Framed by the branches that edge the woods, my brother’s face peers at me like the face of a ghost. My thoughts reel, fighting and thrashing at the end of an unseen cord like a harpooned seal fighting against the rope.
Chev couldn’t have known where to find us without Kol. Kol must have brought him here. Because here he is, not surprised to see me, but surprised to see Kol on the ground, blood flowing down his face.
“What happened?” Chev asks, as he rushes to Kol and drops to his knees. He takes his head in his hands, tilting it to look at his wound.
Watching him, I want to shout for him to back away. I want to scream that he is not needed to tend to Kol’s injuries. But I know it won’t help Kol if I fight with my brother now. Instead, I speak in a voice just loud enough to be heard. “I can take care of him. There’s a plant on this island that slows the flow of blood. I’ll find some. We can use it to treat his wounds.”
My words rattle in the air. Despite my calm tone, inside my gut something kicks and writhes, like a beetle on its back that can’t right itself.
“It was a bear,” Kol says. “I guess it got the best of me.” Kol says this as if it’s a joke—as if we are meant to laugh. But Chev’s frown deepens.
And my anger soars.
“I can take care of Kol,” I say. “There’s a girl on this island who will know how to treat his wounds. I’ll take him to her.”
“What girl? Do you mean Lees? Because I know you brought her here.” Chev gets to his feet and slides an arm around Kol’s back, under his arms. He draws him to his feet.
Bile rises in my throat as I form the words I want to spit at him—that it is his fault Kol is here in the first place . . . that if he hadn’t meddled in his sisters’ lives, none of this would be happening. But then Kol shrugs off Chev’s arm and stands on his own.
“I’m fine,” he says. “It’s a head wound. Head wounds bleed, but I swear I’m fine.” Kol turns to me. Blood still trickles along his forehead, but it does seem to be slowing. A smile spreads across his face like the sun on a cloudless day. It’s a smile that could melt me. It always does. “I’m here with you. I’m all right.”
And though the anger still burns in my throat, though I still taste it on my tongue, I force myself to let it go. Kol’s eyes glow with the warmth of the meadow, and I let my anger float away on the breeze, as insubstantial as smoke.
Kol is here. He is right in front of me. What use do I have for anger now? If he brought Chev here, there must be a reason. And the light in his eyes tells me the reason must be something good. As my anger abates, curiosity takes its place.
“Why—” I start, but my question is interrupted by the sound of feet on the trail below. Before I can look down over the ledge, I hear a voice.
Seeri’s voice.
She calls and waves two spears—both bloody—Kol’s and mine. “I found these spears in a bear!” Before I can grab hold of his arm to help, Kol is sliding over the ledge and scrambling down the face of the cliff to join her. She tosses him his spear as if she’s playing with him—as if she is challenging him to a throwing contest—but I notice her disheveled braid, the hem of her tunic, her own spear—all stained red with blood.
Chev and I follow Kol over the ledge, dropping down onto the trail beside him. Though my palms scrape a bit on the rock, sliding down is much easier than climbing up. Seeri is waiting for me on the path. She hands me my spear. “I’d embrace you,” she says, “but I should wait until I’m a little less bloody.”
“You’ve killed it then?” Kol asks Seeri. It seems so obvious, so simple, as if he were saying, “You’ve gathered the roots,” or “You’ve filled the waterskins.”
“She didn’t do it alone.” A voice—a boy’s voice—calls from farther back on the trail. Pek comes around a turn and Kol smiles.
“Then why is your spear the only one still clean?” he asks.
“Someone had to lure the bear to Seeri—”
“And then run away,” she adds.
“I wasn’t running away. I was getting clear so you could take the shot.” His tone is light, with only a touch of defensiveness or maybe wounded feelings running along the edge of his words. But then Seeri laughs and it’s clear she’s just teasing him. Pek laughs, too, and all at once I feel the relief of knowing that the bear cannot threaten us anymore. My family is safe. There may be other bears on this island, of course, but the one that injured Kol will not be a danger to him anymore.
Not Kol. Not Seeri. Not Lees or Noni.
“The girls,” I say. “Lees and Noni—”
“Noni?” Chev asks, raising an eyebrow at me.
“I left them sleeping—”
“We saw your camp on the beach,” Kol says. “But we saw you heading up the trail to the cliff. We assumed you and Lees were together, so we followed.”
“When we couldn’t find you right away, we split up,” says Seeri. “Kol was lucky enough to find you—and the bear—before the rest of us.”
I want to scold Seeri for making light of the bear attack, but Kol smiles. “Seeri and Pek are not leaving me alone again,” he teases. “I’ll take them with me to check on the girls. You take a little time to talk to your brother.”
Kol says these words in the same offhand way he spoke of the dead bear. But I know these words are bigger than that. Kol can play down the significance of what I need to talk to my brother about, but it doesn’t change anything. This conversation will have an impact on the future of both clans. We all know that.
I walk to Kol’s side, brushing his hair from his forehead, looking for the wound he got from the bear. He steps back, out of my reach, and smooths his hair back down. “It’s healing,” he says, but I notice my hand is smeared with blood where I touched him. I show the red streaks to Kol. “Head wounds bleed, Mya. I feel fine.” He winks, as if that proves something.
“When you get to Lees, show that wound to Noni, the girl who’s with her. She’ll know how to dress it.”
One corner of Kol’s mouth curls up. “Don’t worry about me—”
“Promise you’ll show her—”
“All right. I promise.”
So I let them go. Dread flickers through me as Kol’s face turns away . . . as his head swivels toward the path behind him . . . but still, I let him go. It’s strange how the separation of just a few days has taught my heart what matters. Has taught me what to fear. But I know he won’t be far, and he won’t be away from me long.
My brother calls after them, “Keep an eye out for bears,” and I think this might be a moment of levity from Chev, as close to teasing as he comes.
“And you keep an eye out for Morsk,” Kol calls back over his shoulder. Before I can ask what he means, Kol, Seeri, and Pek disappear around the curve of the path.
“Morsk?” I say, tilting my head to look at my brother.
“Noni?” he says in reply.
I study my brother’s expression—his hard mouth and set jaw, but also his sunken cheeks and tired eyes—and I see that there is more here than his stubborn refusal to answer me before I answer him. There is also the reluctance to admit that I don’t have to answer him. That he can’t force me to answer.
“Noni is a girl we met on the island,” I finally say. “She came here with her mother, but her mother died.” Chev’s eyes widen. I want to tell him about Noni’s father, to ask if he saw the clan on the shore, but I don’t. There are other things to talk about first. More important things. “And what about Morsk?” I ask, my thoughts turning to his proposition in my family’s hut. The memory of the way he stood too close, the way he blocked my path to the door, sends a flush of anger across my skin.
My brother shakes his head. “Come sit with me. I have something to say.” He leads me back up the path to the overhanging rock, but he doesn’t stop to look over the water. He slips under the cover of shade, steps off the path, and drops down onto the forest floor. The sun, much higher in the sky now than when I passed through here this morning, paints splashes of gold in a pattern on the ground. Chev sits in a circle of light and I sit opposite him, in shadow.
“It’s a bold act, to leave your clan. It’s a bold act that sends a bold message.”
“I know.”
“But what you did was even more than that, Mya. You didn’t just leave your clan and your High Elder. You left your family and your brother. I understand you were angry at the decision I made, but you left without even speaking to me about it. I had to hear about it from your betrothed. I wanted to talk to you—to talk to Lees—but you were already gone.”
“But Chev,” I start, my voice a bit too high and a bit too loud, “talking doesn’t always work with you. Sometimes only action is effective in getting you to listen.”
Chev takes out his knife and digs a circle in the dirt. “And you thought this action—leaving your clan and family, even your betrothed—would be effective at changing your High Elder’s mind?”
“I’d hoped,” I say. “But it wasn’t just that.” I don’t want Chev to see my actions as nothing more than manipulation. To see Lees’s actions as nothing more than running away. “We were prepared to do whatever it took to give Lees her own choice. Even if it meant never going back.”
Chev raises his eyes at these words. “Would you have done that? Stayed away for good?”
And with these words, I know we’ve won. He doesn’t ask if we will do this. He asks if we would have. If we’d had to. If he hadn’t changed his mind.
“Never mind. Don’t answer. I know you would have. I guess that’s why I’m here.”
Sitting here in this broken, fragmented light, I feel the history of my life with my brother—the broken, fragmented life I’ve spent beside him—wrap around us in the same gold warmth. Patches of warmth. Memories in pieces. Warm, but broken. If we try to hold them and make them whole, they flicker and stir like the light on these leaves.
“So . . . Morsk?” I ask when the silence stretches too long. “Kol said to keep an eye?”
“He followed us here.” At these words, I rise up on one knee and my head turns back toward the path. “Don’t worry. There’s no threat—nothing to be concerned about. But I told him. I said that Lees would not be marrying him. And he became . . . upset.” Chev pauses for a moment. “I told him you wouldn’t be marrying him either.”
At this, I sit back down, giving him my full attention again. “So you knew—”
“No. I swear I didn’t know he was thinking about you at all. I certainly didn’t know he had talked to you. But Kol told me. He was furious. . . .”
I can’t help but allow myself one small moment to think of this—to imagine Kol, my betrothed, confronting Chev on my behalf. I imagine his anger. I hear his words, telling him he will not honor an alliance with a clan whose High Elder goes back on his word.
“So Morsk followed you here?” I ask, forcing my thoughts back to the present.
“We were followed. The canoe stayed too far back to see clearly, but it could only have been Morsk. He’s the only one we spoke to about where we were going.”
I pick up my spear from the spot where I dropped it on the ground, but my brother shakes his head. “I’m not expecting trouble from him, though I can’t help but wonder why he came. I know he isn’t pleased to lose. He thinks I’m making a mistake—weakening the clan by forging ties with the Manu. He may have followed to confront me. To try to change my mind before I can make an announcement to the clan.”
“Or else to confront me,” I say. “To change my mind about his proposition.”
Chev doesn’t reply, and I go quiet, too, letting his words echo inside my head. Weakening the clan. “You don’t believe that, do you? That an alliance with the Manu will make us weak? It can only make us stronger—”
“Be patient with Morsk, Mya,” Chev says. “He only wants what’s best. And he thinks the Manu may gain too much influence over the Olen, if so many sisters of the High Elder are married to sons of the Manu High Elder—”
“But we won’t be married to the High Elder’s sons. Kol is the High Elder now—”
“You know what I mean. But I understand you, as well. And I agree with you, mostly. I think the alliance with the Manu will strengthen us, as long as we are vigilant about our independence. We wouldn’t want to let ourselves be absorbed into another clan. There’s too much at stake—our history, our stories, our customs could all be lost.
“More even than that, it would go against the will of the Divine. Don’t ever forget who created the clans, Mya. The Divine established the Bosha and chose who would lead them. She did the same for the Manu. The will of the Divine must be respected. Look what happened when Vosk and Lo went against her will. When they tried to lead a clan they were never called to lead.”
These words stir up memories in me that flash across my mind, ending with the image of Lo’s lifeless body at the bottom of her grave. “Is that why you came for us? Because our family was chosen? Were you worried Lees and I would anger the Divine?”
“The Bosha and the Olen will rejoin, Mya, and our family is called by the Divine to lead that clan. That’s true, and it’s important, but that’s not the reason I came for you and Lees.”
All this Chev says while looking at the dirt, watching the lines his knife traces on the ground. But even though he won’t look at me—even though he won’t say the words—I know that he loves me. I know that he loves Lees. Only love would have moved my stubborn brother to leave our camp and come to us. Only love and the need to be sure he doesn’t lose us.
I realize, as I watch the twists and turns traced by his knife, that I must have known this in my heart all along. It was this truth that prompted me to take the action I did.
The truth that Chev would never let us go.
“You asked before if I would have stayed away,” I say. Chev’s hand slows. Is he nervous about what I might say? “The truth is I don’t know what I’d have done.” I pause until my brother’s hand stills and his eyes meet mine. Something in his gaze reminds me of the past, when we were still children. “I never really thought I would have to decide. I think I always knew you’d come.”
“How could you have known that? I didn’t even know what I would do—”
“Because you were called by the Divine to lead. That’s always been clear to me. I guess I knew you would do the right thing.”
My words are broken off by a sound—a sound of something moving. A swish of a step. The brush of a branch.
I hear it from the left, and Chev does too. I rise up on one knee, my spear ready, when another sound comes from the right.
Chev has his spear in hand so quickly, I never see him reach for it. The knife stays ready in the other hand.
I nod toward the left. I will walk that way. He rises to his feet without a sound and glances right.
With my back almost touching my brother’s, I turn my head slowly, sweeping my eyes from the highest branches to the underbrush. “Bears, wolves . . . Morsk,” I say. “It could be any of those.” His only answer is to prop the shaft of his spear onto his shoulder. I do the same, and we each take one step into the shadows. The shade deepens, then thins, as I reach the path. I stare down into a denser stand of trees, but nothing stirs.
On the other side of the path, I find tracks. Squatting down, I see that they were made by a wolf. I pivot in place, sweeping my eyes across the dark brush, searching for movement, when I hear a voice.
Chev’s voice. A quick short cry—my name? Then silence.
I start toward the place where I left him. I try to run. He needs you, I tell myself. He called your name. He needs help.
My legs move. My eyes search. But at the center of my being, I know that I will not be able to help. I know that the cry I heard was not a cry for help at all. It was a different sort of cry.
A warning.
I crash over the trail and into the shade, my feet stuttering to a stop when I reach the place where Chev and I sat together just a few moments ago. The grooves his knife carved into the ground leap out at me. They point in a line, and I follow the direction they point as I creep farther into the trees.
I don’t have to walk far. Only ten paces. That’s where I find him. He lies on his back, his throat slashed, his blood pooling in the open hood of his parka.
His knife is gone. His spear is gone. “No no no . . .” I hear myself speaking, muttering, as I drop to my knees and press my hands to his cold, still throat.
“No, no, no,” I say again, but this time it isn’t muttered. This time it rolls out as long hard sobs. Not a wolf. Not a bear. Not an animal at all. An animal doesn’t disarm its prey.
Only a human predator will do that.
I touch Chev’s cheek. His skin is cool. I bend over and press my lips to his forehead. “I love you. I love you,” I whisper. I had the chance to say it just a few moments ago. I should have said it. I say it now, over and over, hoping that somehow Chev’s Spirit still lingers and he hears me. “Don’t go,” I sob. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us.”
A sound comes from behind me, beyond the trail. I spring to my feet, my spear in hand. “Who’s there?” Another sound—the clear snap of a twig. “Come out!”
I don’t hesitate. I don’t expect an answer, and I don’t wait for one. I hurry into the trees toward the sound, as farther away, farther down the trail toward the center of the island, I think I catch the rhythmic sound of running feet.
I turn in place, and behind me, near the spot where my brother fell, I hear a voice. The muted voice of a man, whispering to the Divine. “Don’t let this be. Don’t let this be.”
I hurry back, feet flying over the ground—no fear, no hesitation. I plunge into the darkest shade, right up to my dead brother’s side. There I find a man—a man kneeling beside him, a spear in his hand.
Morsk.