MY VOICE, RAW FROM CRYING, COMES OUT A croak. “Why—why are we out here?”
“Best to speak where the wrong ears can’t hear.”
My tears stop flowing. I stare at him.
“Council. They assume we’ve come out here so I may mete your punishment. They wouldn’t understand.”
I blink my puffy eyes. “Understand what?”
“You and I. The woods.”
Answering him, the trees bow in the wind. I glance about. Tiny flecks of snow swirl around us. The sun is creeping over the high bank of the river, a thin slice of orange against the blue dawn.
“I want no more secrets between us.” He steps forward and puts his arms around me. For half an addled moment I think he’s embracing me, but then his fingers are working at the twine on my wrists. He’s—letting me go? He undoes the twine but lingers a moment, holding me. When he steps back, I near collapse in relief. I rub at my raw wrists, staring at him wide-eyed.
He points to my hand and asks, “Where did you get it?”
I look down at the ring. My mouth is bone dry. I force my tongue to work. “It was my grandma’am’s.”
“So you said. I was hoping you could be honest with me about how it came to be on your hand.”
My breath is coming in short sips. I close my eyes, trying to clear my mind, but all that surfaces is Jacob, terrorstricken, thrashing about on the ground.
When I open them, Brother Stockham’s studying me. I shake my head.
“You are afraid,” he says. “Afraid of being dragged back to the Crossroads, back to where you got that ring. Afraid you will die, hanging there?” When I don’t speak, his face softens. “We are to be bound, Emmeline. Do you think I would let that happen to you?” He takes my face in his hands. “I will right the wrongs of the past.” Then he dips his head and puts his lips to mine, kisses me soft. His chin-length hair falls forward, brushing the sides of my face.
I break the kiss and pull back. “Why . . . why are we out here?” I ask again.
“I told you. So we may speak plain.”
There’s something in his voice that shoots a sliver of fear through my insides. I pull my cloak tight around me.
He steps away and spreads his arms wide, gesturing to the frozen trees, the rushing river. “What you said the other day, about listening to the land? Your instinct was correct: the woods have secrets they are trying to tell us. But no one since your grandmother has bothered to listen.” He drops his arms and tilts his head. “Tell me what you’ve heard in these woods.”
A crow calls from a treetop, a strangled, ugly cry. I glance about. The Lost People aren’t watching from the woods anymore. There’s nothing out here. Just me and him.
“Emmeline,” he says. My eyes snap back to his face. “I have already told you I won’t send you to the Crossroads. What are you afraid of?”
I dreamt time and again of a hawk circling its prey. Emmeline, you were the prey.
“Do you not trust me?”
I swallow hard. “It’s just that it’s not yet day . . . and we’re near the woods, and there was a Taking—”
“We are in no danger.”
I glance about once more. If I make a run for it, he’ll catch me in a heartbeat. “How can you be sure?”
He steps close. “There can be no Taking without my say-so.”
My heart stutters. “Beg pardon?”
“We both live with family burdens, Emmeline.” He turns to gaze at the ice chunks washing past. “But our togetherness will overcome.”
“I don’t understand.” My mind flies to a picture of him in the woods, the strange half circle of candles on the cabin floor. No Taking without his say-so. He . . . controls the malmaci’s Takings?
“My father burdened me with a position that was built upon the advice of his father and secured upon people’s terror of the unknown.”
He takes the edges of my cloak in both hands and pulls me near. “But I will not make the same mistakes they made.” He’s so close I can smell the bergamot soap on his skin. He sighs. “My grandfather couldn’t risk the unknown. He regretted that, needed to repent. He wanted salvation.”
“For what?”
“Murder.”
The wind whistles straight through my bones. I swallow. “My grandma’am’s.”
He pushes a stray hair back away from my face, tucking it into my hood. His eyes shine. “You see? You know the history, the answers, deep down.” A sad smile crosses his face. “They were in love.”
“They—they were?”
“As we are.”
I squirm, stumble on my words. “But she—she . . . ”
“Was a widow, he a married man.”
“She didn’t proposition him?”
“No.”
He’s gripping my cloak tighter with every word I speak, but I have to keep talking. I have to know. “But he was afraid of the settlement finding out about them? That’s why she was sent to the Crossroads?”
“Certainly their illicit love would have destroyed his position.”
“But . . . but everyone thinks she acted alone. That she—”
“Your grandmother’s actions were unsanctioned, Emmeline,” he replies in a mild tone, “and my position—my family’s legacy—depends upon that history being kept secret. Why ruin two families over one sin?”
My mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. I stare at him, my thoughts whirling, my head awash with confusion and rage and hurt.
“I don’t believe he meant for it to end the way it did. I believe they might have kept their love a secret, might have kept it contained to the cabin he built, far into the woods where few would dare to venture. They might have lived the rest of their days with their secret life in the woods, had it not been for your grandmother’s curiosity, her fearlessness toward what lurks beyond.”
“What are you speaking on?”
“Her Discovery, Emmeline. Her curiosity was her undoing.”
“My grandma’am was sent to death by your grandpa’s hand.”
He nods. “Your grandmother chose the unknown over my grandfather. He chose his position as leader over her. But we will do things differently. When I wandered those woods and found his confession, I realized you and I are two halves of a whole; two people carrying the burdens of our ancestors.”
I try to take a breath in the icy wind, but I’m breathing so shallow it’s like I’m gulping down water. I’m missing something; some piece of this puzzle.
Clara found something in these woods I had not the Honesty or Bravery to reconcile . . .
“I want no more secrets between us,” he says again.
I think again of the cabin, the candles.
“Do you control the malmaci?” I ask.
For a moment I think he’s going to laugh, but then his eyes turn serious.
“I live with a family burden, like you.”
“You keep saying that. But I’m the only one here who’s Stained.”
He sighs and gestures at the boulder gate. “The Cleansing Waters are for more than just disposing of our natural dead.”
Our natural dead. I frown.
He watches the river careful. “My father started the Takings.”
The wind screams through the trees, clear through my head.
He continues, “I’ve often wondered if he believed in the malmaci at all. He never said. I know my grandfather didn’t, he wrote as much in his journal. He guarded the borders against ordinary dangers: large predators, unwanted visitors. But the lore of the evil that was here when we arrived was strong in people’s minds. For some, it has just grown stronger over the years.”
The wind blows fierce inside me, jumbling my thoughts. “You don’t believe in the malmaci?”
“I know that I have never seen it.” He turns and looks at me keen. “Have you?”
I shake my head, mute.
“I cannot answer with certainty whether or not the malmaci exists. What is more important here, Emmeline, is that fearful people are easily led.”
My thoughts are all muddy. It can’t be true. But the look on his face is so honest, so open . . .
“My father understood that well, and he found a way to keep the fear fresh.” Brother Stockham looks again at the water rushing through the boulder gate.
My heart is beating out of my chest. “He—he killed his own people?”
A flash of pain crosses Brother Stockham’s face. He nods, his jaw tight.
“Why?”
“To lead.”
I stare at his tortured face.
“He was . . . an ambitious man. He believed the people needed a leader who wasn’t afraid to sacrifice the occasional lamb for the good of the flock.”
“The good?”
“Order, Emmeline—something the people are desperate for. We need only look at Council to understand this community’s willingness to be led. Our Councilmen don’t even need weapons to enforce their control.”
The wind gusts around us. I think of the crowd watching Jacob struggle as Council strangled him. Some of them lauded it. Said it was the Almighty’s will.
“My father brought the threat of the malmaci close to dissuade risk takers, people who would rather chance the unknown, the terror of the great beyond, than contribute to the settlement.” He looks at me, admiration replacing the pain in his eyes. “But not you.”
“But—but the Takings have been happening for years; ever since our people arrived.”
“Perhaps,” he says. “Or perhaps those Takings were simply accidents. People who wandered too far and were set upon by wild animals, people who froze on the prairies or fell to their deaths in the ravines. Regardless, people will believe what they will. And fear is powerful.”
Could it be true? Who would remember those Takings long ago? There are just a handful of people who lived through his father’s rule. Soeur Manon and Frère Andre are two such. I think about Soeur Manon telling me to ask the woods, and Frère Andre forming a kinship with me over our wanderings. Was it because there was some truth they’d stored away in their hearts and forgotten?
Like they believed, somewhere deep down, the malmaci might not exist?
I breathe deep, trying to slow my racing heart. “The first settlers were near destroyed by the malmaci, years ago.”
“Certainly they were set upon by something. But was it a monster, or has that history taken on a life of its own in the people’s imaginations?”
The river roars.
How did you survive out here? I asked Matisa. Her frown, like she couldn’t figure what I was thinking on, swims before my eyes.
A chunk of ice smashes on the boulder gate. I picture someone being thrown into that water, their body splintering into shards on the rock . . .
“That Pellier man . . . ” I say. He’s my proof Brother Stockham is mistaken. But as I say his name, I realize it’s no proof at all—and I don’t want him to answer.
“I want no more secrets between us.” There’s a right skittering sheen to his eyes.
I can’t think what to do. I nod.
“My father insisted that love—that desire—was the path to ruin.”
My father taught me many lessons.
I think on those scars under his cloak, under his shirt. Sharp crystals of snow sting my bare cheeks.
“But everything has happened as it should to prove him wrong. We have replayed a history that was bound to recur.” He looks like he’s weighing a thought. He scrubs a hand over his face. “Brother Bertrand was an unfortunate sacrifice. I needed to distract Council from watching you too close, needed to reignite their fear. They were starting to become suspicious of that Cariou boy’s reliability.”
He notices my bewilderment and smiles. “An ordinary man would be quite jealous. The way he looks at you—like you’re the summer rains after a drought. But his love for you is nothing compared to what you and I are fated for. When he went after you that night of Harvest, I knew I’d found an ally, whether he knew what he was doing or not.”
I take a painful breath. Kane did come after me during the attack. His scared eyes at the hall flash through my mind. Meet me at my quarters. He knew what Council had planned for me; he was trying to warn me.
“I know you have been out in the woods because I too have been out there. I have been reading, praying, trying to determine my path. It has been unbearable at times.” He touches the scar on his neck. “Pain can help remind us what is important. But I think you understand. I know how you punish yourself too when you are uncertain.” He looks to my foot.
His back. The crisscrossed flesh, branded by lashings. “But I thought your pa . . .”
“My father would’ve thrown me to the Cleansing Waters, if necessary. I never gave him reason.”
But I should’ve known that. His welts were angry, red—like Tom’s hands. Not scars that were old cuts, long healed. Blood rushes through my head. I thought our worries about our fathers somehow marked us the same—I thought that, though I knew my pa would never do what I thought his pa had done. Knowing what truly marks us the same . . .
I wipe clammy hands on my cloak and my grandma’am’s ring catches the sun coming over the cliffs.
His eyes snap to it. “I understand your curiosity, your determination to prove yourself. I’ve been watching you to see if you could pursue the Discovery that lives in my heart.” His words aren’t making any kind of sense. I focus on what I know to be true.
“You turned me over to Council,” I say. “You told them about my wanderings, pretended Kane reported me to you.” Relief sparks through my confusion and fear.
“I was playing the role they expected. Do you think my position is so secure? If I were to defy Jameson outright today, I would be hanging tomorrow. Jameson is a zealot and they are sheep. They are comfortable in their stunted idea of Discovery. As my father was.”
He’s saying it like it’s obvious, and I realize one thing is true: Fear can account for all kinds of horrors. All kinds of betrayals.
He steps close again, parts my cloak and takes both of my shoulders in his hands, pressing hard. “But our love will help me forge a new path.”
My throat’s closing off. Our love.
“Tell me our path,” he says.
I don’t want to guess wrong again.
Think. He’s waiting.
Our salvation lies in Discovery . . .
“We need to”—I fumble for the words—“prove Discovery. A new way.”
He closes his eyes a moment. Then drops my arms and steps back. When he looks at me again, he is relieved. “You’re certain?”
“I’ve dreamt it.”
He tilts his head, tracing a thumb over his cheek to his chin. “I think you’ve seen it.”
A flush races up my chest and into my cheeks. He sees the truth on my face. I nod, my throat tight.
“Tell me,” he says.
I hesitate.
“Emmeline, this is important. I need to know what you’ve seen out there.”
“The Lost People. They’re—they’re here.”