The Poison Season, page 25
“Is everything all right?” Leelo asked her mother when she reached her. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
Fiona nodded. “Of course I am.” She looked past her daughter to Jaren, who was hanging back a bit, unsure.
“You must be Jaren,” she said, holding out her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Jaren stepped forward and took her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Thank you, for helping me.”
When she smiled, Jaren saw Leelo in the small gap between her teeth, in the genuine warmth in her eyes. “You’re very lucky, you know. Most Endlans would have killed you on sight. It’s a miracle you found Leelo.”
Jaren blushed and looked at his feet. “I sort of think of it as fate.”
Fiona studied him for a moment, and Jaren forced himself to meet her gaze, hoping his eyes could convey how much he loved Leelo. That he was good enough to deserve her love, too.
Finally, Fiona nodded. Jaren glanced at Leelo and was somewhat relieved to see she was blushing, too.
The boat, fortunately, was repaired and already loaded into the pulley system that would take it to the surface, as Leelo knew it would be from her reconnaissance mission in the middle of the night. She’d found new oars propped against the cave wall and lashed them to the inside of the boat.
“Just remember,” Fiona said as they took up their positions. “We treat the boat with a special sap that is immune to the poison, but it usually has months to cure, and it’s only been a few weeks since the last application.”
By the time they started moving, night had settled over Endla like a stifling blanket. Leelo didn’t seem to be suffering from the same looming dread Jaren felt. She had taken charge the moment they arrived, directing Jaren and Fiona to the same end of the boat, since he was the strongest and she was the weakest. He tried not to let his fear show on his face as he strained under the weight, supporting it as much as he could to spare Fiona.
It took them nearly an hour to get the boat to the beach. Several times they froze at some sound in the woods, and Jaren could feel the trees around them listening, a phantom breeze ruffling the leaves as they communicated with each other. He would be allowed to leave, he told himself. He was an outsider, and frankly it was a miracle the Forest hadn’t already tried to harm him in some way.
When they finally reached the shore, they set the boat down, the girls collapsing in exhaustion while Jaren tied the end of the rope around a rock. The wind had picked up, buffeting all of them. There was no time to lose, but as Jaren helped Leelo to her feet, he was unable to hide his despair.
Isola must have seen the look in his eyes, because she said a quick farewell before stepping away. “Thank you for helping us,” he said to her.
When he turned to Fiona, she smiled in a way that told him she wished things could be different. He smiled back, and for a moment, her expression faltered.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s nothing. You just seem so familiar to me.” She cocked her head, studying him.
Leelo laughed a little, embarrassed, and took Jaren’s hand. “Mama, you don’t know him. I promise. Can you give us one minute?”
Fiona and Isola stepped into the Forest while Leelo and Jaren pushed the boat toward the water, choppy from the wind coming off the mainland. Perhaps the Forest was still afraid one of its daughters would try to escape, Jaren thought as his skin erupted in goose bumps.
As he turned to Leelo, knowing what he was about to do, he told himself not to think about the Forest or the island or the lake. He was going home finally, to hug his family and sleep in his own bed and eat something other than stale bread or bitter berries.
But now, as he took Leelo’s hands, so small yet so capable, he almost couldn’t remember why he’d ever wanted to leave at all. He wished he’d taken the time to prepare his goodbyes, because now he found himself at a loss for words. Then again, what could possibly encompass everything he felt for her? How could he say goodbye to this girl who meant so much to him, to the girl who had somehow become his home?
Leelo’s velvet-blue eyes were shining with tears, and wordlessly, Jaren leaned down to kiss her, breathing in her scent one last time. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she tilted her face up to his. When their lips met, he could taste her salty tears, and he felt his shattered heart break a little more.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “You have done so much for me, Leelo. I’m the one who should be sorry. It was selfish of me to ask you to leave Endla.”
She sobbed and fell into his arms, and he hugged her tightly, telling her that he loved her and that he always would. Finally, he released her and turned to the boat.
They both froze when they heard a rustle in the nearby bushes, their tears already drying on their cheeks in the wind that now whipped around them in a fury.
“What was that?” Leelo whispered.
Before he could respond, a woman with hazel eyes that seemed to glow with anger stepped out from the trees. On the surface, she wasn’t a threat. She was unarmed and wore a dress and slippers. She wasn’t a Watcher.
But Jaren knew in his bones that whoever she was, they had waited too long. This woman had no intention of letting Jaren go.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Leelo gasped as her aunt burst onto the beach, with Sage right on her heels. She must have followed them to the grotto and gone back to get Ketty. Leelo pushed Jaren behind her. “What are you doing, Sage?”
Her cousin’s face was twisted in a triumphant grin as she glanced between Ketty and Leelo. “I’m saving you,” she said.
Something that was half sob, half laugh burst out of Leelo. “From what?”
Ketty pointed at Jaren as though he were some disease-ridden creature. “From that. Sage told me he was trying to seduce you and lure you away from Endla.” She turned to where Isola and Fiona stood, holding each other and crying. “It all made sense, finally. I just had no idea my own sister was trying to help him.”
“Leave them alone,” Fiona said, but Ketty had already taken a step toward Leelo.
“I should have known. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Leelo pressed her back to Jaren’s chest, as if she could somehow save him with her body. “Let him go. He hasn’t done anything. This was all a misunderstanding.” She looked at Sage imploringly. “Please, you have to know he didn’t mean any harm. He just wants to go home to his family.”
“I might have believed that,” Sage said. “If I hadn’t heard what you said to him in that pathetic hovel.”
Leelo’s stomach sank at the thought of her cousin watching them, of her listening to their private conversation. “You were spying on us?”
“Someone had to! I heard how uncertain you were when he tried to coerce you into leaving. I knew there was still a chance you would fall under his spell. Someone had to be strong. You’re too soft, Leelo. You always have been.”
Leelo wanted to scream at the way Sage repeated everything her mother said, like a starling. Instead, she made a final, desperate appeal to whatever loyalty she still felt for Leelo. “I told him no, Sage. I wasn’t leaving with him.”
“We couldn’t take that chance,” Ketty said. “Not with Endla at stake.”
Through the trees, Leelo could see the glow of torchlight moving toward them. Ketty must have alerted the council. “Just don’t hurt him,” she pleaded. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s leaving now. He doesn’t know anything. Just let him go.”
“You know we can’t do that,” Ketty said. “Give him to me. The council will decide his fate.”
“No!” Leelo pulled her knife out of her waistband. The tiny blade glinted in the moonlight, and as Leelo bared her teeth, one arm still held out protectively toward Jaren, Sage actually took a step back.
But Ketty was not easily cowed. She strode forward and knocked the knife from Leelo’s hand, shoving her aside as she reached for Jaren.
He backed up toward the lake, his heels only feet from where the water lapped against the shore. Isola was crying great, heaving sobs, clearly traumatized from what she’d gone through with Pieter.
Fiona was trying to console her, but she, too, was crying. “Let the boy go, Ketty. He hasn’t done anything.”
“How could you be so foolish, sister?”
“I only just learned of his existence.”
“And then what?” Ketty spat. “Decided to let him take your only daughter?”
Jaren shook his head. “I would never do that. It was always Leelo’s choice. And she chose you!”
Ketty ignored him. “You already let one outsider tear our family apart,” she said to Fiona. “Do you really want to do it again?”
“You tore our family apart,” Fiona growled, the anger in her voice startling Leelo. “You could have let things be. You could have let me have one thing of my own.”
“You had responsibilities,” Ketty spat. “And you abandoned them for some stranger!”
“I didn’t abandon anyone. Kellan knew. He knew, and he forgave me. If it hadn’t been for your involvement, if Hugo had never found out...”
Leelo was more confused than ever. She was torn between pushing Jaren into the boat to save him before it was too late and trying to find some way out of this nightmare they hadn’t considered yet.
“Mother,” Sage warned. The other council members were nearly upon them.
Ketty turned away from Fiona toward Jaren, who had inched closer to the boat. If he jumped in, the movement might be enough to push the boat those last couple feet into the water. Leelo rushed to his side.
But it was too late. The other council members arrived, all nine of them, including several large men. They would kill Jaren, and they would make Leelo watch.
Suddenly, Isola broke into a sprint. She picked up the knife Leelo had dropped and dove for the rope.
“Go!” Mama screamed at Leelo, and everything slowed down as she turned and reached for Jaren’s hand, hauling him toward the boat. Isola slashed repeatedly at the rope, trying to free it, and Fiona, finding some strength Leelo had never witnessed before, was there at the stern, pushing with all her might.
Sage hurled herself at Isola, knocking the girl down. The rope was frayed but still holding on by a thread. Jaren was in the boat, taking up the oars and using them to push away from the shore. Sage screamed when she realized that Leelo was in the boat with him.
“Leelo!” Sage was at the stern, her boots perilously close to the water’s edge as she pulled with all her might in one last desperate attempt to stop her cousin from escaping. “Don’t leave me!” she screamed.
And then the others were there, pulling next to her. Sage collapsed in relief, sobbing like a baby, as Jaren and Leelo were hauled out of the boat—Leelo kicking and screaming like a wild animal, Jaren silent and resigned to his fate.
And as Leelo was torn away from the people she loved, she saw that Sage was smiling in relief, even as holes formed in her boots where they’d been splashed in the commotion. Sage didn’t care about the pain she caused anyone, not even herself, Leelo realized.
Just as long as Endla was sated.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Jaren stood at the center of the pine grove, trussed up like a turkey, surrounded by the Endlan council members. There had been an argument about what to do with Leelo, her mother insisting that she be taken home to avoid any further trauma, while Ketty insisted she stay and watch what her selfish actions had wrought.
Ketty, unsurprisingly, had won.
Leelo sat next to her mother on a log just outside the circle of council members. Her cousin was there, too, attempting to speak to her, but Leelo just stared dead-eyed at the ground in front of her. Her braid had unraveled in the chaos and her hair hung around her in soft waves. Jaren wanted nothing more than to hold her and promise her everything would be all right, to apologize for involving her in this awful mess, to tell her he loved her again and again.
“The punishment is clear,” one of the council members said. He was a large man, one of the ones who had hauled him out of the boat. “The Forest, or the lake.”
“That may be true under normal circumstances,” Ketty said. “But this boy has done far worse than the average criminal. Not only did he use our own vessel to deliberately cross to the island, nearly destroying our one boat in the process, but he seduced one of Endla’s daughters and tried to lure her away.”
Jaren wanted to point out that was not entirely true, but with a gag in his mouth, the most he could do was gurgle in protest.
“Shut up,” Ketty said, poking him with a stick in between his ribs, which were already bruised from being dragged through the Forest by several burly men.
“And what would you have us do with him?” another council member asked. “Kill him ourselves?”
Ketty began to nod, but someone else spoke. She was an elderly woman with a kindly look about her, and Jaren began to feel a small spark of hope that someone might defend him. “What about a Hunt?” she said in a honey-sweet voice.
There was a murmur of excitement among the council members, and Jaren realized with growing dread that the little old lady was not defending him at all.
“What’s a Hunt?” Sage asked, a little too gleefully.
“We let the boy go on the far side of the island, and then we sing the hunting song,” Ketty explained. “Whoever catches him gets the honor of sacrificing him to the Forest.”
Jaren’s eyes met Leelo’s, and he knew the terror he saw there was reflected in his own.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Ketty said, but Jaren stopped listening then. He already knew what the answer would be.
It could have been several minutes or several hours later when Jaren was hauled to his feet (he’d collapsed to his knees at some point, it seemed) and dragged through the Forest.
He lost sight of Leelo and her mother, and maybe that was for the best. He couldn’t stand to see the anguish on Leelo’s face anymore. He hoped for her sake that she wouldn’t have to participate in the Hunt, that she would be well clear of the pine grove when they slit his throat. He hoped Ketty wouldn’t be the one to catch him.
Around him, the Forest was silent. It had to be the middle of the night by now. Would they do it tonight, he wondered, or would they wait till morning? Either way, he was so exhausted he knew he wouldn’t last long. He decided he hoped they’d do it tonight. He wanted to get this over with.
Finally he was pulled up a walkway to a large cottage. The big man who had spoken first at the council meeting yanked him through the doorway. “You’ll stay here tonight,” he told Jaren, which was the first information he’d received all night, and he was strangely grateful for it. “The Hunt begins tomorrow night at sundown. You’ll be fed before then, though not much. And if you cause any trouble, I’ll slit your throat myself.”
Jaren nodded. He was pushed into a bedroom, brusquely untied and ungagged, and locked inside.
He collapsed on the bed and curled onto his side, too tired to even check his body for damage. What did it matter, when he was going to die tomorrow anyway? His stomach turned sour at the realization that he’d been so close to freedom, of escaping not just on his own but with Leelo, and now he was going to die. He didn’t even hate Sage and Ketty or the other Endlans. They were doing what they thought was necessary. He just wished he could prove to them that he would never hurt Endla, or any of the people on the island.
At some point he fell asleep, and he woke to sunlight streaming through the windows. For a moment, all he could think about was how nice it had been to sleep on a real bed. He stretched out and rolled onto his side, and that was when he remembered where he was and why. His mouth felt fuzzy, his wrists were raw where they’d tied him with rope, and his injured leg was acting up again. But he was still alive.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. A man—not the same one from last night, but one similar in stature—brought in a tray of food and set it on the nightstand without looking at Jaren. As if he was afraid Jaren and his outsider ways might rub off on him somehow.
Jaren hadn’t had a hot meal since he came to Endla, and he quickly gobbled down the porridge, scalding his mouth in the process. For jailers, they were being awfully considerate. There had been cream and honey in the porridge, though Jaren had eaten it so fast he’d hardly tasted it. He wondered if it would be considered rude to ask for more, then decided it probably would be.
Later, the same man came back and told Jaren to follow him. In the daylight, he could make out the size and quality of the house better. Whoever this family was, they must be powerful in some way, because this cottage was far grander than any of the others he’d seen on Endla. Once they were back among the trees, Jaren realized with disappointment that they were returning to the pine grove. He didn’t like that place. It smelled of old blood and had an eerie, watchful feel about it.
The rest of the council was already there when they arrived.
“Did he try anything last night?” Ketty asked the man who was escorting Jaren.
“No. He was quiet as a mouse.”
“Good.” Ketty glared at Jaren and took her place with the rest of the council. “Everyone has been alerted of tonight’s Hunt,” she said. “One member from each family will be permitted to take part. Except for the Hart family,” she added. “My sister and niece will be kept at home, in case they get any ideas about helping the outsider.”
Jaren was glad that Leelo wouldn’t have to see this, but knowing he would not see her even one more time made his chest feel hollow.
“Weapons?” one of the council members asked.
“Bows, knives, and spears will be allowed. No traps or snares, though if the fool should run into one that’s already been set up, that’s his own problem. The first Endlan to draw blood will have the honor of sacrificing the prisoner.”
