by Kelli Kimble
I nodded. I took hold of her hand again and we walked the last few steps. The light was blinding now, drowning out most of the colors. “We’re here.”
“I just go in there?”
“Reach out and touch it,” I said.
She released my hand. “You are one stubborn girl, Iris Willa-Jean Hond. You’ll figure out how to stop him if it’s the last thing you do.” She raised a hand and touched the light. It swarmed over her, and she smiled at me one final time. Then she was gone.
Chapter 19
“Iris? Can I come in?” Tessa was outside the door. She tapped at the wood with her fingernails, and it grated on me. I turned from the window and stared at the door, willing her to go away. I wanted to burrow under the bedspread and hide, but it was covered in dust. And, anyway, I wasn’t going to get away from her that easily.
She opened the door. “Dinner’s almost ready. Come set the table?” The light wasn’t on, but she looked around the dim room, taking in my luggage and trunks. “You haven’t even started unpacking.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched a cloud of dust motes rise up and shift through a shaft of moonlight coming through the curtains. “I’m not ready to unpack just yet.”
“Oh, Iris. I know you’re disappointed about Garfield. But there are other schools.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say; no school was going to take me after being expelled from Garfield. Even though Mr. Anu had convinced everyone that Siggie’s death was an accident, her family had demanded that someone be held responsible. Though being expelled didn’t really matter, it was only the final straw. The real hurt had come when Alpha Nu had cast me out. I wasn’t clear on why Mr. Anu had allowed that to happen; after all, I was supposed to be creating relationships within Alpha Nu that would help him in the future. The sting of losing a place where I belonged was the hardest part, aside from Siggie’s death.
“You know Anu did everything he could,” she said.
I sighed. I wanted Jacob to come home, but he was struggling through finals. He was still at Lowry and couldn’t come back to the farm until the semester was done.
Tessa put her arm around my shoulders. It was a tender thing to do, so that was why the ferocity of her words was so surprising. “You’ve been given a gift, Iris. And you made promises. Maybe you’re having second thoughts, but it’s too late. The sooner you get on board and do the right thing, the better. Understand?”
“Or what? He’ll kill me? He says he needs me. Which is it?”
She dropped her arm. “Tell me something. Do you believe what happened to Siggie was an accident?”
Something in my gut twisted, but I didn’t answer. I turned away.
“It wasn’t. He took the person from you that you cared most about— needed, even— to demonstrate something to you. It’s on your head if you didn’t understand the lesson.”
She went to the door. “The table? It’s time to set it.”
“Wait,” I said. “What was the lesson?”
There was a long pause. Her back was to me. She was wearing a long sweater that she’d knitted herself, and in the dim light I could see the unevenness of her dodgy stitching. Mother wouldn’t approve of her technique. “He’ll get your cooperation. And he’ll hurt anyone he has to in order to get it. Anyone you care about is at risk. Anyone.” She paused. “Professor Cane mentioned his wife to you, right?”
“She died. From some disease.”
“Iris,” she shook her head. “She was Anubian.”
My hands started shaking in my lap. Mr. Anu had punished Professor Cane for something by taking his wife. “Jacob?”
She barked out a bitter laugh. “He’s the only one who’s safe. You’re bound together.”
I swallowed. Was he safe? “But Professor Cane must have been bound to his wife . . .”
Tessa shook her head. “No. They met too late in life. They were together, yes. But they couldn’t bond the way you and Jacob are.”
She was afraid for herself, then. And Kal. I shook my head, not wanting to think about it. I couldn’t ever let Mr. Anu hurt someone on my behalf again. Siggie’s smile when I’d told her that I would try to stop Mr. Anu swam through my mind’s eye. Siggie knew the strength I needed was somewhere inside of me. And I’d be damned if I make a liar out of my best friend.
I followed Tessa downstairs to set the table. I had things to see to.
And it was time to get started.
Epilogue
Tessa set the first baby into the crook of my left arm. He was covered in goo, but she didn’t stop to wipe it away. The second baby was coming, and she didn’t have time to linger over the first. Jacob came to my side. He used a dampened swaddling cloth to gently wipe the afterbirth from the baby’s tiny pink cheeks. My eyes slammed shut with the intensity of the next labor pain. I gritted my teeth and strained.
“Push, Iris. Push!” Tessa had her hands on my knees, spreading them apart. If I wasn’t paralyzed by the pain, I would’ve kicked her in the face.
“Careful of the baby,” Jacob whispered. There was a sound in the room, and it took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from me. Ashamed of my lack of control, I cut it off. The pain faded as the contraction ended.
“Almost there,” Tessa said. “You’re doing great. One more and that should do it.”
“Here, let me take him.” Jacob took the baby from me and wrapped him in a blanket. “I think his name is Nooku.”
I frowned, unhappy at the choice in name. We’d had many long discussions about the baby’s names. We wanted to do something that provided a nod to our Anubian heritage. But we also wanted it to be subtle. I’d convinced Jacob that choosing a set of Native American names would allow a certain amount of obscurity in meaning. Though, in my own head, I’d steered in that direction because it felt like a human thing to do; and I wanted my children to remember that they couldn’t abandon their humanity as I had.
But I didn’t like the name Nooku because it meant rabbit in Arapaho, and that sounded like easy prey. Jacob had argued that it would reflect a careful, watching nature with the capacity to be virile. I didn’t agree. Before I could voice my doubt, another contraction overtook me. I grunted and bared my teeth. This was going to be the last push.
“Hang on, Iris. The head is out, just . . . okay, let me clear the airway, good. You’ve just gotta get through this and it’s all downhill. Good, good, good! Here’s the shoulders.”
An immense amount of pressure dissipated, forcing me to release a heavy breath. Tessa let out a squeal.
“It’s a girl, Iris! A baby girl.” This time she stopped to lay the baby on a waiting receiving blanket, which she used to wipe the baby. She took care of the umbilical cord and wrapped her and tucked her into the crook of my arm. She bustled around with other things, but I was too busy staring at my baby girl’s face. Her eyelids were swollen, giving her an elfin appearance. I stroked her clenched fist with my finger. She flexed her tiny fingers and grasped mine.
I knew without a doubt that she was special. She was the one who would help me stop Mr. Anu. And I had to do everything I could to make sure that would happen.
Even if it meant that she didn’t love me back.
“This one’s name is Honi,” I said. Jacob nodded. He still held Nooku, and I couldn’t help but think that he’d already formed an unfair bias towards his son just because he was a boy. It didn’t matter, though. Honi— it meant wolf in Arapaho— was mine, and I’d go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe.
Especially from Mr. Anu.
The End
Turn the page for a sneak peek at book 3 in the Daughters of Anubis series!!
Bonds That Break
Chapter 1
Honi
July 12, 1982
Salvation, West Virginia
Stones bit into my knees and elbows, but I didn’t care. I had my eye on a family of rabbits that were moving towards the snare I’d set. They were almost to it. Just a little bi
t more . . .
“Honi!” A blow to my right kidney informed me that my younger sister, Sei, didn’t care if I caught us something for dinner or not. She clung to my back. “I found you. It’s my turn to hide.”
“Sei,” I said, rolling over and laughing in spite of having lost our dinner. “For the tenth time, we’re not playing a game right now. Don’t you want to eat?” Sei made a show of falling from my back into the brush.
“Nooku, Honi isn’t playing ni-ice,” she called out in a sing-song voice.
My brother materialized, yanking a branch aside, to find us on the ground. “I almost had those rabbits, Honi,” he said, his lip curling. “Would you two quit messing around?”
“I almost had a rabbit,” I corrected. “That’s my snare.”
He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. Sei launched out of the underbrush and wrapped her arms around his legs. “You guys said we could play some this morning.”
The annoyance creasing his brow disappeared when he looked down at her. She was only nine — she’d be ten tomorrow — and he couldn’t hold her playful nature against her for long. He reached down and rumpled her already-messy hair. “You have twigs in your hair, Sei.” He pulled a dead leaf out, causing her to yelp with imagined pain.
“You guys said this camping trip was going to be fun,” she said, thrusting out her lower lip. “So far I’ve had zero fun. Where is all the fun?”
“You didn’t think it was fun to pitch the tent?” Nooku asked.
“What about when we built the fire without matches?” I asked.
“Or how about when we collected all that firewood?” Nooku added.
“Hide and seek is fun. Tag is fun. Hidden treasure is fun. Camping is not fun,” she said. “When do we get to go home?” Her voice rose into a whine. I exchanged a look with Nooku. Our camping trip was actually a secret mission to keep Sei from finding out about preparations for her surprise birthday party tomorrow. But our mission could turn into a miserable bust if Sei started demanding that we take her home.
“All right,” I said, standing up and dusting rocks from the knees of my pants. “What about this? We'll pick some berries. That’s fun, right?”
“Do I get to eat as many as I want?”
“Sure,” Nooku said.
“With ice cream?”
“You know we don’t have ice cream out here,” I said.
“But we could,” Sei said. “If one of you went home and got it.” She eyeballed Nooku as she said it, knowing he was the sibling most likely to bend to her will.
“What if we had berries and graham crackers?” I asked.
She screwed up her face like it was a big decision. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ice cream is way better than graham crackers.”
“Yeah, Honi,” Nooku said. “Everybody knows that.”
“Oh. Then you’ll have no problem hoofing that four miles home to get us a pint,” I said.
“Yeah, no problem, right Nooku?” Sei asked.
“Right.” He pressed his lips into a thin line. He was annoyed that I’d turned that around on him, but he’d get over it.
“Great. Then you go get the ice cream, and we’ll go get the berries.” I held a hand out to Sei. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Can we skip? I wanna skip.”
“Sure.” I winked at Nooku as we skipped past him. He pulled his pack straps tight and started off in the direction of home. He would run most of the distance, so he’d likely be gone less than two hours. Though in this heat he would likely deliver a thoroughly melted pint of ice cream.
Sei and I grabbed pails and cowbells from the campsite and headed off to a nearby ridge where I knew there would be blackberries growing.
“Don’t forget to announce your arrival,” I said, ringing my bell. “Hear ye, hear ye, animals of the forest. The Cucciolo sisters are here to reap your plenty.”
Sei giggled and rang her bell. “Look out birds, we want those berries,” she called out. I let her think that we were chasing off birds. She theoretically knew what to do if we came across a bear but I didn’t want her focusing on why we were making so much noise.
The berry canes shook as various small wildlife took flight or ran away to hide. When I was satisfied that we’d made enough noise to scare off any bears, I hooked my bell over my pack strap. “Let’s get on with business,” I said.
We sang songs while we picked. Though, mostly I was doing the singing because Sei was stuffing her face with blackberries. A purple oval stained the skin around her lips. I sidled up to her and peaked into her pail.
“Sei,” I said. “You’re going to be up all night with a belly ache if you don’t slow down. And you haven’t put a single berry in your pail.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. They’re just so good.”
“I know,” I bumped my hip against hers, knocking her a little off balance. She giggled and bumped back. We resumed singing and picking, and this time she mostly sang along, as well. When our buckets were full, I announced it was time to return to camp. We turned to move our way out of the thicket and off the ridge when I saw some of the larger canes ahead of us swaying. I sucked in a breath.
A bear.
I pushed Sei behind me and grasped without looking for my bell. It wasn’t where I’d hung it, and I tore my eyes off the shuddering canes to look down and search for it. It had slid down the strap. I grabbed it with shaking hands and started clanging it.
“Sei. Use your bell.”
She whimpered at my tone and snuggled up against the back of my legs. The canes abruptly stopped their motion. I clanged my bell as hard as I could. “Get out of here! We don’t want you here!”
Nooku suddenly popped up out of the brush. “Well, I never. I brought you ice cream and you don’t want me here?” He stood with his hands on his hips and frowned.
“Nooku!” Sei rushed past me and glommed onto his leg.
“Hey, Sei. You know how to make a guy feel welcome, at least.” He winked at me. I glared in return. “Ready to go have those berries and ice cream? Mom packed it in an insulated bag but it won’t stay frozen forever.”
“Yay! Ice cream!” Sei rushed ahead. I pounced on Nooku as soon as I was sure Sei couldn’t hear.
“What’s the matter with you? I thought you were a bear. Sei was terrified.”
“You mean you were terrified,” he said with a sniff. Then he yelled after Sei, “hey, crazy kid! Wait for us.”
Sei turned and waited as best as a ten-year-old anticipating ice cream could. Seeing a chance to rankle her, Nooku slowed.
“Honi, when we get back to camp, we’ve got to get some more firewood. Oh, and I need to check those snares. We wouldn’t want to lose our dinner again, would we?”
Even though I was still annoyed with him for making me think he was a bear, I played along. “Yeah. We definitely have a lot of stuff to do before we can have that ice cream. Oh, and I’m really tired. Do you have a canteen? I need to stop for a drink.” He handed it to me, and I stopped and made a big show of how thirsty I was.
Sei stomped her foot. “You said we’d have ice cream.”
She ran back and grabbed one of Nooku’s hands and one of mine. “Come on.”
I suppressed a laugh and gamely allowed her to pull me along. She was leading us back the exact way we’d come, even though I’d neglected to point landmarks out to her that would help her find her way back if something happened to me. I frowned. Uncle Kal would be disappointed in such a mistake. Sei chose that moment to look up at me.
“What’s the matter?”
I shook the frown away. Uncle Kal wasn’t even home right now. He was off overseeing some military exercise and wouldn’t be back again for weeks. I missed him when he was gone. “I was just thinking that maybe we don’t have enough berries for this ice cream.”
Sei rolled her eyes. “The ice cream is the good part, silly. It doesn’t matter how many berries we have, even if we have no berries.”
“She has a point,” Nooku said.<
br />
At camp, we sat around the smoldering fire ring and ate semi-soft ice cream out of paper bowls. Sei only put a few berries on hers; a sure sign I’d let her eat too many. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have bathroom issues after dark. I leaned back and tried to enjoy the treat; it felt good sliding down my throat.
“Thanks for the ice cream, Nooku,” Sei said. “And thanks for bringing me on a special trip with you guys. I’m going to miss you in the fall.”
Nooku and I had just finished our homeschooling in the spring, and in the fall we were starting classes at the local community college. Sei thought that since we wouldn’t be at home for class anymore, she would never see us.
“We’ll be around, squirt,” Nooku said, ruffling her hair. “You’ll see us so much, it’ll make you sick.”
I tossed my empty paper bowl into the fire pit. The fire wasn’t burning, but the charred wood and ashes that remained were still hot enough from last night’s fire to raise a swirl of smoke from the bowl. I watched as the bottom turned black and red embers chased the white paper to ash.
“I’m gonna go check that snare,” Nooku said, standing. He tossed his bowl into the fire pit, too. “What do you say to a game of hidden treasure when I get back?”
Sei wiggled in her seat. “I say yes,” she said.
Hidden treasure was a game that Uncle Kal used to play with us when we were Sei’s age. He’d hide something in the woods for each of us, usually a small toy. Then he’d give us a map with coordinates marked, and a compass. I wasn’t crazy about the game because once he’d hidden a pretty barrette that he knew I’d wanted right beside a nest of snakes. He thought he could get me over my fear of them by putting it there, but I’d refused to retrieve it once I realized where it was.
“They’re just rat snakes, Honi,” Nooku had said. Then he moved on in search of the next treasure. Uncle Kal watched from afar but didn’t comment when I walked away without retrieving the prize. It was the last time we played the game. I don’t know what happened to the barrette. I’d thought he’d bring it home for me anyway, but he hadn’t.
