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Whimpering and shaking, I peel myself off the ground and limp over to the base of a large tree. I can’t see anything in the dark, so I curl into a ball and try not to cry. The cold night air bites into my ears and fingers, and I start shivering violently.
Maybe I should just give up.
Lie down in the dirt and wait to die. It probably won’t be long. Between my hunger and the cold, I’m weak enough that half an inch of snowfall would finish me off. No one cares about me, and not a soul knows where I am. My family will think I died by dragonfire in a monastery, loyal to Maledin to the end. It’s probably best they don’t know I was nearly sacrificed, or that I ran from the Brethren the first chance I got.
I wish I had been able to say goodbye. A year ago, when I was forced into a Brethren cart, Anise was still in her hiding place in the woods where I warned her to stay no matter what. Waylen was crying, frantic, high-pitched cries. Ma was sobbing and Dad looked like he was torn between ripping his hair out from grief and attacking the Brethren Guard.
I had just enough time to call out a frantic,I love you, before the door of the cart slammed closed and the horses set off. I was locked in the shuddering darkness, but it wasn’t just me who was taken from their village that day. There were three girls already in the cart, and by the time we reached the monastery that evening, there were nine of us all together. It was a bad harvest that year, and it seemed like everyone was paying the tithe with their daughters.
I wonder what would be happening to me right now if I’d stayed at the invader’s camp. Maybe he would have draped a warm fur around my shoulders by now and we’d be sharing a hot meal by candlelight. I almost start to regret my decision, until I remember that I’m just as much the enemy to him as he is to me, and he’d more likely be hitting me or hurting me in some other terrible way than making me cozy and sharing his food. Any man who has power is dangerous with it.
A deep, mocking laugh reaches my ears. The familiar sound of the High Priest laughing at me while I’m being beaten and I’m struggling not to cry out. He would personally supervise many of my punishments, and it always amused him when I finally whimpered in pain.
For a moment, I think I feel him grab hold of me in the dark. I must be hallucinating from hunger because when I open my eyes and raise my head, all is silent apart from the wind. All the same, I can’t help the feeling that I’m being stalked in the dark. By a wolf. By a Brethren Guard. By one of those nimble silver blurs. By an invader and his dragon.
As cold and hungry as I am, I don’t expect I will fall asleep, but exhaustion overwhelms me, and I fall into a fitful doze, filled with dreams of being hunted and thrown into burning flames. I awake with the heat of a fire about to consume me alive—until I open my eyes and realize it’s the golden rays of dawn in a clear sky piercing my vision.
Unwinding my stiff body, I get slowly to my feet and take a look around. The woods are empty and coated in frost, as are my boots and sleeves. For months and months, I’ve awoken in the dormitories with the other Veiled Virgins. We weren’t permitted to talk to one another and would wash and dress in silence, eat in silence, and then don our veils to pray in church, all with our gazes fixed firmly on the ground.
I haven’t died in the night. I can raise my chin to the sky and look where I choose. I’m no longer a prisoner of the Brethren, and I’m on my way home, so perhaps all is not yet lost.
I walk as fast as I can all morning, hoping that I’m heading in the right direction. Smoke and clouds have obscured the horizon, but I feel like every now and then I catch sight of a familiar landmark. Mid-morning, I find a small bush of winterberries and cram some into my mouth, filling my pockets with the rest to eat as I walk along.
It’s late afternoon when I finally crest a hill and see my village of Amriste spread below. With my heart in my mouth, I scour every cottage, every garden, every frost-laced vegetable patch. Nothing is on fire or a smoking wreckage, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
As I hobble on bleeding feet down the path to the village square, nothing moves except for a handful of ravens that stand out starkly against the frost. One is perched on the well in the middle of the square and eyes me beadily as snowflakes blow across the cobbles. The village is silent the way only an empty village can be silent; a deserted, bleak silence.
I tear the helm from my head and throw it aside, allowing my tangled hair to fall around my shoulders before hurrying up to a cottage door, knocking and calling out.
“It’s me, Isavelle Harrow. Is anyone there?”
There’s no answer there and no answer at the next cottage either. The next three have their front doors hanging open and leaves have blown inside.
After eight cottages, including my own, I give up hope.
“Is nobody here?” I call out, turning slowly on the spot. “Nobody at all? It’s Isavelle Harrow. Are the Cantrells here? The Ackworths? Has anyone seen my family?”
Silence swallows my shouts. I’m too late. The village has been abandoned, and with dragons haunting the skies, I can’t imagine when they’ll come back. Overcome by despair and exhaustion, I sink down onto the ground, tears welling up and streaming down my face.
A harsh, high voice, as cracked as a dry riverbed, splits the air. “Aye, sit there and cry. Give up before you’ve even tried. As sorry as a half-drowned kitten, aren’t you?”
I scramble to my feet and whirl around to see a hunched old woman dressed in black rags, her gnarled hand grips a walking stick and an unlit pipe dangles from her lips.
“Mistress Hawthorne?” I say, wiping the tears from my cheeks. Biddy Hawthorne lives in a ramshackle cottage in the village, and she’s rarely seen in the village square. She always terrified me, but right now, I’m grateful to be looking at her tangled white hair and hooked nose. Someone who knows me. Someone who can tell me where my family has gone.
I hurry over. “Have you seen Mother and Father? Or my brother and sister, Anise and Waylen?”
She squints at me. “Ah, you’re the Harrow maid. You were tithed the harvest before last because none could bear to part with their pigs.”
“Yes, Isavelle Harrow,” I reply, though I don’t enjoy being remembered in such a demeaning manner. I was taken by the Brethren because otherwise, the villagers would have starved.
Mistress Hawthorne gives a derisive sniff. “If you’re looking for your family, they fled, didn’t they? Packed everything onto oxen and donkeys and into carts days ago and took their old and young and carried them off.”
I feel a stab of guilt on behalf of my village that no one thought to help Biddy Hawthorne to safety. Everyone always went to see the old woman for medicine or advice when a child or an animal was sick. She was respected, but no one liked her. It’s difficult to like an old woman who mutters and cackles to herself in the street. Witchcraft is outlawed and witches are burned, and even though no one said it, everyone knows that Biddy Hawthorne is a witch.
“I’m sorry you were abandoned. It isn’t right that you were left behind.”
The old woman draws herself up. “Abandoned? I wasn’t abandoned. I wasn’t going to leave my home to be taken over by those stumble-headed fribbles.”
