“I left them sleeping—”
“We saw your camp on the beach,” Kol says. “But we saw you heading up the trail to the cliff. We assumed you and Lees were together, so we followed.”
“When we couldn’t find you right away, we split up,” says Seeri. “Kol was lucky enough to find you—and the bear—before the rest of us.”
I want to scold Seeri for making light of the bear attack, but Kol smiles. “Seeri and Pek are not leaving me alone again,” he teases. “I’ll take them with me to check on the girls. You take a little time to talk to your brother.”
Kol says these words in the same offhand way he spoke of the dead bear. But I know these words are bigger than that. Kol can play down the significance of what I need to talk to my brother about, but it doesn’t change anything. This conversation will have an impact on the future of both clans. We all know that.
I walk to Kol’s side, brushing his hair from his forehead, looking for the wound he got from the bear. He steps back, out of my reach, and smooths his hair back down. “It’s healing,” he says, but I notice my hand is smeared with blood where I touched him. I show the red streaks to Kol. “Head wounds bleed, Mya. I feel fine.” He winks, as if that proves something.
“When you get to Lees, show that wound to Noni, the girl who’s with her. She’ll know how to dress it.”
One corner of Kol’s mouth curls up. “Don’t worry about me—”
“Promise you’ll show her—”
“All right. I promise.”
So I let them go. Dread flickers through me as Kol’s face turns away . . . as his head swivels toward the path behind him . . . but still, I let him go. It’s strange how the separation of just a few days has taught my heart what matters. Has taught me what to fear. But I know he won’t be far, and he won’t be away from me long.
My brother calls after them, “Keep an eye out for bears,” and I think this might be a moment of levity from Chev, as close to teasing as he comes.
“And you keep an eye out for Morsk,” Kol calls back over his shoulder. Before I can ask what he means, Kol, Seeri, and Pek disappear around the curve of the path.
“Morsk?” I say, tilting my head to look at my brother.
“Noni?” he says in reply.
I study my brother’s expression—his hard mouth and set jaw, but also his sunken cheeks and tired eyes—and I see that there is more here than his stubborn refusal to answer me before I answer him. There is also the reluctance to admit that I don’t have to answer him. That he can’t force me to answer.
“Noni is a girl we met on the island,” I finally say. “She came here with her mother, but her mother died.” Chev’s eyes widen. I want to tell him about Noni’s father, to ask if he saw the clan on the shore, but I don’t. There are other things to talk about first. More important things. “And what about Morsk?” I ask, my thoughts turning to his proposition in my family’s hut. The memory of the way he stood too close, the way he blocked my path to the door, sends a flush of anger across my skin.
My brother shakes his head. “Come sit with me. I have something to say.” He leads me back up the path to the overhanging rock, but he doesn’t stop to look over the water. He slips under the cover of shade, steps off the path, and drops down onto the forest floor. The sun, much higher in the sky now than when I passed through here this morning, paints splashes of gold in a pattern on the ground. Chev sits in a circle of light and I sit opposite him, in shadow.
“It’s a bold act, to leave your clan. It’s a bold act that sends a bold message.”
“I know.”
“But what you did was even more than that, Mya. You didn’t just leave your clan and your High Elder. You left your family and your brother. I understand you were angry at the decision I made, but you left without even speaking to me about it. I had to hear about it from your betrothed. I wanted to talk to you—to talk to Lees—but you were already gone.”
“But Chev,” I start, my voice a bit too high and a bit too loud, “talking doesn’t always work with you. Sometimes only action is effective in getting you to listen.”
Chev takes out his knife and digs a circle in the dirt. “And you thought this action—leaving your clan and family, even your betrothed—would be effective at changing your High Elder’s mind?”
“I’d hoped,” I say. “But it wasn’t just that.” I don’t want Chev to see my actions as nothing more than manipulation. To see Lees’s actions as nothing more than running away. “We were prepared to do whatever it took to give Lees her own choice. Even if it meant never going back.”
Chev raises his eyes at these words. “Would you have done that? Stayed away for good?”
And with these words, I know we’ve won. He doesn’t ask if we will do this. He asks if we would have. If we’d had to. If he hadn’t changed his mind.
“Never mind. Don’t answer. I know you would have. I guess that’s why I’m here.”
Sitting here in this broken, fragmented light, I feel the history of my life with my brother—the broken, fragmented life I’ve spent beside him—wrap around us in the same gold warmth. Patches of warmth. Memories in pieces. Warm, but broken. If we try to hold them and make them whole, they flicker and stir like the light on these leaves.
“So . . . Morsk?” I ask when the silence stretches too long. “Kol said to keep an eye?”
“He followed us here.” At these words, I rise up on one knee and my head turns back toward the path. “Don’t worry. There’s no threat—nothing to be concerned about. But I told him. I said that Lees would not be marrying him. And he became . . . upset.” Chev pauses for a moment. “I told him you wouldn’t be marrying him either.”
At this, I sit back down, giving him my full attention again. “So you knew—”
“No. I swear I didn’t know he was thinking about you at all. I certainly didn’t know he had talked to you. But Kol told me. He was furious. . . .”
I can’t help but allow myself one small moment to think of this—to imagine Kol, my betrothed, confronting Chev on my behalf. I imagine his anger. I hear his words, telling him he will not honor an alliance with a clan whose High Elder goes back on his word.
“So Morsk followed you here?” I ask, forcing my thoughts back to the present.
“We were followed. The canoe stayed too far back to see clearly, but it could only have been Morsk. He’s the only one we spoke to about where we were going.”
I pick up my spear from the spot where I dropped it on the ground, but my brother shakes his head. “I’m not expecting trouble from him, though I can’t help but wonder why he came. I know he isn’t pleased to lose. He thinks I’m making a mistake—weakening the clan by forging ties with the Manu. He may have followed to confront me. To try to change my mind before I can make an announcement to the clan.”