Winterkill (11 page)

“Non, pas des oreilles.”

No ears. What on earth—“The
malmaci?
”

He shrugs, pacing away from me to the rifle rack, worrying the key ring hanging from his
ceinture
.

“Who else did you tell about this . . . Elephant Man?”

“Bette.” Must be his life mate. “You.”

And then I understand. I was there on Watch when his
eyes failed him. He's not sure what he saw. “Mayhap no one else for now.”

He nods. Hesitates. Then he leans close.
“J'ai des reves de la bois.”

He dreams of the woods. Like me. I don't know what to say, so I'm glad when he shrugs and gestures toward the door.

I turn before I pull it open. “This isn't why you rang the alarm?”

He sighs. “I tell you already:
ce n'etait pas moi
.” I study his watery eyes. Mayhap he
is
telling the truth. He puts a hand to my shoulder.
“Que Dieu te protége.”

I don't go to the woods.

Almighty, protect me indeed.

That night I pull my feet from the dream forest floor. I wiggle my perfect toes, rock back onto my heels. I lean forward, feel the soil and spruce needles soft under my skin. The wind stirs my hair. This time, there is no hawk and
La Prise
doesn't come. This time the sound is quiet, a soft cry. A young girl's voice.

Find us,
it calls.

I take a deep breath of the velvet air, and then I run.

THE RIVER SHINES IN THE AFTERNOON SUN,
winding like a giant silver
ceinture
through the golden poplars. It's real warm for an after-Harvest day and the air is still, with no biting bugs to spoil it. The heat glances off the cliff walls and the heady smell of sage rises up in waves.

I can't enjoy it.

Not the river, not the warm air, not even Tom; I'm not at ease. And the longer I sit, the longer I watch Tom casting his gut-string line in the water, time and again, the more uneasy I get. Something's boiling up under the surface of everything: the river, my skin. I want to break something or run or scream. And Tom sitting there unknowing is starting to make me addled.

“It was so lucky you were there,” he thinks aloud for what seems the hundredth time. He won't stop talking about Harvest. I didn't set him straight about what happened, just let him believe what I'd told everyone else.

I jump up and walk to the river's edge.

“Edith would've been so scared all alone,” he muses.

I pace back and forth on the sandy shore.

“Was just so lucky.”

“It wasn't real anyway,” I say.

“Still,” he says. He tosses his line and looks back over his shoulder at me. “You ready to try?”

“No.”

“They're not biting anymore, anyhow.” He pulls the line in, gathers it on his spool and turns to face me. “You want to spot jays? We got time before dinner.”

I shake my head and keep pacing.

Tom fiddles with the spool and fishing line, his brow creased. “You got an idea of something to do?”

I want to shout at him. Instead, I press into my bad foot and pull at a loose thread on my belt. “Let's just walk,” I say.

We make our way along the rocky shoreline, keeping quiet. I stare hard at the shimmering river, but Brother Stockham's eyes swim up and out of the ripples, so I scrunch my eyes shut.

And trip on a stone.

“Easy.” Tom catches my arm gentle-like and rights me.

There's a giant fallen tree several paces ahead; we'll need to climb the bank to get around it. I turn back to the river, pick up a stone, and skip it hard along the silvery water. Tom sets the fishing spool aside to join me and we skip rocks in silence—Tom tossing them easy and making six or seven skips, me whipping them as though to tear the waves in half and only making three or four.

After a few minutes, Tom speaks. “Before the alarm, you left the dance quick.” He says it in an offhand way, but there's a question there.

I whip a rock and land it with a huge splash. “Yep.”

“Before we could dance again.”

“I was tired.”

“Oh.” He skips a rock. “Well, I guess that's good, because if you hadn't been tired, then Edith would've—”

“Can we stop talking about it?”

He looks at me, startled.

“Please.” I don't want to think about any of it. Not about my Wayward act, not about Kane being there. Certainly not about the dance. Or Brother Stockham looking on me strange, lying to me.

“Something's bothering you,” he says. He worries the rock in his scarred hands.

I throw my rock at the river.

“You're not thinking about that trail in the woods, are you?” I watch him turn the rock over and over. “You're not thinking about going back there?” His voice sounds a mite wistful.

I think about the girl's voice in my dreams. About running toward her . . .

“Em?”

What can I tell him? I don't want to lie to him again, but I need to stop the questions. I look around for a distraction and settle on his hands. “You must be the worst candle dipper in the history of the settlement.”

Tom's cheeks flush. I close my eyes. Why did I choose
that?
I know why Tom's hands are scarred; it's the same reason my foot hurts so bad certain days. Fighting yourself is torture, and it's better to harness the pain than drown in it. And he and I don't speak on that kind of thing.

“S-s-sorry.” I fumble the word. “Don't know why I said that.”

“It's all right,” he says, but he doesn't meet my eyes.

“No, it isn't. I just—don't know what's wrong with me.”

He looks up and watches me awhile. “You looked real happy at Harvest. Dancing.”

I throw another rock.

“Looked like you'd forgotten to worry about your Stain.”

I shake my head. “Doesn't matter much if I forget about it; everyone else remembers.”

“Not half as many people as you figure.”

“That's not true.”

“Isn't it? Edith's real fond of you.”

“Edith's a child.”

“She sees you for you,” he says. “Soeur Manon does too. Lots of people do.”

I snort and wave him off.

“You're always too worried about the people who look on us unkindly in the first place.”

“You mean Jameson.”

“Jameson, sure. Council.”

“They watch me closer than most.”

“So what if they watch you close? They watch you because they think you're apt to do something Wayward. But only you can decide what you do, Em.”

His words send a spike of cold through me. I study the water a moment.

“I don't think I'll fish today,” I say.

Tom nods. “Mayhap tomorrow.”

I turn to head up the bank.

“Em?”

I look back at him.

“Was good to see you smiling like that.”

I pretend to head back to the fortification, but when I reach the dirt path that crosses the flats I keep going, heading north along the stream. Tom's wrong about the others. He doesn't know how it feels to be eyeballed the way I do, to have Stockham's eyes on me all these years. But I don't mind that he's wrong. He's the one person who cares that I'm happy, the one person who doesn't mind about my Stain. He and I watch out for one another. That's something.

I traverse the bank as far as I can until it jumps up steep and I know I'm approaching the Cleansing Waters. I sit and stretch long on a sun-warmed rock, closing my eyes, trying to wipe my mind clean of everything: the dance with Brother Stockham, Andre's Elephant Man.

A shadow falls across the sun.

I squint and find someone blocking out the sky, the sun a blue ring of light behind them. Brother Stockham? I scramble up.

Kane. He's standing on the rocks, his shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled back.

“Oh.” I sit back down, trying to look easy, but my thoughts fly back to him playing hoopball yesterday. With no shirt.

“Afternoon, Em.”

I nod, my eyes to the ground.

“C'est belle,”
he says. “Beautiful.”

It takes me an unbearable moment to realize he means the day, the river. I nod again.

“You like coming out here, hey?”

I glance at him. He's looking over the river all casual, but there's something about it that seems a bit put-on. Like he didn't just happen on me here; like he was mayhap . . . looking for me?

I decide not to answer him direct. “Just resting a minute.”

He settles himself on a rock nearby, picks up a pebble. The other night hangs between us, heavy and unspoken. It's addled, us sitting here like nothing after being pressed tight together in that well, but I pray he doesn't bring it up. Don't want to speak on it, especially if he knows I lied to Brother Stockham.

“Nice enough to go in.” He nods at the river.

“It'd be cold,” I say.

He shrugs. “Cold's all right by me. Could be the last chance before
La Prise
.”

I stare down at my moccasin. Not about to take it off in front of him. “I don't swim.”

“Someone should teach you someday.” His lazy-river voice tugs at me. I look over at him, at his easy smile. He tosses the pebble in the air and catches it, over and over. “I've been swimming since I was a youngster. Taught my brothers to swim too.”

Are we making chitchat? I fumble for something to say. “How old are they?”

“Four and six, but believe me, you're never too old to learn.”

Does he mean
he
could teach me? My secret heart swells. I watch the river. The whine of the crickets grows. The scrub along the bank has turned; the leaves are pink-orange and bright yellow. Days like these, it's hard to imagine
La Prise
sweeping in, cloaking the world in ice. Comes so fast, though, you could be standing in the river one day and in knee-deep snow the next.

The animals aren't fooled. Above us, a flock of geese heads south, honking. Wispy white clouds scud across the yawn of blue sky. I watch the birds awhile. A thought pops from my mouth: “You ever see that blue color anywhere? I mean, besides the sky?” It's the color of that scrap of fabric I found in the woods. It occurs to me I've never seen it in our fabric dyes.

He stops tossing the rock and looks over. “No,” he says. “But can't say I've been looking.” He raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

I shake my head like it's nothing.

He goes back to catching the rock. Toss, catch. Toss. “It's nice here. Real peaceful,” he says.

I nod.

“Can see why you'd want to come out here.”

This time I can't help but smile over at him.

He fumbles the catch. Real quick, he snatches the pebble from where it lands and tosses it at the river. Clears his throat.

“So. You keeping out of trouble?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Keeping in the good books?”

“I think so,” I say, willing him to drop it.

“Hide in any damp wells lately?” He says it joking, but my heart gets tight. Does he want me to admit I lied?

“Don't you have somewhere to be?”

“Umm . . . no?”

“Well, what do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

I hop up. “I'm needed at Soeur Manon's. So unless you have something important to speak on, I'll be on my way.” The words come out in a rush, my throat too tight. I sound like a treed squirrel. It's just . . . he's speaking easy. Looks easy. But seems like he might be trying to catch me in some sort of trap.

He runs one hand over his shaved head, back and forth, and nods, eyes fixed on my face. “All right. I just . . . wanted to talk.” He shrugs. “Ask if mayhap you want to . . . play hoopball sometime?”

I stare at him. “Girls don't play hoopball.”

“Regular girls, no. Thought mayhap you . . . ” He trails off.

I flush to the roots of my hair. “Can't. Got some
irregular
things to do.” I say it with as much bite as I can muster.

He bursts out laughing.

And then I realize how addled I sound. For an instant I want the ground to swallow me whole, but his laugh is so good-natured it's catching. I frown to hide a smile.

He puts a hand to his chest in the Peace. “Emmeline.
Un plaisir, toujours
.”

Always a pleasure
. I bite down on my bottom lip as I head up shore.

What does he truly want? If he knows I lied to Brother Stockham, then he's guilty like me for keeping my secret. If he doesn't know, why does he want to talk about my Waywardness? And what was he doing outside the doors during the false attack, anyway?

The only thing that's certain in all of this is that I'd best mind my tongue around him.

But that's what's so skittering. Something in me wants to spill my secrets when I see him. His eyes are so warm and calm.