Come on now! her mind mocked. Is Row any better?
No, but Row knew he was worse, harbored no illusions about himself. That made a huge difference. Row might be unkind, but Gavin was a fool. He didn’t even like to read.
Tear, Aunt Maddy, and Mum left the clearing, heading west, back up toward town. Mum nodded to Katie as they went, a subtle signal that Katie had done well today. Gavin, Howell, Alain, and Morgan disappeared into the trees, heading eastward, around the hill and south, down to the cattle farm. Jess went downhill, toward the lumber site, and Virginia followed; she was part of a large group that was just beginning to explore and map the vast land outside the Town—Tear’s Land, they were calling it now, though Katie knew from Mum that William Tear didn’t like that at all. They all had apprenticeships to camouflage these sessions; even Jonathan Tear had a day job, working at the dairy. But no apprenticeship could match Tear’s lessons. He was teaching them to fight, but that was only half of it. In some indefinable way, Katie felt that Tear was also teaching them, not by word but by example, to be better. Better people, better members of the community. During their sessions, Row’s voice was still present in Katie’s head, but muted. In Row’s world, Alain would have been booted a long time ago, but Row’s ideas of exceptionalism, his dog-eat-dog vision of the world, these things seemed to have no place in this clearing.
Katie waited a minute before she got up, brushing the prickly grass from the bottom of her pants. She could afford to be a bit late to the sheep farm; she worked hard, and Mr. Lynn, who was in charge of the spinners and dyers, thought she practically walked on water. She could probably ditch for a week before he would say something.
Across the clearing, Jonathan Tear was still sitting on the ground, staring straight ahead. His face was clouded and dull, almost sleepy, and Katie walked away, leaving him alone; Jonathan was so damned weird! Even in a community that valued individuals, Katie wasn’t sure what place Jonathan held. He was his father’s son, and that could have given him a great status, but Jonathan would accept none of the adulation the Town longed to shower upon him; he didn’t seem to know how to handle it. He spent all of his free time in the library, curled up with a pile of books in a dark recess on the second floor. Even in their practice sessions, Jonathan was isolated, shut out of the jocular familiarity that the rest of them enjoyed, that happy sense of group-elite that defined them. He was odd, simply odd, and Katie’s first impulse was to simply leave him alone.
But as she reached the edge of the clearing, her steps slowed until she came to a halt. Mum’s voice was in her head, the voice of Katie’s childhood, the voice that said when you saw your neighbor in trouble, no matter how much you disliked him or disagreed with him, you stopped. You helped.
Jonathan Tear didn’t look at all well.
With an exasperated sigh, Katie turned and marched back to him.
“Are you all right?”
Jonathan didn’t answer, merely kept staring straight ahead. Katie squatted down on her haunches and stared at his face, realizing that the look she had mistaken for dullness was really fixation, as though Jonathan saw something in the distance. Katie looked behind her, but there was only the wall of trees on the far end of the clearing.
“Jonathan?”
She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, but he didn’t blink. His pupils were dilated, and Katie wondered if he was having an attack of some kind, if she should call someone. But the rest of the group had disappeared. Even the sounds of their passage had gone, and there was only the melody of the woods, birdsong and the low rustle of the tree branches as early afternoon wind sighed through their leaves.
Slowly, hesitantly, Katie reached out and placed her hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. He jumped, but his pupils did not contract, and when he turned to look at her, his gaze was just as blank and distant as before, staring straight through her, making Katie shudder.
“It’s gone bad,” he whispered. “Bad town, bad land. You and me, Katie. You, me, and a knife.”
At the last word, Katie jumped, her hand reaching automatically for the knife at her waist. Jonathan reached out and grasped her wrist with ice-cold fingers, the edges of his mouth lifting in a ghastly grin.
“We tried, Katie,” he whispered. “We did our best.”
With a low cry, she tore her wrist free. Jonathan blinked, his pupils contracting in the sun-dappled light. He stared at her, brow furrowed.
“Katie?”
She scooted backward. Her heart was still racing, and she didn’t want to be so close to him. She felt danger coming from him, radiating off him, almost like heat.
“You were dreaming,” she ventured.