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I do not understand yet that I am so small, next to the thing that has swallowed us. I do not understand yet how much we will lose.
They have brought her to the edge of town. The flowers have grown over the road, bursting greedily between the cracks in the stones, thrusting their fleshy petals high on nodding stalks. Our feet trample them as we race to get to Trina, and the air is filled with their spice-grass-rot scent.
They push her to her knees, her hands behind her back. The preacher stands in front of her, thumb thumping the cover of his leather-bound book. Trina struggles, teeth bared in terror. She lunges forward, one arm breaking free, but the preacher closes a hand around her throat. She claws at him, her nails scraping across the book in his other hand.
I try to push my way to her, but there are endless bodies between us, and they have all the give and mercy of stone. Jeremy still grapples with Kyle, trying to hold him back from chargingafter his sister to help her, but Miranda and Mel and Vanessa are here. Vanessa is breathless, eyes wide, watching the scene with an expression I can’t read. Mel has her hands pressed against her mouth.
I struggle to force myself between two women, but they don’t budge. I fall back a step. I can’t get to Trina. I can’t stop them. I can’t save her. I am going to watch her die. I look around frantically, searching for some way through the crowd, and instead I see Miranda. She’s staring at the horizon as it bleeds light with the coming dawn. There is something odd about the shadows on her skin. Something too deep in the blacks of her eyes.
“They’ll take their toll,” she says. Tension streaks her voice. “Sara, listen. They’ll take their toll. There’s no way around it now. They want the wicked, but Sara—Sara,who was holding Vanessa’s hand?”
Vanessa’s gaze turns toward Miranda, and her expression is clotted up with such hatred, such venom, such raw rage that I flinch away.
One of the townspeople is stepping forward. A child. A girl. A red ribbon is tied at the end of each of her braids, and she’s humming a song I almost recognize. She holds a knife in her hand. A kitchen knife, with a wooden handle and a spot of rust near the edge. The sort of knife you use to cut onions.
“I was with Anthony. Trina was with Kyle. Jeremy was with Mel and Miranda,” I say. “Who were you with, Vanessa?”
Vanessa looks at me, and if I hadn’t seen her face when she turned toward Miranda, I would believe the confusion, the fear in it now. “What?”
“You don’t stutter anymore,” I say.
“I d-don’t know what y-you’re talking about,” she says.
“You’ve done it a couple times. Like you had to remember,” I say. “And you were ashamed. You apologized. I’ve known Vanessa almost my whole life. She doesn’t apologize for stuttering. She’s got no reason to.”
“Y-you’re scaring me,” she says. Shrinking back, in a way I’ve never seen Vanessa shrink from anything.
The girl lifts the knife. Kyle is screaming his sister’s name. Trina shuts her eyes. The whispers swell.
Her lover rushes in
The sea rushes in
The gates are open
The moment is suspended. Unformed and undecided, but that decision is rapidly being made without me. I see it as clearly as if it were labeled and laid out neatly in front of me. The toll is blood. And someone has to pay.
I step forward, and lift my hands, and shove Vanessa in the chest.
Her arms pinwheel. For an instant she is balanced, her body a slash canted away from me, mouth open in an O of surprise. The light of the sunrise slashes down and glints on the blade of the knife, and Vanessa loses her balance. She falls back. Into the crowd, which is already turning to meet her. To seize her. To bear her down.
I see the knife flash twice more, above the press of bodies. The first time it is silver. The second time it is crimson. Jeremy is trying to fight his way through—to Vanessa, to Trina, I can’t tell. Anthony is grabbing me, shaking me, demanding to know what I’ve done.
And then the people seethe back, like water withdrawing from a shore. Trina kneels at the place where the dirt road of the town turns back to stone. She is whole. She is breathing.
Vanessa is gone. Where I saw her fall, the ground is covered in a thick carpet of flowers, their petals purple pulsed with red, their centers bright and yellow as the sun washes over them. The preacher stands beside Trina, the book in his left hand, his right tight on Trina’s shoulder.
“The toll is paid,” he says. “The gate is open. The road wends on. To Ys. To the sea.”
Trina screams, a sound of rage and fear and relief all at once, and springs to her feet. She whips around to face the preacher, but he only smiles at her. He whispers something, too softly to hear, and presses the book into her hands. I step forward, not sure what I intend to do—and then Jeremy shouts.
“Guys!” he cries, and points behind us.
The sea rushes in, the whispers say, but it isn’t the sea rushing in behind us. It’s the darkness.
Anthony seizes my hand. We run.
PART III
