Page 34 of The Poison Season

After a few minutes, she glanced over her shoulder. “I’m Leelo.” She added, “You really shouldn’t be here,” in case it wasn’t obvious.

He gave a low, ironic chuckle, doing his best to limp along behind her. “Believe me, I know.”

“You said the wolf chased you here? That doesn’t make sense. Wolves don’t come to Endla.”

He paused to rest against a tree, his brow beaded with sweat. “I can’t explain it. I found the lake by accident, months ago now, and ever since then, since the singing, it’s like a part of me has been trying to come back.”

She had been rummaging in the undergrowth for something that would work as a walking stick, but she froze at his words.

Jaren was tall, at least a head taller than she was. She swallowed, grateful that he wasn’t big the way Hollis Harding was, in the way that felt menacing even when he was just standing there. “You heard us sing?”

She saw his throat bob as he, too, swallowed down his apprehension, as ifherpresence unnervedhim. Then she remembered the bow slung over her shoulder, the knife at her waist. He was gravely injured, and she was supposed to kill him. He had good reason to be scared.

“That can’t be right. You would have gone into the lake, if you had.”

“That’s what everyone in Bricklebury said. But I heard it. Once at the festival, and once when you were... Well, I didn’t see anything, but it sounded like you were slaughtering animals.”

He’d heard the killing song? While some of Endla’s songs were more powerful than others, anyone who listened long enough would be drawn to the sound, some part of their brain searching for the source. Her mother had told her of foolish outsiders who’d been lured into the water by accident, simply because they wouldn’t stay away from Lake Luma’s shores. The killing song was one of their strongest; it should have spelled his doom. None of this made any sense.

Suddenly she heard the call of the starling, the same damn bird that had stolen her voice before. At least she knew she was close to the cottage.

“That,” Jaren said. “That song. That’s the first one I heard, the one I can’t get out of my head.”

The blood drained from Leelo’s face as she realized what he was saying. “You know this song?”

He started to hum the tune, and she slapped her hand over his mouth so quickly he startled and grabbed her arm. For one long, strange moment, they were connected, and Leelo wondered if Jaren’s arm was humming with a current the way hers was, emanating from the point where her hand touched his lips.

Stunned into something between wonder and horror, her hand slipped free of his mouth just as his released her arm.

“Be quiet,” Leelo said. “No one can know you’re here. If they find you, you’re as good as dead.”

He nodded, and she could only hope he hadn’t noticed that the voice coming from the bird’s throat was hers.

Chapter Twenty-Three

As the girl—Leelo—led him farther into the woods, Jaren couldn’t help but wonder what the odds were that of all the people on this island, he’d foundher, the same girl he’d seen at the lake’s edge. Lupin had told him that outsiders would die in the Forest if they made it past the lake. He assumed she’d meant because of the Watchers. And now here he was, following one of them into that very Forest, with no idea what her intentions were.

Jaren knew he should be questioning Leelo and where she was taking him, but he also knew that she was his best hope for getting off this island, assuming he could convince her not to kill him herself. His mind had been so full of fear and confusion since he first encountered the wolf that it was a relief to follow someone else for a few minutes, to give his brain a moment to process where he was. Besides, Leelo seemed to have a destination in mind, and that was better than what he’d had when he ran into her.

As he limped behind her, his stomach roiled with nausea from the pain in his leg. He studied the pale braid snaking between her slim but square shoulders, the bow across her back, the soft falls of her feet. He tried to picture Story in her place, to give himself something other than the pain to focus on, but his mind could only conjure an image of her cursing as she tried to tear her skirt free from the undergrowth. She wouldn’t know how to walk quietly in the woods if her life depended on it.

Finally, Leelo came to a stop, peering into the undergrowth as if she was looking for something. “There,” she said after a moment. It took him a little longer than her to see what she’d found: a small, crooked shack hidden among the trees.

He followed her through the slanted door into the cramped space, where he was forced to bend his knees to avoid hitting his head.

“What is this place?” he asked as she struck a match and lit a candle.

“Just a cottage.”

The word seemed far too generous for whatever this was.

“My friend used it to... Well, it doesn’t matter. No one else knows about it. You should be safe here.”

He collapsed onto a blanket on the floor, wincing as the pain in his leg intensified. “Thank you. For helping me.”

She reeled a little, like he’d struck her. “I’m not helpingyou,” she said, her voice suddenly cold. A silence followed that begged to be filled, and he knew there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Right, of course.”

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