AS SOON AS THE WORDS ARE OUT, I FEEL SICK.
But he smiles. “He said they ‘appeared like ghosts from the woods, strange tongue, stranger effects.’ He said, ‘If they return, Clara’s kind will find them.’”
Appeared like ghosts . . . If they return . . . My grandma’am found people like Matisa?
“It’s all in my grandfather’s journal. The one you took from the cabin.”
“I—”
“I know you can’t read.”
Her curiosity was her undoing.
Dread seeps into my chest. Was Tom right? Is Matisa here to harm us? No. It can’t be true.
His eyes pierce mine. “Where are they now?”
“The cabin.” Brother Stockham looks off into the woods, to the west. “They’re too scared to come to the settlement,” I add quick.
“They were seeking you.”
My heart is thrumming something fierce, my stomach is knotted.
“You are so like your grandmother, Emmeline. It’s why this has happened exactly as it did before.” He stares at the woods. “We have come full circle.”
Full circle. The journal. My grandma’am.
Her death was a sin against the Almighty. The worst betrayal.
My voice is a whisper. “What happened back then?”
He turns to me. And now, now it’s like he can see how confused and scared I am. His eyes soften. “All I truly know is what my grandfather confessed. I’ve spent many hours trying to imagine it: his conflict, his confusion.” He frowns. “He was afraid. The people your grandmother found were mysterious. Were they benevolent, or had he been wrong all along in his unwillingness to believe in the malmaci? Were they its agents? Or something equally dangerous? Your grandmother believed they were here to help them; she wanted him to tell the community about her Discovery.
“He asked for time to decide, but your grandmother’s curiosity was too great, her desire to share her Discovery too strong. Desperate, he found a way to keep her quiet without dirtying his hands with her blood.”
And the picture comes clear. “He put lies in Council’s ear, rumors about her adultery, her Waywardness,” I think aloud. “She was already feared and disliked for her forest wandering, her daydreamings.” I know this. I know it because I’ve lived it.
“Propositioning a married man—the leader, no less—was all Council needed to send her to the Crossroads.”
“But why didn’t she speak?” I ask, my heart heavy. “Tell them what she’d found?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Perhaps for the same reason you didn’t tell Council what you found? She was waiting for my grandfather to speak the truth, to choose her over his position.”
He thinks I wanted him to save me. I push the thought aside as something worse starts to sprout in my mind. “What happened to the people?”
“He acted impulsively; on the pretense of sharing food, he drugged them with bittersweet and imprisoned them. He was afraid to release them, and afraid to reveal their prison: how to explain the cabin? How to explain Clara? They died in their shackles.”
The sick feeling in my gut deepens.
Our scouts didn’t return.
The bones in the cellar of that cabin are the lost scouts. Brother Stockham knew it, and he waited for me to follow in my grandma’am’s footsteps.
We have come full circle.
But why does that matter? A spike of fear pierces me.
“What will happen to the Lost People I’ve found?”
“My father shut out the world beyond, did ruthless things, to maintain his position. I have a choice. I can choose that path, or I can choose the path my grandfather wished he had: opening his heart and mind to the unknown. Opening his heart to desire.” In a sweeping motion he draws me close, drowning me in his cloak. His mouth is inches away. “My path is clear.”
He presses his mouth to mine. Hard. He moves forward, forcing me back toward the willows. I stumble and he catches me, pulls me into his arms, lowers me into a thatch of branches. I am pinned between the ground and his insistent mouth.
Images scream through my mind: the churning Cleansing Waters, Jacob’s bulging eyes, that dusty book, hidden for years. He’s been waiting for me to become eligible, waiting for me to prove his father wrong . . .
My father had no use for decisions made from love.
Realization knifes through me and with it, cold fear: all of this hinges on his belief that I love him back. I bite back a cry of panic.
He’s breathing fast and his hands are inside my cloak now, running all over me. “I could have kept my family’s secret,” he says against my neck. “But I chose us.” He kisses me again. All I can smell is the bergamot on his skin. I want to pull away so bad my teeth ache. I try to put my mind to something that takes me away from this moment, but the golden poplars have vanished, so I am reaching, reaching for anything . . .
He breaks the kiss and draws back, eyes raking over my face. “We have proven my father wrong.” He smiles. “Haven’t we?”
I nod, every inch of my body crying out. I try to smile, try to match the hope, the excitement on his face.
“I knew that Cariou boy meant nothing to you.”
And now my secret heart betrays me. I feel a pang, so deep, so true, that it near takes my breath. At once, I can tell something in my eyes has spoken plain. The elation in his is snuffed out. He draws his head back further.
“You accepted my proposal.”
The blood drains from my face. “I did.”
“And yet?” There is a dangerous undercurrent in his voice.
“We are to be bound. When—when La Prise comes, Gabriel, we . . .” I can’t say it and make it sound truthful, so I raise my head and press my mouth to his, fighting my every instinct to push him aside and scramble away. My skin crawls away from his body, heavy, so heavy, on top of me.
He lets me kiss him a moment more. Then he puts his forearm on my collarbone and shoves me back to the earth.
I try to take a breath, but his weight is closing off the air. I try to speak. “Gabr—” I can’t finish. I cough, trying to find my voice. But it wouldn’t matter if I could speak, because I can tell by the look in his eyes that he knows. He knows.
Pain twists his features as he pushes me aside and jumps to his feet. He spins away from me, his head bowed, hands on his hips.
I gulp air and stumble up onto my bad foot.
The wind blows hard, bending the bare willows like blades of grass. I glance to the woods, then back to him.
His torso heaves with a deep breath as he runs his hands through his hair, smoothing it onto the nape of his neck. When he turns back, his face is calm, but his eyes are stricken.
“You don’t love me.” His words are a poison arrow piercing me straight through.
I can’t move. Can’t deny his words; can’t say I do and make it sound anywhere close to the truth.
His next words are so soft I can hardly hear him. “He was right.”
His father. “No. Gabriel, he wasn’t right—” But I don’t know what to say. He’s been waiting all this time, harboring this strange notion that our love is the answer.
“I waited for you to help me prove him wrong.” His voice grows louder. “I took that chance. If you had denied me, if you had never risked the woods or found those people, I would have known to stay the course. To lead.” His face changes, his mouth pulling into a mean line. “But you lied. And you will ruin me.”
He advances on me, his body taut.
“I won’t, I—”
“You’ll betray me, like your grandmother.” He stalks forward. “You will tell the settlement about the Takings, and I will end up neither leader nor your lover.”
“No!” I stumble backward. I’m right next to the bank, the river is roaring loud at my back. My hands flutter up in front of me. “Gabriel, please! The people I found—they can still be our Discovery.”
He stops. His eyes go dull. “The people you found do not exist.”
I stare at him, fear creeping through my hairline. “What do you mean?”
“I will make sure of it. Like my grandfather did.”
I bite back a cry of despair. “But you can still—”
“No!” He stares at me like he’s staring down La Prise itself. “My father was right.”
I can’t get a breath in the wind. His hawk eyes are full of a pain so deep—
He lunges, grabbing me by the cloak and dragging me hard toward him. His grip is strong. I struggle backward, but he spins me around, pins my arms to my sides. Turns so we are facing the river. Huge chunks of ice are catching at the edges of the boulder gate. Some slip through and are dashed to bits as they drop over the shelf. He shoves me forward, moving me closer to the edge of the bank. My moccasins slip as I try to scramble backward.
“This was not the path I hoped for.”
He stops pushing and lifts me. My arms sing with pain as he crushes me to his chest; my feet dangle useless in the air. “But you have shown me the way, Emmeline,” he breathes in my ear. “I will lead. Without you.”
And then he casts me over the bank to the water below.