Winterkill (32 page)

I remember how scared I was when I found them, when
they found me . . . I look at Kane. He's got a dark ring under one of his eyes I didn't notice before, and his bottom lip is bruised. But he doesn't look scared or confused. He looks like himself: beautiful, brave.

“We headed back to the fort at first light. Took a while to sort ourselves out. Thanks be, they wanted to skirt the fortification riverside. We spotted you and Brother Stockham at the Cleansing Waters. Got there just in time to see him throw you . . .” Kane's jaw clenches and he looks away, back at the group. “Matisa here can swim something fierce.”

I look over at the three and notice she's drying two sets of clothes over the fire: hers and mine. “Matisa,” I say, “I don't—I . . .” My voice catches. “Thank you.”

She shrugs. “Your boy has good aim. Once I caught hold of you in the water, he hit me with the rope like we were standing still.”

The boys nod, looking with admiration at Kane.

Your boy.
I glance at him and he rubs his head. “Guess the knife-throwing practice was good for something,” he says.

My mind spins. “How—how did you get past Watch without Stockham's say-so? To get to the cabin, I mean.”

“Told Jameson I'd found something out in the woods while I was watching you. Something he'd be interested in.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“He didn't ask what. Think he was too wound about you and Brother Stockham.”

The horror of those moments at the river floods back. Brother Stockham was calling it love, but he's wrong: he doesn't love me. I watch Kane sitting so calm.

“You”—I swallow hard—“went out at dusk. After a Taking.”

He shrugs. “If the
malmaci
got me, it got me. Wouldn't be much inside the settlement for me if you were at the Crossroads.”

I close my eyes against the tears that spring up. He did it for me. After I turned from him. My voice is so tight I have to force the words. “Kane, I'm sorry. I should've believed you—”

He cuts me off. “And I should've told you.” He brushes my hair back. “And it doesn't matter anymore.”

A bone-tired wave washes me. I lie back.

Kane frowns. “You should rest.” He moves to tuck the blankets around me, but I grab his arm.

“Stay with me?”

“Course.” He goes to pull the blankets up again, but I squeeze his arm, stopping him.

“No. Kane—
stay
with me.” I nod at the blankets. I can picture my bad foot beneath, but it doesn't fill me with shame anymore. I look at him.

His dark eyes go wide. Then he rubs the back of his neck, blows out a breath, and looks around.

Matisa and the boys are looking everywhere but at us.

His voice is so soft I strain to hear him. “Course.” He lies next to me and moves in under the blankets. When he puts his arms around me, I can feel his heart beating fast. His body is trembling just the littlest bit, and it's red hot, burning through his clothes into my skin. I press my face into the hollow of his neck, breathing in his woodsmoke warmth. I draw my head back. “Tell me that piper story?”

His eyes drink me in, shining a warm, perfect light on my bare shoulders. He smiles. “Course, Em.”

“HE'LL BE LOOKING FOR YOU,” I SAY.

We're gathered round the smokeless fire watching Nishwa portion out hot broth into metal cups.

“Eat first,” Matisa says, like we've got all the time in the world.

I can tell Matisa's the sort who's never in a rush for things to happen, just like her brother Nishwa. Isi's a different story; he's pacing while Nishwa moves snail slow, measuring out the broth like it's the most important thing on Almighty's green earth. And the broth might
be
the most important thing. They have supplies, but not near enough to last five of us very long. It's plain they need to make a run for it.

Kane sits beside me, forearms on his bent knees, his thigh pressing into mine. He's sticking close, like he doesn't want me out of his sight ever again.

I slept hours—the whole day and into the night—wrapped in his warmth. When we woke, the wind was whistling soft outside the cave and a thin dusting of snow coated the
ground. The clothes that Matisa brought me were warm and dry, but I wanted to stay inside the blankets with Kane forever.

He insisted on Matisa coming with me when I went to relieve myself in the woods, though I'd told him about the lie of the Takings before I drifted off.

I stumbled from the cave out into the starry night and was met by a soft rush of breath—just like the one I'd heard in the cabin the other day. They'd brought me to the cave on the back of one of their horses, and the beasts were wandering quiet nearby as I stepped out into the trees. I stopped to watch them shift about—so calm, their breath steaming in the cold. I imagined how they'd be when I looked at them in Soeur Manon's books, but they're so much more beautiful than I figured.

I'd never been out in the woods in the full dark before. Instead of it feeling skittering, though, it felt like a shadowy embrace.
Les trembles
shifted and sighed, like they'd been holding their breath for years, waiting to welcome me. Skeleton branches danced shadows on the walls of the coulees.

Matisa trailed behind, talking soft to the horses. I tucked behind a tree, skin flushed, feeling alive finger to toe. The moon was a thin sliver of light, but the stars were so brilliant the whole sky was drinking me up. I thought about Soeur Manon speaking on being a child and looking at that night sky, and I understood.

When I returned, Kane was waiting with his funny smile. And even though everything was upside-down and still is, I've never felt so whole, so full.

I take the broth from Nishwa and drink it quick. I can't
help but make a small sound of pleasure when I'm done. Isi watches me across the fire.

“He'll be coming for you now, Matisa,” I try again. “Mayhap he told Council he's seen the
malmaci
. They'll shoot first, that's their way.”

Her eyes are calm. She wipes at her mouth with a cloth and speaks. “We always knew we were taking a risk.”

“But you should go—get out of here before he finds you, before they—” I don't finish. When I told them about the bones in the cellar—their scouts—Isi's eyes went real dark, then he jumped up and left the cave, but Matisa and Nishwa just sat there, silent and calm, thinking. When Isi returned, his face was blank, but he started pacing the cave end to end. He's still pacing.

“I'm sorry.” I'll never say it enough. “This is all my fault. You need to go.”

Matisa frowns. “My dreams told me not to leave without you. Can you leave your people?”

I look into the coals. What exactly would I be staying for? If I left with these new friends, I'd be running from a settlement that had never wanted me, from Brother Stockham, who'd wanted me for all the wrong reasons.

And going back to the settlement is courting our death. No doubt Brother Stockham's told everyone I've been sent to the Crossroads, and he'll be wondering where Kane is and how much he truly knows. Everyone's already half addled with the
malmaci
seeming to circle ever closer. We walk out of the woods like ghosts—Lost People at our sides or no—there's no guarantee they won't shoot us on sight. Almighty knows Brother Stockham would give the order himself; he's
probably scouring for Kane's whereabouts right now. And at first light Council will hunt for Matisa and the boys, if they aren't hunting already.

Brother Stockham knows I took that Almighty-loving journal; he'll look for it. And Tom knows it's in Pa's trapping satchel. What if Tom goes to Brother Stockham with it?

What would he do to my pa?

To Tom?

My heart clenches tight.

Isi nods at the wind outside. “The winterkill comes.”

Takes me a minute to realize he means
La Prise.
It's a strange word for it, but it's also exactly the right one. Affirmation has already started and the settlement is closing up until the Thaw. The thought of
La Prise
—the winterkill—barreling down on us sends an arrow of fear to my heart.

I look at Matisa's calm eyes. She's risked so much. But for what? “Why did you come?” I ask.

Isi stops his pacing a moment and looks to Matisa.

“I told you the answer was long,” she says.

“We don't have much time,” adds Isi.

“Then you'll have to talk fast,” I say.

Isi crosses his arms, his brow like thunder, but Matisa waves him off. “Emmeline is right to ask.” She studies me. “The quick answer is this: death is coming again for our people. Our elders have seen it, just as they saw it years ago.”

“What kind of death?”

“A war. The Dominion is coming.”

The Dominion: the people of the east. “And they are coming to fight?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Why?”

“We have things they need.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Matisa,” Isi's voice rasps from the corner. “Hurry up.”

“The important thing is that the war will be bloody. It will not end well.” She swallows and looks at her hands. Again I wonder about her home, her family. She says her people used to war with nearby tribes for food and people, but they banded together years ago in the face of the threat of newcomers—people like us. Over the years they learned the Dominion's languages to better understand what they were up against. “For years we have known this, but for years our elders have also been telling an old tale of our people. It is about two dreamers from different times who have the answer to keeping death at bay.”

I frown. Different times. “You think you and I are those dreamers?”

She nods.

“But what's the answer?”

She shrugs. “It will become clear, if we listen to our dreams.”

I study her. I see for the first time that beyond her gentle eyes and easy manner there's a heaviness, like she's carrying something she shouldn't. It's the kind of weight brought on by knowing too much. By having to make decisions that aren't easy.

Like leaving your home.

I look at Kane. He meets my eyes, silent. I push to my feet. “Need to go for a think.”

“Em!” Kane calls as I leave the cave. The wind takes his voice and whisks it into the trees.

I tuck myself in under a sweeping spruce. The boughs make a roof and walls around me, sealing out the icy wind and the moonlight.

Kane ducks his head inside. “You can't think in the cave?”

I give him a half smile. “Not used to so many people watching me when I do it.” I sink to the needle-covered ground and draw my knees to my chest.

He stands there a moment, looking at me. “You need to think alone.”

I fight back tears and nod. “That all right?”

“Course. I'll be waiting outside the cave.” His eyes are gentle. “Em?” he says. “I'm following your lead. No matter what.” He gives me a smile that's meant to be reassuring, and disappears.

And then the tears come. Not desperate, painful tears; mixed-up tears. Tears of sadness and anger and guilt, tears of thankfulness and relief. I let them stream down my cheeks and sit quiet, listening to the wind in the top of the spruce. It's a big, soft voice shushing me, telling me it's all right.

But I don't know what to do.

Matisa trusted herself, trusted that leaving her family was the right path. And her people were imprisoned here, starved to death or Almighty knows what else, because our leader was afraid. Yet she tells me she's not leaving without me.

I scrub at the tears with my sleeve.

We should go now, before
La Prise
is howling down around us. Leave those stifling walls, the suspicious stares, the people who never understood or cared for me . . .

Except it's not that easy.

I'd be asking Kane to leave his family: his ma who taught him to read, who raised him kind and brave.