It all happened so quickly that later, back in the safety of her hut, it would seem to Kiva that she’d seen it twice: once as it really happened, and then a second time in the brief quiet that followed as she played it back more slowly in her mind, subdividing the blur into a sequence of events that could be analyzed and understood, one following the other in a chain of action and reaction.
Po rising over the hillside. The boy with the weapon aiming and letting loose a white orb of light over Po’s shoulder. Matthew running to wrest the weapon from the boy’s hands, just in time to place himself in the path of the whizzing arrow Po had loosed from his bow.
For a moment afterward everything was still, and in that brief space Kiva wondered if perhaps time had stopped, and that now they were all frozen on the cusp before everything fell apart. There was comfort in the thought—in the notion that they could stay here forever, looking over the edge but never going over.
Then Rehal let loose a piercing scream, and the illusion was broken.
Matthew spun to the ground, still gripping the weapon tight in his hands. It slipped loose from the other boy’s fingers and went arcing through the air, the gleaming metal glistening in the Great Mother’s red light before it landed in the grass.
At the top of the hill, the two Forsaken men rose up beside Po and came thundering down, spears in hand. Po came over the swell a few steps behind them, notching another arrow in his bow as his feet moved down the incline.
“Stop!” Kiva yelled. “Don’t hurt them!”
Po and the Forsaken drew up at the bottom of the hill, their steps faltering to a stop. They stood only a few paces from the boy who’d shot at Po. They brandished their weapons at him, Po training his bow at the boy’s chest, but they didn’t attack.
From where she stood, Kiva could see the boy’s head angle toward the spot where the weapon had gone into the grass.
“Get the weapon!” Kiva shouted, coming forward.
The boy made a move for it, but the Forsaken leapt forward with their spears and the boy stepped back, his arms raised. Quint, who’d come down the hill after Po, went for the weapon and picked it up.
The dark-skinned woman rushed toward where Matthew lay on the ground and sank to her knees next to his body. Kiva and the Sisters converged on the spot.
Matthew’s face was pale, but he was still alive. The woman spoke some words to him, her voice low, and Matthew muttered back something Kiva couldn’t hear.
Kiva turned to Po.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“I, I thought—,” he stammered. “The signal.”
“I didn’t give the signal,” Kiva said. She looked to Quint.
The girl shook her head. “It wasn’t me. He got up and shot the arrow before I said anything.”
“But all the shouting,” Po said. “I heard the shouting and thought you were in danger.”
On the ground, the woman spoke softly to Matthew as she wrapped her fingers around the arrow’s shaft. Matthew shook his head, pleading, trying to lift his shoulders off the ground—but the woman held him down with the other hand as she yanked the arrow out of his chest.
Kiva winced as Matthew’s screams pierced the air.
“I’m sorry, Vagra,” Po said. “Forgive me.”
Kiva shook her head. “What’s done is done. Now we have to deal with the consequences.”
On the ground, blood was pouring from Matthew’s wound. The woman ripped the sleeve off her shirt to stanch the bleeding.
Thruss stepped forward. “We should kill them.”
Kiva looked up at Thruss. “What did you say?”
“It’s like you said. What’s done is done. The boy is going to die anyway. We should just kill them all and be done with it.”
Kiva’s gaze wandered. She looked at Matthew’s face. It was growing pale. His eyes were glassy, and his lips moved without making a sound.
Kiva thought back to her visions of the Strangers, her visions of Matthew. Everything the Ancestors had shown her had come true.
But she’d never foreseen this.
This was the moment she’d been waiting for, preparing for. Waiting and preparing—for what? To let Matthew die? To kill the Strangers and be done with it, as Thruss said?
Kiva shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“But Vagra … ,” came Po’s voice at her side.
“No,” she said, more firmly now. “We have to save him.”