The stocky man pulled the boy up, positioning him in front of his short body like a shield. Unlike his blade-brandishing friend, he was a coward.
“Let him go, or I’ll bury you along with your friend.”
Horrified, he looked to the water and back at me, backing out of the river a step, dragging the boy toward the opposite bank.
“I’ll not drown him. I’ll take him back with me. We won’t be a bother again,” he blathered.
“Let. Him. Go.”
Still, he retreated. Another step, and he’d pull the boy from the water and run for safety he would not find. Didn’t he realize that if I could command the stones in the river, I could command any of them, anywhere?
The kidnapper was choking the young man with his elbow. His face turned red, then purple. The boy’s hands were still bound at the small of his back; blood dripped from his wrists as he strained to free himself.
It splashed into the water, swirled and diluted, but the stones were outraged.
“I’ll ask once more. Let him go, or I will end you,” I seethed.
But the man didn’t release him. Wouldn’t. I saw the determined grit fill his eyes. With one foot on the bank, he dragged the boy backward.
I called on the stones. “Bury the one who holds the boy.”
More stones rose up, floating through the air. I raised my hand and focused on keeping the boy safe, imagining a magical bubble around him. The stones struck true and the mountain of a man fell from their power, splashing into the shallow water. His skull cracked on the sharp edge of a boulder.
The stones brought him to the bed and tucked him beneath it as well.
I’d never killed a man before. Let alone two.
My hands shook, but the stones settled down.
I’d done the right thing. What Fate wanted me to. What I should have done.
But who was this young man, and why had they bound his wrists? Did he wrong them in some fashion? Were these the vagrants Edward mentioned the militia spotting?
Release him, Fate whispered through the stones beneath my feet. I slogged through the water, as wary of the boy as he seemed to be of me. I stopped a safe distance away. “If I help untie you, will you hurt me?”
“No,” he said adamantly.
I knew his words were true, not because of his tone, but because he’d already tried to warn me away. If he hadn’t cared about my wellbeing, he wouldn’t have done it. But I still wanted to hear the words from his mouth.
Something about him called out to me. They called him a witch, and I could sense magic in him somehow. Could all witches sense this from others like themselves?
“Are you from Nautilus?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Were you cast out?”
He shook his head. “I was kidnapped.”
“Why?”
His golden eyes met mine. “I’m not sure. I, too, am a witch, and those men were Purists. They hate our kind.”
Purists. Such an innocent word to be spoken so venomously.
I walked forward and gently tried to untie him, but it was no use. I had no knife, and the man who had a blade…it was buried with him.
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“I need you to follow me someplace safe. I’ll free you when we get there, but I need a knife to do it.”
I turned to head toward home, but he stopped me. “I can stay here if you’d feel more comfortable.”
The stones almost purred underfoot. River.
Does that mean he should stay at the river?
I needed more guidance. Suddenly, a warm feeling flooded my veins. A sign from Fate that I could trust him – again.
Besides, I couldn’t leave him here alone. What if there were more Purists nearby? What if they finished what their friends began while I went waltzing off to find a blade? I would help him more by cutting him loose and sending him on his way. I shook my head.
“I’d be more comfortable if you came with me.” I helped him up and kept a hand out in case he fell as we crossed the swollen river.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “For saving my life.”
Water swirled around our hips, but I stopped and looked at him, studying his features. His dark hair and honey-colored eyes. The way the water droplets hugged his skin. The way the moon lit the edges of his brow, cheeks, and jaw.
“Would you have done the same for me?” I asked, curious to know his answer.
“Not so grandly. My power differs from yours.” Something over my shoulder caught his eye. A ward, hung in the tree. I’d made it of grapevine woven in a circle with hag stones hanging down into the center. The stones swayed in the gentle summer breeze, warmer than the water in which we stood.
They said he was no danger to me, and I trusted the stones – Fate – above all else.
I led him from the water, allowed him past the wards I made, and escorted him into the village. Fate was pleased. Lindey, however, was not going to like this. Especially after Edward made it sound like vagabonds were circling our village like vultures.
River
The spirit who led me from Thirteen stood behind the girl’s right shoulder. Her pale eyes pleaded with me. She still wanted help, but didn’t have enough energy to tell me more. I watched her fade, her once-defined form and features turning hazy, and all the shaded colors of her blurring and then dissipating until she was gone. I wasn’t sure why she was so strong sometimes and too weak to stay around others. I could hold her here and then loan her energy to get some answers, but now wasn’t the time.
The girl turned to look behind her, her eyes catching on a strange wreath hung in the trees. Three stones swung from strings bound to the top of a woven circle. By her demeanor, I could tell the girl was the one who made it. She commanded the stones that saved me, but beyond that clue, there was a familiarity in her eyes when she looked upon the charm.
Waving me forward, we walked out of the waist-deep, murky river onto the opposite bank. Her pale dress clung to her waist and legs.
The two of us dripped, muddying the trail toward her home, where she promised to unbind me. I tried to be leery of her, but Fate sent a strong message that he trusted her and that I should, too.
The moon’s cool pallor lit her features and for a split second, I thought she might be a spirit. But she was too vibrant. Her hair was rich and dark, her lips a dark fuchsia, though she wasn’t wearing makeup like the girls in the Kingdom sometimes did. Her natural outward beauty shone from within.
“Why are you out at this time of night?” I asked.
The corners of her lips turned up. “You should just be glad that I was.”
We traveled down stomped-bare paths, not unlike those around the Center’s pentagram in The Gallows, that bisected a number of hay fields separated by waist-high stone walls. Stones, like the ones she used to save me…river stones.
I glanced at the girl. “Did you build these walls?”
She shot me a wary glance. “Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them,” she answered shortly.
“By yourself? With your power, I mean?”
Her steps slowed and she ran a hand across the top of one of the fences. “Yes,” she said simply, her affection for the stones evident in her caress.
She led me past a large white barn and more hay fields separated by more stone walls, until we came to a small, white-washed house that sat alone on a cleared piece of land. The grass had recently been cut and the clippings smelled fresh and clean. Around the house was a chest-high stone fence. Wooden gates allowed entrance to the front and side yards.
“I’m not sure how Lindey is going to feel about you,” she said, a hint of warning in her voice.
“Who is Lindey?”
She shot me a cautious gla
nce. “The woman who raised me.”
“I just need to be freed. I can leave after that,” I rasped. “I don’t even need to meet Lindey.”
“Your wrists need to be tended,” she noted.
The blood on my hands was starting to dry, but I could still smell the coppery scent.
“I’m fine. I just need to get back home.”
Brecan, Mira, and Arron were probably beside themselves with worry right now, and that was if my Mom and Dad hadn’t killed them for losing me. To be fair, no one could have anticipated that I would willingly leave the sector. The spirit led me out, but intuitively I knew she wasn’t trying to lead me to the Purist scum. She tried to help me once she realized I was in trouble, but was too weak to manifest before the men.
Out of all the cast-outs in The Wilds, it just had to be two Purists who found me the second I stepped out of the protective wards. And what was worse, they knew exactly who I was.
The girl pushed open the front gate and held it open for me to enter the front yard, then fell in step beside me. “Were those men going to kill you?” she asked quietly as we approached the house’s small wooden porch.
I swallowed thickly. “I believe so, yes.”
I came so close to dying, to being drowned in a river, of all things. The irony would’ve been fodder for legends, of the prince who haunted the wood and water in The Wilds, desperately seeking revenge for anyone who dared cross his path.
The scary part was, it might have come true. I’d never considered what would happen when I crossed from life into death and walked among the spirits with whom I communed. Would it feel terribly different? Would I truly know I was dead?
The girl pushed the door open and a warm glow yawned onto the weathered porch planks. “Lindey?” she called out as she stepped inside, holding the door open. I stepped into the room and the scents of every dried bundle tacked to her walls hit my nose. Rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, rose, honeysuckle.
Someone had left a few candles burning in holders on the kitchen table, illuminating the space. I could see the girl better in this softer light than I could in the cool moonlight. Her hair was lovely, composed of every warm shade between blonde and chestnut brown, streaked and kissed by the sun itself. Her dress was soft-spun white cotton, and it clung to her as she went to build a fire. “We should dry off. The air outside is warm, but the river water isn’t.”
I tried not to stare at her shape, but my eyes kept sweeping back to her.
She threw a few logs in the fireplace, then grabbed a nest of tinder, striking a stone with a knife. Sparks flew with every blow until a flicker finally caught the tinder on fire.
As I watched her, I learned something. She had no flame.
Neither did I.
Mom could summon scant amounts of the elements, but I’d never been able to, no matter how hard or how often I tried to conjure them. Even after listening to the words of her spells and reciting them exactly, my magic didn’t react at all.
“You should come closer,” she suggested.
I hesitated, lingering near the door. “I’m already making a puddle.”
The girl laughed. “As am I. The fire will dry it. Come and get warm. I need the light to cut the rope, silly.”
“Oh, of course.” I shook my head with a smile. Of course she needed light, and I wanted her to have all the light she needed for the task. The wounds on my wrist were bad enough. Adding a stab wound to the mix wouldn’t be wise.
I took a moment to survey the space. There was a small kitchen with a hearth that looked like it was well loved. The living area was neat, with a chair and couch positioned in front of the fireplace. What intrigued me most, beyond the bundles of herbs and flowers tacked all over the walls from floor to ceiling, were the stones. There were piles and stacks of river rock in every windowsill, as well as stacked on the hearth and piled in the corners of the room, boulders and pebbles alike.
I looked from them to the girl, watching as her face turned pink, and in the firelight could see that her eyes were a pale shade of gray, almost silver.
An older woman shuffled out of what I presumed was a bedroom, carrying a candlestick. She wore a plain nightgown and robe, and the look on her face was exhaustion mingled with fright. “Who is this?” she asked, carefully watching me and clutching her chest.
Assuming this was Lindey, I stepped forward to shake her hand, forgetting I was still bound. The woman shrank back, alarmed, while the girl who’d saved me noticed and started into the kitchen to get a knife to cut off my bonds.
I turned back to the older woman. “My name is River, ma’am.”
The girl stopped in her tracks, but stood with her back to me for a long moment. Lindey noticed that she was frozen as well. “Omen? What’s the matter?”
Suddenly I was frozen. It all made sense now.
“The Omen of stones,” I breathed. “This is going to sound crazy, but I’ve been looking for you.”
The girl turned to face me. “I’ve been looking for you, too.”
9
River
You’re Fate-Kissed?” Omen asked, turning to face me.
My brows furrowed. “Fate-Kissed?”
“Blessed by Fate himself. Do you hear him sometimes? Through your magic?” she tried to explain.
“I do; I’ve just never heard the term Fate-Kissed.” The words crashed through me, a feeling of rightness clicking into place. All my life, I thought I was the only one with whom Fate communed. Mom said she felt him inside me before I was even born, that she could sense him in me now, but I’d never experienced him as she did. Before yesterday, I’d never even heard his voice. But through the years, I often had urges to do something or felt warnings in my stomach to avoid other things.
He tried to tell me not to leave The Gallows, but I brushed the feeling and him off.
Had Fate blessed many others with his guidance, or were we the only two? If he split his attentions between the two of us, what made him choose Omen, and why me?
Omen and I did the only thing we could. We stared at one another, each struck by a swirl of thoughts as to why this was happening. Why had Fate insisted we find one another, and to what end?
“My goodness,” Lindey said as she raised her candlestick and walked around me. “Your wrists are a bloody mess.” All fear forgotten, Lindey strode to the kitchen and plucked a small knife from the counter. She cut the rope from my wrists, wincing when she had to pull the coarse cord from the wounds beneath it, eliciting a hiss with every inch as sticky blood clung to the strand. She tossed it into the fireplace and the magic contained within shimmered as it burned. “Spelled,” she muttered.
“Are you a witch, too?” I asked her.
“No, I’m not a witch. But my husband was.” She turned to Omen. “He was shunned by the witches in the Kingdom because he loved me. We lived together in Sector Twelve for a time, but a few people were uneasy with a witch living among them. Eventually, someone accused him of something he was innocent of, and he was cast out. I followed him into The Wilds.”
“You’ve been with me since I was a babe, yet you never told me.” Omen was clearly hurt by the woman’s omission. “Where is he?”
Lindey’s lips quivered as she answered, “Dead. He lies dead on the other side of the river.”
“What happened to him?” Omen asked.
“Those who hate witches found him. They hanged him from a tree and watched for days until he rotted, afraid he would come back to life somehow.” A tear streaked down Lindey’s face. “There was nothing I could do to help him. The two of us had gone out hunting, and we split up to cover more ground. I’d caught two hares in snares we’d set and was heading back home when I heard him scream. He used his last breath to warn me away. He sensed me, I think. By the time I reached him, it was too late. I was too late. After they left, I cut him down and buried him properly.�
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“So you came here…” Omen said quietly, “and settled the village with the Smiths.”
“Edward and Judith were already living here, as were a handful of other families. East Village has tripled in size since I stumbled upon it. When I got here, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay or not. There are two other villages not a day’s walk from here, so I traveled to them to see what they were like – West Village and North Village. North is nestled high in the mountains. I couldn’t breathe comfortably so high, and something about East didn’t feel right, even though it was lower.
“I never liked Edward Smith, but he gave me a home and a chance at a new beginning when he asked me to care for you. Wandering The Wilds after my husband died,” her voice cracked, “I nearly starved to death. I had no idea how to survive off the land, so I am grateful to have settled here. And more than anything, I’m grateful to have you in my life, Omen.”
Tears formed in Omen’s eyes. They shone in the firelight. She gave Lindey a hug and told her she was thankful for her, too.
Lindey’s story tore at me.
Was that what happened to the people we sent into The Wilds? I mean, sure, they might stumble upon small villages and settlements, but what about those who didn’t? Was banishment essentially a slow and agonizing death sentence?
A sudden crack of thunder overhead shook the house. Lindey jumped and grabbed her chest. She looked at Omen. “A third storm?”
The two hurried to close the few windows that were cracked open as sheets of rain began to fall. It rained so hard, it soaked the porch and smattered the window glass, wind driving the rain in every direction. When the front door blew open, I rushed to close it.
Omen met me there, latching it securely. Her eyes caught on my wrists.
“I can make a salve that will help.”
I’d planned to leave once she cut the rope off…“I don’t want to make either of you uncomfortable. I can find help at home.”
The Omen of Stones Page 8
