“What do you mean?” growls Otto.
“Vanished. Right before his eyes.”
“Haven’t you noticed there’s no clues, Otto? No tracks? Maybe this has something to do with that.”
“He’s involved.”
“We need to get rid of him.”
Nothing good grows out of fear, my father said. It’s a poisonous thing.
“And if he didn’t do it?”
“He did it.”
“I bet we could get him to talk,” says Tyler. I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Tell us where they are, the children.”
“You forget the sisters are protecting him,” says Master Matthew.
“But who is protecting them?”
There’s a long silence.
“Now hold on,” says another nervously.
“We don’t want to—”
“Why? You can’t tell me you’re actually afraid of those witches. They’re all dried up and their craft is too.”
“Why shouldn’t we march up there and demand the stranger?”
“Why should we wait for more children to vanish?” my uncle growls. “This all started when that boy arrived. How many more children will we lose? Jack, you have a boy. Are you willing to lose Riley because you were afraid of two old witches? My sister-in-law has two girls, and I’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.
“Matthew,” Otto says in appeal, and I picture the Council member, his face softer than the others, his blue eyes almost sleepy behind the small spectacles on his nose.
The other men murmur approval. Matthew must have nodded. I can make out the sound of metal against the house stones. Guns?
I risk a small step along the wall.
“Let’s go, then,” my uncle booms, and the others rally. “This ends now.” He slams his hand against the side of the house, and I jump, knocking a low shelf. My heart races as the voices fade, their words echoing in my head. They’re building a case of lies against him. But right now, with children missing and no one to blame, lies will be enough.
I have to warn Cole.
I turn south down the path that Dreska took, the one that curves around the town square, the ground falling away beneath my father’s boots. This path is winding, so the men will never take it, and if I hurry, I might make it to the sisters first.
I run along the outskirts of the village. In my mind, Cole bleeds into sight on the dark moor, eyes shining. A gust of wind whips through, and he vanishes, like smoke.
I push the thought away and hurry east.
I PULL MY SLEEVES DOWN and scold myself for not dressing warmer. The wind is biting as I climb the hill to the low stone wall. When the sisters’ house comes into sight, my chest tightens, partly from the exertion of running, and partly from the sudden relief of seeing the cottage untouched. I’ve beaten my uncle’s men here. I hoist myself over the wall and hesitate.
The place is too quiet, too closed.
The edge of the shed peeks out from behind the house, but Cole’s gray cloak is absent from its nail.
I reach the sisters’ door, and I’m just about to knock when I hear voices within, muffled words, and then my name. It is a strange thing, the way the world goes quiet when we hear our own name, as though the walls grow thin to make way. My fist uncurls and comes to rest, fingers splayed against the door. I slide closer, straining to listen. But the words are muffled again, so I slip around the corner to the next wall, where a window has been cut roughly into the cottage. The glass is old and the wood frame cracking, and through the sliver of space, the voices leak out.
“Lexi found a child’s sock nearby.”
I glance over the sill and see Cole’s narrow frame in the dim room, his back to me. He’s sitting in a chair by the hearth, staring at the cool dark stones while Dreska fidgets around him, her long knotted cane scraping the floor as she goes. Magda unpacks something from her basket, muttering. Cole looks wrong inside the cottage, without the wind and the tangled grass. He takes up no more space than the chair.
“Is that all? No other trace?”
“One thing,” Cole says, standing. He goes to the mantel, his long pale fingers moving over it. “A wind-swept path tracing over the moor. Faint. I showed Lexi.”
Magda’s eyebrows arch, wrinkles multiplying. “Where did it lead?” she asks.
“Here.”
Dreska lets out a small hiss. “But the villagers have had no luck.”
Dreska’s next words are muffled, and I stretch to get a better look, some scattered rocks shifting beneath my feet.
“And I don’t expect they will,” says Magda grimly.
“And Lexi?” asks Dreska, turning toward the window as if she means to ask me something. I duck, just before her gaze finds me.
“She doesn’t know what to make of it,” he says.
My skin prickles. Make of what?
“She will.” Dreska’s voice is too close this time, just beyond the glass, and I duck lower, pulse pounding in my ears so loudly I can barely hear the words.
“If you don’t tell her…” Dreska adds before moving deeper into the cottage, her voice fading out. Cole replies, but he’s moved away too, and it’s nothing but muffled sounds by the time it reaches me. I hurry back to the front of the house, hoping to catch more.
But instead the front door swings open, and I’m standing face-to-face with Cole.
I fight the urge to turn and run, even to take a step back. Instead I find his eyes and hold them with mine.
“Tell me what, Cole?” I ask, quiet and angry. His mouth opens and closes just a fraction, his frown deepening. But then his jaw sets, and he says nothing. I let out an exasperated sigh and turn, walking away. Unbelievable. I’m risking my uncle’s wrath to help him, and he won’t even tell me the truth.
“Lexi, wait.” Cole’s voice cuts through the wind in my ears, and then he’s beside me. He goes to take my arm, to pull me to a stop, but his fingers only hover over my skin.
“Just let me explain,” he says, but I walk faster. Too fast. My shoe hits a stone, launching me down the hill. I close my eyes, brace myself, but I never fall. I feel cool arms around my shoulders, and I sense Cole’s heart beating through his skin. I pull away, the wind tugging at my hair, my dress.
He folds his arms across his chest.
“Lexi, what you heard—”
I run my hand through my hair. “Cole, I’m trying to help you.”
He frowns but doesn’t look away. “I know—”
“But I can’t possibly do that if you’re keeping secrets from me.”
“You don’t—”
“Everyone in town wants to blame you for the missing children. My uncle and the Council are coming for you right now.”
I look back down the hill to the grove and the narrow path Otto’s men will take, but no one’s there. Still, I imagine I can hear the sound of twigs and leaves cracking underfoot, deep in the trees. Cole follows my gaze.
“This way,” he says, gesturing past the cottage to the shed. An actual crack, this one unmistakable, comes from the trees below, and I let him lead me past the shed, the grove and the hill and the sisters’ house vanishing behind the slouching wooden beams.
Cole turns to the rolling hills. I reach out, bringing my hand to his shoulder, and he tenses but doesn’t pull away. I press my fingertips against him, testing him.
“What haven’t you told me?” I ask.
And for a moment I think he’ll actually tell me. I can see him juggling the words inside his head. Fumbling. I tried to juggle once, with three apples I’d found in the pantry. But I just ended up bruising them all so badly my mother had to make apple bread. The whole time I was trying, I kept getting lost in the movements. I couldn’t concentrate on all of them at once.
I wish Cole would give me an apple. And then he looks at me, and there’s that same sad, almost smile, like he’s decided to pass me one, but he knows I can’t juggle either. Like there’s no reason for both of us to bruise things any more tha
n needed.
I hold out my hand.
“Let me help.”
He stares at my upturned palm.
“You want to know my story,” he says, staring so hard that I think he must be counting the creases in my hand.
“Once, long ago, there was a man and a woman, and a boy, and a village full of people. And then the village burned down. And then there was nothing.”
I hold my breath, waiting for him to go on. But Cole turns away, makes his way to the point where Near falls away and the moor takes hold. I have never been to the sea, but Magda told me stories about rolling waves that go on forever. I imagine it would look like this, only blue.
“You’re not very good at telling stories,” I say, hoping to coax a smile, but he looks so sad, staring out at the moor. The wind around us is whistling, pushing, and pulling.
Then I understand. “Your village burned down?” I ask, staring at his gray clothes, their singed look, and realizing suddenly why he hates the name I’ve given him.
“Oh God, Cole…I mean…”
“It’s fine, Lexi. It’s a fine name.”
“Just tell me your real one.”
He turns away, his jaw tensing. “Cole is fine. It’s growing on me.”
I hear the door to the cottage swing open, and the sisters hobbling out, Dreska’s cane knocking on the ground.
I walk back toward the shed and catch sight of them in the yard. Dreska’s hard eyes flick toward us before moving over the path down the hill. I feel Cole come up behind me.
“How did you survive?” I ask, before I can stop myself. He stares at me, weighing his words in his mouth like they are trying to crawl back down his throat.
“The fire was my fault,” he whispers.
“How?” I ask. But he begs me with a look, all pain and loss and something worse. He is trying to keep his breath steady, even, his jaw clenching as if he’s afraid he might cry. Or scream. I can tell because it’s how I felt right after my father’s death, like I wanted to shout but all the air had been stolen from my lungs. Like if I opened up one part of me, all of it would pour out. Cole closes his eyes, and his hands wrap around his ribs, as if that will keep him contained.
“Lexi,” he says, “I’m not—”
But then the men’s voices break through, Otto’s above the rest.
As if wakened from a trance, Cole’s eyes open wide, dark and gray, his mouth forming a thin line. I push him into the shadow of the shed, pressing him back against the wood.
Peering around the corner, I can just make out the men at the edge of the grove below. They seem to be fighting. Otto gestures up the hill impatiently. Several men gesture back before retreating against the tree line. They don’t seem so bold now, with the witches waiting at the top of the hill. Otto huffs, turns, and makes his way up the slope alone.
Dreska casts a warning glance toward the shed, then crosses her arms and sighs, facing the path.
Magda slips down into the patch of dirt, murmuring uselessly to the bare earth and brushing her fingers back and forth in her childlike way. Otto approaches.
Cole and I huddle against the shed. My hand brushes his, and he slips his fingers through mine. My pulse skips at his touch.
“What brings you to the edge of Near?” asks Dreska, appraising my uncle. I hug the corner of the shed, stealing glances around the edge.
“I need to speak to the stranger,” says Otto.
Cole’s hand tenses in mine.
Dreska’s frown deepens, and overhead the clouds begin to gather. She takes a deep breath.
“Otto Harris. We saw you born.”
Magda unfolds herself. “We watched you grow.”
When the sisters speak, there is a strange echo to their voices, so that when one stops and the other starts, they blend in to each other.
My uncle just shakes his head impatiently. “The Council has concerns about the stranger’s presence,” he says. “About his reasons for being here.”
“We are older than the Council.”
“And we, too, watch over Near.”
“The boy has done nothing. We vouch for him.”
Otto’s gaze hardens. “And what do your words mean?” he barks. His eyes dance with frustration, crease with fatigue. Without the other men, he is not standing as straight, and I remember his hunched form over the table, head in his stained hands. He takes a breath and cools.
“Two children are missing, and that boy you harbor is under suspicion,” he says, rubbing his beard.
“Evidence?”
“Witnesses.” He ignores a short cough from Magda. “Now, what do you know of it?” His face is settling into its hard lines, burying the fatigue beneath his beard, behind his eyes.
“Now you care for the thoughts of two old hags?” spits Dreska.
“The Council knows who is taking the children,” adds Magda with a wave of her dirt-caked fingers.
“Don’t waste my time,” he growls. “Not with that rubbish.”
“All Near knows.”
“All Near forgets.”
“Or tries.”
All Near tries to forget? Before I can make sense of it, the sisters’ voices begin to overlap, and the sound is haunting.
“But we remember.”
“Stop it,” says Otto, shaking his head. He straightens, squaring his shoulders. “I need to speak to him. The stranger.”
The sky is darkening, threatening rain.
“He is not here.”
Magda’s gnarled hand flutters through the air. “Out on the moor.”
“Somewhere out there. We do not know.”
“It is a very large moor, after all.”
Otto frowns. He does not believe a word of it.
“I will ask you one last time—”
“Or what, Otto Harris?” growls Dreska. I swear I can feel the earth rumble.
Otto takes a breath before meeting her gaze. When he speaks, his words are slow and measured. “I do not fear you.”
“Neither did your brother,” says Magda. The ground beneath us begins to shift, just a ripple, but enough to make the house stones groan. “But at least he respected us.”
Several stray drops of rain splash down on us. The wind is bristling. I think I feel Cole’s hand slip away from mine, but when I look over he’s still there, his eyes staring straight ahead but unfocused.
Otto mutters something I cannot hear, and then, louder, “But I will.” And with that, I hear his boots scuff the ground as he turns away. Cole shifts his weight beside me, leaning deeper against the shed. The boards creak. His eyes light up with panic, and I catch my breath. My uncle’s heavy footsteps grind to a halt. When he speaks again his voice is frighteningly close to the shed.
“He’s here now, I know it.”
The footsteps grow louder and louder, and Cole casts a troubled glance at me. He seems thinner in the growing wind. I have to do something. If Otto finds me, it will be bad. But if he finds Cole, it will be much worse. I mutter a curse beneath my breath, then release his hand and force my feet to carry me out from my shelter and into my uncle’s path. He staggers back to keep from barreling into me.
“Uncle,” I say, trying not to wince as his look turns from shock to anger.
“This is where you’ve run off to?” Otto’s hand encompasses my arm as he pulls me toward him. I don’t have a lie ready, so I opt for silence. Behind me, the boards give another loud groan.
Otto shoves me out of his way as he rounds the corner of the shed, and I bite my tongue to keep from shouting NO! But the look he shoots me when he turns back is enough to tell me Cole isn’t there.
Otto says nothing, only grabs me and spins me back past the sisters’ house and onto the path home. His sudden silence worries me more than any amount of shouting. He pushes me ahead of him like a prisoner, and it takes all my will to not look back.
He doesn’t speak. Not when we’re down the hill, or through the grove, or when our own homes have come into sight. By then the sun is
setting, and my uncle is a black outline against it. The silence is too heavy.
“I was just doing my—”
He doesn’t let me finish. “Do you disregard everything I say?”
I cannot contain the frustration bubbling up in me. “Only when you treat me like a child.”
“I’m only trying to protect you.” Our voices climb over one another.
“You should be protecting Wren instead of trying to lock me in the house.”
“Enough, Lexi.”
“You want me to just sit inside and wait, when I could be searching.” I storm across the threshold.
“Because you should be here,” he says, following close behind, “with your mother and Wren.”
“Because that’s what women do?”
“Because it’s dangerous. The stranger could be dangerous. What if he hurt you? What would I—”
“He’s not dangerous.” I head down the hall and into my bedroom, Otto on my heels.
“How do you know? Do you know him so well?”
I let out a strangled sigh and run my hands through my hair. “I just want to help, Uncle. However I can. And if that means searching for the stranger, if that means turning to the sisters, then how can I not? I just want to protect my family.…” My voice trails off as I catch sight of a small white square tucked under the corner of the window frame, flapping gently in the evening breeze. A note.
“As do I,” he says, so low I barely hear it.
I pull my gaze from the note and turn to face him, trying to hold his eyes so they don’t wander to the window, where the slip of paper stands out like a splash of paint against the dark glass.
“Lexi, I know I’m not your father,” he says. “But I promised him.”
The room goes cold, but Otto doesn’t seem to notice.
“I promised I’d keep you from harm, remember? I know you were listening that day,” he continues. “I’m doing the best I can, Lexi, but it doesn’t make my job easier if I’m battling you and trying to find the children.”
My uncle sighs, the fight bleeding out of him before my eyes, leaving a stiff and tired quiet in its wake.