Stolen

Taken - 0.5

by

Erin Bowman

Before

ONE

“BREE, DO YOU SEE THIS?” Lock shouted from his perch on the rocks, a massive fish held up on his line. It was flailing away its last moments of life—tail flapping, gills puckering madly.

Bree gave him a courtesy eyebrow raise and returned her attention to the water. She was standing in a mostly calm pool, just behind the rock jetty Lock was fishing from, water up to her knees. Silver scales flicked into view. She threw her spear and missed.

“I don’t know why you insist on using that thing,” he said.

Because it required skill. Because she wasn’t just waiting aimlessly, hoping some suicidal fish would come along and decide to chomp on the hooked end of her line.

“Also, did you see this?”

Lock hoisted the fish higher, but all Bree could see was the way his pants were hanging on his hips, a V of muscle cut off by the waistband. Muscle everywhere, actually. His chest. His shoulders. His biceps, flexed on account of the weight on his line.

Bree wasn’t the only girl to notice how Lock had filled out his scrawny frame in the last year. They’d been flocking after him like gulls to oysters, and he certainly hadn’t been fighting them off. Bree was starting to suspect Lock’s desire to go shirtless lately had nothing to do with the heat.

Lock shook his catch at her more adamantly. It was dying a slow, pitiful death.

“Yeah, you snagged a fish the length of your forearm, and in shallow waters, too. You want a ribbon or something?”

“Why would I want that when I can have your sarcastic back-talk?” He shot her a smile, then bent over to unhook the fish. Bree watched the muscles in his shoulders as he struggled with it.

Why couldn’t he wear a stupid shirt?

She turned back to the fish in the shallows. It was days like this that she missed her mother most. It would be nice to ask her if this was normal: a guy being able to make your knees knock even when he’d done nothing but show you a slimy, stinking fish. Bree didn’t like it.

She threw her spear at another flash of silver. This time her angle was right, and it pinned the fish to the ocean floor. She retrieved the spear, tossed the catch in the small bucket set on the nearby rocks, and stretched.

It had been a merciless summer, heavy with humidity, greedy with rain. Bree gazed toward Crest, barely visible at the center of the island where it broke from the trees. Her island’s freshwater came from that mountain when it rained, running down the steep rock face to fill the small lake at Crest’s base. Keeva had been yelling about conserving supplies lately, claiming less water should go into irrigation and more into their stores. Drinking water trumps crops. Bree agreed with the philosophy, but not the approach. Keeva was working everyone into a frenzy, talking like they’d be parched and dead by the next sunrise. Mad Mia was even doing nightly rain dances as a result, chanting beneath the glow of the moon.

Like it would help.

Like her antics ever helped.

Granted, there was that one time she treated Lock. He’d been a kid still, with a fever nearly as bad as the one that later killed Bree’s mother. Everyone had been certain he would die, but Mad Mia gave Lock a few ladles of some vulgar-looking concoction, and two days later the fever broke. Lucky Lock, they called him after that. Course, no one bothered to drop the Mad from Mia’s name.

Bree wiped the sweat from her forehead and inspected the cloudless sky. Last year, a stretch of weather like this would have made her desperate for winter. For cooler temperatures and snow that could be boiled for drinking water. But not now. This year was different. She was dreading the change in seasons.

Lock had less than a week until his birthday—six days, to be exact. Bree had three months. His fate was sealed, and hers, uncertain. She wasn’t sure which was worse. At least the boys could prepare—mentally, emotionally. They’d be Snatched at eighteen, no exceptions. Gone without a trace. But for her . . . She didn’t know what would happen come December. She had theories, of course. The odds were good for girls—only about one in every ten wouldn’t make it. But the last six girls to turn sixteen were spared, and there wasn’t a skilled female hunter who’d come of age and could say the same. This didn’t bode well with Bree.

Lock appeared untouched by his looming birthday. He was still smiling constantly, carefree and boisterous, like he had any number of days stretching before him. Bree was positive it was a front, that underneath he was shaking in his skin, but any time she tried to broach the subject he’d grow very interested in completing some chore his ma had assigned him. Or chatting about the weather. (Not that there was anything worth commenting on—it had been hot, hot, hot every day for the last three months.)

Bree waded out of the water and strapped on her leather sandals. Half the village was still fishing, some in the water with spears, others on the jetty with their poles like Lock. She could even make out a few boats bobbing beyond the docks, checking the crab traps or trying their luck in deeper waters, but not too far. Never too far. It wasn’t safe.

“You staying at it?” she called to Lock. The sun was getting dangerously hot, and the best fishing hours were behind them.

He twisted to face her, and every muscle in his back came to life with the motion. Bree cursed herself for noticing. He should have stayed scrawny forever. Although maybe she would have fallen for him anyway. That tends to happen when you spend all your time with someone. It’s practically guaranteed when you spill your secrets like they aren’t precious. Her ma always said that was why it hurt so much to lose Bree’s father. She’d told him every last dream and fear, so when he was Snatched, it was as though a piece of herself had been, too. Like her soul was stolen away, never to return.

Bree had listened, but she hadn’t heard. Not until now. She was finally beginning to understand what her mother had meant—how opening up can make you vulnerable.

Lock picked up his bucket of fish. “Nah, I’ll head in. I’ve got a good haul here, and Ma asked me to fix a leak in the roof. You want to help?”

“Ooh, tempting. You know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Come off it, Bree. You’ve got nothing better to do. Patch the damn thing up with me. Please?” He made a show of it, hands clasped and everything.

“Fine, but only because you’re begging.”

“Course I’m begging. You think there’s another girl I’d rather patch a hut with?” He smiled and a pair of dimples winked.

“I don’t know, Ness is pretty handy with a needle. Maybe she’s good with roof repairs, too.”

Lock rolled his eyes. “The only labor I’ve ever seen that girl do is limited to stitching and sewing.”

Just the other night Bree had seen Lock drawing Ness toward the lake, his grip firm on her hand. She’d laughed at something he said. He’d kissed her neck. Clearly he didn’t mind that Ness couldn’t patch roofs.

And there was Maggie, too. And Cate. But Bree didn’t bring them up because he wasn’t asking for their help with the roof; he was asking for hers. Lock was always asking her for anything but what she really wanted.

So take what you want or quit complaining. He could have had Conner help him.

And then Bree remembered Lock’s best friend had been gone four weeks now. The only sign of Conner was the vague resemblance on the three kids he’d left behind. Sometimes that was all Saltwater felt like to Bree: an island filled with ghostly remains.

“Lock?” a terse voice called, barely audible on account of the windy shoreline. “Lock!”

Bree twisted inland. The rocky and crushed-shell beach eventually gave way to a steep, smooth rock bed, which led up to level land. It was there that Ness appeared, looking breathless.

“It’s Heath!” she shouted, waving frantically.

Lock’s face hardened like the sky before a storm. “What happened?”

“It’s bad. He’s . . . well . . .” Ness glanced at Bree, then motioned for Lock again. “Just hurry up. You need to come home.”

“Go on,” Bree said, taking Lock’s bucket from him. “I’ll meet you back at the hut.”

A gracious, sideways glance was his only response.

Bree watched him scramble up the rock. When Ness took Lock’s hand, Bree wondered if it was some sort of cover—Ness comes crying that something’s wrong so they can slip off into the trees. It took the duration of an exhale for Bree to regret the thought. If Ness’s words were truthful, if something had happened to Heath . . . well, that would kill Lock. Actually kill him. He’d die of a broken heart and everything, just curl up on his mattress and never move again. If there was anything on the entire island that Lock loved more than his girls, it was his kid brother. And Heath wasn’t well lately.

To be fair, Heath had never been well. His vision had been bad since birth. Bree wasn’t sure if it was getting worse or if he was slowly going blind, but these days, Heath could barely see more than a few wingspans in front of him. He also fell sick almost monthly, like his health was tied to the cycles of the moon. It had been that way all ten years of his life, and even still, you couldn’t find a more upbeat, radiant kid.

Bree stooped to retrieve her fish, kicking loose stones at the braver gulls that were getting too close. The rope handles tore at her palms as she hiked. She was sweating in no time, the cool lap of the water around her ankles an ancient memory. It was a shame this steep, grueling passage was the only access point to Saltwater’s fishable shoreline. Everywhere else, the land dropped away in the form of treacherous cliffs when it met water.

Finally the rock leveled off and Bree was back on grass, crunching and brittle beneath her sandals. The cry of gulls behind her meshed with the rustling leaves ahead. When Bree stepped between the first tree trunks, it was blissful. Her skin may have been bronzed that late in the summer, but the kiss of shadows was always a relief. Muscles aching, she lugged the buckets through the trees and into the town clearing.

Outside her hut, Mad Mia was chanting to the skies for rain, a bunch of bird bones clinking around her neck. A fish, skewered over her fire and long forgotten, was charred black. Still, she was not too distracted to ignore Bree. The woman’s eyes seemed to bore into Bree long after she’d passed by, burning through her skin, as though she were the one putting on a ridiculous display.

It occurred to Bree that Mad Mia might be concerned about Heath. It seemed most of the village was aware something had happened, for a small crowd was gathered outside Lock’s hut.

Bree had called the place home ever since her mother passed and Lock’s mother, Chelsea, insisted that no eight-year-old should grow up alone. Bree’s old home stood empty on the edge of the village, its roof buckling, its dirt floor cold. She visited it often, just in case the ghost of her mother was lonely. (She wasn’t. An empty house is an empty house.)

Inside, Bree could hear Lock arguing with Sparrow, the village healer. She pushed her way through the curious crowd, buckets still in hand, and ducked into the one-room home. The air was heavy. Bunches of seaweed hung drying from the rafters. Chelsea had left a half-woven basket on the dining table. A first for her. She never set aside her weaving uncompleted. Ness, Lock, Chelsea, and Sparrow were huddled around one of the four beds on the opposite end of the room.

“What’s going on?” Bree asked, setting down the fish.

Ness twisted to glare. Lock’s eyes were heavy. Sparrow moved, and Bree saw.

Heath.

His breathing was panicked, his skin caked in sweat. A wooden spike skewered his left leg, just above the knee.

The noise that escaped Bree was more animal than human. She knew how this had happened.

It was her fault.

Her trap.

TWO

BREE’S MOTHER HAD BEEN THE best storyteller in all of Saltwater. People would gather around the fire when she told tales, the tone of her voice and the crackle of burning wood equally addicting. She could make the imaginary real, the impossible plausible. Bree didn’t know how she did it, but her mother weaved magic with words.

There was a certain tale she recounted most often. On an island very much like their own, villagers faced a hard summer. The sun was strong and the sea unyielding. No matter the number of lines cast or nets hauled, no fish could be summoned for the tables. Desperate, the young men of the village set out to hunt the herons that frequented the shorelines, but were stopped by a girl named Hope. She was on the brink of womanhood, her frame just starting to soften, with eyes so wide everyone assumed she could see the future.

“Don’t kill them,” Hope warned. “The herons feed on the fish as we do. If we spare them, they will lead us to new food.”

And so the village watched the herons for nearly a week, their stomachs growling as they ate only grass from the ocean and greens from the earth. When the birds fled across the ocean, flying to wherever better food could be found, the people turned on Hope. They claimed she’d misled them, and called for her death. She was tied to a pole in town, but before a flame could be brought to the dry leaves surrounding her, a single heron flew over the village. Following the bird into the heart of their island, the people found a small lake. There, a massive creature emerged from the woods and wandered into the shallows. It jumped logs as nimbly as a rabbit, but sprouted branches from its head like a tree. The villagers brought it down with their spears and though everyone ate until full, there was still meat to spare for days to come.

Bree knew this tale was her mother’s invention. But a beautiful story can make fantasy preferable to reality, and a piece of Bree wished it were true. The herons became her favorite—graceful birds that promised hope and bounty—and if Saltwater was home to herons, why not also this mythical animal that could feed everyone in the village?

Lock used to help Bree hunt for the creature. After Bree’s ma died and the two began sharing a roof, it became their game, a distraction from the pain of Bree’s loss. They’d look for the creature’s prints in the forest. They’d throw spears at fallen trees for target practice. Lock theorized about the creature’s weight, and Bree proposed an inground trap—one fashioned so the animal could wander right into their grasp. After digging, they’d lined the belly of the pit with sharpened tree limbs, then covered the opening with weak boughs and foliage.

They caught nothing. Childhood had fled them, along with the boldness to believe such colorful tales. By the time Lock was fourteen (Bree, twelve), they’d given up on the creature entirely. Lock had suggested they dismantle the trap, and Bree hadn’t had it in her. It was one thing to not believe, another to declare it so openly. She’d argued to let the trap fall to the wear of the seasons, and that had been the last she’d thought of it.

Until today.

With Heath.

She could picture it clearly, the boy wandering into the trees to escape the heat of the day. Chelsea was likely busy weaving and didn’t see him leave. Or maybe she was too preoccupied to really care. Heath’s fever had been light when Bree kissed his forehead earlier that morning. For him, it was a good day, a chance for Chelsea to breathe a little easier and set down her stress.

Heath wouldn’t have noticed the trap—the subtle variations in the ground, the way leaves and grass lay scattered over crisscrossed branches. Not with his terrible vision. He’d likely walked right over the trap and it snapped under his weight.

It could have been worse, Bree thought.

Horrible, but true. The spear could have impaled his stomach, vital organs. But it only got his leg.

“We have to pull it out,” Sparrow said.

“But the bleeding,” Chelsea argued.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Lock,” Bree muttered. Her voice was so soft, so uncertain, it came out a whisper. “Lock, I am so sorry.”

He kept his eyes on Heath, one hand clutched around his brother’s small fingers, the other brushing sweaty hair from his eyes. They looked so alike despite the difference in years, difference in fathers, even. They’d inherited everything from Chelsea. The same green eyes, as brilliant as seaweed. Same dark, shaggy hair.

“Lock,” Bree said again, more firmly this time.

Ness wheeled on her. “This island’s got fish. And plenty of birds and rodents and even a few rabbits. Nothing needs a trap that size.”

So Lock had already spoken of the trap in Bree’s absence, explained the origin of the spike. There was no other explanation for why Ness would know of it.

“It was an accident,” Bree insisted.

“All you’ve managed to do is hunt our own people!”

“Ness, quit it,” Lock said.

“Heath’s speared straight through the leg on account of—”

“It’s not her fault!” he snapped.

Chelsea and Sparrow hovered around Heath, muttering over how they should remove the spike, control the bleeding. Sparrow’s eldest son, Cricket, appeared with bandages in hand. He was barely Heath’s age, and yet he could patch up wounds nearly as well as Sparrow.

Ness kept a hand on Lock’s shoulder. Heath continued gasping for air.

“What can I do?” Bree asked, feeling completely useless. Feeling horrible.

No one answered.

Sparrow took the spike in her grasp. Cricket stood ready with clean rags.

“I’ll do anything,” Bree said. “Just tell me what—”

“You can leave,” Lock said. “And you, Ness.” The pain poured off him like a tangible thing, flooding the hut. The skin around his eyes crinkled. The corners of his lips turned down.

“But I should be here,” Bree insisted. “Heath’s like a brother to me, and—”

Lock jumped to his feet. “Are you trying to make me furious?”

She took a step away.

“Don’t act like he’s your brother, Bree. Don’t for a second act like you know how I feel.”

Retorts raged in her head. If it were any other situation she’d tell him to pull his head out of his ass, to apologize to her right that instant. That’s how they were, Lock and Bree, always honest, always keeping the other in line.

But he didn’t mean it, those words. Bree knew he didn’t. He was distraught. And Heath . . . If Heath . . .

“Lock . . .”

“Go,” he snarled. “Go destroy that trap before someone else gets hurt from our stupid games.”

Bree turned and fled. The crowd had overheard everything and they were a flurry around her. Her trap, they whispered. She’s responsible. As if Lock had never helped Bree construct it. As if she had pushed Heath into the pit with her own two hands.

A scream ripped the afternoon. The spike had been pulled.

“Will he make it?” Maggie asked, grabbing Bree’s wrist. “How bad is it?”

“If you have a decent bone in your body, you’ll clear out and go home.” She shook her arm free, then turned on the rest of the villagers. “That goes for all of you! Give them space.”

As Bree broke into a run, tearing for the thick trees, the crowd’s murmurs tailed her.

She’s one to talk . . . her fault . . . mad as Mia.

THREE

BREE RAN UNTIL SHE REACHED the trap, then dropped to her knees beside the snapped boughs. Heath had been barely two steps onto the covering. The rest of the trap looked untouched; grass and leaves unruffled, a good portion of the spiked belly still hidden from view.

What had he been doing out this far, halfway to Crest? He’d made this trip only once before, at least that Bree knew of. A few months back, Lock hit a lucky break fishing and was pulling out catch faster than Bree could throw her spear. Being around him had been unbearable, and she’d left to check her inland snares, happy for some time alone. Heath had tagged along. Bree gave him her spare knife and taught him how to skin and gut rabbit. He was good at it, his blade precise. Amazing how coordinated he was with things he could see.

“How come you don’t call Ma ‘Ma’?” he’d asked, pulling the hide off a rabbit with a quick snap of his wrists.

“She’s not my mother.”

“I know. But she acts like it.”

Bree wiped her blade clean on her pant leg. She was grateful to have grown up with what felt like family, but it didn’t make Chelsea her mother. As far as she was concerned, the woman had never been outwardly maternal. What sort of mother doesn’t prepare a girl for what’s coming as she approaches womanhood? Bree had thought she was dying that first day she bled. It was Ness who’d explained things to her. Ness, two years older than Bree, not Chelsea.

“How old was I again?” Heath had asked. “When your ma died and you came to live with us?”

“You were still a toddler—had just turned two—and you were fat.” He’d shot her a skeptical look. “I know it’s impossible to imagine, but you were. You had so many chins I thought you were neckless.”

He giggled. “Now I’m a string bean.”

Just like every other kid in Saltwater. A diet of fish and greens took care of baby fat quickly. And even when boys started filling out again—like Lock—the muscles were lean ropes. Bree was filling out, too. Not as curvy as Ness and some of the older girls, but she wasn’t all sharp hip bones and ribs anymore, either. Another thing Chelsea had never prepared her for.

“Well no matter what you think of Ma, I think of you as my sister,” Heath said.

Had Lock declared the same thing, the disappointment would have been overwhelming. But with Heath, everything was easy. Bree had smiled, because it was exactly what she wanted—for him to look at her that way. To be a sibling and a shield, a sister dedicated to keeping him safe.

And today she’d ruined everything.

Her stupid trap. Stupid fables.

Bree slid into the pit and grabbed the nearest spike. She heaved, pulled, but even after sitting unattended for several years, it was well secured. She resorted to kicking, and eventually knocked the spike free. Then she moved on to the others, toppling them each in turn, until the belly of the trap was filled with uprooted spikes and Bree was gasping for air. She brushed sweat from her eyes and looked up, only then realizing her mistake. She was surrounded by steep dirt walls, with no means of getting out. Bree jumped, trying to grab the woven branches supporting the overhead foliage, and came up empty. She was short, small. Always had been. Not that it mattered. If she managed to grab anything, it would likely snap from her weight.

Bree slumped to the floor. Maybe no one would come for her. Maybe she’d starve to death in the base of her own trap. It would be a fitting punishment.

Damn, she was stupid.

It was much later, when her stomach was growling, that she heard footsteps. The crunch of twiggy brush, the swish of feet through grass.

“Bree?” Lock came into view a moment later, peering down at her. “What the—? Come on. It’s time to eat.” He looked drained, like he’d run to Crest and back. Dark circles bloomed beneath his eyes.

“Heath?” she asked.

“Still breathing. Sparrow got the bleeding to slow, and he’s bandaged up now.”

“I’m so sorry, Lock. I’m so damn—”

“It was an accident, not your fault. Now get out of the trap.”

“I would if I could.”

He smiled then. An actual smile. “Well, isn’t this something.” He stared down at her, hands on his hips. “This from the girl who made fun of me last week when I got stuck up a tree.”

“I told you those branches were going to snap. You brought that upon yourself.”

“And you didn’t with this—jumping into a trap without running a vine in first?”

She scowled. “Are you going to help me out or not?”

He disappeared, and came back with a fallen tree limb, which he extended into the pit.

“Thanks,” she mumbled after he heaved her out.

Lock plucked a piece of bark from Bree’s hair and tossed it aside. “Don’t mention it.”

Bree pulled the rest of the boughs off the trap. She cleared away the packed moss and earth that made it so deceiving, lugged aside the stitched branch-work so no one else would mistake their footing. Lock watched her, silent. When she straightened, he looked sad again.

“Are you sure Heath’s okay?” she asked.

“For now. Hey, Bree? I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.”

“I’m sorry about the trap, the spike, everything.”

“You already apologized. Are you listening? I’m sorry. Heath’s healing and it’s over and done, and I shouldn’t have sent you off. Heath would have wanted you there. I wanted you there.”

He looked wounded, and it broke Bree’s heart. She threw her arms around his middle and pressed her cheek to his chest. He returned the hug, and when they stepped apart, Bree thought he might be looking at her differently.

“Do you still need help patching the roof?” she asked.

“Always knew I could count on you.”

And then he ruffled her hair, gave her a teasing shove. Like she was a sibling. Like the little sister he couldn’t live without.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Bree thought, and followed him back into town.

They finished the patch job with only a fraction of summer light remaining, but stayed on the roof far longer.

Chelsea had brought them fish from the town center, and they’d eaten while working. Now, with the heat of the day finally fading, they were too exhausted to move. Lying side by side on the roof, they watched the stars emerge between the breaks in the trees. The sky was midnight blue.

“Are you worried?” she asked Lock.

“About?”

“You know what.”

He bit his bottom lip as though it were edible, like breaking the skin might make words come more easily.

“How come you don’t talk to the stars anymore, Bree?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Answer my question and I’ll answer yours.”

Bree scowled at the pinpricks of light overhead. That’s all they were—light. Her ma had once said that her father was up there. That anyone you lost was. That to be near them again, to speak to them, all you had to do was talk to the stars. But Bree had screamed at them after her mother’s passing—she’d yelled for her to come back, to not leave her alone, to show that she loved her by returning—and it hadn’t done a damn thing. That’s how Chelsea had found Bree the night she offered the girl a new home: Heath was bundled in the woman’s arms, Lock at her side wearing a too-big sweater and even larger eyes, and Bree had been hollering at the stars. But Bree’s mother hadn’t listened, so she’d reluctantly gone with Chelsea, wondering if perhaps she’d been too harsh on her mother.

Bree whispered after that, spoke softly, politely. But by the time she’d turned twelve it was obvious her mother—if she could even hear the pleas—didn’t care. Bree never spoke to the sky again.

“Stars are stars, not people,” she said to Lock.

“But we bury our dead in the ground, and they become dirt, which springs new grass, which feeds animals, that end up in the ground in turn. And if we burn the deceased, they become air and ash. If we send them to sea, they dissolve in salt. It’s like we’re all one and the same—like there’s a bit of us in everything. Why not the stars, too?”

Bree frowned. “For the same reason I destroyed that trap today: Some things are real, and some are in our minds. Sometimes we make ourselves believe because we are desperate. Or weak.”

“I don’t think you’re weak,” he said.

She angled her head toward him. She couldn’t tell if he was being honest or just trying to make her feel better.

“Are you worried?” Bree repeated.

“What’s to worry about? I know what will happen. As surely as each wave will break.”

“And you’re not scared?”

“No.”

Liar.

But she never said it out loud. Maybe she was the one who was scared. To lose him. To say good-bye. To face her own birthday and all the unknowns attached to it.

FOUR

WHEN SHE WOKE, LOCK’S BED was already empty. Heath was in his, though, and he didn’t look well. Not even in sleep.

There was a sheen of sweat on the boy’s brow, and his breathing seemed labored. Bree glanced at his leg. The bandage was heavy with a discerning amount of liquid—tinged pink and mucus yellow. Pus. Blood was one thing, but pus . . . Bree was no healer, but she knew it wasn’t good.

“Heath?” she whispered, touching his wrist. His skin was clammy and cold.

In the front of the hut, Chelsea sat at the table, weaving.

“Is Lock fishing already?” Bree asked. The woman nodded, her eyes barely leaving the half-finished basket. “Heath’s bandages . . . They’re dirty. They need to be changed.” Another nod. “Is Sparrow coming soon? It doesn’t look right, and his fever’s climbing.”

“I didn’t realize you were a healer, Bree.” There was no smile, no hint of a joke. “Please go worry about what you’re good at—fish, food. I’ve already talked to Sparrow. She’ll stop by later.”

Bree frowned, but picked up her spear. Halfway to the shore, she turned around. Lock hadn’t blamed her for the accident, but she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if Heath fell to the fever. Sparrow could only do so much for the boy. Most of it was already done. But Lock . . . he’d been sick once. Deathly sick. On the bridge between realms, Sparrow had called it. Desperation led Chelsea to allow Mad Mia a chance. And it had made all the difference.

Maybe it would again.

A failing driftwood fence surrounded Mad Mia’s ramshackle hut. Every few paces a post was erected, bone wind chimes hanging from them. They clinked in the morning’s tired breeze. Within the fence a small garden of wildflowers was wilting, and the charred fish that had been cooking over her fire yesterday was now gone. Likely stolen by some scavenging animal during the night, or perhaps burned right off the stakes in Mad Mia’s negligence. The woman’s door was propped open, but a dense curtain of vines hung in the frame.

Bree slipped inside the fence.

“You’re not going to find any fish in that hut,” a voice said.

Bree turned to see Maggie eying her. Ness stood nearby, a load of laundry braced against her hip.

“Who said I’m after fish?” Bree retorted.

“Leave her at it,” Ness said to Maggie. “It’s her own hide if Keeva catches her ditching work.”

The vines of Mad Mia’s house were drawn aside. “Is sleep precious to no one?” the woman asked, a glare directed at the three girls.

“The sun’s been up for hours,” Maggie called out.

“As was I, dancing for rain beneath the moon.”

“Can I speak with you?” Bree said to Mia. “It’s important.”

The woman grumbled, but pulled the vine curtain back farther. Bree ducked inside, not wanting to see the look on Maggie’s or Ness’s face.

“Sparrow is a talented healer, but everyone has to die eventually,” Mad Mia said.

“Not him,” Bree said. “Not Heath. He’s barely ten!”

“The earth calls for some sooner than others.”

Bree fumed. Here was Mia, old, ancient, and acting like it was perfectly fair for a young boy to have his life end before it truly began. Like children being Snatched was just as natural. Lock claimed it was merely the cycle of life, but Bree wasn’t convinced. If only the boys were lost, then maybe. But the girls—how it took only some of them . . . It was like a conscious choice was being made.

There was Fallyn, Snatched well before Bree’s time, but still a legend recounted around the bonfire. Stubborn. Bold. So brave she’d jumped off the jetty in a raging storm to save a child who’d lost his footing.

Keeva’s daughter, Cora, a natural leader destined to take over for her mother until she’d been stolen when Bree was still a toddler.

Wren, the island’s most recent female loss, who had been Bree’s biggest competition when it came to hunting and fishing.

And so many other girls, gone. All gone. Plucked from Saltwater like the ripest crop during a season’s harvest.

“Keeva’s just as bold as some of the Snatched, and she’s still here,” Lock once pointed out. “There’s no logic to it, Bree. It’s a random cast into the ocean.”

A cast that someone has to reel in, she’d thought.

Mia was burning some sort of herb in the cramped hut, and the scent was making Bree light-headed. Dried plants and grasses hung from the rafters, dangling so low she’d had to duck around a few when entering the hut. Symbols and numbers were carved into Mia’s table. Animal bones and small clay containers lined every shelf. A few more mobiles and wind chimes hung at the edges of the room. Being in the hut was like swimming through seaweed. And bones. An underwater graveyard.

“You made something for Lock once,” Bree said. “‘Lucky Lock,’ they call him now—that’s how amazing whatever you made was. It did the impossible.”

Mad Mia flashed a toothy smile and Bree tried not to cringe.

“I remember that,” Mia said. “I got lucky. Perhaps as lucky as the boy.”

“Could you get lucky again?”

“If you bring me something, maybe.”

“Bring you what?” Anything. Bree would bring her anything if it meant saving Heath.

“A heron.”

The hope in Bree’s stomach disintegrated. “I haven’t seen a heron on the island in weeks.”

“Just yesterday, at dusk, one flew toward the freshwater as I prayed for rain.”

Convenient, Bree thought, and perhaps a lie. Though what did the woman have to gain? Heron or not, it made no difference to Mia.

“They’re flighty as anything,” Bree said of the bird. “Scare at the sound of a snapping twig.”

“Then you ought to be quiet when you hunt the thing, no?” Mad Mia’s smile thinned to a doubtful pout. “I heard you’re a stealthy one. Is that not true?”

“I can catch anything,” Bree insisted. Even a heron. It didn’t matter that the bird was her favorite, that she thought it beautiful and pure. For Heath, she’d spill its blood.

“Then scram,” Mia said.

Bree didn’t like the woman—not her tactless nature, nor unkempt home, nor mindless rain dances—but she bit her tongue now. It was only at the mouth of the hut that Bree paused.

“Why a heron?” she asked over her shoulder.

“You’re the storyteller’s daughter. You know the importance of that bird—the power, the magic. It accompanies the impossible.”

“It’s just a bird,” Bree said.

“A bird with blood that might save the boy.”

Maybe it was another fable, another sliver of hope that was bound to disappoint, but Bree couldn’t risk idleness. She went not to the shore, but home, where she dropped off her spear in favor of different equipment—a pack, water, her slingshot. Then she made for Crest.

FIVE

TO HIKE THE MOUNTAIN TOOK half the day.

By the time Bree pulled herself onto Crest’s small plateau by way of a scraggly tree, the heat and humidity was unbearable. She’d sweat through her shirt, and she was pretty certain she had a blister from her sandal, right where the leather straps tied around her ankle, but didn’t bother looking. What would it matter? She’d still have to climb down with that same blister. Acknowledging its existence would only be like letting it win.

No longer obscured by rock or brush, a blissful breeze whipped over Bree’s limbs. She found her typical resting place—an area where the rock was more smooth than sharp, almost like the weather had worn out a bench for view-hungry climbers. Mad Mia claimed she saw the heron flying toward the lake, but it was just as likely the bird had simply flown over the island after hunting along the shore. From this vantage point Bree could keep an eye on both water sources.

She’d sat here with Lock many times over, and with her mother only once. With Lock, it was always a thing to do to kill time. After fishing and hunting, and before someone could saddle another chore onto their backs, they’d sneak into the woods and climb Crest, then sit and stare at the endless stretch of ocean beyond Saltwater in complete silence. They didn’t need words, Lock and Bree.

The first and only time she’d hiked Crest with her mother, it had been an anniversary of her father’s Snatching. They’d both needed a distraction, and so Bree showed her mother the rough path she’d carved out with Lock. She was only eight back then, so the passes weren’t as clearly marked and worn as they were now, but her mother had managed better than expected. Who knew a storyteller could have such nimble limbs?

When they reached the summit, Bree’s mother had stood dangerously close to the edge, one hand gripping the tree that grew from the rock, the other held out at her side.

“Look at that lake,” she’d said. “It almost looks close enough to dive into.”

It was not.

“Maybe I could fly there, like a bird.”

The woman let go of the tree and spread both arms like she had wings. Her toes flirted with the edge.

“Ma?” Bree had said, voice cracking.

“I’m tired, Brianna. I’m tired of feeling empty and tired of living without him.”

“Without Pa?”

She’d nodded. “I’m no one alone. He carried so much of me. He was me.”

Bree didn’t understand. Her mother was her mother. Her father was her father. They were two people.

“I really feel like I could fly today.”

Bree watched her mother lift a foot.

“What about me?” Bree asked.

“What about you?”

Bree’s bottom lip quivered. “You can’t fly. You’re not a bird. And then what about me?”

“You’re stubborn as a weed, Brianna. You don’t need anyone.”

“You’re my mother!” Bree had shouted. “It doesn’t matter if I need you or not; you’re supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to fly away.”

Her mother looked in a trance, though. Her fingers moved with the wind, her chin careened forward. Bree felt her heart breaking—a crack in the center of her chest, a split that seemed to grow, screaming, You’re not enough, you’re not the person who makes her days worth living.

She grabbed her mother’s wrist and pulled her away from the edge. She might have called the woman selfish. Bree couldn’t remember now. Whatever she’d said, the words had jolted her mother to reality, or maybe she was suddenly too scared or ashamed. Maybe she would have done it at a later date. But that day, at Bree’s touch, the woman’s eyes cleared. She looked at Bree like she was seeing her for the first time and collapsed at her knees, pulling the girl into her arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m here,” she whispered into Bree’s hair.

About a month later she caught a chill and never got better. As Bree watched her mother die, the fight drawn out for weeks, she wondered if she should have let her try to fly. She’d lost her in the end, and it hadn’t even been quick. The thought plagued her during those first months alone, and even after Chelsea took her in that fall.

Bree relished a long drink from her waterskin, scanned the water, and waited.

The lake was visited by a few women hauling freshwater into town and a pair of boys who stripped down to their shorts to cool off. Maggie and Ness—at least, Bree assumed it was them—left the stream that fed the lake with clean laundry. The shoreline numbers slowly thinned, men and women coming in for the day, clearing out like the tide, Lock probably among them.

Late in the afternoon, when Bree was losing all hope and growing rather hungry, a shadow flicked across her knees. She glanced up, and nearly yelled out.

Soaring as gracefully as the wind itself was a heron. He tucked his wings to his sides and dropped silently toward Crest’s runoff. The bird followed the stream as he descended, until he looked no larger than a pale leaf fluttering to a standstill.

Bree cursed herself, wishing she were down there as well, but she hadn’t really believed Mad Mia. The bird stayed near the tributary, wading silently in the shadows. It plucked something from the water—a frog, maybe—then moved upstream and out of Bree’s sight.

Still cursing, she gathered her gear and started her descent.

The light was slipping from the sky, and Bree knew the bird would be gone as soon as dusk was. Still, there was only so fast this pass could be traveled. Her body moved on its own—the memory of where to grip, what holds to press her fingers and toes into seared in her mind. She scrambled down rock, raced through switchbacks, squeezed between shelves.

When she reached the lake, she was sweating again, and the blue-purple tinge of twilight hung before her. She crept as silently as the heron itself. There was a stone in her slingshot and a flame of confidence in her chest. But at the edge of the water, Bree found herself alone. She circled the lake, checked the tall grasses, walked up Crest’s runoff. Nothing. The bird was gone.

“Dammit.” Bree launched her stone into the water. It splat, and rings rippled outward. A bullfrog laughed at her.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

She kicked at a clump of reeds and felt the blister on her heel split open. The sting was both distant and unbearable.

When her pulse calmed, Bree searched the tributary for a rock to replace the one she’d loosened. She found a handful of nice stones—the size of her palm, smoothed by the moving water—and pocketed them before heading home.

Tomorrow, she told herself, you can stay at the lake all day. Set up in a tree. Wait where you’re in range. Maybe he’ll come again—at dusk. Dawn, if you’re lucky.

Back in the village, dinner was under way. The bonfire blazed. Mad Mia was plucking through the discarded crab and clamshells, pocketing a treasure here and there while everyone else ate.

Keeva grabbed Bree at the elbow and hauled her aside.

“Explain,” the woman demanded.

“Explain what?”

Keeva folded her arms over her chest and eyed Bree from head to toe, as if she was something she might like to defeather and then roast over the fire.

“You’re on food detail, Bree. Have been since you were ten. I’ve never specified if that means fish or oysters or clams or crab or rabbit or frog or fowl. I don’t specify because up until now, you’ve always gone where you thought the catch was, and you’ve always brought plenty in. But I will monitor you if I have to.”

The only thing Keeva had monitored lately was water. Freshwater. It was all she seemed to think about.

“I skip one day of duties and you’re threatening to monitor me? Monitor Mad Mia. She’s the one not yielding results.”

Stupid rain dances.

Keeva lifted her arm and the sting of a backhand laced Bree’s cheek.

“A boy is dying because of your trap,” Keeva growled. “And my patience is waning. Act like you are more important than the good of the village again, and you swim for the horizon.”

Bree choked down the retort on her tongue. No one survived a swim for the horizon. No one ventured farther than the crab traps, not ever. To do so meant death, even for those who took one of the fishing boats. There was no other land. There was just water and waves and extremely strong currents, because the bodies always came back: washing up on the beach, crashing against the ragged coastline. Bloated. Blue.

“There has to be more land somewhere,” Lock always argued. “Where else are those birds always flying?”

“Fine, there’s land,” Bree would say. “But it’s nowhere close. Nowhere we can get to without wings of our own.”

Bree turned her back on Keeva and fled home. She wouldn’t stop trying to save Heath because of a death threat. She’d kill the heron tomorrow. Mad Mia could take the blood, and Bree would bring the bird to the bonfire to be roasted. Heath would live. Keeva would have her dinner. Both tasks completed. Simple as that.

Bree lay awake that night, listening to the distant crash of waves and Heath’s labored breathing.

“Did Sparrow visit?” she whispered to Lock.

“Crap, Bree,” he gasped. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

You’d have known if you had used your ears, she thought, rolling her eyes in the dark.

“He’s got a fever,” Lock said after a moment.

“And?”

“And Sparrow thinks it will break.”

“The wound’s not infected?”

“She didn’t say.”

Bree sighed. “What do you think, Lock?”

“I think it’s not good. I think . . .” Bree couldn’t see him, but she heard him sit up, and she imagined his gaze skimming over Heath’s bed to settle on hers. “Come outside with me?”

Bree complied.

Beneath the glow of the moon, Lock looked troubled. A wrinkle was visible between his brows.

“I didn’t want to wake them,” he said, jerking his head at the door. He sunk to the ground and leaned against the hut. Bree did the same. “He’ll be okay, right? He has to be. This is Heath. He’s sick every month. If he was going to die, it would have been from blood loss when they pulled the spike. He’s . . . he’s not supposed to go before me. I’m not supposed to outlive him.”

Bree dared a glance Lock’s way, and spotted a tear on his cheek. She’d never seen Lock cry, and even now it seemed impossible. Like she was looking at a stranger. For a moment Bree thought of telling him about Mad Mia and the heron, but she took his hand instead. His fingers were calloused and rough, like hers—hands of work—but they seemed stronger, sturdier. Twice as large. Like he had twice everything she did. Twice the love in his heart and pain in his chest. Twice the need for Heath to live.

She bit back her words. If the heron failed, if it didn’t work—Bree didn’t want to be that girl again. The one who chased the promise of a fable. She didn’t want to let Lock—or Heath—down.

A shadow moved on the other side of town, threading between two huts and pausing just beyond the bonfire ring.

“That’s Maggie,” Lock said, pulling his hand from Bree’s. No wonder he’d been lying in bed, waiting. He stood and Bree protested.

“I need to clear my head,” he said.

“I thought that’s what we were doing.”

“This is different.” He looked down at her, frowning. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Bree watched him leave. And then she kept watching the spot where he’d disappeared between the trees, hoping he might reappear. Alone. Muttering an apology. Thanking her for holding his hand. Asking her to hold it again.

She let the waves crash a dozen times before she stood and slipped inside.

SIX

IT WAS MIDDAY AND THE heron hadn’t reappeared.

Bree’s butt was numb and she had a cramp in her neck from craning it at such an unnatural angle. She was beginning to fear she’d wasted her morning. Maybe the bird wouldn’t appear until dusk. Maybe it only ever appeared at dusk. If it didn’t show, Bree would need to find food in a hurry. She hadn’t checked her snares in a few days. It wouldn’t be much, but if she snagged a rabbit, it would buy her time. Keeva couldn’t banish her when she still brought in food . . . could she?

Saltwater already had plenty of fishermen. And Bree wasn’t contributing to the village’s growth. Most of the girls her age had a child (or at least one on the way), but Bree had eyes only for Lock, and it seemed every boy on the island but Lock was aware of it. They steered clear. (The horrible, snapping monster-of-a-girl she’d been in the years following her mother’s death probably helped account for their distance.)

Still, even if Lock had looked her way, Bree doubted it would have made a difference. Not where birth numbers were concerned. She was pretty certain Lock was infertile. Cate had two kids, but neither looked like Lock, and Maggie and Ness had been lying with him for the last year without consequence.

If Bree wasn’t going to become a mother anytime soon, and there were other hunters and fishermen to replace her, maybe Keeva really would cast her to sea. Just to make a point. To prove that she could. The woman was ruthless. She’d cut Conner’s right pinky off when he swiped more than his fair share of dinner once. The boy had been ten. Bree thought it too harsh, but as Lock pointed out, his friend never stole again.

Bree heard grass swish beneath her and readied the slingshot in her hands.

It was only Lock.

He strode to the edge of the lake and dropped his gear, tore off his shirt. Bree watched for a moment, and then, terrified he’d keep ditching layers, coughed lightly.

He nearly tripped in surprise.

“What the heck are you doing?” he asked. “You know Keeva’s furious with you? You should have been fishing this morning.”

“Same goes for you.”

“I was fishing. It’s noon now, you idiot. Besides, I deserve to cool off.” He kicked off his pants, and waded in. The water crept up his legs, over his knees, to the hem of his shorts, before he finally dove. “You coming in?” he asked when he resurfaced.

“I’m busy.” Even as Bree said it, the thought of slipping into the lake was tempting. It was rarely cooler than the ocean, but it was always more refreshing—smooth and silky. Bree liked that it didn’t leave her hair crusted with salt.

Lock swam until he was beneath the branch Bree was camped out in, where he then focused his efforts on attempting to splash her, even though she was well out of reach.

“You’re scaring off the game,” she snapped.

“What game?”

“None, now that you’re here making such a racket.”

He flashed a smile. Those damn dimples.

Screw it. She was sweating, and cramped, and the heron, if it was coming, wasn’t going to show up while Lock was thrashing in the water. Bree stripped down to her tank-top and underwear, and threw the clothes and extra gear onto the grass. Then she stood and edged out along the branch, hands on the limb above for balance.

“You jump from there and you’ll hit bottom, Bree,” Lock teased. “Jam your knees on the rocks and shatter your shins.”

“Really? Is that why you and Maggie jumped from here last week?”

His face washed over blank.

“Yeah, I saw you,” she said. “I know how you like to bring your girls to the lake.”

And it was true. She had seen them jump when she was checking snares. She’d been surprised the water was still deep enough, given the lack of rain, and had stayed long enough to make sure they didn’t hurt themselves, then bolted for town. What followed the swim was not something she’d wanted to witness.

“My girls?” Lock said from the water. “It’s not like I own them.”

And right then, Bree knew he was never going to look at her the way she wanted him to. The fact that he couldn’t see it—the way he treated those girls and the way he treated her, like they were different species . . . It hurt so much it was like Bree had drowned years ago and was only just feeling the effects of running out of oxygen.

She leaped from the branch. Her feet hit the water, and she was swallowed whole. The lake was warm, but still refreshing, a relief after being in the tree all morning. When she resurfaced, Lock was there to dunk her.

“What was that for?” she gasped.

“For spying on me and Maggie.”

“I left before things got exciting.” Then, because she knew it would annoy him, she glanced at his shorts through the water and added, “Not that there was much to see.”

“Oh, you are going to regret saying that!”

He lunged at her, but she was already fleeing. Bree laughed as she swam toward shore, choking on water, strokes sloppy. Lock continued to spew playful threats as he chased. Bree scrambled onto the grass, only to feel Lock grab hold of her ankle. He yanked her to a standstill. She cursed him, then gasped as he pulled an arm behind her back and pinned it to her spine.

“Apologize,” he said.

“Never,” Bree said into the grass.

He tugged harder and her arm flared hot. “Then say ‘mercy’ or I won’t let you up.”

Bree had only once gotten free of a wrestling session like this without saying “mercy,” and that had been when she’d mistakenly caught Lock between the legs with her knee. Every other victory, she’d earned. She’d fought her way free, slipped loose, beaten him fair and square. He had more muscle than her, but she was fast and small, and used her elbows ruthlessly.

“I’m not Maggie,” she said through gritted teeth. “Or Cate or Ness.”

Lock released Bree’s arm and flipped her over so quickly she barely registered it happening. One moment her mouth was pressed into the grass, and the next he was above her, dripping water onto her from his nose and eyelashes.

“What’s that mean?”

She rolled her sore shoulder. “Nothing.”

“No, it meant something, or you wouldn’t have said it. What are you driving at?” he demanded.

“Just that you can’t expect me to say ‘mercy’ because of a little pain. When have I ever folded without a fight? I’m not like your girls, remember?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to be like them. I have nothing to give them.”

“I think Maggie might say otherwise.”

Lock shook his head, frowning. “It might not seem like it, but I give you the best parts of me, Bree. If Maggie were smart, she’d wish she were you. They all would. So don’t go asking me for more. Don’t ask me to ruin this.”

But Bree wanted him to. Badly. His birthday was three days off, and things would be ruined anyway. She’d never see him again, never have the chance to tell him how she felt. And he was still hovering over her, a knee on either side of her torso, looking right at her. Into her. Listening, truly, for the very first time.

So Bree did something she’d never done: She sat up and took what she wanted.

Lock’s lips were still wet with water when she kissed him. He sat there a moment afterward, stunned. His gaze trailed over Bree. Her eyes and her lips and her neck and her lips again. And right when she was certain he’d leap to his feet and tell her she’d ruined everything, he slid a hand behind Bree’s neck and pulled her mouth back to his.

This kiss was nothing like the first. He leaned into it. He led with his chin. He opened his mouth to hers. Bree was suddenly back in the lake, drifting, floating, weightless. Even when his lips left hers, she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her. Because he was kissing her neck now, and her shoulder, and a school of minnows had taken up residence in her stomach. Her hands were everywhere—she couldn’t control them. She touched every inch of skin she’d once cursed for being so distracting. His collarbone, the curve of his chest, the muscle of his arms, one half of the V that disappeared beneath his shorts.

He hummed at that, his lips against her neck. Bree traced the line again, and the hum became a moan. Lock’s hands found the hem of her shirt and peeled it over her head.

This is actually happening, Bree thought. Would it have happened ages ago had she only been bolder? Was that all it took, unapologetic confidence?

His hands on her skin. His mouth against hers. She could barely think straight, and the minnows in her stomach were moving into every last inch of her body: her hips and toes, shoulders and spine.

“We don’t have to do this,” Lock said.

“I want to,” she said.

“You don’t.”

Don’t have to do it, or don’t want it to happen?

Bree didn’t ask.

He’d be gone in three days, and right now they could be together. Maybe that would make it harder to lose him. Maybe it would all hurt that much more when he was Snatched. But in the moment, Bree didn’t care. She was drunk on the taste of him, and the feel of his body pressed against hers, and he saw her now. He saw her and she wanted the moment to never end.

She leaned back in the grass and drew him closer.

SEVEN

POLLEN DANCED ON THE THICK summer air. Crickets sang. Dusk was falling.

Dusk.

“Shoot!” Bree gasped, rolling out of Lock’s arms. They’d fallen asleep, right there in the grass beyond the lake. The heron hadn’t come, or she’d missed it altogether. “I need to check the snares. Keeva’s going to kill me.”

“Do you need help?”

“No, I’ll meet you in town.”

Lock nodded. He seemed almost shy as he found his shirt in the grass, hesitant to make eye contact.

“Lock, are we okay?”

“Yeah. Course,” he said, nodding again. “See you at dinner.”

As soon as he ducked off, Bree hurried to her traps. She hurt. It had hurt during, too, but after . . . Was it supposed to hurt after? She pushed on. Found two of her ten snares full.

She couldn’t get Lock’s expression out of her head. The way he’d stared at her following that first kiss, the way he regarded her after it was all said and done. He was looking at her differently now, but it still wasn’t as she’d imagined. Something was missing, and she didn’t know what. She’d finally done it: demanded he see her. All she’d had to do was reach out and take it. Why did that victory feel like a burden?

And right then she realized her mistake. Because no matter what, she was pretty sure it shouldn’t feel this way—like she’d stolen something. Like she’d won.

Keeva was satisfied with the rabbits and didn’t order Bree to swim toward the setting sun, although Bree almost wished she had. Afraid of returning to the hut after dinner, she lingered along the shore. What would she say to him? Should she act like nothing had changed even though everything had?

She needed her mother. She needed someone to tell her what came next.

Beyond the curve of the island, where the steep rock cliffs met water, a loon call pierced the twilight. Still as stone, Bree listened. The bird wailed again. Its song sounded how she felt—uncertain and lonely. Regretful, even.

She cupped her palms and blew on her thumbs. The whistle she produced was nearly as convincing as the one her father used to make. She had few memories of him—all vague and blurry—but she remembered his loon calls.

“It’s in your hands, B,” he’d explained.

Bree couldn’t recall him saying these exact words, but her mother had told the story so many times, Bree could almost picture the entire evening.

They’d been sitting on the jetty, him just hours from a Snatching, her a still-chubby toddler. He was nothing but a boy, really, but Bree thought him a man; burly, strong. To her he was the size of a giant, with shoulders as wide as Crest and hands that never faltered. He’d pick her up and toss her toward the clouds, never letting her land anywhere but in his arms. Those same hands hauled nets of fish from the ocean and set the nimblest of snares. They combed her hair out of her eyes—hair that was as brilliant and pale as his—and they made the most beautiful loon calls she’d ever heard. So pure and clean you might mistake him for the actual animal.

“Pretend you’re holding the bird. A baby loon. Cup it right in your palms like this, and then fold your thumbs over.”

But she’d been so young, with little coordination and even less patience. The sun had set. Her father put her on his shoulders, and hiked to where her mother stood watching. The woman walked Bree home, and her father drifted back to the shore.

That was the last Bree ever saw of him.

She turned three that winter, and forgot all about loon calls. It wasn’t until several summers later, when she heard Conner blowing into his palms and trying to teach Lock the call, that she remembered. She’d spent every evening of that season teaching herself. She refused to ask Conner or Lock for help. She just sat on the jetty where she used to sit with her father until she managed a wispy whistle, and then a mediocre one, and finally, a convincing—maybe even flawless—call.

Bree sat there now and did the same. The loons sang with her until they didn’t, at which point the sun was gone and the world dark. Bree turned her back on the shore. She hiked to town with a pinching sensation in her stomach. There were a few minnows in there still, only now they made her feel ill instead of alive.

As she stepped into the village clearing, Bree caught sight of Lock on the opposite edge of town. He was walking into the woods. Someone was with him. Ness.

Bree jogged forward a few paces.

“Lock,” she whispered, but not loudly enough for him to hear. Not loudly enough for anyone to hear. They were gone before the first choked sob worked its way into Bree’s throat, before she even truly registered what she was seeing.

She retreated home, collapsed on her bed, and couldn’t unload her tears fast enough.

“Bree?” Heath asked in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“You’re a liar.”

And an idiot. And one of his girls. I’m one of his girls now.

Heath shivered despite the heat of the evening. “I don’t feel like it’s getting better, Bree—my leg.”

She forced her breathing steady, forbade herself to continue crying. Tears would change nothing, and this was what mattered: Heath. Not the problems she brought upon herself, not the hurt that she reached out and took. Bree rolled from bed.

“Scooch over, bug.”

Heath complied, and Bree lay down beside him. The dried leaves and grass of the mattress crinkled as she settled in. Heath’s bandage scratched against her knee. He was clammier than yesterday.

“Sparrow said she can’t do much else—that it’s my blood’s battle now, whatever that means.” He paused a moment. “She thought I was sleeping when she told Ma that, but I heard.” Another lengthy pause. “Bree, am I going to die?”

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“How can you know?”

“Because I’m not going to let it happen.”

“Some things can’t be controlled. Like the Snatching.”

Bree let out a shaky exhale. “I got you into this mess, and I’m going to get you out of it. That’s a promise.”

“I never blamed you, you know.” He angled his head toward her. “Not even the littlest bit.”

“I promise,” Bree said again. “I promise I’ll fix everything.”

EIGHT

SPARROW WAS THERE WHEN BREE ducked off to hunt the next morning. The healer stood beside Heath’s mattress, Chelsea’s hands scooped up in hers. She patted them reassuringly. A condolence. An I’m sorry for your loss. Like it was already done. And maybe it was. The bandages had been soaked through with pus and blood, a wet rag. Flies buzzed around Heath like he was food. Lock would be gone at midnight the following evening, and it was looking more and more likely that Heath would beat him to an exit.

Everyone has to die eventually.

Bree tightened her grip on her slingshot and hiked faster. She would not lose them both in the same breath—Lock and Heath. She would not.

Before reaching the lake, she slowed to a crawl. The wind rustled the leaves. Hair stood on Bree’s arms. Despite the already sweltering heat, a coolness spread over her limbs. The bird was here. She was sure of it. Bree slid a stone into the slingshot and took her next steps carefully. Over a fallen log. Choosing moss-covered rock instead of dry grass. Silent, invisible.

At the foot of her tree, she peered around the trunk.

And there, in the shallows, no more than a stone’s throw away, was her heron. Her beautiful, flawless, breathtaking heron. He stood on his spindly legs like a graceful sentry, neck extended, wings tucked in at his sides. His bill twitched, then drove into the water, pulling out a small frog.

Slowly—painfully cautious—Bree moved into the tall reeds beneath the tree.

Her fingers itched to loosen the stone. Her heart hammered.

She stood only when the heron turned to focus on another portion of the shallows. She took aim as the breeze blew, so the whisper of her clothes and the stretch of her slingshot would be covered by the rustling reeds.

The bird spread his wings to take flight, and Bree let her stone free.

She did not strike the head as she’d hoped, but the body. The bird screeched, flapping a now broken and useless wing. Bree tore through the shallows, grabbed the bird by the neck, and twisted her hands. Its beady eyes went dull.

Bree scrambled from the water and set the bird on the bank. It was larger in death than it ever seemed while hunting or flying. White feathers blanketed its belly and wrung neck, but across the back and wings the plumage darkened like the sea before a storm—salty, gray, regal. An even darker gray—nearly midnight black—ringed the creature’s eyes, drawing back toward the crown of its skull like war paint.

Bree wrung out her wet pants and slung the bird over her shoulder. Its neck flopped, its legs dangled. It looked so ridiculous now. So pathetic.

Bree hiked to town at breakneck speed, shocked at how little the dead bird weighed. Alive, it had stood well past her navel, with a wingspan wider than she was tall, but in her hands it felt no heavier than the two rabbits she’d pulled from her snares yesterday.

Hope is heavy, Bree thought, but this bird weighs nothing.

Long before she reached Mia’s, she feared it wouldn’t make a difference, and yet she refused to slow.

Mad Mia tore into the heron like a starved savage. She hacked off its bill and ground it beneath a stone, sprinkling the dust into a shallow bowl. She plucked feathers like flowers, then slit the bird’s chest open, letting the blood spill. It overran the dish, flooding the table with red.

Bree watched from the doorway, motionless.

Mad Mia moved like she was dancing, which she may have been, given the constant hum at her lips. An upbeat, staccato chant. She added to the mixture. The roots of some plant on her sill. The crushed residue of seaweed. The pollen of the island’s wildflowers. When the heat of the hut was finally getting to Bree, the woman stood and shoved the bowl into her hands. A small portion of the liquid sloshed onto the front of Bree’s shirt, staining it deep auburn.

“The whole thing,” Mad Mia said. “He drinks every last drop or it will do no good.”

Bree nodded.

“By tomorrow, the fever should break.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Do I look like a seer of the future, girl? A gifted eye?” She batted a hand at Bree’s frown. “If it doesn’t work, I’ve done all I can. As Lock became lucky, Heath will be hopeless. I seem to wield complete successes or utter failures, nothing in between.”

You’re a complete failure in nearly everything, Bree thought. Rain dances and moonlit chants. Burnt fish and bone decor. But she just nodded at the woman and said, “I’ll be back for the bird. It belongs to the island now, to the dinner table.”

Mad Mia adjusted one of her mobiles, side-eying Bree. “That scrawny thing would barely feed a toddler. Little to no meat on the bones.”

“I’ll be back for it,” Bree growled. “Don’t move the carcass.”

With that, she stepped from the hut and into the blazing afternoon.

“It worked for Lock,” Bree insisted. Chelsea and Sparrow wrinkled their noses at the bowl now sitting on Heath’s bedside table. “‘Lucky Lock,’” Bree continued. “All because of Mia.”

“She also poisoned Bay’s son to death two years back,” Sparrow said.

“He was approaching an end anyway,” Bree said, remembering the fever the young man had come down with. “Just weeks from eighteen. Maybe she put him out of his misery.”

“And maybe she’s trying to do the same with Heath.”

Bree turned to Chelsea. “Please. You’ve seen his leg, the infection. It’s going to claim him, Chelsea. If this doesn’t work, he’s sailing for the same horizon either way.”

Chelsea worried the inside of her lip.

“I can’t condone a treatment from Mad Mia,” the healer said. “You know I can’t.”

“Sparrow,” Chelsea said. That was it. Just her name. Her name like a crack of lightning.

The healer fell silent, backed away. “He’s your son to lose. I can’t make this call.”

Even after she left, the house still seemed crowded, cramped. Chelsea’s gaze was locked on Heath, and when it finally drifted from the unsteady rise and fall of his chest, it fell on the bowl of heron blood.

“Go on and wake him. If he can stomach it, make sure he stomachs it all.”

She drifted to her weaving, as though busying her hands would cause the rest of her worries to melt. Bree didn’t understand this sort of detachment, the way some people gave up a fight long before it was over. Her mother did so after losing her father. Now Chelsea was doing it with Heath. As though the people left meant nothing. As though losing one meaningful thing meant there was nothing else worth living for.

Bree sat on the edge of Heath’s bed and put a palm to his brow. He was sticky. “Heath?” He stirred, shivered. “Heath, I brought you medicine.”

His eyelids fluttered open. The pain registered on his face almost immediately.

“Try to sit up. You have to drink it all.”

She helped him upright in the bed, the boy coughing and heaving all the while. He was paler than Bree had ever seen him, and he looked almost half his ten years. She placed the bowl in his hands and, with hers cupping them, helped lift it to his lips.

“Drink?”

He sipped cautiously, and instantly gagged.

“It’s bad, I know. But you have to keep drinking.”

Heath muttered and whimpered and some of the rust-red liquid ran down his neck as Bree urged him on. It felt like an entire afternoon had passed by the time the bowl was drained.

“Better? Good?”

He stared at her, looking half dead, then slumped forward in a heap.

“Heath?”

Bree rolled him over. He was out, but breathing—drained by the effort of drinking, or perhaps the medicine was already working through his system.

By tomorrow, the fever should break.

There was nothing to do but wait and hope.

NINE

LOCK’S LAST FULL NIGHT UNFOLDED with clear skies and an eerie stillness that spread over the island like the heat wave that refused to break. The loons did not cry as dusk fell. Not even the leaves whispered from their branches; there was no breeze to move them. An exhale could be heard, Bree thought, for the ocean herself seemed quieter tonight.

Heath was recovering. Or maybe just sleeping. Maybe slowly dying. Bree didn’t want to think about it. Lock still didn’t know about the heron blood, and Bree intended to keep it that way. Let him wake on his final morning to find his brother well. Let his last hours be ones of relief and gratitude to learn that Heath would carry on and that Bree had made it possible.

Lock walked through the doorway then, silent as a heron, and sat on the edge of Heath’s bed. Still pretending to be asleep, Bree listened.

“Hey, little man,” Lock said, and Bree imagined him putting a hand to his brother’s shoulder. “Once you get better—and you will get better—I need you to take care of Ma and Bree, okay?”

A pause.

“I’m sorry I’m going to miss it all: you getting well, turning thirteen in a few years, becoming a man. Not a little man anymore but a big one. I hope you’ll be better at it than me. It shouldn’t be hard. I’m not much of anything but a liar and a coward, and you already smile twice as much as I do, even with how much unfairness life shook on your plate.”

Bree heard the mattress crinkle as Lock repositioned himself, or maybe stood. Heath’s breathing was a wheeze as he slept.

“I love you, kid. And I hate that I have to leave.”

He still had another morning, though, another full day to say all this in person. Why now, in the quiet of night? Did he think Heath wouldn’t make it through the evening? Were his words about getting well just another lie?

“Bree? Are you awake?” She flinched when his hand met her shoulder.

“I am now,” she said.

“Will you walk with me? I can’t sleep.”

You actually have to lie down and try first, Bree thought. Bedside confessions to your brother after rolling around in the weeds with someone doesn’t count. But she fished her sandals from the floor in silence, and crept after Lock.

He said nothing as he led the way across town and down the sloping rock to the shore. The tide was out, making the climb onto the jetty easy and dry beneath the light of the moon. They sat, Bree keeping a good distance between their shoulders.

“So you couldn’t sleep?” she asked when she could no longer stand the silence.

“Been sitting out here on the jetty, hoping to get tired.”

No girls tonight, then. Bree stared at Lock’s profile, trying to guess what he was thinking. There was a bump on his nose that hadn’t healed properly from a break, and a heaviness to his chin she hadn’t noticed before. Like it weighed too much for him to lift away from his chest.

“Is it Heath, or your birthday?” she asked.

“Both.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

He twisted to face her. “Don’t lie to me, Bree. I can handle everyone else doing it, but not you.”

“It might be okay,” she said.

The corner of his lips twitched. “See why it’s better to not say anything?” Lock planted his left hand on the rock behind Bree’s hip and pivoted toward her. The space between them seemed instantly minuscule. He was looking at her lips the way he had the other day at the lake. There were minnows in Bree’s stomach again, but also a hook in her ribs, urging her to lean away. Lock had all but closed the space between them when Bree dropped her chin.

He frowned. “I thought you wanted this. You said you did yesterday, and now . . . ?” He looked so truly confused Bree didn’t know whether she should feel sorry for him or drown him in the shallows. “I’m scared, Bree. For tomorrow night. For what’s waiting for me.”

He leaned toward her again, and Bree shoved him off.

“I don’t care if you’re scared! I don’t even care if you’re sorry. I wanted you, Lock.”

“You had me.”

“And I wanted you to want me back.”

He squinted at her. “I do want you back. Why else would I be trying to kiss you?”

“And Ness? Last night? What am I supposed to think about that?”

“It was just Ness.”

“Just Ness! Just . . .” Words bottlenecked in Bree’s throat. “I wanted it to be just me. I wanted to be your only girl.”

“It was always you, Bree. You’re the one I cared about, and so I never tried to show it. And I certainly didn’t act on it—not until yesterday—because I always knew it would get messed up. I’d ruin it. Saltwater would. That’s just how things are. What guy do you know who lays with only one person?”

“That’s not the point, Lock.”

“Tell me I’m wrong. Give me a name. What guy doesn’t have his girls?”

Bree bit the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t think of a single example. It was likely that even her father had drifted.

“Just because everyone else does things one way doesn’t mean you have to,” Bree said. “There’s no rule. You could tell them no. Keeva didn’t order you to go roll around with Ness, did she?”

Lock looked away, and Bree honestly considered shoving him off the jetty.

“I’m an idiot, and clearly you’re an even bigger one. It’s a good thing your birthday’s coming, because you’re right, Lock. You did ruin it. You ruined everything, and the thought of you sticking around, of having to share a roof with you for the rest of my life—it’s enough to make me wish I was guaranteed a Snatching, too.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said.

She didn’t. She hated what he’d done, but she didn’t hate him. She might even still love him, and she hated that most of all. How could she love him after everything?

We don’t choose who we love, her mother had once said. Love sweeps you off your feet like a riptide, and leaves you blind by the time you find your footing on the shore.

“I’m thinking of chasing the horizon,” Lock said, aiming his words at the waves.

“You can’t be serious.”

When he didn’t respond, Bree noticed his gaze drifting in the direction of his boat. She’d helped him carve it from a trunk several years back, sanding the contours of the hull, perfecting the form and float. He’d won a few friendly races in that boat over the years. It cut through currents like a spear.

“You can’t. It’s a death wish, Lock.”

“Staying is one also.”

“What about Heath?”

“He’s going to lose me either way.”

“You ass!” Bree shoved Lock’s shoulder. He wasn’t expecting that, but at least he was finally looking at her again. “You think Heath wants to see your body wash up on shore? Of course he doesn’t want to lose you, but don’t do this, Lock. Don’t take the easy way out.”

“What easy way? There is no easy, Bree. You wouldn’t understand—how this date has been looming all my life, how I knew I’d never amount to anything but another loss.”

“And running guarantees it. Maybe there’s something else after you’re Snatched. Maybe you’ll end up wherever those birds fly to. Maybe you’ll sprout gills and live with the fish. I don’t care how ridiculous it sounds: The truth is, you have no idea what happens after eighteen.”

“There isn’t an after.”

“You don’t know that! That’s what I’m saying. Please, Lock. Just meet it. Greet it like an equal and maybe I’ll end up the same. Maybe in a few months we’ll both be together again, and then Heath will follow another few years down the road.”

“And maybe we’ll all meet in death, too.” He held her gaze. By the dim light of the moon, his green eyes seemed almost storm gray. “You’ll take care of Heath, right? You’ll watch after him for me?”

Bree felt her chin trembling and forbade herself to cry.

“Promise,” Lock insisted.

The best she could do was nod.

Lock studied her a moment, like he was etching a permanent rendition in his mind, then he reached out and tucked a tangled mess of hair behind her ear. His hand paused there, fingers grazing the nape of Bree’s neck. She knew she should pull away, but he looked so resigned and broken, she couldn’t bear it.

“I’m sorry, Bree. And I’m scared. I know I told you I wasn’t, but I’ve been scared my entire life. Especially the last few months. Please just be with me tonight. Here. With the waves and the stars and the whole sky as our blanket. I can’t be alone.” He moved nearer, so close his lips practically brushed hers. “I can’t be alone, and you’re the only girl on this whole island who makes me feel like I’m someone worth having.”

Against her better judgment, Bree kissed him.

It was bittersweet and simple. It was a distraction from the real issue.

She pulled away.

“We should go home. Before the tide comes in.”

“You afraid to get your ankles wet?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to do something stupid.”

“This is stupid?” He kissed her neck. “I thought we were having a good time.”

“I was talking about your boat.”

Lock tensed and drew back, stared out to sea. In the distance it appeared calm enough to be ice, moonlight winking off the surface.

Bree stood. “Are you coming?”

Lock stared at her outstretched palm, then her.

“I’m really sorry, Bree.”

“I know. Let’s go home.”

She extended her hand farther.

He took it in the end.

Walking back to the hut with their fingers threaded, the regret hit Bree. She shouldn’t have kissed him. And even still, she wanted to forgive everything. She wanted to make excuses for him. Lock was watching his life burn out like the last embers of a dying fire. Of course he was desperate to feel something—anything—as often as possible.

She wished she knew how to draw the line between protecting her heart and letting it have what it craved.

TEN

BREE WOKE BEFORE THE SUN and instantly knew something was wrong. It weighed on her chest, a suffocating, heavy blanket. Death.

She threw off her sheets. Hands shaking, she found a candle and lit it. “Heath?” she whispered. The silence in the hut was sharper than a knife. “Heath?”

The glow of the candle fell on him, pale as a ghost, mouth an open slit. His chest moved, and Bree buckled to her knees. His skin was still clammy, but he was breathing. Bree let out a sigh, but the pressure on her chest did not lessen.

And she knew.

Blood pounding, she held out the candle. At the far end of the room, Chelsea lay still asleep. The mattress between her and Heath was empty. Bree stumbled from the hut. “Lock?” The town was quiet, the world murky in dawn’s first light. Her feet moved faster. Across the town, beyond the empty bonfire pit, and toward shore. Somewhere within the trees she dropped the candle so she could run.

She was yelling his name now. Loud enough that the waves couldn’t swallow her words or the wind whip them away. The air tasted like tears, and when the sea came into view, it was angry; choppy waves and gray surges. The horizon burned as brightly as the fear in Bree’s chest.

Halfway down the sloped rock, she spotted his slumped form facedown in the shallows, the waves lapping over his shoulders. She fell twice on the way to him, cutting open her palm. Then she was on her knees on the froth-slicked rocks, rolling him onto his back. Vacant eyes stared at her, and she lost all composure.

“You stupid idiot!” she screamed, clenching the front of his shirt into her fist. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” She hit his chest, her own tears mixing with the salt the waves threw into her eyes.

The bronze skin she’d run her hands along just days earlier was now tinged a dull silver, like he wore a sheen of the ocean on his limbs. His lips were as cold as the shell of an oyster. Lock looked clumsy and dense, certainly not capable of hauling fish from the ocean or cracking a smile. The thought of dimples appearing on his cheeks seemed ridiculous, but it was his eyes that destroyed Bree most. Those green eyes that used to feel as lively as the ocean itself, as mischievous and scheming and magical. They were nothing now. They were holes. They were an empty, bottomless reminder that Lock was gone. That this was just a pile of bones and flesh and cold, bloated muscle. Her Lock was lost. Drowned hours ago in the water she could never escape.

Fingers grazed Bree’s shoulder and she bolted to her feet.

“You woke half the town,” Keeva said.

Behind the woman, a crowd had gathered. Chelsea and Heath were not present, and Bree felt the tiniest pinch of relief. They didn’t know. Their world had not yet been shattered.

“So foolhardy,” Keeva said, gazing at the horizon. “Each thinks he will be the first to reach it, even though none before ever has.”

“Well, he was Lucky Lock.” It took Bree a moment to find the speaker. A boy named Kent just months from his own Snatching. He kicked a stone toward the corpse. “Not too lucky now, is he?”

Bree didn’t remember deciding to do it. One moment she was standing over Lock’s body, and the next she was towering over Kent’s, her knuckles throbbing from the punch she’d delivered right to his mouth. Like she could force the words back into his throat. Like she could make them unsaid.

She was winding up to deliver another when she was yanked away. Not knowing who held her, and not caring, Bree turned and swung. Keeva grabbed her wrist, cutting the blow short.

“Compose yourself, or you’re heading for the horizon next,” she spat. “This body needs burying. Earth, sea, or sky—you’ll decide with Chelsea.” She turned on Kent. “And have respect for our dead. You face the same fate come the new year, and I doubt you’ll be laughing then.”

“My lip!” Kent said, touching it and looking at his bloody fingers. “She split my damn lip.”

“You deserved it. Go cry to Sparrow if you need a bandage.” Keeva wheeled on the rest of the crowd. “Well? There’s work to be done!”

Bree watched them disperse. Ness was sobbing into her hands, and Bree hated that the tears seemed genuine. Lock sometimes felt like Bree’s whole world, like the sun and the moon and the star-pocked night sky, and now that he was gone all those things seemed to burn less adamantly. How was it possible he could have the same effect on someone else? He was hers. Bree’s. They were each other’s.

She grabbed Lock at the wrists and hauled him out of the surf. Heath would have to see this—Lock’s body, blue and bloated. The bastard. The selfish bastard, forcing this upon his brother.

Bree broke down again, a brilliant sunrise her only audience.

They sent Lock back to the sky.

Chelsea stood before the pyre, stoic. Heath sobbed, but from the comfort of his bed. He couldn’t sit up, let alone stand to walk into town. Bree watched the flames slowly devour the water-logged corpse. The smell was awful. The sun was angry. It was another hot day, and it unfolded even when Bree’s world had stopped.

She fished, and brought in a decent haul.

She ate with the town that evening, but tasted nothing.

As dusk fell, Bree found herself on the jetty, a bottle of Honeyrush clutched in her hand. Its flavor was nothing like honey now—not after fermenting in the sun for weeks on end—but after draining the majority of the bottle in under an hour, the Rush had certainly hit. Bree’s head buzzed. Her limbs felt distant.

Distant was good, though. Distraction was key.

She couldn’t be back at the hut. Not since the weight of Lock’s death had finally settled on Chelsea, rendering her a blubbering mess. Heath was hysterical, too, mostly on account of his leg. He was delirious—shouting about things he saw materializing in the room, only to collapse a moment later and lie unconscious until the next outburst.

Stupid herons. Stupid myths and magic and elusive hope.

Bree took another long drink, letting the Rush scorch her throat. Somewhere on the water, a loon wailed.

“Shut up!”

It didn’t. It called until another joined, and then the cries became a duet.

Bree drained the bottle, then threw it in the direction of the birds, wishing every last one of them dead. Loons, herons, gulls, it didn’t matter. She hated them all. Birds flew places she could not go. They reminded her of her father she’d never again see. They promised to save injured boys only to hoard away hope and deliver nothing but heartache.

Lying back on the jetty, Bree let the sky blanket her. The Rush raged in her core and behind her temples. She was a fish, swimming among the stars. She was an anchor, plunging. Her stomach coiled, and Bree rolled to her side, retching, emptying herself of the drink and even her dinner. Emptying herself of everything, it seemed, but the hurt.

ELEVEN

BREE HAD A FIERCE HEADACHE the following morning, rivaled only by an even fiercer desire to never cry again. She was done being weak. She’d managed when her mother began drifting away, and even after she was gone, Bree had gotten by. She’d been strong on her own—lonely, upset, angry, but strong. There are people who drain you and people who raise you up. People who take and people who give. People who make you feel dressed in armor and people who actually provide it. Unless she was dealing with one of the latter, Bree decided she would never again expend her energies.

She climbed from bed, limbs arguing and headache a roar.

Heath’s skin was burning. Of course Mad Mia’s work had failed. Of course it had done nothing. Lucky with Lock and never lucky again. Bree had killed the heron for no reason, snuffed out a life just to spill blood.

She grabbed a rag from the bedside table and wiped the sweat from Heath’s brow. Summoning her courage, she lifted the sheets and unwrapped the soaked bandage on his leg. Dense and suffocating, the smell of rot hit her like a wave. Bree buried her face in the crook of her elbow and peered closer. Inflamed skin surrounded the wound, red and angry. The entry point was still oozing and festering. But worse still was the faint red discoloration on Heath’s skin that had spread from the wound and crawled up his thigh. It looked like a bad sunburn, and Bree wished it were that simple.

“It needs to be amputated,” Bree said, looking up at Chelsea. The woman sat on her bed with her knees curled into her chest, eyes vacant. “The blood poisoning.” Bree pointed at the red trail on Heath’s leg. “We need to act before it spreads farther. Before it’s too late.”

Chelsea’s gaze remained on Lock’s empty bed.

“Chelsea! You can’t just disappear. You can’t leave when he needs you.”

“He’s dead,” she whispered. “Gone.”

“Lock is, but not Heath. Not yet.”

Nothing.

“I’m getting Sparrow.”

“He won’t survive an amputation. He’s already so weak.”

“We still have to try.”

“Like you tried with the heron’s blood?” Chelsea lay back down on the bed. “I’ve already lost one son, Bree. Don’t make me lose another.”

“You will if you do nothing. Chelsea? Chelsea!” Bree scrambled around the beds and grabbed the woman by the front of her cotton shift, yanking her upright. “He can lose his leg or lose his life. If you honestly think those are equal losses you’re the most worthless mother this island’s seen, and I thought mine won that title years ago.”

“Don’t you dare judge me!” The woman knocked Bree aside, a fury on her face so animated Bree submitted without a fight. “Heath’s sick every few weeks. He’ll likely be blind by the end of the year if his vision keeps deteriorating. I’m trying to be merciful. I’m trying to spare him pain. His life already has such little quality. What will his future hold if you take his leg, too?”

“He won’t have a future to worry about if we do nothing!”

Chelsea crawled over Lock’s bed and into Heath’s. She wrapped her son in her arms and pressed her mouth in his hair.

“I’m getting Sparrow,” Bree announced again.

Chelsea said nothing, and to Bree, it was as good as consent. Maybe Saltwater broke everyone in time. It took all their boys and broke all their women. They grew resigned, like Chelsea, or desperate to fly, like Bree’s mother. Or maybe that was just life, water beating against a stone until it succumbs to smooth edges. But Bree wouldn’t be broken, or worn down, or shaped any way but how she wished. She’d made a promise. To Lock. To Heath. She’d right this.

She pushed off the bed, and went to find Sparrow.

The surgery was horrible. Bree regretted the decision as soon as it began.

Heath, who had been unconscious all morning, was now screaming with such fervor it seemed impossible that death had been near claiming him. He’d been secured to the bed, and a wooden spoon was in his mouth to protect against biting his own tongue, but he was thrashing like a trapped animal. The Honeyrush they’d given him could only numb so much pain. Chelsea, trying to drown her fears with that same bottle of Rush, was a worthless, sobbing mess at the main table.

And so it was just Bree and Ness, of all people, restraining Heath while Sparrow and Cricket tended to his leg. First with knives, then a saw meant for trees, and finally a needle. Sparrow secured a flap of skin she hadn’t completely severed over Heath’s now much shorter leg. They’d taken it from midthigh down. The bed was steeped in blood.

“He’s facing the same odds all over again,” Sparrow said as she stowed away the tools. “If it heals clean—if it doesn’t get infected—he might make it.”

They moved Heath, unconscious but alive, onto Lock’s bed.

“I can clean the sheets,” Ness offered, pointing at the blood-soaked bedding. “And ask around on how long it might be until a new mattress can be made.”

“They don’t need to be replaced,” Bree said. “He can have Lock’s.”

“Right” was all Ness said, but there were many words passing over her features.

Together, the girls dragged the ruined sheets and mattress outside, where they burned them beneath a noon sun. Bree and Ness stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the smoke billow.

“Thank you for helping,” Bree said when she found the courage. “Chelsea’s sort of out to sea, and I don’t think I could have held Heath alone.”

Sparrow had invited—no, requested—Ness join when they’d crossed paths on the way to the hut. It was like the healer could foresee that Chelsea would be useless during the surgery.

“Sure,” Ness said, nodding. A breeze stirred, and on it, Mad Mia’s chants reached their ears. “Think she’ll get us any?” Ness glanced up at the cloudless sky.

“Any rain?” Bree said. “If it comes, it won’t be because of her dances.”

“Do you think she’s really mad?”

“I think she’s hopeful. I think she’s not afraid to believe in things bigger than herself, in things we can’t find explanations for.” Bree looked directly at Ness. It could have been the lighting, or just exhaustion from the surgery, but Ness suddenly looked closer to sixteen, like Bree, than the eighteen years she was approaching. “I think it takes a lot of courage to be hopeful—to be blindly hopeful,” Bree added. “Maybe she’s mad. Maybe she’s brave. Maybe they’re the same thing.”

Ness shoved her hands into her pockets. “That day Heath fell on the spike . . . What I said wasn’t fair. I was angry, and scared. Scared for Heath, and for what would happen to Lock if he lost him.” A pause. “I just wanted to make sense of it all, and blaming you was all I had. It was the only thing that got me through the day.”

Bree half smiled, then nearly laughed at the fact that she had. Lock was dead and Heath was healing, and here she was having a conversation with a girl she’d never exchanged more than a handful of sentences with all her life. A sadness bloomed in her core, and she recognized the bittersweet sting of missed opportunity. Ness could be a friend. Ness could have been a friend years prior, even, had Bree only put down her shield as she had for Lock and Heath.

“Think he’ll make it?” Ness said, tilting her head toward the hut.

“I hope so.”

“‘Hope’ again. It’s like the whole damn world is fueled by it.” A smile. “Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to learn to fish like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like it was nothing. Like the spear was an extension of your hand.”

Bree flushed. She’d seen Ness along the shore on occasion. Sometimes alone, other times with Maggie. Bree had thought her visits were to gape at Lock, but clearly Ness was observing many things. She’d never considered that Ness might long to do more than mend and sew.

“I could teach you,” Bree offered. “How to fish.” The thought of heading to the shore every morning alone, Lock no longer at her side, was paralyzing.

“Nah.” Ness wrinkled her nose. “There won’t be enough time.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think you’ll be around much longer.” Ness turned to look at Bree, her face conflicted. “Seems like it’s always the toughest girls who get Snatched.”

That evening, Bree made her way to the jetty. It was her harbor, a port for her thoughts, and she had a lot on her mind.

“I wouldn’t stay out long,” Mad Mia said, dropping one of her chants midsentence as Bree passed. “Rain’s coming.”

It did feel vaguely like rain. Bree could taste it on the air, and the afternoon had brought in thick clouds. Even now, forks of heat lightning licked the darkening horizon, but this had happened before. It was summer, after all. The whole purpose of the season was to constantly threaten storms.

“And you’ve delivered this rain, Mia?” Bree said. “It won’t just be a lucky coincidence?”

“Luck is a river. Sometimes it runs dry, but wait long enough and the springs are always restored.” Mia frowned at her. “These are the subtleties of life, the undercurrents of possibility and chance. When they all align with our wishes, it’s almost like magic. Magic Mia,” she said, mostly to herself. “That would have been so much nicer. Yes, yes. Magic.” She pulled aside the vine curtain of her doorway and disappeared.

On the jetty, as Bree watched the distant heat lightning dance, her thoughts fell on Lock. It was his birthday today. He’d have been eighteen. She looked up at the sky, thick with storm clouds. Somewhere behind them, she knew the stars were winking by the company of the moon.

I’m sorry I yelled at you, she told Lock. I don’t hate you—I could never hate you—but I am angry. That you left, that you’re gone. Sometimes I feel like we might have had a chance, Lock. Somewhere else. In a different life. In a place without all this water. Wherever all those birds go.

It’s possible you were right. There might be nothing for those Snatched—it might be death and decay and the end of all possibilities. But I almost hope to find out. It’s crazy, but I’m ready for whatever you ran from. I hope it comes for me, and I hope it’s something worth seeing.

I’ll let you know.

If I live through it, I’ll let you know what you’re missing.

When Bree stood, she was tired and relieved and surprisingly lighter. She couldn’t remember why, exactly, she’d ever thought it a good idea to stop talking to the night sky. It was absurd, yes, a shout into an endless void. It was her words among a million stars. But to put her thoughts on such a large canvas was like emptying her hurt into the ocean. It could hold all her pain, worries, fears, if she was only willing to unload it.

A fat raindrop hit Bree’s forearm. Another, then another, smacking the rock jetty and stinging her bare skin. Thunder rumbled. The waves roared. And then the sky unloaded like a breached dam. Bree was drenched in a heartbeat.

She stood there on the jetty and stretched her arms to the clouds.

TWELVE

THE EARTH WAS SWOLLEN WITH rainwater the following morning, but Bree’s patchwork on the roof with Lock had held true. The reservoirs were up a few inches, along with the islanders’ spirits. Keeva even planted a kiss on Mad Mia’s leathery cheek.

Bree pulled in her share of fish and then slipped into the woods. Heath would need crutches, because he would get better—just as Lock had promised—and Bree wanted to provide them. She found a fitting piece of wood in time—still slightly green—but not before stumbling upon something that broke her heart: a heron nest, tucked into one of Crest’s lowest ledges alongside the freshwater lake. Inside the nest were the remains of two babies—shriveled by the sun, half eaten by maggots and flies. Bree looked away. She’d killed their mother, and for nothing. Nothing. The heron blood hadn’t helped Heath in the slightest. Or had it? Was it only because it had failed that Bree felt brave enough to take the boy’s leg? Would she have had the courage otherwise?

Bree didn’t bother to make sense of it. Heath was conscious when she returned home, and his bandages were clean. When Sparrow stopped by that evening, she confirmed there was no sign of infection.

As the days passed, the boy grew stronger. He napped less and smiled more. He sat up in bed to hold a conversation. His appetite returned.

Bree carved his crutches in the downtime between her obligations, perfecting their shape, smoothing and sanding. When she wasn’t working on the crutches or her other duties, she was teaching Ness to fish. The girl taught Bree to mend a wardrobe properly in return. Ness could make rips and tears vanish, their scars barely visible. If a spear was an extension of Bree’s arm, a needle was the same for Ness.

By the time Heath was ready for the crutches, summer had faded into fall. By the time he’d relearned how to walk with them, the first frost-tinged mornings of winter were upon Saltwater. With the arrival of December, Bree’s fishing lessons with Ness came to an abrupt halt. The water was frigid and the loons had fled. Bree missed them fiercely. The birds had seemed so sad on the night of Lock’s funeral, but now the days were short, and the nights had never seemed more empty. Even a bittersweet song would have been a comfort.

On the evening before what could potentially be her last, Kent found Bree on the jetty, watching the stars fight to reveal themselves amid the season’s first flurries.

“I never should have said that stuff about Lock,” he said. “That day on the beach.”

“Feeling guilty now that your own birthday’s just days off?”

“Look who’s talking.”

Bree shrugged and said nothing. A small part of her was even excited. If she were Snatched, maybe she could see Heath again in the future. Or Wren and Cora and every other girl who had once been stolen away. Assuming it even worked like that. Regardless, it was better than living her whole life trapped on Saltwater, only to die alone.

Kent took a seat beside her. He had a brooding face, like his features were stuck in a permanent state of regret. Bree watched him wring his hands together and set his stocky shoulders toward the horizon.

“I always thought you were pretty,” he said. “I wanted to tell you for forever, but you only saw Lock, and then as soon as he was gone I went and said the dumbest thing possible—gave you a reason to hate me.” He paused. “I still think you’re pretty, you know. Even if you scowl all the time.”

Bree almost laughed.

“Hey, do you have any regrets? Anything you didn’t do during your time here?”

“Even if the answer was yes, it would be none of your business,” Bree said, drawing her jacket tighter.

“You’re scowling again.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Have you ever . . .” He raised his brows. “You know?”

“Know what?”

“Been with someone?”

“Dammit, Kent, I’m not talking about this with you.”

“I . . . I just thought if you hadn’t . . . if we were both going to die—be Snatched—that maybe—”

“Stop it,” Bree said. “First, there’s no proof that a Snatching means you die. Second, you don’t want to be with me. You think you do, but you don’t. You want to be with someone who wants you back. Someone who makes you better. Someone who challenges you and sees you and gives you as much as you give them. It works two ways.”

“I don’t care how it works. I—”

“Kent, I’m going home now. Thank you for apologizing about Lock. I’ll see you tomorrow, and if I end up Snatched, maybe I’ll see you somewhere else, too. In time.”

She left before a reaction could register on his face.

That night, Bree slept in Heath’s bed, the boy wrapped in her arms and his head tucked beneath her chin. In the morning, he woke first, and nudged her with a bony elbow.

“Go back to sleep,” she muttered. “The sun’s not even up.”

Heath went on prodding her until she retaliated. He suffered a few good jabs in return, but he’d won. Bree was awake now.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“My birthday’s tomorrow, bug,” she said.

“But I might not get to say it tomorrow. You could be Snatched.” He sat up, using his arms to aid in the process. He was still getting used to the missing muscle on his left side, the new, unbalanced state of his body. “No matter what, I’ll see you again someday. I really think that’s how it works.”

Bree just nodded.

They spent the day doing nothing of importance. They sat around the fire and drank hot tea. They went for a walk through the town, which was dusted with a thin layer of white. Heath was good on his crutches now, but the snow made him clumsy. Bree laughed when he fell, and when she refused to help him up, he called her a word he’d most certainly learned from Lock. Heath managed in the end—awkwardly bracing his weight against the crutches until he pulled himself upright. He tossed another swear Bree’s way but she smiled. He could manage without her, and that was all she’d been testing.

Chelsea brought food back from the bonfire that night and the three of them had a private meal. No one said much, but what really remained to be said? Besides, Chelsea was present, looking at Heath instead of through him, and Bree knew everything would be fine in her absence.

Later, when the town was sleeping, Bree wandered to the jetty. It was here that it always happened, a private occurrence without spectators. The brave would wait. The desperate would chase the horizon. And the people of Saltwater did not interfere.

Against her island’s traditions, Bree witnessed a Snatching for the first and only time at the age of seven. She’d wanted to see what had happened to her father—not just hear a vague recount of the phenomenon—and it had been terrifying. The roaring wind, the blinding light, the thrashing ocean. A dark shadow had taken the trembling boy.

And now she was on that same jetty—her harbor, her port—facing an uncertain future.

The horizon was barely discernible from where she stood. The star-strewn sky met the water like an old friend, bleeding into one. Waves crashed around her, a familiar song Bree was suddenly terrified she’d miss. Her thoughts drifted to Lock. She couldn’t change whatever was coming—if it even was coming—but she understood him clearly now. The nerves and fears, the overwhelming sense of helplessness that threatened to drown. The difference was that she wouldn’t run.

There were pieces of her that no force could take away. No matter where she might find herself tomorrow, she had the stars as her confidants. And if she lost the sky, she had her hands. She had calluses from spears and the means to whistle to loons. And even if those were stolen she had memories of Lock and Heath and herons and hope and all the things that mattered. They were hers, and nothing could take them from her.

When the night sky went ablaze, Bree didn’t flinch. She didn’t tremble or cringe or cower in fear. She greeted it like an equal.

She might have even smiled.

After

THIRTEEN

HER WORLD WAS LARGE NOW. Frightening large. And so much more complex than she ever could have imagined.

She’d read the truth in a series of leather-bound journals, equal parts appalled (at the lies she’d been fed in Taem) and amused (at the minor discrepancies in the captured notes). Saltwater had no Wall—the ocean was a mighty guardian—but it had been watched. Just like the other test groups. She, like so many, was another victim of the Laicos Project.

Those journals had lit a fire beneath Bree, a need to right wrongs. She’d picked up a firearm eagerly, shocked—if not a little bit startled—to find it as comfortable as a spear in her grasp.

Her hands were the only things to get her through those first few months. She whistled into them almost obsessively, a loon call reminding her that she was still Bree from Saltwater. Bree, Bree, Bree. The same girl, despite how much of her life had dissolved like a crashing wave.

She peered at her mark through the binoculars. The boy was still dragging his brother—at least, she assumed they were related. They looked identical. Especially in those horrible Order uniforms.

She could hear Fallyn in her ear: Act now, question later. Fallyn, whose name Bree had heard whispered around Saltwater fires—a legend there, now a captain here.

But even after tracking the brothers, stalking them in circles through the forest, Bree still hadn’t pulled the trigger. It wasn’t that she hadn’t killed before. She had. She’d done a lot she never thought herself capable of in the past eight months. Disbanding the boys’ mission team three days back had been one thing. But what Bree was doing now? It was hunting. It was tracking prey. Half-dead prey, at that. She knew, with a deep, undeniable certainty, that this kill would rot her conscience like meat under a summer sun.

Bree lowered the binoculars and shook her head. She was only thinking this because she got stuck tracking the young ones. The brothers. The only two of the Order team to flee who looked around eighteen. And so the question weighed on her: What if they don’t know they’re fighting for the wrong side?

The boy was weak, exhausted, but just a bit farther north he’d find the water. With water, he’d make it. And if he kept on hiking to the mountains and found headquarters . . . Bree didn’t want to think about what Ryder or Fallyn would say. And yet here she was, a clear shot in her sights, and she couldn’t take it.

You’re waiting because he reminds you of someone.

She told herself to shut up, because now wasn’t the time to think about him.

But that dark hair, the way his shoulders hunch forward, the brother who he can’t stop fussing over. From a distance, it could be him.

Shut up.

Lock. He reminds you of Lock.

Shut up!

But it was too late, because her past—everything she sealed away in order to stay strong after reading those journals—surfaced like a mirage in the heat.

He did look a bit like Lock from far away, but his care for his brother—that’s what really did it. The way he refused to leave him behind even though it would have made more sense to scout out food and shelter alone and then double back. But no, this boy kept fretting like a mother over a newborn. Feel for a fever, check the bandages, drag, drag, drag his near-unconscious brother under the relentless sun. What a waste of energy. What a loyal, devoted, stubborn waste.

Ahead of her, the boy sank to his knees before a green pond. He lamented the undrinkable filth for a moment, then paused, cocking an ear to the side. He stood, walked to the rock face beside him, and found the trickle of water filling the pond, the gap through which he could slip. Undoubtedly hearing the roar of freshwater hidden on the other side as well.

“Blaine. Get up,” he said, shaking his brother. “You have to walk. There’s water.”

He pulled his brother—Blaine—to his feet. Even hidden several trees back, Bree could tell Blaine was in no state to walk. One of his legs was bound and bloody, an injury from her team’s attack on their camp. He was sweating, too, fighting a fever that wouldn’t break. It was like looking at Heath all over again, only aged a good few years.

“Through here,” the boy said, pointing at the gap in the rock. “Can you do it?”

Blaine coughed and moved his chin in a small nod. Then, like an idiot, the boy let go of his brother and turned his back. Blaine collapsed almost instantly, falling like a rock and hitting one in the process. The crack of his skull was audible even from where Bree stood.

And now the boy—the idiot boy—was panicking. He shouted Blaine’s name, paled at the sight of his bloody scalp. Bree watched him lay an ear to Blaine’s heart—still beating, it seemed—and bandage the head wound. Finally, as he should have done from the beginning, the boy scurried through the gap in the rock alone.

Now, she told herself. So you don’t have to watch his face blow over with shock when you shoot his brother.

Bree ran, rifle gripped tightly. She stepped over Blaine’s unconscious body and let her aim settle on the Franconian emblem of his uniform. Act first, question later. But with her finger resting on the trigger, Bree hesitated.

The boys were indeed identical—she’d been right to suspect brothers, if not twins—but up close, the resemblance to Lock was lost. Instead, Bree was reminded of Owen Weathersby, a Rebel captain. Owen had sons in Claysoot. Right around this age, if Bree remembered correctly. She wished she’d asked for their names. These boys could be them, Heisted and working for Frank because they didn’t know the truth.

Her finger lifted off the trigger.

Muttering a curse, Bree climbed through the gap in the rock. The air was full of mist on the other side, cool and clean, and the sound of the waterfall hitting the pool echoed off the steep, surrounding walls. The boy was kneeling before the water’s edge, filling a canteen.

“Stop right there,” she ordered. Her words bounced off the rock, making her sound more demanding then she felt.

The boy raised his hands overhead and slowly turned to face her.

“You,” Bree said. “What’s your name?”

He stared, head tilted, and Bree got the impression that he was about to call her bluff, that he could tell she didn’t want to shoot him unless absolutely necessary. She marched forward and pressed the muzzle of her weapon to his chest. It was only now, with her eyes barely level with his collarbone, that she realized how truly unlike Lock he was. The physical similarities stopped at the dark hair, as this boy was taller—maybe over six feet—with a jaw set like a cliff, harsh and demanding. His hair was wet from the water he’d splashed on his face, and dirt still caked the creases of his skin, creating rough lines. Everything about him seemed harsh, really. Everything but his eyes, which were gray. As gray as the skies that hung over Saltwater before a rainstorm, deep-set and cast in shadow.

Bree faltered, then cursed herself for it.

She was stupid. Sloppy and unfocused.

She pressed the weapon against the boy’s breastbone a bit harder. “I asked you what your name is.”

He stared. Blinked.

“The boy outside. Is he your brother?”

And finally, words.

“You’re just going to kill us anyway.” His voice was steadier than she expected, no sign of nerves. “You’re going to murder us, the way you murdered that Order team.”

“Murder?” Of course he had to make this difficult. He was stupid enough to let his brother crack his head, and now he was stubborn enough to throw up walls when someone tried to help him. “It’s not murder when we’re fighting for our lives,” she snarled. “Now, your name.”

“You were really good. All quiet like that. How long have you been following us?”

Like she’d tell him.

“You’d make a good hunter,” he added. “Especially where I came from. I don’t think we had a single girl as stealthy as you.”

“Where you came from?” Hope spiked in Bree’s chest. Maybe he was Owen’s after all. She nudged him again with her rifle. “Are you with the Order or are you from somewhere else?”

“What’s it matter? You are going to shoot me, right?”

And then he had the gall to smile. It lit up his entire face, made every last feature soften.

Bree watched triumph spread over the boy’s lips, like he believed he’d won. Like he thought he knew her.

She brought her knee up, catching him between the legs. He gasped, and his shocked expression was so priceless that Bree couldn’t help but smirk as she knocked him out with her rifle. She dragged him out of the water so that he wouldn’t drown his pretty face, and pulled a radio from her pack.

“Fallyn, I’m at the waterfall. I’ve got two unconscious Order members—potential recruits. Send Luke or someone from the Interrogation Center to help me haul these idiots in.”

The boy looked so harmless now, one of his arms pinned beneath his chest. Bree hoped she wouldn’t come to regret sparing him. He was stupid and cocky and potentially undeserving of the Rebels’ aid, but she’d looked him in the eye and heard his voice. She’d caught a glimpse of his personality. She’d seen his smile.

If she ended up having to shoot him later, it would no longer be easy.

And right then, Bree knew it, a truth as unforgiving as the sun beating down overhead: This boy was going to be a major thorn in her side.

Content

Stolen
Taken - 0.5
by
Erin Bowman

Before

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

After

THIRTEEN