Frost (13 page)

Ivy and Jonn recoiled as I slammed the door shut and threw the bolts into place. The Watcher howled outside, the sound far away and piercing.

We were safe.

The horse snorted and shook his mane. Gabe slid off his back and handed me the lead rope. He was breathing hard. Our eyes met, and we broke into desperate laughter. It was just too absurd—my siblings standing there with their mouths hanging open, the horse in the living room, and the Watcher unable to reach us and unwilling to cross the blossoms. And it wasn’t even funny, but it was laugh or cry. So I laughed. Deep, belly-splitting laughs that bent me over. Gabe and I leaned together, howling with mirth while the others sat dumbfounded. Well, Jonn sat. Ivy stormed over to us and stood glaring.

“Lia Weaver,
what in the world
—”

“I found the horse,” I interrupted, still giggling. “In the forest.” Gabe leaned against the wall and laughed, his eyes squeezed shut. I liked the way he looked when he was happy, even if that happiness was pure delusion.

Ivy planted her hands on her hips, her mouth hanging open as she looked from me to Gabe to the horse. Apparently the whole situation—our laughter, the horse, our wild entrance—was simply too bizarre to merit any kind of comments, because she just acted like we didn’t have a giant animal standing in the middle of our house. She zeroed in on me instead. “Since when did you get so jovial?” she asked, as if that were the most pressing question, like I’d committed some kind of crime.

The horse stamped one foot against the floorboards and snorted explosively as my grin weakened a little. Wasn’t I allowed to laugh?

My gallows humor faded, and I straightened. Taking the poor horse’s lead rope, I took him beside the window and tethered him to one of the coat hooks. I even gave him a pat on the neck—although I wasn’t particularly fond of this animal, or any animals, I was glad he was safe and not eaten by a Watcher.

By the fire, Gabe began explaining what had happened while Ivy and Jonn listened intently. I stiffened when he reached the part about Adam Brewer, but he left out the kiss and simply described the scene as if I’d pushed him into the bushes and marched out to confront Adam on my own.

“How dare Adam Brewer ask
you
questions like that,” Ivy growled, interrupting the story. “He—they—” Apparently there were no words to describe her feelings about the Brewers. I wholeheartedly agreed.

“Why they haven’t been evicted from the village for their bad behavior, I don’t know,” she said.

“They always meet their quota,” Jonn pointed out. That was my brother, generous with everyone.

“He said such cryptic things to me, too,” I said slowly, remembering that moment in the woods and the way he’d been so cold, so rigid while the snow fell between us. “Like he was expecting something from me, something specific, and he was disappointed when I didn’t deliver it.”

“He probably wanted you to get angry. Maybe he was hoping you’d accuse him,” Ivy said.

What was it he’d said at the end?

I wouldn’t have pegged you for a risk-taker
. That boiled my blood a little. It was like he was calling me cowardly. And perhaps I would have agreed with him a month ago, but now...

I looked at Ivy and Jonn and Gabe—Gabe describing the part where we caught the horse, the others listening with rapt attention.

Some things were worth taking a risk for.

He’d said something else to me, something odd, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was.

We spent the night by the fire, wrapped in quilts. The horse huffed and nickered quietly in the corner, and I listened to the sound of my family sleeping. I fell asleep in the middle of trying to figure out what exactly Adam Brewer had said to me before we’d parted, and while I slept I dreamed that I was lost in the forest again, only this time I was with Ann. We found our way home after hours of wandering, and she hugged me with relief, but when she put her arms around me she became Cole and then a creature with both fur and feathers, and red eyes that glowed in the dark. I knew it was a Watcher, and when I tried to run it ran at me with its jaws opened wide—

I woke abruptly. My skin was damp with sweat and my throat felt scratchy. I lay still a moment as my senses sharpened. Gradually, the room swam into focus.

Everyone else was still asleep, tangled up in the blankets and breathing deeply. Ivy was nestled against the hearth, her head pillowed in her hands. Gabe slept with his head in his arms and his elbows braced on his knees. Jonn was curled in his chair, the face that looked so much like mine soft and gentle in sleep.

Guilt stabbed me as I thought about how worried my brother must have been when we didn’t return. Anything could have happened, and for all he knew, we’d simply gone to the barn.

Barn
. That’s what Adam Brewer had said to me—
perhaps you might want to choose a safer place for your romantic trysts...perhaps your parents’ barn, above the place where the stones form a circle
.

The place where the stones for a circle? How oddly specific. How strange. What did he know of my parents’ barn, and why had he spoken of it?

A suspicion curled in my gut.

I went to the window and threw back the shutters. It was early morning. A thread of orange light sparkled on the horizon and blazed across the top of the forest. The yard was silent. Nothing moved against the tree line.

The Watchers were gone.

Grabbing my cloak, I untied the horse and led him out into the chilly air. A soft light colored everything gray. Holding my breath, I led him across the yard to the barn.

Inside, the darkness swallowed us. I put the horse in his stall and fumbled along the wall for a lantern and the matches. The light flared; the horse nickered softly to his mate. My breath caught.

There, in the middle of the stone floor, was a pattern.

A circle.

I dropped to my knees, running my fingers across the stones, tracing the edges of the shape they made. I’d lived my whole life in this house and never really looked at the floor here—it was always covered in dust or straw. Always concealed.

Something touched my arm.

I whirled, gasping, and it was Gabe. He put a hand over my mouth and a finger to his lips. I nodded, my heart thumping. It might be morning, but there was no reason to take chances. The sun hadn’t risen yet.

“You startled me,” I whispered when he removed his hand.

“What are you doing?”

I gestured at the floor. “It was something Adam Brewer said. Remember? About the circle of stones in the barn. And there it is. How did he know?”

Gabe’s forehead wrinkled. He crouched down beside the stones, staring. “What is it?”

“I have no idea.”

I moved the lantern closer and knelt beside him on the ground. Sliding my hands along the edge, I felt them catch. I heard a click, and the circle moved. We scrambled back as a dark crack appeared in the stones. A piece of the floor slid aside, revealing a dark hole. A hollow place. Stairs.

“What the...?” I grabbed the lantern and peered into the darkness. My head spun with questions and my arm trembled, making the light dance.

What had my parents been hiding here?

The stairs creaked as I descended them with Gabe close behind me. The steps curved into a room lined with earth and smelling of must and rot. I held the lantern high and peered around.

Shelves stacked with boxes covered the walls. Gabe pulled one off and opened the lid. A few papers covered in sketches lay at the bottom. Setting the lantern down on the floor, I reached in and caught one with my fingertips. I lifted it to the light. “What are these things?”

Drawings—sketches of cylinders, squares, like a massive map of inventions I’d never dreamed possible. The lines were faded with age, the paper spotted with wax and wrinkled from water spills long ago. I sucked in a breath as I tried to read the words that accompanied them, but either the handwriting was so bad that I couldn’t understand it, or the words were a different language altogether.

Gabe left the box in my hands and dug into another one. He pulled out more papers covered in scribbles, maps, and sheets and sheets of notes. Lists.

Names
.

“These are mostly common Aeralian names,” he said, astonishment coloring his voice. “What does this mean?”

I found something in the bottom of the box, and I held it to the light. A brooch. The little bit of twisted metal glinted coldly as I twisted it in my fingers. “Tell me again the name of that group that helped you escape, the one you said had a contact in our village?”

He came closer to see what I held. “The Thorns.”

I dropped the bit of metal into the palm of his hand, and his eyebrows lifted.

It was a tiny metal branch, sharp with thorns.

WE LEFT THE barn after the sky had already begun to turn light. The sun played through the bare branches of the trees and made ribbons of gold across the snow, and the air tasted crisp. But I was oblivious to the beauty around us. My body was cold and numb with shock, my mind buzzing with questions. My parents had been members of a secret group called the Thorns? Why had we never known? And what did Adam Brewer know about it?

We reached the house together. I put a hand on Gabe’s arm to stop him before we went inside.

“Please don’t say anything to Ivy and Jonn yet,” I said. “I need to think about this, about what it means and what I’ll say to them. This is dangerous, and I don’t even know if I want to involve them. And I think...I think I need to talk to Adam Brewer.”

Even saying his name left a sour taste in my mouth, but I knew it had to be done. He knew something—he’d tipped me off to the room beneath the barn on purpose. He wanted me to find it. The question now was why.

Gabe nodded. His eyes searched mine, and he reached out and grazed my face with his fingers. “Are you all right? You just discovered your parents were keeping secrets from you. It must be a lot to take in.”

I shut my eyes. “Right now I’m wondering what about my reality is truth, and what is a lie.”

He was quiet, understanding.

“So much has changed,” I said. “My whole world has just expanded—so many things I thought I knew, and yet I didn’t.”

It had been happening a lot lately, this world-expansion. First Gabe, then the Mayor, now this. I felt bewildered, newly born, dizzy. Like I no longer knew which way was up. I didn’t know how to express this, but Gabe seemed to understand. He shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded.

I continued, fumbling for the right words. “It’s like when I look at the world, everything has shifted. Like everything has rearranged itself while I was sleeping, and I’m just now noticing it.”

“Or maybe it’s just you that’s changed,” he said. “Maybe you’re the one who’s been rearranged.”

Our gazes locked, and I remembered yesterday. The escape from the Watcher. Our hysterical laughter. The kiss.

Heat crept up the nape of my neck. The air between us grew heavy, and we crept toward each other in centimeters.

“Lia,” he said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “I...”

The front door burst open, and Ivy hurried out. Gabe broke off abruptly, disappointment flickering in his eyes.

“Oh,” Ivy said, catching sight of us. “There you are.”

I was suddenly and uncomfortably aware of how close we’d been standing. I stepped back from Gabe hastily, folding my arms across my body. “Yes. What?”

“I was just worried,” she said. “You have to stop sneaking away.” She looked at me and then at Gabe and then back at me, and her eyes narrowed.

I blushed. “I put the horse back in the barn.” The weight of my discovery about our parents pressed on me like a stone in my chest.

“Quota is due today,” she said. “Have you forgotten?”

I
had
forgotten. That had never happened before. Usually I was so careful because our family’s fate depended on it. Disgusted with myself, I stalked past her into the house without answering. She followed.

“Do you want me to take it this time?”

“No,” I said, gathering up the sack and smoothing a hand over my hair. “I’ll take it. I have to go into town anyway.”

I needed to talk to Adam Brewer and I needed to talk to him soon.

~

When I reached the outskirts of the village, I realized something was different, but it took a moment for me to place exactly what it was.

The streets were almost empty.

This was unheard of for a quota day. Usually the town bustled with people coming and going with their sacks and barrels. I moved down the street slowly, past empty store fronts as my feet crunched on the snow. Where was everyone?

I found the quota master standing outside the Assembly Hall, his face pulled in a frown. I stepped straight up to him and presented my sack. He snatched it, muttering, and barely glanced at the contents as he thrust the allotted supply sack at me. I accepted it and turned to go.

“You there!”

I turned back. The quota master had not spoken. It was someone else.

My heart froze, then dropped like a stone.

A Farther stood in the street, his shoulders thrown back and his strange garments glimmering in the weak sunlight. His black eyes swept over me and my pitiful sack, and then he strode toward me.

Terror struck me like a lightning bolt. I couldn’t move. Farthers? Here in the village?

They were looking for Gabe
.

No, no, no…it couldn’t be that. They couldn’t know. It was something else—it had to be.

“Why aren’t you at the meeting?” he demanded.

“The—the meeting?” I struggled to remain calm. What if my expression gave me away? What if he guessed that I had Gabe at my farm? Shock had all but immobilized me, otherwise I might have run.

The Farther looked disgusted with my question. “Your whole village was ordered to assemble by your leader.” He pointed at the door to the Assembly Hall. “Get inside now before you suffer the repercussions of disobedience.”

The Farther had a gun in his hands. The quota master turned his head and acted as though he heard nothing. What else could I do?