Winterkill (3 page)

“I should have told someone. I'm sorry.”

“I'm sure you are. And I'm sure you are equally sorry for skipping the Thompson life day ceremony two weeks ago?”

The flush rushes over my entire body, my chest seizes with panic.

“This Waywardness requires penance.”

I nod again, hoping with every inch of me that he doesn't mean—

“Watch on the fortification. Tonight.”

My breath leaves me. “But I don't know how—”

“You will learn. Go to the north quarter. I will alert your father.”

Pa's going to die a thousand deaths over. Being punished for two Wayward acts . . .

Brother Stockham puts a hand under my chin to raise my eyes to his. “Sister Emmeline. Never again. Do you understand?”

I want to answer, but my mouth is dry. I blink. Pa's sad eyes fade in my mind because there's something curious about the way Brother Stockham is touching me—is looking at me. He drops my chin and steps past, heading in the direction of our quarters.

A strange feeling shoots through me. Brother Stockham was irate, but there was something right gentle about his touch. I shiver. Then I remember Kane and hope he had the good grace to excuse himself from my tongue-lashing. I pivot and find nothing's going right.

Kane is still there, and his jaw is hanging open. “Why would you do that?”

For an addled moment I don't know if he means skip a life day ceremony or ponder Brother Stockham's touch.

“Two Wayward acts in two weeks?” There's something in his eyes that doesn't quite match his words. Like he's horrified
and
having a laugh at me. “You got a death wish?”

My temper flares. The only reason he knows about my Waywardness is because he's toying with it himself—waylaying me before Dark!

“No,” I retort. “Just rather do Watch than work in Storages with the likes of you.”

I spin on my heel and stride away before he can answer, trying to feel satisfied with the look of shock on his face. But around the corner of the weapons shack, I stop and wrap my arms close, angry tears biting my eyes. My heart leapt when he talked about us working together. Did I think for a moment that he wanted to spend time with me? He was probably sent to talk to me on a dare. His age-mates will have a good laugh now.

I stamp my bad foot hard on the earth, then clench my jaw and scrub my sleeve across my eyes, turning toward the north quarter. I'm still dreading Watch, but the humiliation burning in my body distracts me, dulling my fear.

Thank Almighty for that.

THE NIGHT AIR IS HEAVY WITH THE BITE OF
autumn. I shift my weight off my bad foot slow, hoping Frère Andre won't notice me favor it.

We stand together on the fortification wall, my body a crushed sapling next to this hardened oak of a man. His beard lies in a wiry gray mass on his chest and his brimmed hat is battered. I think he's even older than my pa, but I don't ask. He's the senior Watcher, and surely not someone who wants to entertain foolish questions.

He has a spyglass and is scouring the torches that form a border about a hundred strides outside the high walls. They light the field surrounding the fortification, and each Watch post surveys a portion of the border. We're watching the west side of the fort, which faces the woods and the soft shadows of the coulees—the low, dry hills—beyond.

Andre's spyglass is for scanning the distance; I'm meant to watch along the walls with my naked eye. All of this I learned from Andre in a mix of broken English and quick
French in our first moments together. He hasn't spoken to me since, and I know it's not just because he's busy watching for the
malmaci
.

The sun set long ago, wild-rose pink bleeding out onto a bruise of swollen cloud hanging low on the hills. I've only ever seen the sky change colors from the courtyard, before we head inside until morning. Never seen the sunset from the walls before, never seen that big orange sun dip low and spread its golden rivers along the coulees, all through the cracks and valleys. My secret heart felt real full, looking on that.

Now, tendrils of mist curl across the flats toward us and my heart is tight. I can picture the river nearby steaming, releasing the day's heat into the cold night. The river, which winds along the east side of the fort, is flanked on the far side by steep earth walls that end with grassy plains as far as the eye can see. Those cliffs, pockmarked with tufts of scrub and sage, have deep cracks running down them like tear stains. Like the hills have been crying for thousands of years.

The coulees I'm watching are shadows now, but they have the same sad creases. Pockets of scrubby brush and poplars are huddled in their ravines, and tall spruce trees dot the low hills beyond. I gather for Soeur Manon in the first line of brush, where the Watcher in the tower can see me. A Taking in the day is rare, but it's Wayward to wander too far. It's also Wayward to miss important events such as life day ceremonies . . . Bleed it! Why did I get in my daydreaming way at the river that day?

I glance about the top of the fortification. The Watchers
on the far wall are small, dark shapes—the size of June beetles from here.

All of the Watchers are born into the north quarter, and I suspect they choose to stay and learn Watch as a matter of pride. Their rations are better in the north than in the rest of the quarters too, which is added reason to stay put.

Punishment with Watch is another story. It means doing the dangerous job without getting any reward for risking your neck. Proving my Bravery virtue tonight isn't a choice, because I failed in other ways. Even so, I can't help but wonder if the north quarter doesn't feel a mite insulted that my punishment is a turn doing their regular job.

I'm not about to ask Andre and get some cranky reply.

He's busy with the dark ritual now anyhow, staring through that spyglass and crossing himself with the other hand, muttering,
“Je suis Honnêteté. Je suis Courage. Je suis Découverte.”

I copy him in a half-whisper, crossing myself, my gaze tracing over the bare wood walls.
I am Honesty. I am Bravery. I am Discovery.

Pa says by now we should all speak English and French perfect. We can't, so we're either stubborn as laying hens or clinging to our birth tongues because we're scared they're going to be taken from us, like everything else. We are a mélange—a mix—of three peoples trying desperate-like to get on together without losing ourselves. Most in the north quarter come from an Old World kingdom that spoke French. The east and west quarters have their roots in an English kingdom. The south are a mélange themselves, of French and First Peoples from the east—they're the only
ones who speak both French and English well, and I've heard First Peoples' words in their speech too.

Pa says when we arrived there were also three religions, but the ungodliness of the
malmaci
banded people together in one understanding of the Almighty, and of how the virtues can keep us safe.

Pa. I'm grateful Brother Stockham sent me straight to Watch, that I didn't have to tell Pa myself and see that worry—that disappointment—in his eyes. I see it enough as it is.

A flicker of movement in the courtyard catches my eye. It's two Councilmen moving along the east wall, wearing their long, dark cloaks. Couldn't be anyone else; only Watch and Council would be outside after dark. I turn my eyes back to the bare walls, thankful they can't see who I am from this distance. I don't need them wandering over and fixing their stares on me. The fortification is big: everything of value—sheep, chickens, even the gardens—is kept inside the walls, and it takes me several minutes to walk one end to the other. But it never feels so small, so stifling, as when Council is around.

I shift, wriggling the toes on my good foot to keep them from freezing up. Andre is quiet, focusing on the woods. Watching, watching.

Some whisper the
malmaci
is half man, half bear—a nightmare mishmash of two creatures that destroys trespassers on its land. Others say it's a spirit, drifting on the night air like a death wind.

No one really knows, so we are watching for a
bête
or
fantôme
of some kind—although to my thinking, there's a
world of difference between a beast and a ghost. Andre's rifle might do some damage to a beast; an apparition seems pretty bulletproof.

Course I don't get a gun. All the weapons are under lock and key, given to particular people at particular times, and the weapons shack key is hanging from Frère Andre's
ceinture fléchée
—the long woven sash we all wear and use for everything from wiping sweat to hauling things. Not even Councilmen carry weapons to enforce the law; Brother Stockham says common sense during conflict is better than a bullet. But I suspect it has more to do with the fact that bullets are so valuable he can't risk just anyone having their hands on them.

The woods beyond the Watch flats are silent and still. The ring of torches lights the first trees with a soft glow, but the shadows beneath the lowest branches are raven black. I risk a glance upward, away from the walls, hoping to see the stars now that dark has full fallen, but only a few are glimmering through the cloud cover.

Soeur Manon told me when she was a girl she saw them one night and there were so many it was as though
“Dieu répandit un peu d'argent sur un grande tissu noir”
: the Almighty had sprinkled tiny bits of silver upon a huge black cloth. I wonder if Soeur Manon saw them because she was forced to Watch. Wish the sky wasn't so cloudy.

I sigh and turn my eyes back to the walls—these looming walls standing at attention, keeping us safe from whatever lurks beyond. I watch and watch, until my toes are near frozen through my moccasins. By and by, despite the dark, it all
becomes a mite deadbore. The backward part of me starts to hope something will happen. That we'll see
something.

And then I've willed it upon us, because Andre sucks in his breath.

“Maudite,”
he curses in a whisper, his eye not leaving the spyglass. He points with a steady hand into the distance. I squint.

I see nothing outside the torch-lit ring but the brush. But there must be something, because I hear Andre bring the rifle to his shoulder with his free hand. My heart skips into my throat. He'll need to drop the spyglass to get a shot off. I scan the surrounding brush looking for movement.

There!
There
is
something out there. It's slinking along the shadows, just outside the half circle of light. It's big—on all fours or two? When I fix my eyes on it, it stops dead, blending quick as a blink into the black of the woods. There's a pause where all I hear is my heart hammering in my ears.

It darts to the next tree, quiet and quick. It's on all fours—dark, but somehow shimmering in the moonlight . . .

I tear my eyes away and force my tongue to work. “What do we do?”

Frère Andre's face is grim. He brings the rifle to his eye and leans into it, training the barrel on the outskirts of the torchlight. The directive is calm, but I can see that his breath is coming fast.
“Sonnez la cloche.”

Ring the bell?

He jerks his head toward the Watchtower that stands six strides down the wall from us. There's a door facing us—the bell must be inside.

I push off my bad foot by mistake, but the shooting pain is swallowed by my fear. I run, asking the Almighty for steady steps. The
malmaci'
s never breached our walls; I can't be the reason it succeeds tonight. At the door my fingers scramble along the handle and I haul it open, feeling a slight give in the muscles under my shoulder blade.

Inside a single torch burns and a thick waxed rope hangs in the center of the circular room. I lurch forward, grab hold, and heave with all my might. The rope doesn't move. The dark cavern above me that houses the bell is silent, undisturbed.

I brace myself, ignoring the fire shooting through my leg, and heave again. My sweat-slicked hands slip, burning along the rough fibers. And then the right idiocy of this plan—sending the cripple to sound the alarm—makes me want to laugh.

Have I lost my senses?

I wipe my palms on my cloak, grasp the rope, and am about to heave again when something crashes into the room behind me.

“Arrête!”
It's Andre.
“Soeur Emmeline, arrête!”

I spin.

His eyes are wide, but one hand reaches toward me in a soothing, slow-down gesture. The other holds the rifle at his side.
“Ne le sonnez pas.”

Don't ring it. “Why not?”

“Mistake,” he says.

Mistake? But I saw . . . I saw . . . I pause, thinking hard. That dark form slinking along the shadows.

“What was it?”

“Un loup.”
He shrugs, looking sheepish.
“Ce n'était pas un fantôme.”