Page 3 of The Poison Season

Leelo turned to look into her brother’s brown eyes, her heart swelling at his gentle earnestness. She rose and pulled him into an embrace. “That’s a lovely idea,” she whispered against his soft hair. “Will you help me?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

Together, they rinsed the lifeless cygnet with fresh water from Leelo’s waterskin, then wrapped it in Leelo’s cloak before heading back toward the house. On the way, Tate gathered a few thin branches from the Forest floor, supple enough to bend into a crown. Leelo pointed out some brilliant blue berries that would make the perfect adornment. Tate plucked half a dozen, whispered a prayer, and placed them in his pocket for safekeeping.

When they were nearly at the house, Tate stopped to tie his bootlace and motioned for Leelo to kneel down next to him.

“What is it?” she asked.

He kept his voice low, though they were still alone. “Aunt Ketty is watching from the window.” Leelo knew well enough not to look up. “She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Leelo assured him. “She’s just Ketty.”

He frowned. “She’s going to wonder what we were doing.”

“I’ll tell her I asked for your help. Don’t worry, little brother.”

“I’m scared.”

Leelo knew he wasn’t talking about their aunt anymore. She reached out and cupped the dwindling roundness of his cheek for just a moment. “If it’s any consolation, so am I.”

They shared a small, sad smile before straightening. “I’ll wash and pluck the swan,” Tate said. “You should go and finish your chores.”

“Be careful. Wear gloves.”

He raised his chin as he took the bundled creature from her hands. “We look out for each other, don’t we?”

Her chest ached with love, and with guilt for the lie she was about to tell. “Always.”

Late that night, when everyone else in her house was asleep, Leelo sneaked out, taking a knife from the kitchen on her way. Guided by nothing but moonlight and her own sense of purpose, she made her way to the center of the island, to the heart of the Wandering Forest.

The trees here were special. Each belonged to one of Endla’s families, serving as a kind of patron saint to which the family prayed and left offerings. But winter was the one season that the islanders kept away from the grove. Offerings required a song, and Endlans didn’t sing in the winter. It was the only way to ensure outsiders didn’t come across the ice inadvertently. After all, it was one thing for a Watcher to stop an outsider intent on attacking the Forest or its inhabitants; accidentally luring an innocent with song, however, was against their code.

But tonight, Leelo was prepared to violate the code. Prayers hadn’t worked, which could only mean the Forest wanted a sacrifice. And while she wouldn’t kill an animal—the killing song, which lulled prey into a trancelike state, was too powerful to perform on her own, and there was too much of a risk someone would hear—a small blood sacrifice might be enough to wake Tate’s dormant magic.

She hunched down below her family’s tree, a tall, stately pine that was hundreds of years old, as ancient as the Wandering Forest itself, according to Aunt Ketty. Even before she dragged the knife across her palm, Leelo could feel the music pressing at her throat, so eager to be released after months of silence.

As the blade bit into her skin, the music poured out of her along with the blood, and she almost believed she could hear the trees sighing, though that was probably just the wind. And the way the blood seeped into the ground so quickly, like the roots were drinking it up, was probably just the moonlight playing tricks on her.

And if somewhere across the water, an unwitting young traveler was tossing in his sleep, unaware that the lake whose shore he slept on was full of poison, or that the Forest on the island in its center was just awakening after a long, hungry winter...

Well, then, he should have camped somewhere else tonight.

Chapter Two

“Where have you been?” Stepan demanded, closing the door behind Jaren. He did a cursory inspection to make sure his son was unharmed, then let out a sigh of relief. “We thought the forest spirits had taken you.”

Jaren cast a sheepish glance at his father as he walked to the washbasin. “I wish I could blame my tardiness on sprites or will-o’-the-wisps, Father. But—”

Before he could go on, his entire family finished for him. “You got lost.”

He nodded. “I got lost.” He’d never spent a night in these woods before, and he was grateful he’d managed to find his way home when he woke with the dawn.

“Of course you did.” His oldest sister, Summer, smiled at him from where she sat whittling by the fire. She was as warm as her name implied, the gentlest of his three sisters. “You were daydreaming again, weren’t you?”

“Head in the clouds, feet in the mud,” his middle sister sang, tutting at his filthy boots. As twins, Story and Jaren were closest in both age and bond, though Story had been born first and liked to lord those eleven minutes over him whenever possible.

Their youngest sister, Sofia, was still the baby of the family at fifteen. They called her Tadpole, mostly because she’d been as wriggly as frog spawn from the time she could move, but also because she pretended to hate it. Currently, she sat on their sofa, braiding her long red hair. “You didn’t find any early spring flowers for me, did you? I’m so tired of all this.” She waved her hand vaguely toward the front door.

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