“Their hunting range is the Bosha’s hunting range. Their bay is the Bosha’s bay. They have no right to any of it, and the Divine has chosen this day for it to be reclaimed.”
I step sideways out of a small beam of light that falls from a gap in the hides above our heads. Finally, Lo’s face is lit enough that I can see her features. They are dressed in sharp intensity: the line between her eyes has returned, and her taut lips are as pale and bloodless as bone.
A sound comes from the hill above the camp, a voice calling out—a name perhaps? Or maybe a word.
Another voice answers and then another.
They each call out the same word. With repetition it becomes clear.
Ready.
One after the other, voice after voice repeats: ready, ready, ready.
Ready for what?
The answer doesn’t take long. A sound starts at the crest of the hill but gets closer, louder, stronger—the rhythm of running feet. Another sound mixes in—something dragging across the ground.
I push past Lo to look out the door, just in time to see at least ten of Lo’s clanspeople scrambling down the hill from the clearing, pushing newly built kayaks to the sea.
“It’s begun,” Lo says.
“What—”
Lo comes up behind me, her fingers wrapping around my wrist. When she answers, her words come from right behind my ear. “They do not have to go far. We know that Chev is in your camp—he and his whole family. The process of reclaiming what is ours has begun.”
I turn quickly, and the twisted sneer on Lo’s lips is like a confession. “It’s too late,” she says. “It’s too late to save them from their destruction.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Her last few words set off a loud ringing in my ears. The room grows dark a moment and then brightens again, lit by an unnatural golden glow independent of the sunlight that bleeds in from outside. Lo’s face, illuminated by this eerie gleam, appears so calm, so lovely. She cannot have said the words I thought I heard.
The ringing in my ears begins to fade, and as it does, the sound of kayaks splashing into the sea rises from the beach, mixing with the calls of gulls, circling, shouting out a warning.
“Where are they going?”
“I told you. The tyranny of a false leader, the wedge dividing a clan—they go to remove these things.” Lo’s voice is oddly changed—controlled, detached, rhythmic, like the voice of Shava’s mother—a storyteller’s voice. “When their orders have been carried out, the so-called Olen clan will be no more. We will again be one clan, and we will again be strong.” There is no conflict in her eyes, no hesitation in her voice.
“Their orders are to remove a false leader?”
“Their orders are to end Chev’s tyranny—to end the tyranny of his entire family.”
“By what means?”
Lo lets out a faint sigh. “I’m sure you already know.”
She smiles at me now, and her eyes invite me to smile back. She wants my complicity. Worse, I can see she thinks she will get it.
“You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can! Death will be repaid with death—it’s what they deserve!” And there it is—a sudden flash like lightning splitting the night sky—the hatred Shava described. The hatred I would not believe in. A bright white flash of rage—fleeting—but in its light everything comes into view. With crisp clarity, the true shapes of things are shown.
I don’t waste time with a reply—I push past her. I’m out the door before she can react, running as fast as my legs will move. The path to the shore is steep and uneven and my feet slide on loose rocks. More than once they nearly go out from under me, but I keep running and never slow down.
I only dare lift my eyes from the ground right in front of my feet a few times, but even so, it doesn’t take long for me to realize my kayak is gone. The spot where I pulled the boat up onto the shore is empty, marked by a telltale rut in the sand leading back to the water’s edge.
Of course they would take it. Without it, I have no way to pursue them across the bay.
Out on the water, I see the black silhouettes of Lo’s followers as they head east toward the sun, toward the eastern shore, toward my own clan’s camp.
The overland route that I hiked with Lo yesterday is to my left. It will take me much longer than the water route, but I have no choice. I scan the edge of the trees that conceal the trail up the mountains. My empty hand twitches—I think of my spear, tucked inside my kayak’s hull.
I allow myself one last glance at the silhouettes receding across the bay before sprinting off toward the trees.