Thorns (9 page)

She muttered to herself as she twisted the thread with her thumb and forefinger, oblivious to me.

“Any other news from the village?” Jonn asked.

I thought about the way Ann’s eyes shifted from mine these days, the scratch on her cheek. I thought of the words painted on the quota wall, the brewing animosity between the villagers, and the things Raine had shouted.

But all these things would only make them worry.

“No,” I said.

~

I lay in bed while the snow fell outside and the house creaked and settled in its sockets around me. I traced Gabe’s bracelet with my fingers and thought about the missing Fishers. My mind kept playing back the night we’d taken Gabe to the gate. The guttural growl from the shadows. The jaws that came out of nowhere. The red stain left on the snow.

And now I was supposed to venture out into the darkness to meet Adam?

I tried to sleep, but every time I shut my eyes I saw red on the snow.

The hours trickled by like melting icicles, and my thoughts chased in circles. My parents. Gabe. I tried to think about them, but the memories of their faces eluded me. Panic flooded my veins, and I focused on breathing slowly. I did not care for them any less if I couldn’t remember the colors of their eyes, I told myself.

But the sick feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away.

I had to go to meet Adam. It was a test, he’d said. A test of cleverness, a test of mettle, a test of bravery. He wanted to see if I had what it took. It wasn’t a matter of safety. The Watchers would be gone by then.

Wouldn’t they?

In that window of time between night and day, no one really knew.

I lifted one damp hand to brush strands of hair from my eyes. My fingers trembled, and I stared at them in the near-blackness a moment. Sitting up, I reached for my bureau drawer. My hands found the cuff Adam had given me, and I slipped it onto my wrist. Instantly I felt safer.

Shutting my eyes, I didn’t open them again until dawn.

I CREPT DOWN the stairs from my bedroom slowly, stepping around all the places I knew would squeak. I paused a moment and listened in the darkness for any sound to indicate my siblings had heard my descent and awoken, but all was still. The familiar hush of fallen snow wrapped the house in a thick silence and muffled all sound from outside. Inside, the darkness breathed with the faint creaks and groans of boards settling against the cold, and I could hear the wheezing sound of my sister snoring.

Otherwise, all was quiet.

I tiptoed on, pausing at the door to wrestle into my boots and wrap my cloak around my shoulders. I tied a string of snow blossoms around my neck, gathered up the lantern, and drew open the front door. A blast of chilly wind rushed over my cheeks and stole my breath. Casting one last glance over my shoulder at the warm darkness behind me, I stepped onto the porch and pulled the door shut.

Snow and shadow swathed the outside world, and light tinged the horizon even though the sun had not yet risen. Mist painted the barn in shades of gray, and the forest beyond made a black wall encircling the farmyard. Above my head, the Watcher Ward clattered in the wind. I could smell and taste the cold as I faced the woods.

The world was still dark. The Watchers still roamed somewhere in the shadows of the deep forests. My skin crawled with awareness of each gust of wind and scrape of branches against each other.

I didn’t want to do this, but Adam was waiting. This was my moment to prove myself.

I struck a match and lit the lantern. The flame flared to life, and I half-closed the shutters to restrict the light. Gathering in a lungful of frosty air, I wrapped my cloak tighter around my body and crossed the yard.

Each step seemed loud as a shout. The forest loomed closer and closer until I could smell the sharp scent of pine. My ears were tuned for any sound in the depths that might signal the approach of a Watcher, but I heard nothing. The shadows lay still. The trees made stark lines against the sky.

I kept moving. My lungs felt as unyielding as glass as I struggled to draw a quiet breath.

Another step, and another, and then the yard fell away as the trees crowded around me. The shadows enveloped me, and chills skittered over my skin.

I was in the Frost.

The light of almost-morning leaked silvery glints across the snow. The snow blossoms lining the path looked luminous, their petals glowing bright blue in the faint light. The snow sparkled, a dance of diamonds lit by stars.

I’d never been in the forest so early. I didn’t recognize this terrible and beautiful fairy land.

A branch snapped behind me. I whirled, my hand going to the knife at my waist.

A pale white deer went loping away in the darkness, her tail flapping.

Lightheadedness swept over me. Just a deer.

I sucked in a breath and pressed on.

Follow the path until the charred oak
, he’d said. So I hugged the edges of the road, brushing past the snow blossoms forming a tenuous line of safety between me and the deep forest. My eyes searched the line of trees for the oak. I knew the one he meant. It had been struck by lightning when I was a girl, and now the trunk grew twisted and strange.

All around me, the darkness hung heavy as a curtain.

I breathed a sharp sigh when I spotted the blackened trunk rising up from the forest around it like a half-desiccated corpse. I turned left, leaving the path and forging directly into the Frost. I counted the paces in my head as I moved until I reached a clearing. Trees made a wall around me, their scabby trunks slick with ice and dark with damp. I could smell the sharp scent of ice and pine. Above my head, the sky was a dark indigo laced with pink. No house or hut or other structure was in sight, and nothing in the darkness so much as moved. The ground was damp and muddy from melted snow, and frost ferns covered the forest floor. If Adam was here, I couldn’t see where.

Where was I supposed to go now?

Beneath the stingweed
.

I spotted an abundance of the thorny bushes at the edge of the clearing. Stubby branches of reddish-green poisoned nettles waved gently in the wind.

Beneath?

Crouching, I peered at the dark patch of earth underneath the curling branches of the stingweed. I could just barely make out the seam of wood against it.

A door, just like the one in the barn.

I set the lantern down and looked over my shoulder at the forest behind me. No red Watcher eyes glowed in the darkness, no Farthers lurked behind the trees. But the shadows shifted faintly, and my skin still crawled with apprehension. I bent back over the door, taking care not to brush against the stingweed branches.

My fingers found the handle after a moment of brushing over the ground. I tugged, and the door slid sideways, revealing a cavernous hole. The scent of mud and dampness rushed up at me.

I didn’t dare call out for Adam. I thrust my foot inside and found a ladder bolted against the wall of the shaft. Grabbing the lantern, I opened the shutters so it gave a little light, and then I began to descend.

The lantern cast a pale yellow glow across the stone and dirt surrounding me. The hole was narrow, almost like a well and my sleeves brushed the sides as I climbed. Above me, the Frost was just an indigo circle against the blackness.

The suffocating sensation of being trapped pressed against my throat like invisible fingers, but I fought the panic down and kept climbing. I was almost there.

Finally, mercifully, my feet touched dirt. I stepped down from the ladder and turned toward the scent of musky air that wafted toward me, betraying some further hollowness ahead.

“Hello?” My voice echoed faintly up the tunnel I’d just descended.

The scuff of a footstep made my hair prickle. I lifted the lantern and fumbled for my knife.

The shadows stirred and formed a human shape. “You made it,” a voice said quietly.

My heartbeat slowed a little as I recognized him. “Adam.”

I stepped away from the ladder, and the light from my lantern illuminated the space—walls of stone and earth, shelves stuffed with books, a rug thrown over a dirt floor. Several black boxes sat on a desk, and I wanted to ask what they were, but I didn’t dare.

The light illuminated his face. “Any sign of Watchers on your way here? Any glimpse of tracks?”

He must have heard about the missing men. Had he worried about me arriving unscathed? I couldn’t tell from his expression.

“None,” I answered, trying to look as unaffected as possible. I allowed myself to glance around at the shadowed corners, the boxes, the dark earthen ceiling and walls. “What is this place?”

“A Thorns meeting place much like the one beneath your barn,” he said, still watching me as if looking for signs of stress or fear.

“It seems…old.”

“They were built long ago. We’ve only adopted them for our use. It is secret, so do not reveal it to anyone else.”

“I won’t.”

The lantern light steeped his face in shadow, making inky pools of his eyes, and it was hard to read his gaze. The intensity in it made me shiver.

“There isn’t much time,” he said, “and I want to keep this brief. Do you swear to follow the orders of your superiors, risk life and limb for the cause of the Thorns, and keep your mouth shut about your secret activities?”

I choked on a laugh. “Is that really the official oath?”

His mouth quirked in a faint smile. “No. But it’s very long, and out here in the Frost we skip most of the formalities.”

“I swear it,” I said. “Wait. Who are my superiors?”

“You should probably ask questions before swearing to things,” Adam said dryly, turning his head to hide another smile. “As to your question, your immediate superior is me.”

“Were you my parents’ superior, too?”

“I was.”

A shiver went through me, a little skitter of feeling that left quiet assurance in its wake. I was literally taking my parents’ place.

“Any more questions?”

I had a thousand questions.

“How many operatives are in the Frost? Is your entire family involved?” I remembered his brother, Abel, joining us the night we took Gabe to the gate.

“That,” he said, “is not your concern. We are not aware of all the others who might be Thorns operatives for purposes of security. That way, if you are caught and tortured, you cannot give away a list of names even if you want to. You know your immediate superior and any operatives below you, should you ever be in that position.”

Tortured
. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. “Does…does it happen a lot? Being caught and tortured, I mean.”

Adam tipped his head to one side as if he were considering whether he wanted to reassure or frighten me with his answer. “Not a lot,” he said finally.

I failed to feel too reassured, however. Officer Raine’s words ran through my mind again. With him, there’d be no torture. Just swift, merciless execution.

I swallowed to ease my suddenly dry throat and pushed on to other thoughts, other questions.

“Will there be many fugitives?” In my mind’s eye I saw the Aeralian children, so thin and bruised.

“Some,” he said. “The ones who make it this far.”

“Did they—are they—?” Hope rose in me, wild and unbidden.

“I sent them through the gate,” he said. “They are safe.”

Safe. Just as I’d promised them. I exhaled as an invisible weight slipped off my shoulders, and my mouth curved in a smile that quickly faded. “Will they be all right where they’ve gone?”

“There are many others who went before them,” he said patiently. “They all go to the same place. The children will be cared for.”

I nodded. Other questions begged to be asked, but I didn’t know how to phrase them. “Where they go, is it…is it nice?”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know where they go. The coordinates were fixed by someone else, and we dare not change them. Without the right coordinates, a traveler could fall off a cliff or into the ocean. They must be mapped carefully.”

I shouldn’t have expected that he would know. Why was I so disappointed? “And they…” I paused. “They can’t come back, can they?”

He said it without emotion, but the words crushed me anyway. “To return requires a second working gate. There is only one still in existence, the one hidden in the deep Frost and guarded by the Watchers.”

Breathing was suddenly impossible. I already knew this, somehow, but hearing the fact spoken so plainly was like being punched in the stomach. I struggled to keep my face expressionless even as my pain spiked through my chest. “I understand.”

“Any other questions?” His voice was gentler this time, as if he could see my pain.

I shook my head and took a deep breath. Life went on. It always went on. That was the way of the Frost.

It should be my way, too.

“What about the Farthers in the village?” I managed. “What about Raine?” Then I told him about the messages the Blackcoats had left on the walls, and the note they’d left for me. Adam listened in silence with a frown of concentration. When I’d finished, he got up and paced.

“We have a very important task right now, one that will draw us away from the village. For now, simply try to lie low and avoid drawing any attention to yourself when it comes to Raine and his soldiers. The Blackcoats may dig their own grave, but we do not have to be mixed up in that.”

A very important task?

But light was beginning to trickle down the ladder and into the room, bathing us in gray and pink and banishing the shadows. Adam went to the well and peered up, gauging the time. “Keep your eyes and ears open in the village, of course. If you ever need to contact me, use the lantern signal as you’ve been doing and leave a message buried beneath it. Come here only in a moment of complete necessity—this location is secret. And prepare yourself. I am going to need your help.”

“When?” Fear and excitement fizzled in my chest.

“Tomorrow. I’ll meet you in the late afternoon. We’ll need the horses. I’ll be behind the barn at the time you normally do your evening chores, waiting for you.”