Page 10 of The Poison Season

“If she had, she wouldn’t have let him come back,” Sage said.

Leelo waited with her mother after that, until everyone who was coming had assembled. Ketty had been speaking with the other council members, each of whom represented roughly thirty islanders, but she approached the girls now.

“The ceremony is about to start,” she said to Sage and Leelo, squeezing their shoulders. “You should go down by the water.”

Leelo obeyed her aunt, treading carefully to keep her boots clean. The banks here were muddy from snowmelt, though shoots of green grass were valiantly poking their way through. Soon, the entire island would be verdant with spring. Leelo would still be a Watcher, and, unless a miracle occurred, Tate would be leaving.

“Watchers,” one of the council members said, clapping her hands. “The ceremony is beginning. Please take your lily from Councilwoman Ketty.”

Ketty was standing in front of a metal basin filled with water. Floating along the top were twelve white water lilies, one for each Watcher. They were grown by the council in a pond that Endlans were forbidden to visit before their year as Watchers was over.

Ketty smiled proudly at Leelo and Sage as they took their flowers. When they had all gathered at the shore, the rest of the islanders began to sing, a beautiful melody that was as uplifting as the drowning song was mournful. For the first time that day, Leelo felt some of the excitement she imagined the other Watchers must be feeling. She would be an adult by the time this year was over. She would be able to make her own decisions.

But of course, she couldn’t really. She couldn’t give Tate magic or make her mother well again. And she couldn’t keep her own heart from breaking. She remembered how her mother had told her once that heartache and grief are their own strange kind of gift because they remind you that you still have a heart to break.

When you stop caring, when you stop grieving, that’s when you know you’re really lost, Fiona said. Leelo understood even then that she was talking about Aunt Ketty, who never once spoke of loss. Hers or Fiona’s.

The Watchers knelt down and set their lilies in the water, where they floated like tiny ice floes on the surface. Slowly, the lilies drifted out into the lake. They would eventually take root, until finally the poison in the lake dissolved them. They lasted longer than birds or people or anything else that went into the water. But eventually the magic consumed everything it touched, like a beast that devoured every scrap of its prey, leaving nothing behind.

Not even bones.

Chapter Six

Jaren sat on a tree stump on the shore, directly across the lake from where the islanders had released what appeared to be flowers into the water. He had promised his father he wouldn’t wander, and he hadn’t intended to. But every time he went gathering, the mournful memory-song rose up in him, and he felt the strangest urge to come back here. The first time, the island had been quiet, with no visible signs of life. There was no reason to return.

But as soon as he’d set out this morning to forage for nettles and dandelions, the only edible plants available this early in the spring, he found himself on the trail again, the one leading to the lake. He had still been more than a mile away when he heard the singing. In that moment, he finally understood where he’d heard the song that had haunted him for days. He had rushed through the woods to get here, ignoring his father’s warning. The eerie, distant tune had been real, as real as the person who sang it.

This song, however, was nothing like that. It was joyful, making his foot tap against the mossy roots despite himself. Despite the fact that he was beginning to wonder if the stories of Endla were true.

Last night, he had met some of the other villagers at Bricklebury’s only pub for a drink. He was still considered an outsider, but he was an outsider with three pretty, eligible sisters, and that was apparently enough to earn him an invitation.

Casually, Jaren had asked one of the other young men about the lake. Lake Luma, they called it. The empty lake.

“It’s notexactlyempty,” one of the villagers said. His name was Lars, and he was tall and lanky, with a shock of red hair that seemed to have a personality of its own. “It’s full of poison.” He lowered his voice an octave. “Magicpoison.”

“Magic,” Jaren repeated, hiding his chuckle behind his pint.

“Laugh all you want,” a young woman with unruly eyebrows spat. “It won’t make it any less true.”

Jaren ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh. I just don’t believe in magic.”

The woman’s brows dipped into two angry slashes and she stormed off, in search of better company. Jaren grimaced at Lars. “Whoops.”

Lars leaned closer, cupping his mouth behind his hand, though he had to shout to be heard above the boisterous conversation filling the small pub. His red hair tipped toward Jaren, as if it, too, were in on the secret. “Maggie’s father was killed by the lake.”

“But if everyone knows it’s poisonous, why would he go in?”

Lars had explained that the islanders were like the sirens of old pirate shanties, calling to the villagers late at night in voices too beautiful to resist. But though the song seemed to haunt him, Jaren didn’t think anything could tempt him into that water. Not after Lars had described Maggie’s father’s death in gruesome detail.

Now he watched as the Endlans danced together, their haunting voices their only instrument. They wove through the trees, flashing horns and antlers, feathers and fur, as if they had become creatures of the Forest instead of people.

He straightened as one of the girls detached herself from the group. From here, she was little more than a pale smudge against the trees. She wasn’t wearing horns like some of the other girls, but there was something on her head, whiter even than her hair.

She walked to the edge of the lakeshore, and for a moment Jaren was afraidshemight actually walk into the water. But she paused at the edge, bending down to release something she held in her cupped hands.

He rose from the stump and made his own way to the water’s edge. He was directly across the lake from her, and it was easy to pretend that this clear blue water wasn’t full of poison, that the girl on the other shore was just an ordinary girl, like his sisters. She watched the object she’d released float for a few moments before it sank beneath the surface. She stood, smoothing her dress, and looked up.

Too late, Jaren realized he had left the safety of the trees. He was as exposed as the girl; there was no chance she didn’t see him. For a moment, the superstitions of the villagers pricked at his conscience. What if she started to sing? Would he be strong enough to resist?

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