree. Don’t make me lose another.”

“You
will
if you do nothing. Chelsea? Chelsea!” Bree scrambled around the beds and grabbed the woman by the front of her cotton shift, yanking her upright. “He can lose his leg or lose his life. If you honestly think those are equal losses you’re the most worthless mother this island’s seen, and I thought mine won that title years ago.”

“Don’t you dare judge me!” The woman knocked Bree aside, a fury on her face so animated Bree submitted without a fight. “Heath’s sick every few weeks. He’ll likely be blind by the end of the year if his vision keeps deteriorating. I’m trying to be
merciful
. I’m trying to spare him pain. His life already has such little quality. What will his future hold if you take his leg, too?”

“He won’t have a future to worry about if we do nothing!”

Chelsea crawled over Lock’s bed and into Heath’s. She wrapped her son in her arms and pressed her mouth in his hair.

“I’m getting Sparrow,” Bree announced again.

Chelsea said nothing, and to Bree, it was as good as consent. Maybe Saltwater broke everyone in time. It took all their boys and broke all their women. They grew resigned, like Chelsea, or desperate to fly, like Bree’s mother. Or maybe that was just life, water beating against a stone until it succumbs to smooth edges. But Bree wouldn’t be broken, or worn down, or shaped any way but how she wished. She’d made a promise. To Lock. To Heath. She’d right this.

She pushed off the bed, and went to find Sparrow.

The surgery was horrible. Bree regretted the decision as soon as it began.

Heath, who had been unconscious all morning, was now screaming with such fervor it seemed impossible that death had been near claiming him. He’d been secured to the bed, and a wooden spoon was in his mouth to protect against biting his own tongue, but he was thrashing like a trapped animal. The Honeyrush they’d given him could only numb so much pain. Chelsea, trying to drown her fears with that same bottle of Rush, was a worthless, sobbing mess at the main table.

And so it was just Bree and Ness, of all people, restraining Heath while Sparrow and Cricket tended to his leg. First with knives, then a saw meant for trees, and finally a needle. Sparrow secured a flap of skin she hadn’t completely severed over Heath’s now much shorter leg. They’d taken it from midthigh down. The bed was steeped in blood.

“He’s facing the same odds all over again,” Sparrow said as she stowed away the tools. “If it heals clean—if it doesn’t get infected—he might make it.”

They moved Heath, unconscious but alive, onto Lock’s bed.

“I can clean the sheets,” Ness offered, pointing at the blood-soaked bedding. “And ask around on how long it might be until a new mattress can be made.”

“They don’t need to be replaced,” Bree said. “He can have Lock’s.”

“Right” was all Ness said, but there were many words passing over her features.

Together, the girls dragged the ruined sheets and mattress outside, where they burned them beneath a noon sun. Bree and Ness stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the smoke billow.

“Thank you for helping,” Bree said when she found the courage. “Chelsea’s sort of out to sea, and I don’t think I could have held Heath alone.”

Sparrow had invited—no, requested—Ness join when they’d crossed paths on the way to the hut. It was like the healer could foresee that Chelsea would be useless during the surgery.

“Sure,” Ness said, nodding. A breeze stirred, and on it, Mad Mia’s chants reached their ears. “Think she’ll get us any?” Ness glanced up at the cloudless sky.

“Any rain?” Bree said. “If it comes, it won’t be because of her dances.”

“Do you think she’s really mad?”

“I think she’s hopeful. I think she’s not afraid to believe in things bigger than herself, in things we can’t find explanations for.” Bree looked directly at Ness. It could have been the lighting, or just exhaustion from the surgery, but Ness suddenly looked closer to sixteen, like Bree, than the eighteen years she was approaching. “I think it takes a lot of courage to be hopeful—to be
blindly
hopeful,” Bree added. “Maybe she’s mad. Maybe she’s brave. Maybe they’re the same thing.”

Ness shoved her hands into her pockets. “That day Heath fell on the spike . . . What I said wasn’t fair. I was angry, and scared. Scared for Heath, and for what would happen to Lock if he lost him.” A pause. “I just wanted to make sense of it all, and blaming you was all I had. It was the only thing that got me through the day.”

Bree half smiled, then nearly laughed at the fact that she had. Lock was dead and Heath was healing, and here she was having a conversation with a girl she’d never exchanged more than a handful of sentences with all her life. A sadness bloomed in her core, and she recognized the bittersweet sting of missed opportunity. Ness could be a friend. Ness could have been a friend years prior, even, had Bree only put down her shield as she had for Lock and Heath.

“Think he’ll make it?” Ness said, tilting her head toward the hut.

“I hope so.”

“‘Hope’ again. It’s like the whole damn world is fueled by it.” A smile. “Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to learn to fish like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like it was nothing. Like the spear was an extension of your hand.”

Bree flushed. She’d seen Ness along the shore on occasion. Sometimes alone, other times with Maggie. Bree had thought her visits were to gape at Lock, but clearly Ness was observing many things. She’d never considered that Ness might long to do more than mend and sew.

“I could teach you,” Bree offered. “How to fish.” The thought of heading to the shore every morning alone, Lock no longer at her side, was paralyzing.

“Nah.” Ness wrinkled her nose. “There won’t be enough time.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think you’ll be around much longer.” Ness turned to look at Bree, her face conflicted. “Seems like it’s always the toughest girls who get Snatched.”

That evening, Bree made her way to the jetty. It was her harbor, a port for her thoughts, and she had a lot on her mind.

“I wouldn’t stay out long,” Mad Mia said, dropping one of her chants midsentence as Bree passed. “Rain’s coming.”

It did feel vaguely like rain. Bree could taste it on the air, and the afternoon had brought in thick clouds. Even now, forks of heat lightning licked the darkening horizon, but this had happened before. It was summer, after all. The whole purpose of the season was to constantly threaten storms.

“And you’ve delivered this rain, Mia?” Bree said. “It won’t just be a lucky coincidence?”

“Luck is a river. Sometimes it runs dry, but wait long enough and the springs are always restored.” Mia frowned at her. “These are the subtleties of life, the undercurrents of possibility and chance. When they all align with our wishes, it’s almost like magic.
Magic Mia
,” she said, mostly to herself. “That would have been so much nicer. Yes, yes. Magic.” She pulled aside the vine curtain of her doorway and disappeared.

On the jetty, as Bree watched the distant heat lightning dance, her thoughts fell on Lock. It was his birthday today. He’d have been eighteen. She looked up at the sky, thick with storm clouds. Somewhere behind them, she knew the stars were winking by the company of the moon.

I’m sorry I yelled at you,
she told Lock.
I don’t hate you—I could never hate you—but I am angry. That you left, that you’re gone. Sometimes I feel like we might have had a chance, Lock. Somewhere else. In a different life. In a place without all this water. Wherever all those birds go.

It’s possible you were right. There might be nothing for those Snatched—it might be death and decay and the end of all possibilities. But I almost hope to find out. It’s crazy, but I’m ready for whatever you ran from. I hope it comes for me, and I hope it’s something worth seeing.

I’ll let you know.

If I live through it, I’ll let you know what you’re missing.