“Toraf is foolish!”
Toraf has been their best friend since birth—that is, until he recently made his intentions toward Rayna clear. At least he had the good sense to hide out and wait for her death threats to subside. But now she gives him something worse than threats—complete indifference. No amount of pleading or coaxing from Toraf has thawed her. But since she turned twenty this spring—two years past the normal age of mating—Father couldn’t find a good reason not to agree to the match. Toraf is a good candidate, and the decision is made, whether Rayna chooses to ignore it or not.
“I’m starting to think you’re right. Who would want to attach himself to a wild animal?” Galen says, grinning.
“I’m not a wild animal! You’re the one who isolates yourself from everyone, choosing the company of humans over your own kind.”
“It’s my responsibility.”
“Because you asked for it!”
This is true. Galen, stealing an old human saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, asked his older brother, Grom, for permission to serve as an ambassador of sorts to the humans. Grom, being the next in line for kingship, agreed with the need to be cautious about the land dwellers. He granted Galen exclusive immunity to the law prohibiting interaction with humans, recognizing that some communication would be necessary and for the greater good. “Because no one else would. Someone has to watch them. Are we really having this conversation again?” Galen says.
“You started it.”
“I don’t have time for this. Are you staying or going?”
She crosses her arms, juts out her bottom lip. “Well, what are you planning to do? I say we arrest her.”
“We?”
“You know what I mean.”
He shrugs. “I guess we’ll follow her for a while. Watch her.”
Rayna starts to say something but gasps instead. “Maybe we won’t have to,” she whispers, eyes big as sand dollars.
He follows her line of sight to the water, to a dark shadow pacing beneath the waves where the girls share the surfboard. He curses under his breath.
Shark.
There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls.
It’s been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home. “Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.”
In those black days, on the edge of these very woods, there lived a girl named Nadya and her brother Havel, the children of Maxim Grushov, a carpenter and woodcutter. Maxim was a good man, well liked in the village. He made roofs that did not leak or bend, sturdy chairs, toys when they were called for, and his clever hands could fashion edges so smooth and fasten joints so neatly you might never find the seam. He traveled all over the countryside seeking work, to towns as far as Ryevost. He went by foot and by hay cart when the weather was kind, and in the winter, he hitched his two black horses to a sledge, kissed his children, and set out in the snow. Always he returned home to them, carrying bags of grain or a new bolt of wool, his pockets stuffed with candy for Nadya and her brother.
But when the famine came, people had no coin and nothing to trade for a prettily carved table or a wooden duck. They used their furniture for kindling and prayed they would make it through to spring. Maxim was forced to sell his horses, and then the sledge they'd once pulled over the snow-blanketed roads.
As Maxim’s luck faded, so did his wife. Soon she was more ghost than woman, drifting silently from room to room. Nadya tried to get her mother to eat what little food they had, giving up portions of turnip and potato, bundling her mother’s frail body in shawls and seating her on the porch in the hope that the fresh air might return some appetite to her. The only thing she seemed to crave were little cakes made by the widow Karina Stoyanova, scented with orange blossom and thick with icing. Where Karina got the sugar, no one knew—though the old women had their theories, most of which involved a rich and lonely tradesman from the river cities. But eventually, even Karina’s supplies dwindled, and when the little cakes were gone Nadya’s mother would touch neither food nor drink, not even the smallest sip of tea.