The Poison Season(6)

Rosalie snatched at her daughter’s sleeve. “Stop this nonsense, Isola! You know he can’t stay. What were you thinking?”

But Isola pulled free and ran after him, stumbling barefoot in the mud. “Pieter! Come back!”

Pieter. Now Leelo recognized him, though he’d been only a little older than Tate the last time she’d seen him. His father was a painter, and his mother sometimes bought Ketty’s wool to make the warm felted boots they wore in winter. But beyond that, Leelo couldn’t remember much about the boy, other than that he was incantu. What was he doing back on Endla?

“Come on,” Sage said, yanking Leelo behind her.

Rosalie was following her daughter at a rapid clip, but she didn’t run. She had to know Pieter would only make it so far. “Get your family,” she called to Leelo and Sage over her shoulder. “There’s going to be a drowning.”

Leelo gasped, but Sage’s expression was strangely intent as they ran back to the house. What had Isola been thinking? Leelo knew she would want to see Tate after he left, but she would never allow him to risk his life by coming back to Endla. And Pieter wasn’t family, just a former friend who had somehow become something more.

When they reached the house, the girls pulled off their muddy boots before going inside. Sage paused to warm her hands by the stove for a moment as she hollered for her mother. “Hurry up!” she shouted. “There’s going to be a drowning!”

Leelo’s stomach twisted at the echoed phrase. She had always been too sensitive, according to Aunt Ketty. Whenever a lamb was slaughtered for their summer festival, Leelo didn’t have the heart to eat it. It wasn’t the sight of blood that made her vision tunnel and her knees grow weak; it was the thought of anything enduring that much fear and pain. And while she knew a drowning wasn’t a slaughter, exactly, that Pieter had chosen his own fate, he was nevertheless going to suffer greatly.

Ketty came in from the yard, where she’d been chopping firewood. She had the same auburn hair and hazel eyes as Leelo’s mother and Sage, while Leelo had her father’s silvery blond hair and blue eyes. Tate didn’t look like any of them. Her mother said he resembled their grandfather, who had died before Leelo was born.

“A drowning?” Ketty asked, hanging her apron on a hook near the door. “Are you sure?”

Sage nodded. “It’s Pieter Thomason. He was in Isola’s house. He must have come across the ice and hidden all winter. Isola’s mother chased him into the woods.”

Ketty sucked in a breath. “Poor Rosalie. This will be a lasting shame on her family.”

Leelo had never heard of an incantu returning to Endla, and she wondered how this differed from an outsider trespassing. But unlike her aunt, Leelo wasn’t thinking of Rosalie. She was thinking of Isola and, more importantly, Pieter.

Ketty shook her head, muttering to herself. “Best get Fiona. She’s upstairs resting.”

“I’m awake.” Leelo’s mother came down the stairs on unsteady legs, leaning heavily on the wooden banister. She had been weak and tired often lately, though she promised she was fine. Leelo had helped her with the weaving and embroidery before she became a Watcher, but now Fiona had to do all that work herself. “Pieter Thomason, you say?”

Leelo took her mother’s arm and helped her into a chair by the fire. “We can stay here, if you’re not feeling well enough.”

“Everyone has to attend,” Ketty said. “You know that.”

“Mama?” Leelo crouched down next to her mother. “I don’t mind staying.”

“I don’t think I have the strength for it,” Fiona said to Ketty.

“Exactly why you should come, sister. The singing will help bolster you.”

Fiona frowned and rubbed her temples. “My head is pounding. I’ll try to follow, but you should go ahead, Leelo.” Her mother’s voice was soft with compassion, though she looked troubled. “That poor boy. And his parents. I wonder if they know.”

Leelo bit at the jagged edge of a fingernail. Her mother understood how much Leelo hated the drownings, but she had missed the last one, when a man who claimed to be lost in a snowstorm was found by a pair of Watchers on their first day of duty. He had been given the same choice as everyone else, and Leelo had been surprised when he chose the Forest. In the winter, there was at least a chance of making it across the ice. But the Forest would no sooner tolerate an outsider than a dog would a flea. The man had been crushed by a falling tree within minutes of his release.

Leelo’s repeated absence would be noticed. Besides, drownings were important to Endla. They were a reminder of how precious this place was and how vital it was they protect it at all costs. Only the incantu were spared from these occasions, as they weren’t considered true Endlans.

Despite the food and shelter the Wandering Forest provided, outsiders believed it was evil, as Aunt Ketty had explained a hundred times. That’s how outsiders are. If they don’t understand something, like the Forest, they have to destroy it. Anything that doesn’t function the way they decide it should doesn’t deserve to live in their eyes.

That was why all the other Wandering Forests had been chopped down or burned by outsiders and why it was so vital no harm should come to Endla. Pieter wasn’t an outsider, of course, and he likely had no intention of harming the Wandering Forest. But if he could come across the frozen lake so easily and remain hidden, what was to stop an outsider from doing the same?