The Grace Year Read online

  “Drink this,” he says, pouring a cup of steaming broth from a kettle.

  My eyes widen. “I thought I couldn’t have any more—”

  “It’s yarrow. It won’t ease the pain, but it might help with the fever.”

  Sipping the broth, I try to forget about the pain nagging at my shoulder and think of anything else, but my thoughts keep coming back to my family. A different kind of pain. My little sisters. I bet they’re worried sick about me, worried about what will happen to them if my body goes unaccounted for.

  “If I die … promise you’ll skin me,” I say, swallowing the bitter liquid. “Give me an honorable death, so my sisters won’t be punished.”

  “Of course,” he says without the slightest hesitation.

  “Of course?” I try to raise my head. “Can’t you even say, Hey, don’t talk like that. I’m sure you’re going to make it?”

  “I’m used to speaking my mind.” He sets the cup on the table. “I say what I mean.”

  “What a luxury that must be.” I laugh as I settle further back in the pelts, but it’s not at all funny. “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  I try to focus on him, but I can feel the fever taking over. “In the county, there’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind. That’s what happened to Eve, you know, why we were cast out from heaven. We’re dangerous creatures. Full of devil charms. If given the opportunity, we will use our magic to lure men to sin, to evil, to destruction.” My eyes are getting heavy, too heavy to roll in a dramatic fashion. “That’s why they send us here.”

  “To rid yourself of your magic,” he says.

  “No,” I whisper as I drift off to sleep. “To break us.”

  A shrill caw in the distance jars me awake.

  Ryker reaches for his knife belt and then stops, sinking back into the shadows.

  “Aren’t you going?” I ask.

  “It’s too far away. The call is coming all the way from the northwest.”

  That may be true, but I want to believe it’s more than the distance, that maybe he’s starting to see us in a different light.

  As he tends to the fire, my eyes veer toward the glass bottles lined up on the table, set there like a constant reminder.

  “How can you do it?” I ask, a dry hollow sound to my voice. “Kill innocent girls?”

  “Innocent?” He looks back at me, staring pointedly at my shoulder. “No one is innocent in this. You of all people should know that.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Accident or not, you have no idea what they’re capable of. The curse. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” As he stokes the fire, his shoulders begin to relax. “Besides, nothing in this world is cut and dried. From death there is life … that’s what my mother always says,” he adds quietly.

  “You have family?” I ask. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that poachers would have feelings … a life before all of this.

  He starts to speak but then clenches his jaw tight.

  “Look, I don’t want to be here just as much as you don’t want me here. I’m only trying to pass the time.”

  He remains silent.

  I let out a huff of air. “Fine.”

  “I have a mother. Six sisters,” he says, staring up at the figurines on the hearth.

  I count them. There are seven in all. I thought they represented the girls he’d killed, but now I’m thinking they might be his family.

  “Six sisters?” I ask, trying to adjust my body so I can see better, but I’m still too weak. “I didn’t think women of the outskirts had that many children.”

  “They don’t.” He sets the kettle over the flames. “They’re not blood.” He glances back at me but doesn’t meet my eyes. “My mother … she takes in the young ones. The ones no one wants.”

  I’m trying to figure out what he means when the thought hits me right in the throat, making me choke on my own words. “Girls from the county? The girls who get banished?”

  He stares into the flames, his eyes a million miles away. “Some of them are so traumatized they don’t speak for months. At first, I hated them, I didn’t understand, but I don’t think about them that way anymore.”

  “As prey?” I ask, my voice trembling with anger … fear. “And still you poach us?”

  “We’re not poaching anything,” he snaps. “We’ve been sanctioned to cull the herd, paid handsomely to deliver your flesh back to the county. Your fathers, brothers, husbands, mothers, sisters … they are the ones who consume you. Not us.”

  A sick feeling rushes through my entire body, making my eyes water. “I had no idea it was the county who did this.”

  “If I leave, if I don’t take my place as a poacher, my family won’t get my pay … they’ll starve. And thanks to the county, I have a lot of mouths to feed.”

  “Who pays you?” I ask, trying to get control of my breath … my reeling thoughts.

  “The same people who send you here,” he says, pouring a steaming cup of broth. “On the final day of our hunting season, we line up outside the gate. Those who return empty-handed get just enough so our families can survive. Those who have prey present their kill. The bottles are counted, the brand verified. If it’s healthy, properly rendered, they get a sack full of gold, enough to take their families west … leave this place for good.”

  “But there’s nothing out there … nothing but death.”

  “Or maybe that’s what they want us to believe,” he says, barely above a whisper, as he lifts my head, helping me drink.

  Another caw rings out over the woods, closer this time, making my skin prickle.

  “How do they do it?” I ask, staring toward the doorway. “How do they lure the girls out of the encampment? Is it skill … brute force … the power of persuasion?”

  Ryker sets down the broth. “We don’t have to do anything.” His gaze settles on my wound. “They do it to themselves. To each other.”

  His words feel like an axe, cutting me all over again.

  “Have you ever killed a grace year girl?” I whisper, afraid of the answer, afraid not to ask.

  “Almost,” he says, pulling the pelts up, gently tucking me in. “But I’m glad I didn’t.”

  “You’re burning up,” he says, pressing a cool rag to my forehead.

  Prying my eyes open, I’m struggling to focus on him, to focus on anything. A dull clanking noise pulls my attention.

  “What’s that sound?” I whisper.

  “The wind.”

  “The other sound. I’ve heard it before.”

  “The chimes?” he asks.

  I let out a deep shiver. “I don’t remember wind chimes sounding like that.”

  “They’re made from bones.”

  “Why?” I ask, trying to keep my eyes open.

  “Anders … he likes to make things with bones.”

  I think I heard him correctly, but I can’t be sure of anything anymore.

  I reach for the cloth draped over his mouth. “I need to see your face,” I say through my chattering teeth.

  He stops me, tucking my arm back under the pelts. “It’s better this way.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me … how I’ll react,” I say. “I’ve seen all kinds of deformities. My father has a book—”

  “It’s not that.” He lowers his eyes. “It’s forbidden.”

  “Why?” I try to wet my lips, but they only seem to crack open with the effort.

  “Without our shrouds,” he replies, glancing up at me through his dark lashes, “we’d have no protection from your magic.”

  “I told you, I have no magic.” Once again, I reach for the gauzy fabric.

  “You’re wrong,” he says, folding my outstretched fingers back into my sweaty palm. “You have more than you know.”

  There’s something about his words, the way he says them, that makes me flustered; an unfamiliar heat rises to my cheeks. I want to argue, tell him t
he magic isn’t real, but I don’t have the energy.

  “Please,” I whisper. “I don’t want to die without seeing the face of the person who tried to save me.”

  He stares at me intently. He’s so quiet, I wonder if he even heard me.

  With only the sound of the snow shifting from the eaves, the heavy hiss and crackle of the fire, he begins to unwrap the charcoal shroud. With each new sliver of exposed skin, my heart picks up speed. The sharp angle of his nose, his chin. Thin lips pressed together, dark hair curled up haphazardly around his shoulders. Is he handsome? Maybe not by the standards of the county, but I can’t stop staring at him.

  I wake to Ryker singing softly, his bare back to me, muscles rising beneath his skin as he stokes the fire. It’s a song I recognize from the county. A real heartbreaker. His sisters must’ve taught it to him.

  My hair is wet, my whole body is damp, but my lips and tongue are so dry they feel like the bark of a sycamore tree. I try to say something, eke out even the tiniest word, but nothing comes out. I’m so hot that it feels like I’m slowly roasting on a pyre. Using all my strength, I fling the pelts off of me.

  Ryker startles when they hit the floor with a dull thud, but he doesn’t reach for his shrouds.

  Kneeling beside me, his brow knotted up in worry, he presses his inner wrist to my forehead. I swear I can feel his heart beating against my skull, or maybe it’s my own, but as he looks down at me, his face softens, the faintest smile easing into the corners of his mouth.

  “Your fever broke.”

  “Water,” I manage to get out.

  Scooping up the water from a bucket, he holds it to my lips. “Take it slow.”

  The first sip is so good, so cool against my throat, that I can’t help grabbing his hands, gulping it down. Half of it runs down my chest, but I don’t care. I’m alive. I pull the chemise away from my skin. My chemise. The crude stitches, the uneven hems. He’s sewn it back together for me.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he says as he leans over me to unwrap the bandage from my shoulder. “You haven’t seen my handiwork.”

  “Is this also your work?” I ask, skimming my thumb over the muted thick pink scar on the lower side of his abdomen.

  He takes in a tight inhalation of breath, his skin prickling beneath my touch.

  “Did I do this?” I ask, remembering lashing out at him with the blade when I tried to escape.

  “I guess we both have something to remember each other by.”

  Looking over at my arm, what’s left of the muscle on my shoulder, the jagged scars, the puckered skin, all I can feel is grateful. He saved my life more times than I can count, but I need to remember that he’s still a poacher and I’m still a grace year girl.

  “Is it daylight?” I ask, looking off toward the pelt covering the doorway.

  “Would you like to see?”

  “Even if I could move, isn’t it too dangerous?” I ask.

  Reaching up to the ceiling, he pushes open a hatch. I hear slushy snow slide to the forest floor.

  The sunlight blinds me for a moment, but I don’t care. The rush of cold air blowing in off the water seems to revive me a bit. I smell melting snow, lake water, river clay, and fresh-cut cedar.

  When I can see clearly again, he’s rolling up birch bark, placing it on the roof. “What’s that for?”

  “It’s finally starting to thaw. This will keep the water from settling.”

  I’m still trying to get used to seeing him without the shroud, but I like it.

  “Hungry?” he asks.

  I think about it for a good minute. “Famished.”

  Ryker tosses a sack of walnuts onto the bed; they spill out, startling me.

  “You need to start building muscle,” he says, placing a steel cracker in my left hand.

  “I can’t.”

  “If you had enough strength to go for that knife hidden beneath the mattress, you have enough strength for this.”

  “That was self-preservation.”

  “So is this. Do you want to starve again? Eating whatever chunks of meat I decide to toss over the barrier?”

  “That was you?” I ask.

  “Who else?”

  I thought it was Hans, but I keep it to myself.

  “You need to start pitching in,” Ryker says. “Take care of yourself.”

  Propping myself up, I reach out to grab a walnut. I’m trying to work the cracker, squeezing as hard as I can, but I’m not even making a dent.

  “Like this,” he says, cracking one wide open without the slightest effort, tipping the meat inside his mouth, grinning widely.

  My stomach growls.

  “I get what you’re trying to do, you know.” I glare up at him. “When I was five, I went to the orchards with my father. He could reach right up and pluck an apple from the limbs. I asked him to hold me up so I could get one, and he refused. He said, ‘You’re smart enough to get one on your own.’ It made me furious, but he was right. Eventually, I grabbed a long stick and beat it out of the tree.” I laugh at the memory. “I have to admit, it was the best apple I’ve ever had.”

  He smiles, but I see something behind his eyes. A tinge of sadness … regret.

  “Do you know who your father is?” I ask.

  “I was born in June.” He looks at me like I should know what that means.

  “April, for me.”

  “Figures,” he says. “Stubborn. Obstinate. Try this one.” He rolls another walnut my way. “I was born nine months from when the poachers returned for a new hunting season.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. “So he’s a poacher?”

  “Was a poacher.”

  “I’m sorry … did he pass?”

  “If you mean pass right over the mountain, then yes.” He cracks another one. “He got a kill, but he didn’t take us with him. He offered to take my mom and me, but not the girls. He could never look at them as anything but the enemy.”

  “Like Anders?” I ask, thinking about the way he talks about the grace year girls.

  He lets out a deep sigh. “Anders is complicated. His mother was once a grace year girl. She got rid of her magic, nearly died from it, has a scar clear across her face, but her husband-to-be didn’t like the way she looked anymore, so they banished her.”

  “I know this story from my mother,” I whisper. “She was a Wendell girl.”

  He shrugs. “She hated the county. Everything it stood for. She raised her boys the same.”

  “She had more than one boy?” I ask, sitting up a little taller.

  “A rarity. I know.” He nestles the empty shells together. “She loved them. Doted on them. Especially William, Anders’s little brother. He was always so … happy. Anders wanted to get a kill so his little brother wouldn’t have to. And now they’re gone…” His voice trails off.

  “The curse?” I ask.

  Ryker nods. “My mother believes it happened for a reason, but she believes a lot of things. I guess if the curse never happened, if your father hadn’t saved him, we wouldn’t be here right now.” He looks up at me. His eyes are the color of burned sugar. I never noticed that before.

  I swallow hard. “Your mother sounds lovely. What’s she like?”

  “Kind, beautiful, full of life.” As he says this, I watch his entire body relax. Normally he holds his frame like a tight wire, ready for anything, but I see an ease come over him. “But there are spells. She works hard, provides as much as she can, but she’s getting older now. Before I came of age, it was my responsibility to take my sisters from the hut when she had a visitor … to help her when she needed to recover.”

  “Recover?”

  His shoulders collapse. “Sometimes it’s crying spells. A dark cloud hanging over her. Other times it’s more serious and I have to send for the healer.”

  “Serious how?” I’m still trying to crack the shell, but I don’t have the muscle strength.

  “The wives are
spared this,” he says as he picks another walnut. “While you are vessels for sons, the women of the outskirts are vessels for their desire. Their rage.” His eyes narrow. “There are certain men that will only be accepted inside a hut when the food is running low.”

  I think about the Tommy Pearsons and Geezer Fallows of the world, and a shiver runs through my blood.

  “Or worse, the guards,” he adds.

  “The guards? But they’ve gone under the knife. They don’t have any…” I finally manage to crack the walnut open.

  He raises a brow; he almost seems amused by my sputtering. “It doesn’t castrate their minds. If anything, it makes them worse.”

  “How?” I ask as I tip back the shell, finally getting something to eat.

  “Because no matter what they do, they can never be truly … satisfied.”

  I think about Hans, weeping in the healing house, ice nestled between his legs … the look of utter despair when he escorted the girls home from his first grace year, the girl he loved not being one of them. The tic he had of rubbing his heart, like he could somehow mend it. His trembling hand when he unsnagged my ribbon from the post. Maybe that’s true for some, but not Hans.

  “That’s like saying all poachers are animals,” I say.

  “Maybe we are.” He glances up at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

  He wants to know what I think of him.

  But I’m afraid of what will slip out if I open my mouth.

  “Here,” he says as he reaches over, putting his hand over mine to help me crack the next one.

  I could still be delirious from the fever breaking, or high on the fresh air, but when he pulls his hand away, my fingers seem to hang there in the ether, as if longing for his return.

  SPRING

  The winter that came in like a lion has gone out like a lamb. The snow has melted under a clear mellow sun. The birds are singing, chlorophyll fills the air, and the full moon is upon us. Every night I see it growing through the hatch in the roof, which seems to mirror my own feelings for Ryker. Sometimes, when I look at him, it feels like my rib cage is being pried apart, expanding for extra air—it hurts, but it’s a feeling I’m not sure I want to let go of.