Page 119 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

“That’s me.”

“That all your stuff?” She frowns at my duffle bag.

I shrug. “And this.” I tug at the strap of the backpack hanging over my shoulder.

“I’ll throw it in the back.”

Soon as I’m done stashing my meager possessions, I slide into the passenger seat and buckle in. Juliet gives me a warm smile and sticks out her hand. “Welcome to Cinderhart.”

“Thanks,” I say, shaking her hand. She’s in her mid-twenties. A plain-faced woman with short brown hair and an affinity for denim, if her denim pants and shirt are anything to go by. All she needs is a cowboy hat.

Bug Ash Pass is...something else. With a sheer drop on one side and a cliff face on the other, it feels like we’re veering toward the canyon. Juliet must be used to driving this road, though, because she definitely doesn’t seem fazed.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she says, grinning at me as the pass winds around an outcrop.

“It’s...uh...certainly something.” I’m sure someone whose parents didn’t die on this road would have found it beautiful.

“Did you know, the Littlerock Pass was closed off for almost a decade back in the day?”

“Rockslide?” I manage, my fingers sinking deeper and deeper into the seat cushion.

Juliet sighs and shakes her head. “That’s more common on this road. We lost some visitors about two months ago to one of those. Tragic.”

There’s a lump in my throat, and it doesn’t matter how much I swallow, it doesn’t go away.

“But no, the Littlerock Pass was closed when a massive explosion in one of the tunnels blew out half of the mountainside. Next time you drive through there, keep an eye out for the hole it left behind. Looks like a cave mouth.”

“It closed up the pass?”

“Doesn’t take much,” Juliet says through a laugh. “Bug Ash is steep as hell, but that pass is narrow. Plus, they had to stabilize the tunnel so they wouldn’t endanger the workers going in to clear the rubble.”

“Yeah, but...ten years?”

Juliet shrugs. “If you ask me, I don’t think the townsfolk back thenwantedto have it fixed. We’ve always been a little too independent for our own good. Until the famine hit us, of course. Then everyone was only too eager to get that pass opened up.”

“Famine?”

She waves away the question. “There’ll be plenty of time for history lessons at the Academy.”

An hour later, we start descending the pass. This valley is as verdant as the one Cinderhart is nestled in, but the bottom is filled with a vast lake.

“Scarstone,” Juliet says when she sees me looking. “Awesome in summer if you need to cool off.”

“The water looks black.”

“Something to do with the stones on the lakebed,” Juliet says. “And nothing at all to do with the curse.”

“Curse?” I say through a laugh.

Juliet smiles. “This old town has urban myths and folklore coming out of its ears. It’s all nonsense, of course.”

“Of course,” I murmur, staring at the distant lake.

It’s savagely beautiful, like Bug Ash Pass. The shore is covered with dark gray gravel and big slab-like stones. It almost looks like a meteor crater that filled up with water.

“Can you see it?”

“Hmm?” I glance at Juliet. She’s grinning. Her eyes move past me to my window. “There, kinda in the middle of the forest.”

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