by Lani Lenore
She was here with me, Wren thought of saying, but then she understood.
She did it on purpose, the girl realized. She led me to this boy Nix in hopes that he’d kill me.
Wren wondered if it would do any good to say this, but kept it to herself when she noticed Nix again. He had turned to go.
“Walking away?” Rifter called after him as the fairy drifted over his head.
Nix didn’t say anything more, and didn’t wait for Rifter to either. He kept going and had soon disappeared into the shadows.
“Wait here,” Rifter groaned, stepping past her to go after him, but Wren had other ideas.
“Don’t leave me alone again,” she begged, reaching out to grab his arm. He responded to her touch.
"It’s okay,” he said, giving her a reassuring smile. “It’s just right here.”
“What is?” But before she got an answer, he too had vanished into the woods.
Chapter Seven
1
Beneath the dark forest, known to very few, there was a system of tunnels that reached out under the ground, spanning lengths in the cool, hard earth. The tree roots were like hallway arches, supporting the chambers of the labyrinth. This was the place where the wolves lived, yet this particular pack was not of beasts, but of boys.
If anyone had chanced to find the hideaway, they would have been met with a surprise – yet wouldn’t have lived very long afterward. The group that lived within the tunnels did not take their secrecy lightly.
The forest floor was full of holes which allowed easy entrance to the tunnels at different points. There were many who had tried to seek out the home of the Rifter and his Pack, but none had ever found it. Some said this was because the Rifter kept it as such a heavily guarded secret in his own mind that the discovery was able to be hidden from everyone else on the island.
Being one of the Pack, Nix knew the passages by heart. He dropped down into one of the openings, but of course he knew he couldn’t hope to get away from Rifter like this. It wasn’t as if he wished to escape. It was the point of the thing! Storming off had its advantages, and one of them was getting back to his brothers to make them see what had happened before Rifter could twist things around. He was good at that.
Nix passed through the dark tunnel in the silent, still air, knowing that Rifter would be along behind him shortly, but he reached the den first. It was quiet. The rest of his brothers – none of which were related to him by blood – were lying low for now, but not for long, and Nix would make sure of that.
There was one there sleeping on a bear skin that was spread out over the dirt floor. Could he not stay awake long enough for Rifter to come back?
Lazy bastard…
“Wake up,” Nix ordered, dropping his quiver down onto the boy’s chest. The boy with the dark curls gave an ‘oomph’ as he awoke.
“What? What’s happened?” Finn asked, jolting upright and wrapping his arms around the quiver instinctively – but once he saw what he was holding to himself so protectively, he pushed it aside.
“Is he back?” asked Toss, whose wide girth was all but blocking the fire that he was hunkered in front of. “Has he brought someone new?”
“He brought a girl,” Nix said moodily as he passed through to the other side of the den.
Just after those words had left his mouth, Rifter entered behind him, looking perturbed that his announcement had been ruined, but his arrival had gotten the others’ attention. They all began to appear.
Toss and Finn stood to show their readiness in the presence of their leader, and a pair of red-haired boys who looked as if they had come from both sides of a mirror crept out of the shadows like rats. Only Sly did not come forward, and that was because he was resting above them in an alcove with a heavy, old text in his lap.
“What? A girl?” Finn asked, still rubbing his eyes to fend the sleep away. “I thought we decided—”
He stopped when he saw the harsh glare Rifter was giving him.
“Never mind then,” Finn corrected, scratching his head beneath his mop of black ringlets.
“We did decide that it was a bad idea, but Rifter did what he wanted to do – as usual!” Nix went on, whirling back to light the air on fire with his opinion.
In the niche, Sly sighed and looked back to the pages of his book. “Here we go…” he muttered.
“The sea sent her to me, twice,” Rifter defended. “That’s never happened. Besides, I’ve never called anything faulty – except maybe them.”
Rifter looked disapprovingly at the red-headed twins, Mach and Mech, who he could never quite tell apart, but they seemed to like it that way. It was their private joke against him. Presently, they scowled at him identically beneath their freckles, but Finn was amused by Rifter’s joke and snickered to himself.
“After you saw her the first time, you were the one who asked us what we thought about it,” Nix continued to argue. “You asked for our opinions, and we gave them to you. You said you weren’t going to bring her here, and now you’ve gone and done it!”
“I was the one who got to choose, and I chose her,” Rifter said calmly.
“And to hell with the rest of us!”
That had done it. In the passing of that breath, Rifter drew his sword, and all of them tensed to see that flash of metal as he lifted it toward Nix.
“I decided we needed a girl; so I brought a girl. If you’ve got anything more to say to me about this, we’ll do it with weapons,” he warned sharply.
Nix didn’t seem rattled. He looked at the shining end of the sword and then back up at his brother – his leader.
“One of these days, I’m not going to just walk away,” he warned. “But for now, it is once again as you wish.”
Nix stooped a little in a mocking bow and backed away, retreating deeper into the tunnels. There was a collective sigh as Rifter put his blade away again, and everything finally came back to a calm.
“So, a girl!” Finn said loudly to draw them back in.
“Is she pretty?” Toss asked with great interest. “I want to meet her.”
“Me too!” said Mach and Mech at the same time, after which they gave one another a sharp look. They didn’t like it when they expressed the same thought – as if their minds were the same mind.
Even Sly put his book down, looking interested. “What’s her name?” he asked.
“You’ll have to ask her yourself,” Rifter scoffed, feigning annoyance. “I can’t do everything for you.”
“Well, where is she then?” Toss wanted to know. For such a large boy, his face had a genial quality that made it impossible for his brothers to think of him as anything other than an enormous child.
“Somewhere outside. Come to think of it, you’d probably better go make sure she’s still alive out there,” Rifter said slyly. “If not, I don’t suppose there was any sense in having the argument.”
2
Wren waited in the spot that Rifter had instructed her to wait, vowing that this time, she would not be led astray. The wisp – as Rifter had referred to it – had drifted off again, but Wren could still hear the whispers as the fairy passed around her, keeping a safe distance as she watched. Rifter had been gone for several moments, and Wren was beginning to wonder how long she would have to wait for him. She didn’t want things to take a turn like they had before.
Rifter has good intentions, but no one has ever taught him any manners at all, she decided firmly.
To pass the time, she studied her own shadow – this imp that had attached to her. It seemed as regular as a real shadow and she didn’t feel any different because of it. She was only bothered to know the truth about it. The way the mimic had come upon her hadn’t been very pleasant, but the imp seemed obedient enough for now.
Perhaps it’s not such a big deal, she told herself. What would it be like without a shadow following her around, after all?
She began to hear a disturbance coming through the trees and she turned, expecting that Rifter had come
back for her, but instead, she saw a number of forms approaching through the mist.
More pirates? She wondered if she ought to run or at least duck down and hide, but she was sure that they had already seen her. The drifting orb shot out of the trees and settled in the midst of them, and with her light, Wren could tell that she was looking at a group of boys, all around her age.
There were five of them – of varying sizes; some younger, some older – and they stopped in a line several steps away from her. They did not speak, and neither did she, but not because she couldn’t think of anything to say. She was simply too shocked to do anything.
They were ghastly.
They peered at her past dirt, blood and ratty mops of hair. Though they were filthy, there was no mistaking their youth. Their eyes were bright beneath the grime.
The arrangement of their clothes seemed to be based on what they had managed to kill. They were decorated with furs and bones, feathers and hide. They wore necklaces of teeth. She believed some of those pearls were human. The group of them was frightening – worse than the orphans running wild on the streets of London – and if Wren had not felt that they were familiar with Rifter, she would have fled from them.
They are just boys, she told herself. You have two brothers, and there are other boys at the orphanage.
I would much rather deal with boys than men.
“Hello,” she greeted them finally, putting on a warm smile. She saw that Rifter had emerged now, standing back behind the rest, observing as they reacted to her. She felt safer to see him there. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her – she hoped.
The boys seemed as wary of her as she was of them. A tall, rotund boy nudged one of the others with his elbow, urging him forward to be the braver one of the group. This one was pale with thick black curls, and after an annoyed glance at the other, he did step toward her.
“Uhh, hello!” he greeted her in return. “I’m Finn, and these are my brothers. Toss, Sly, the um, the twins over there – Mach and Mech. And there’s another one around here, Nix, but he’s pissed off right now.” He was sputtering, and finally he stopped with a shrug. “I’m sorry! You’re – well – pretty.”
That melted her fear away. They had won her over.
“Thank you,” she said with a smile, feeling flattered – though of course the admission of her beauty gave her a sense of power over them, as it does with all lovely girls. She felt more comfortable in their midst.
Finn grew braver at that, but not only him. They all moved toward her, coming closer to get a better look, and she was able to examine them a little better as well. She made mental notes about them to be able to distinguish one from another, but it wasn’t so hard. They were all very different.
The one called Toss was larger than the rest, though perhaps not any taller than Nix. She would remember him easily by his round face. When she tried to look him in the eye, he blushed and directed his own gaze at the ground. His brown hair was cut unevenly like Rifter’s, longer in some places than others. They had certainly hacked away at it themselves without caring much. The large coat he wore was stitched together from many types of fur, as if no single animal would be enough to clothe him. Still, he was not so much fat as he was solid. He definitely appeared strong.
Sly was short and thin, his clothes dark and snug. The jacket he wore looked as though he had ripped the skin off an animal and put it on himself, for the top came up in a hood that still had the pointed ears from the creature’s own head. His brown hair was a bit long and stuck out more on one side than the other, but his face was delicate and almost pretty for a boy. His eyes were wide and alert, observing everything. There was a little curve to his mouth that seemed to promise that he knew something she didn’t, though she couldn’t have known what that was.
The twins were a bit difficult to distinguish – not from the group, but from each other. She was not sure which had been introduced to her as Mech and which was Mach. They were dressed the same way in ponchos of brown fur, and their hair was shaved down the sides but with a long portion down the middle which stood straight up. Wren got the impression that they kept themselves so similar purposefully, as if it was a private joke so that they could swap themselves out as needed and no one would know.
Finn had a very welcoming face and a friendly smile – if not a little crooked. He wore a heavy fur jacket, and there was a satchel secured across his body. He was at once very amiable and always looked her in the eye. Presently, he took her hand to draw her attention. His own were wrapped in dirty strips of cloth.
“Now you know us,” Finn reminded her. “But who are you?”
She felt immediately foolish, wondering if she’d been staring at them for too long.
“Oh! I’ve forgotten to introduce myself! I’m sorry; I’m Wren.”
“Ren!” Finn dropped her hand immediately and took a step back. It was as if he had just realized he was holding the tail of a cobra. Toss had the same horrified look in his eyes and crossed himself hurriedly.
Seems kind of rude, she thought, mildly insulted. They’d had an even more severe reaction than Rifter when he’d first heard her name.
“It must be an omen,” muttered one of the twins quietly as they both leaned in to whisper together.
“We should rename her,” Toss suggested.
“She can’t get a new name until the Vow,” Sly reminded him.
Wren only stared at them. What was the issue? She was intent to get to the bottom of it.
“What do you mean? What is wrong with my name?” she wanted to know.
“The Ren is the name we gave to a dangerous creature that roams the land,” Rifter explained. “We usually try to stay out of its way, because we haven’t quite decided how to kill it yet.”
“Can’t you start calling it something else?” she tried. “Why Ren?”
“Because if it catches you, it will rend you limb from limb,” came a voice from the shadows. A familiar figure stepped out from the trees and they all found that Nix hadn’t gone too far after all. He emerged now with a smirk on his mouth, his long hair hanging in his face. “It’s a terrible monster and we just can’t seem to get rid of it. How ironic.”
They are going to stop insulting me like this, she decided. If it hadn’t been clear before, it was obvious to Wren now – the boy Nix did not care for her at all.
“Are you saying you’d like to get rid of me?” she asked him pointedly.
“I’m just saying that the similarities are a little too close to ignore.”
Nix certainly wasn’t keeping his feelings about her a secret and he didn’t care who knew it. She saw that Rifter was giving him a firm stare, but Nix was ignoring him – until Rifter stepped up to confront him head-on.
“I told you not to say another word,” Rifter threatened.
Nix looked back at him levelly, and though he was trying not to appear intimidated, it was evident that he was. He didn’t respond, and eventually shifted his eyes away. Once Nix had been subdued, Rifter turned to the rest of them.
“For as long as Wren is here, she is one of us,” he told them. “You will give her the same regard as you do each other. But she is also a lady, so I want you to treat her with respect as well, or else you deal with me. Anything unclear?”
Wren felt proud that he had stood up for her that way, but then Toss was raising his hand tentatively.
“Yes?” Rifter was willing to entertain his question, but there was a warning in his voice.
“You said we should treat her like one of us, so are we giving her the test?”
Nix perked up at that. He raised his head and his eyes flashed. “That’s a damn good question.”
They all looked toward Rifter expectantly, and he glanced at Wren in consideration, his mouth a grim line. She didn’t know what they were talking about, but she didn’t like how it had affected him.
“You should know the rules,” Nix said smugly. “You made them.”
Rifter was silent for another
moment, mulling it over. “I’m not so sure that she should have the same test. She is a girl, after all. Girls were meant to be protected.”
That would have made her happy – if it wasn’t for what he said next.
“But there are still a few hours before dawn,” Rifter agreed with a smile, after which all of them looked at each other knowingly.
“Off to the beach then!” Finn said, rallying the rest of them. They all began to whoop agreeably. “Lead the way, Wisp!”
The glowing fairy did oblige, and they all started after her, following the light that threw shadows across the forest.
“But we just came from there,” Wren said, confused. To hear how Nix had seemed to promote this made her feel uneasy about what it meant.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Nix said with a grin. Whatever was going on now, he was more pleased with it than her arrival. Actually, most of them seemed to be in high spirits.
“Let’s go,” Rifter said to her, stepping to fall in behind them, but she gripped his arm, her fingers catching in the leaves.
“Why are we going back there?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
“To do what we do most every night,” Rifter told her.
“And that is?”
He smiled, his face lighting up and his teeth brilliant in the glow of the fairy, who came back to circle around him once before shooting off again.
“You’ll see when we get there,” he assured her, and took up her hand to lead her on.
She was pleased that he was holding her hand again, but there was uneasiness in her stomach as she followed them along. The boys were not even bothering to be quiet, talking amongst themselves and making loud animal-like cries into the woods, baying like wolves.
What is going to happen now? She wondered. What have I gotten myself into?
Chapter Eight
1
When they set out through the woods, guided by the light of the wisp as if she was a lantern, Wren was certain they had headed off in a different direction than the way she and Rifter had come into the forest. She was a bit confused by this. Wasn’t the beach the other way?
