Authors: C. J. Redwine
Outcast (3 page)
“L
ook who finally decided to grace us with his presence.” Dad’s voice is full of mean as I leave my room and walk down a short set of stairs to our home’s main room, which is built around the trunk of the oak tree. I push my shoulder-length black hair away from my face and skirt the edge of the trunk, heading toward the cooking stove in the corner where a pot of Mom’s stewed apples bubbles over a low fire.
The chill of the winter morning seeps in through the cracks in the walls. The scattered rag rugs, faded from years of use, do little to block the cold. I pull my leather coat tight, the book of poems securely tucked in an inner pocket far from my father’s prying eyes. Mom hovers near the stove, her eyes on her husband, her hands already shaking with the need for her next drink.
“Guess you were tired after having to do the cleanup all by yourself last night,” Dad says.
I grab a chipped porcelain bowl from the rack above the stove and scoop apples into it.
“Hope you used that time alone to do some hard thinking, boy, because I’m not putting up with you questioning my authority again.”
I dip a spoon into the apples and take a bite. The stew is tangy, verging on sour. Either Mom forgot to add sugar, or we’re out of it again.
“Look at that, Cora.” Dad’s voice is menacing as he circles the trunk and comes closer to the stove. “Your son thinks he can ignore me.”
Mom’s hands flutter toward her neck and latch onto the frayed edges of her knitted shawl. “Answer your father,” she says in a weary voice. When I take too long to finish chewing and swallowing, she whips her head toward me, desperate anger flaring in her bloodshot eyes. “
Now
, Quinn. Answer him!”
“Yes.” I carefully set the bowl into the sink beside our ancient water pump, the sour tang of the apples still ripe in my mouth. “Yes, I did some hard thinking.”
“Better make sure you came to the right conclusion.” Dad strides forward and grabs the front of my coat. I hold my arms tightly to the sides to keep the book from sliding out of its pocket while he gives me a hard shake. “Who’s in charge of our missions?”
“You are.” The words are easy. The effort to stop myself from arguing that we should approach the village’s protection differently is not.
“You forget that again, boy, and I’ll have to teach you a lesson.” The threat of violence lies heavy in his voice. I nod but don’t look at him. He lets go of my coat slowly and straightens. “You’ll do the scouting run today.”
My eyes snap to his as panic sears me. If I’m scouting for potential threats during the day, I’ll be kept at home tonight. There will be no one to stand between Willow and my father’s desire to mold her into another version of himself. And I won’t be there to absorb the violence he turns against us when things don’t go his way.
“I’m not a scout.” I keep my voice calm and expressionless. “The elders gave Sorra and Matthias that job. If I take their place—”
He slaps me. I see it coming. I could’ve dodged the blow, but it’s better to take the first hit than risk provoking him into the kind of beating that will leave me hobbling for days.
Leaning close enough that his breath fans the stinging handprint on my cheek, he says, “You’ll scout if I tell you to. And you’ll keep scouting until you’ve learned to hold your tongue and do as you’re told. I had hopes for you, Quinn. Thought you’d follow in your old man’s footsteps and make me proud. But now I’m thinking maybe your sister is the true warrior in this family.”
His dark eyes flash with challenge, and my stomach lurches as I realize he knows I’m trying to protect Willow. He knows I’m willing to do anything I have to do to keep her from becoming like him. He knows, and he’s recovered from his shock at my defiance last night and is ready to answer me with the kind of violence that has kept Willow and me doing his bidding without question our entire lives.
Mom picks up a glass jar filled with pale-yellow corn liquor and walks out of the room without looking at us. I do the one thing that will pacify my father and put me on the road to being in his good graces again, where I can watch out for Willow.
“If you want me to scout, I’ll do it.” My voice is calm and controlled—at odds with the frantic pounding of my heart and the fury that blazes through me with almost unbearable ferocity.
For one moment, I imagine striking him back—using the skills he’s taught me to hurt him, disable him, and then hurt him some more. Watching his face as he realizes that the monster he’s created has turned against its master.
Then I take a slow breath, ignore the anger that pounds through me, and walk out the door. The morning sky is winter gray as I climb onto the walkway that circles our home and stretches tree to tree, connecting our home to the buildings around us. The village occupies five hundred yards in the center of the southern forest. Every home, council, and community building is built high up in the trees, centered around thick trunks and then branching out with the use of walkways, rope stairs, and support beams.
Below us, a thin crust of snow remains on the forest floor, though spots of dark earth are peeking through in places. Snow never lasts long in the southern forest. I don’t know which direction Sorra and Matthias went this morning, and I’m not going to hunt down the elder in charge of scouting to ask.
Not when it means trying to explain why my father is displeased with me. And why I’m struggling to obey him.
I head south, running silently along the walkways, past the council building, the butcher shop, and the schoolhouse until I come to the edge of the village. A thick forest of oak, cypress, and elm surrounds us. Most of the people who enter our borders are either highwaymen traveling to pillage or trade or couriers from other city-states looking for a shortcut to Rowansmark, a three-day’s journey south.
None of the strangers who enter our borders uninvited make it out alive.
Grabbing a sturdy elm branch, I swing off the walkway that borders the village and into the forest beyond. Moving lightly along that branch, I scan the surrounding trees, pick another branch that can hold me, and leap from one tree to the next only to do it all over again. In moments, I’ve left the quiet noises of the village behind and am embraced by the occasional call of the birds above me, the creak of the branches below me, and the reverent hush that holds the woods captive.
When I’m far enough away that I feel comfortable stopping, I climb into the cradle of a cypress and pull out the book.
The last book I found was a collection of short stories full of magic and make-believe—so different from the life that I knew—and they fed my soul in a way that nothing ever had. I’d read them to Willow in the quiet early morning hours after a hunt when Dad was already asleep. The words felt like a treasure. Something that was untouched by anyone but us.
But one day I wasn’t careful enough, and Dad overheard me reading. Furious that I’d kept the book out of a night’s haul, he’d confiscated it.
We never saw it again.
Now, I hold the book of poems carefully and slide a finger over the thin, yellowed pages while I read. The words are lyrical, like the river’s steady cadence as it rushes over the rocks in spring. I read poems about battles, beautiful streams, and the loss of a girl named Claribel. Images of noble soldiers, lonely journeys, and love that is strong enough to endure every separation fill my mind. I feel a sense of peace for the first time in years.
Then I turn a page and read a poem whose last lines stop me cold. Drawing in a breath of chilly air, I speak the words aloud while my heart picks up speed.
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
My throat closes as the memory of slashing the unarmed highwayman’s throat fills me. What are my echoes? What mark am I leaving on this world to roll soul to soul, growing forever?
The questions, the doubts that I’ve struggled with snap into focus with one clear thought: I will not become the man my father wants me to be. I will choose my own path. My own echoes.
And if I have anything to say about the matter, Willow will get to choose her echoes too.
“W
here have you been?” I whisper as Willow glides into her room just minutes before dawn on what will be my fourth day in a row of scout duty.
She shoots me a quick glare and whispers back, “Get out of here before Dad hears you.” With deft movements, she shrugs her bow and quiver off her back and then reaches for the knife strapped to her waist.
“He won’t hear anything if we keep our voices down.” I step closer as I see the dark gleam of blood on the serrated edge of her knife. “Your knife is bloody.”
“That’s what happens when you stick it in somebody.” Her voice is as quietly controlled as mine, but her fingers grip the hilt with white-knuckled ferocity. She grabs a rawhide cloth from her dresser and carefully wipes the blade clean, while I cross my arms and stare her down.
I’ve spent my days scouting, and all has been quiet. No highwaymen. No lone thieves prowling for an easy victim. No travelers looking for a shortcut to Rowansmark.
When I haven’t been scouting, I’ve used my time to read poetry and think about how to change the course I’m on and rescue Willow at the same time.
I haven’t come up with any answers, and the longer we’ve gone without threats to put down, the harder it’s been to dodge the restless violence that simmers in our father like a cauldron about to boil over. When he took Willow with him to “check the perimeter” twelve hours ago, a knot of worry blossomed in my gut. As I look at Willow now, that knot turns into a stone.
“What happened?” I ask.
“The usual. Killing people. Hunting things. The family business.” She avoids my gaze and sets her weapons against the wall beside her bed.
“Willow, this isn’t the usual. There were no reported threats. And when there are threats, we deal with them just outside the village borders. You should’ve been gone three, maybe four hours.” I glance at the graying light seeping in past her curtains. “You’ve been gone for twelve.
What happened?
”
She sits on the side of the bed and concentrates on unlacing her boots. “We found a threat.”
I frown. “Where? There were no reports—”
Her gaze snaps to mine, and the darkness in her eyes is an accusation I don’t know how to answer. “Dad needed a threat, so we found one. Took us hours of moving through the Wasteland looking for travelers, but we found some. And we made an example out of them.” Her voice shakes, and she presses her lips closed. A shaft of light leaks past the shutters and illuminates a bruise swelling along her cheekbone.
“Did a tracker give you that?” I gesture toward her face.
She shrugs and refuses to look at me. My heart thuds heavily in my chest. A tracker didn’t do that to her. Dad did. Without me there as Dad’s favorite target, he took out his rage on her instead.
“Willow.” I breathe her name while rage pushes against the dam I’ve built to contain it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve—”
“Come with us?” Her tone is hard, but the fierceness in her face is a mirror of the protectiveness I feel toward her. “You can’t do it, Quinn. We both know that. This life is destroying you.”
“It’s destroying us both.” I sink to my knees beside her bed and meet her gaze. “Every time we hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it, we lose something we can’t get back.”
“The men tonight were bounty hunters searching for a Baalboden courier who stole something from Rowansmark. They want the price that’s been put on the courier’s head. You know bounty hunters will cut through anyone who stands between them and their prize. I’d hardly call them innocent.”
“Were they a threat to the village?”
Her eyes drift away from mine. “No.”
No, they weren’t, but it hadn’t mattered because Dad was more interested in killing than he was in protecting our borders.
“I’ve been thinking—”
“I was afraid of that.” She rolls her eyes.
I nudge her knee with my shoulder. “Just listen. I’ve been reading the book you gave me.”
She flops backward onto her bed. “If you’re about to give me advice based on a poem written by some dead guy, you can forget it.”
“Not advice.” I lean my elbows against the frayed quilt that covers her bed and then hold my breath when I hear footsteps on the stairs that lead from the main room to our bedrooms. Seconds later, I breathe again when I hear the unmistakable
shuffle-scrape
of our mother’s steps heading past our rooms and toward the cupboard where she keeps the corn liquor hidden behind a set of fancy sheets we once took from a dead highwayman.
“I’m tired, Quinn. I want to go to sleep, not listen to poetry.” Willow keeps her voice down as we hear Mom fall to her knees in front of the cabinet.
“No poetry. Just . . . you’re right. This life is destroying us. And now you’re taking the brunt of Dad’s sickness instead of me and—”
“And you’re afraid I’m going to end up just like him.” She barely whispers the words, but they seem to grow larger, filling up the room and taking on a life of their own. I clench my fists and remember the Willow of my childhood—the sister who laughed and loved with wild abandon until she killed her first highwayman and earned the black feather she still wears dangling from her ear cuff.
I can’t tell her she’s right. I can’t put into words the fear that haunts me when I see how easily she obeys Dad. How quickly she shakes off the things she’s done in the name of protection. Instead, I say, “We have to stop this. We have to stop
him
.”
“How?”
Raw desperation is on her face.
“Maybe the elders can help. If we show them that Dad is more interested in torture than in obeying them, they might—”
“Try to lock him up and get killed for their trouble?” Willow sits up again and looks at me. “There’s only one way to stop Dad, and we both know it.”
I swallow hard as we stare at each other. Killing Dad is a fantasy that lurks at the edges of my thoughts on the really bad days, but it isn’t something I can truly stand to look in the eye. Not if I want to stop being the murderer he’s raised me to be. Not if I want to choose a different path for myself. Before Willow tells me she can handle the task herself, I say, “If we’re there to protect the elders, Dad will be outnumbered. They’ll see him for what he really is. They can lock him up, and all of this will stop.”
Slowly, Willow nods. “That could work. One problem, though. How are you going to force Dad into revealing his true self in front of the elders? It’s not like they’re going to agree to come on a hunt with us. And if they did, Dad would just be on extra-good behavior and then punish us—punish
you
—afterward.”
“We don’t need a hunt,” I say as the plan that’s been taking shape inside my head for the past three days clicks into place. “All we need is for one threat to make it past our borders and be imprisoned instead of killed. Dad won’t be able to leave that alone.”
“Dad won’t let a threat get past our borders.”
“No, but I will.”
Before she can argue, I head out for the day’s scouting mission with one goal in mind: find someone worth taking as a prisoner. Someone Dad won’t be able to resist trying to kill no matter who’s watching.