No. This is not the right time. My fingers relax on my spear.
“Give up. It’s lost,” Dora calls. I watch her. Her interest in the mystery of the wolf that stopped to howl has faded. She’s ready to move on. “You know not to steal from the dead—even from Chev. You’re lucky all you got was a cut on the hand.”
Anki stands, dragging her cut palm across the front of her tunic, leaving a red smear. She sweeps her eyes across the ground at her feet one final time before running off in the direction of her mother, back toward the path.
As their rustling steps fade, I let out a long, silent exhale.
But before they are out of range, Seeri springs up from her hiding place. She stands at her full height, her spear over her shoulder, ready to throw. She takes a few sliding steps and I think she will do it. She is about to release the spear and let it fly into Anki’s back.
But just as quickly, Morsk is on his feet, lunging toward her. In just three steps he is beside her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and tackling her to the ground.
The women look back—they were not so far away that they couldn’t hear them fall. We all hold still, hidden only by the low growth and the deepening shade, Morsk’s huge hand cupped over Seeri’s mouth. Dora and Anki stand and stare over their shoulders, searching for the source of the sound. Finally, when nothing stirs, they turn away.
We watch them recede, picking their way back to the trail, disappearing into the trees. No one moves until their footsteps can no longer be heard.
Then Seeri shoves Morsk away, kicking at him as she climbs to her feet. Pek rushes to her side, his hands on Morsk’s chest, pushing him away from her.
“Why?” she spits. “Why wouldn’t you let me kill her? She admitted to killing Chev—”
“Because he was protecting them,” Kol says, his voice so thin I wonder if I’m the only one who hears it.
But no. Morsk hears. He turns on Kol. He dares to speak in a voice above a whisper.
“I wasn’t protecting them. I was protecting Seeri. Seeri, Mya, your brother, even you.”
“We don’t need your protection.” Pek spits the words, backing Morsk so far away from Seeri, I wonder if he intends to push him off the cliff. But then, with a final shove against his shoulders, Pek leaves him and turns back to Seeri, who is brushing broken bits of needles from the front of her tunic and the knees of her pants.
“If she’d taken the shot—then what?” Morsk asks. “Dora turns and fires her spear. Maybe she hits Seeri. Maybe she misses and hits Mya or you or me. But she would have hit one of us. And that’s assuming Seeri didn’t miss—”
“I never miss,” Seeri snaps.
“It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the best plan,” Morsk says. He walks back to where he’d dropped his own spear on the ground. As he picks it up, Kol begins to rise to his feet beside me, and Seeri pushes the tension a bit further.
“I don’t care what you think,” she says. She walks to me and extends her hand to pull me to my feet. “I only care what my High Elder thinks. Mya?”
As I grip my sister’s hand, I struggle with how to answer. I see the pain in her eyes, the reflection of the pain I feel, too. The urge she’d felt to strike Anki down . . . I’d felt it, too.
And yet, like Morsk, I’d judged it to be the wrong time to attack.
“Just like you, I want revenge,” I start, letting Seeri haul me up. “Whether that was our best opportunity or not, I can’t say. But I promise it won’t be our last.”
There’s more I want to say—to Seeri and to Kol, too. But before I can form the words, a long howl comes from deep within the heart of the island—Black Dog. My eyes meet Kol’s, and I can see he feels the same urgency I feel.
“That’s Noni’s dog,” I say. “He belongs to the girl I left with Lees. We need to go find him.”
Seeri nods, but her eyes slide to Morsk as she shoulders her spear. It’s clear she trusts him no more than Kol does. With Pek in solidarity with his betrothed and his brother, Morsk is without an ally.
Unless I am his ally. Right now, I’m not sure how I feel.
Before Kol walks away, he squats down in front of a thicket of thorns. At first I worry he is getting sick—his skin is still gray, his eyes still dull—but when he straightens, Chev’s knife is in his hand. Relief washes over me at the sight of it. Though it may have been used to kill him, it is still his knife—the work of his own hands—and I would’ve hated to have left it behind.
Kol hands it to Seeri. “Hold on to it,” he says, glancing at Morsk. “You may get a chance to use it.”
For just a moment, anger flares in me, though I’m not sure why. Is it because Kol refuses to trust Morsk, or because he chose to give the knife to Seeri instead of me? It doesn’t matter. I shove the anger down. This is not the time for emotional reactions. I can’t be selfish now. I need to stay focused on our task.
I need to think like a High Elder.
As we move downhill toward the sound of Black Dog’s howls, I notice changes all around us. Off to our left, the chime of water spilling over rocks comes from the stream that feeds the lake. The trees begin to thin, even as the underbrush thickens. A cold breeze whistles past my ears, chilling them. Overhead, a circle of blue appears—the open sky above the lake—ringed by dark green treetops.
And straight through the shade, running straight toward me, is Black Dog.
He jumps against my leg, runs a few paces back the way he came, then circles around and jumps against me again. He wants me to follow.
We move closer to the edge of the trees, and I notice the scent of algae mixing with evergreen, and a sound I had not expected. The roar of falling water.
Sun hits my face as we step out from beneath the trees. Finally Black Dog stops. He runs out ahead of us and looks up, letting out another piercing howl.
Right in front of us lies the lake—an oval stretch of water that reflects the blue and white of the sky. A sharp cliff of black rock rises behind it, and tumbling from its top ledge is a spray of water and light—the waterfall.
Black Dog howls again, and I scan the ridge at the top of the falls and spot two figures seated on the highest ledge. Two figures under the broad sweep of the sun, waving at me.
Lees and Noni.
SEVENTEEN
Lees raises her hands above her head and calls out. “Mya Mya Mya!” Her voice rolls like a wave, a ripple of sound expanding over the trees. “You found us!”
And though relief washes over me at the sight of her, my stomach twists into knots at the sound of her voice. She is loud and she is high in the air, her voice carrying on the breeze, uninterrupted by the trees below.