by Brandon Barr
Aven poked his head down to look at her. “I know,” he said.
Of the few people he was close with, Winter was the only one who held his soul. She knew him like no other, just as he knew her.
“Are you truly worried my going out will change something?” he asked.
“I’m not too worried,” said Winter. A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Besides, it’s First Kiss, I can’t expect you to miss that. Just don’t do anything out of the ordinary, and what will happen will happen.”
“Great. That’s very comforting.”
“Be careful.”
CHAPTER 2
AVEN
Careful.
The word disturbed Aven’s thoughts as he walked the starlit road to Harvest’s farm. The moon dodged in and out of the trees. A racket of chirps sounded from every bush and rock where crickets sang their songs.
Careful. He was being careful. As god-touched as she was, Winter could be so timid, tinkering in her mind with possibilities and meanings. She wanted to be so sure of things before acting. The one danger she continued to take was telling the visions to him.
Their mother and father had only an inkling of Winter’s gift. When she first began talking openly of the things she saw, they treated it as nothing more than the wild imaginings of a nine-year-old.
Their parents were just farmers. They kept things simple. They preferred tradition over novelty. Aven was much more like them. Although he knew Winter had a gift, he was wary of it and the Makers. All he wanted was a farm to work. A family. Harvest would be his wife. He envisioned the love he and Harvest shared to be much like his parents’ love. A soft, ever-present respect between them, playful, and sensual. It filled him with pride every time he detected the hidden passion that entwined his parents. It was another layer of love that tightly bound their family together.
Like the love that burned in his heart when he and Harvest kissed in the wooded darkness above her home.
It had happened last night, a day earlier than it was supposed to. It was like an uncontrollable pull gently drawing them toward the other. He didn’t want to leave and neither did she. They’d talked until the moon had passed through the Star Sage’s constellation. Asking deeper questions than the weeks before. Discovering who the other was. What made them laugh. What had caused them pain. What their dreams for life were. It was all part of the farm peoples' tradition, starting the month before the nuptials. Right down to the kiss that was supposed to have been tonight.
Yesterday’s kiss had been a first for them both. Slow starting and a bit clumsy, but Harvest never laughed. He could feel the intent in her every movement. The serious passion she would bring into every part of their marriage. In weeks past, they’d expressed words with their mouths, revealing who they were to each other. Now their mouths expressed a new thing, a soulful thing. Harvest’s tongue spoke a new language, one he could feel and taste with his own tongue. The warmth of her body so close, the brush of her nose against his face, the hush of the forest surrounding them.
It had been a glimpse of the hidden fires that held his own family together. It echoed of a simple, beautiful life that awaited. The uncomplicated life of a farmer and the joy of family.
Work hard, earn food for the stomach, love your mate, your family, make friends of your neighbors. That was the life his parents had forged. It seemed a warm and satisfying life, and it was all that he wanted.
It was what Harvest wanted too, but there was something else consuming her—especially with their looming escape.
She wanted her brother back.
Aven glanced into the trees at the thought of her brother, Pike. Her half brother, really. He was supposed to be gone tonight and the next. Pike was a watcher for the Baron. A traitor as far as any farmer was concerned. But, then, none of the farmers knew Pike was the Baron’s son by rape.
Harvest had told him the ugly truth. What had happened to her mother many years ago. How the Baron had taken Pike aside and told him the truth about his lineage. Pike then turned on Gar, who had loved him as his true son his entire life, and for reasons Aven couldn’t understand, Pike had embraced the Baron even though he knew what the Baron did to his mother.
What did the Baron give him that was worth spitting on the face of his family?
On the night of their escape, Harvest’s father, Gar, would bind Pike’s hands as he slept, then wake him and tell him their plan to leave. Pike would be asked to make his decision then: stay with his family, or continue eating from the Baron’s table while the farmers ate scraps.
Aven came around a bend in the road and saw the small open acreage where Harvest lived on the eastern border of Plot Eight. Rows of sape vines hung from trellises. The vineyards, once believed to be a pathway to independence for the farmers tending Rhaudius’s land, were now only a symbol of the Baron’s wealth. The sun-beaten wire trellis on which the sape berries hung was a more fitting symbol for the farmers.
Harvest’s hovel was at the base of a bulge oak, like his own, only the trunk was larger. Light poured through a circle outline in the middle of the hatch. Aven knelt and knocked on the illumined wood. A moment later, Gar eased the door open. It was a vulnerable position, standing on a ladder, looking up through the wooden hatch to the unknown dark.
“It’s Aven. I’ve come for Harvest.”
Gar grinned, but his voice was rough as dirt. “You’ve come to kiss my daughter?”
“Yes I have,” said Aven, poised. He’d grown acquainted to Gar’s bluntness when he worked under him as a picker in the vineyards. There was often a joy behind the man’s grinding words. In the field he was not the type of man to talk poorly of the work, instead he came alive when sweat ran down his face, as if work was what he loved to do.
It was an attitude that had touched Aven profoundly.
Gar disappeared, and then she was there, climbing the ladder, swift and graceful, the red flower he’d given her the night before tucked into her curled hair. At the top of the steps, she looked up and smiled.
Aven took her hand and, before he could speak, she was out and pulling him off through the rows of trellises.
In the middle of the vineyard, Harvest steps became less hurried.
“I have so much to tell you,” she said. “But first, how are you?”
“I’m well. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you since breakfast.” Aven grimaced, his words sounding so formal. It had been more than two months since his mother and Harvest’s father had arranged the marriage, and still he couldn’t seem to get past the first few moments of talking to her without being awkward.
Harvest squeezed his hand. “Since breakfast? Is that all? I dreamt about us all night. We were in the forest with the Erdu, and we were free, and we had our own long tent, and I kept wishing you could smile, but you wouldn’t. You would only fly around the tent.”
Aven frowned. “Fly?”
“Yes. I forgot to mention, you were a bird. Still, your plumage was handsome and I was madly in love with you, even if you were feathered. But your beak was the problem. I kept wanting to kiss you. I wanted your beak to turn back into your lips. But they didn’t. You couldn’t even smile.”
Aven laughed. A genuine laugh. The awkwardness had vanished in an instant.
“I was so angry when I woke up, until I realized it was a dream.” She squeezed his hand. “And then I remembered that tonight was a special night.”
Special night? What was he forgetting? She didn’t mean—
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?” she said softly. “Tonight is First Kiss.”
“I haven’t forgotten. It’s just…we made last night First Kiss.”
Harvest stopped. Her eyes were large as she looked into his. There was a sort of amusement in them. The same hint of amusement Aven caught often in her father’s eyes. And then, as he read her face by moonsglow, he knew what she was asking.
He leaned forward, so that his mouth was close to hers. “Yesterday never happened,” he s
aid.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Harvest, her hands gently tugging on his elbows.
Aven dipped his head, moving in close. He could feel the warmth of her breath; its sweet scent filled his nose. Lightly, his lips brushed against hers.
Slow, soft kisses. Exploring. Lingering.
It was as if yesterday had never happened; tonight, he felt none of the clumsiness. She moved closer to him, her hands against his back, gently pressing the form of her body into his.
The stars churned in the sky, glowing as they made their way across the dark while the crickets’ song droned on in melodic waves. After a time, Harvest came to rest her head on Aven’s shoulder. He held her, his mouth tingling with the ghost of her lips still fresh upon his own. Harvest’s breaths in his ear were a calming, primal rhythm. He took in the close scent of her hair. Sweet. Rich. Like the smell of fresh rain and loam.
“I can’t imagine this ever growing old,” said Aven.
“Kissing me? Promise me it never will,” she said, gently running her nose under his chin.
“I promise,” said Aven. “I’ve seen mates amongst the farmers with passions like stone. They might as well have wedded a rock.”
“We must keep this. What we have right now. My mother said to always remember these first moments. To delight in them and when we’ve been mated ten, thirty, fifty years, to make fresh, new moments. To be passionate like a storm, unpredictable as lightning.”
She pulled back, so that her face was before his.
Aven had no words, he simply met her eyes and ran his fingers softly against the side of her face.
After a time of quiet, Harvest’s eyes saddened.
“What is it?” asked Aven.
“It’s nothing.”
“I want to hear.”
“It’s about my brother, it can wait.”
Aven took his hand from her hair and placed it against the back of her shoulder. “I know you love him.”
Harvest placed her head on his shoulder again. “I’m angry at him,” she said, “and scared for him. I hope he’ll choose to come with us.”
Aven ran Harvest’s hair gently through his fingers. “Your brother has come to hate me.”
“He hates many people these days. And he only dislikes you because of me. Because our parents brought us together to be mates.”
“If he leaves the valley, do you think he’ll change how he sees us?”
Harvest looked up. The moonlight glowed bright on her face. “The choice to leave or stay will either save him, or deepen his roots in the Baron’s household.”
Harvest’s lips twisted in a painful knot. The only time Aven had seen pain on her face was when Pike’s name was raised.
“Once we escape this valley,” said Aven, “we’ll leave the past with it. Everything will be brand new. Us. Our future. The Baron won’t have control over our lives any longer.”
A crash sounded ahead of them and they froze. In that instant, Aven thought he heard something else. Something throaty, like a low grunt.
“What was that,” whispered Harvest.
Aven drew a knife from his belt. “Something close.”
He took a step forward but Harvest grabbed his arm. He saw the concern in her eyes, silently pleading with him to stay with her. He took her fingers, gently squeezed, and pulled them free.
He moved in the direction of the sound, careful to plant his feet on the soft patches of weed and grass. He neared a large trellis roped with Sape vines and stopped to listen.
Far away, the drone of crickets blended with the ambient noise of open space. Aven crept to the side of the trellis then peered around the corner. Moonlight shone softly on the leaves. On the ground lay two broken pieces of wood. A large darkened shape protruded from the leafy vines.
It jumped suddenly and grabbed Aven’s shirt. He slashed with his knife, but a hand caught his arm, and yanked him off balance.
A knife was put against the side of his neck and a man whispered, “Quietly now, berry picker, drop the knife.” The husky voice, the perfumed scent of the Baron’s whores on his clothes. It was Rozmin, the head of the Baron’s watch.
CHAPTER 3
AVEN
Aven obeyed, and let his knife fall to the ground.
Rozmin breathed words quietly into his ear, “Aven, son of Lynx, what a nice surprise finding you out tonight. Such passionate kisses. Secret lovers, are you?”
“Tonight’s First Kiss,” said Aven quietly, conscious of the knife at his neck. “We’re to be joined as mates in twelve days.”
“You’re not joined in anything else are you? A plot to leave the Baron’s valley?”
The words caught Aven off guard. An ugly recognition dawned in his mind. Rozmin had overheard them.
He saw in his mind’s eye the ashen faces of those caught in his position before, as they stood beside the axeman. Alive one day, executed the next, just like Coriander and Violet. He still had images in his head from when he was ten. Fifteen headless bodies left on the road, the dirt crusted with blood, their heads hanging in the trees, empty eyes staring down at the passersby.
It was over. Rozmin had overheard.
“Get over here, Harvest!” shouted Rozmin. “I can see you through the trellis. If you try and leave, I’ll slit your lover’s throat and chase you down.”
Desperation made Aven’s body scream with the need to tear away and run, to go to Harvest’s rescue, but he was imprisoned in Rozmin’s muscular arm. What were his choices? Could he incapacitate Rozmin somehow? Was that even possible? Aven’s eyes searched the ground for his lost knife. He found its moonlit glint in the grass not far from his feet.
“Speak up, lover boy,” said Rozmin softly into his ear, “If you want to live to see tomorrow, tell me everything about this plan and who’s involved.”
There was no other choice. His right arm was partially free. He raised it and readied himself to strike his elbow into Rozmin’s ribs.
The flash of movement halted him. Harvest had stepped out from behind a trellis. She held something in her hand that Aven couldn’t make out. Without a word she leapt toward them. Aven felt Rozmin tense and instinctively the watcher extended the knife to meet Harvest’s thrust.
Aven twisted his upper body free, and grabbed Rozmin’s arm. Harvest lunged at Rozmin with the unseen weapon in her hand, but he kicked out, striking her arm. Harvest spun and fell. Aven thrust his head back, hitting the side of Rozmin’s face. It took only a moment for Rozmin to slide free from Aven’s grip, knife still in hand. Aven backed away toward Harvest. She held a pair of pruning sheers.
He glanced at the ground for his knife, but Rozmin was already moving toward them. Rozmin brought something out of his shirt and put it to his lips. A piercing warble tore through the night air.
He’d raised the alarm.
Aven took Harvest's hand and together they began to run, back in the direction they’d come. Rozmin’s footsteps crashed close behind them. Ahead, Aven searched for the stump that was the door to Harvest’s home. They didn’t have enough distance between themselves and Rozmin to make it inside. And in that moment, it occurred to Aven they’d be trapped if they did.
“Go!” shouted Aven. He grabbed the shears from Harvest’s hand and pushed her forward. The stump was just ahead. “Warn them!”
“Aven!” she screamed, but continued to run.
He had to distract them and make time. Time for her to warn their families. Aven spun on Rozmin.
An ugly smile touched the watcher's face as he slowed to a stop. Then his eyes drifted up at something beyond Aven.
Aven turned. Harvest began to shout down into the hovel but, beyond her, a figure holding a lit torch jogged off the road toward their position.
Aven quickly glanced back at Rozmin. He was two steps closer. Aven backed away, but as he did, he darted a look back at the figure with the torch. It was Rose, the Baron’s female version of Rozmin. Heartless, young. He had thought her beautiful when she first arrived on the
ir streets, but the ugliness of power and her cruel ways washed it from her face.
Aven glanced back and forth between Rozmin and Rose. Rose was quickly closing on him.
Suddenly Rose spotted Harvest and broke into a run toward her instead. Aven realized his mistake—his eyes had lingered on Harvest and Rose too long. He twisted as Rozmin’s knife point slashed down across the back of his shoulder. Aven winced but didn’t falter, turning and sprinting toward Harvest. The cut wasn’t deep, but he knew if he’d hesitated a moment longer, it would have been fatal.
“Harvest,” he screamed. “Go down! Go down!” Rose had almost reached her when she jumped down the hole. Aven came to a stop at the stump. Rose strolled up to him, the torch illuminating the entire area. Rozmin stopped not far away.
“How many are down there?!” shouted Rose.
“I don’t know!” Rozmin growled. “We have to wedge that hatch or we could be overrun!”
Rose pulled a sword from a sheath at her back. “How many are down there, picker?”
The shears felt like a toy in Aven’s hands. Rose came toward him, whipping her blade playfully through the air. Aven noticed Rozmin moving around to his back, when Rose lunged. All Aven could do was glance the blow with his shears, then he ran. If he had stood his ground, Rozmin would have skewered him with the knife.
Aven turned and looked back from the short distance he’d fled. Rozmin’s knee was on the hatch, and he was putting in a wedge.
“You hold the stump down,” said Rozmin. “I want the boy.”
Rose said sharply, “Pity to have to gut him, handsome as he is. I always had a liking to that one. What’s the charge?”
“Conspiracy to leave the valley.”
“Delicious,” said Rose, giving Aven a hungry look. “Bring me back his head so I can carve a heart in it with my name.”
Rozmin grinned as Rose put her knee down and held the wedge in place. Rozmin stood and moved toward Aven slowly, his face dark and sinister with the torch light blazing from behind.
