A girl had been taken in the night. Stolen by the beast of the Forbidden Forest. A fist of dread reached up from Caelia’s middle, choking her.
Papa was already out the door. Caelia hurried after him, her boots leaving dark prints in the rime. Spread out below them, the town glittered white with early-morning frost. Chimney smoke rose from the split-shingle roofs of a few hundred homes surrounded by dead fields.
Past the low stone wall, a man rode a black horse bareback up the hill toward them. Steam burst from the animal’s flared, pink nostrils. Its coat was dark with sweat.
Caelia recognized the rider and froze, everything inside her going blank.
Chickens scattered as Kenjin reined the animal in and looked down at them, his face ashen and his feet bare. “Atara is gone.”
A dozen memories assaulted Caelia. When they were children, she and Atara had caught frogs by the river. Later, they had giggled over boys at the town fair. Later still, as Caelia lay sick with fever, Atara had come to visit nearly every day, the smell of wind in her dark hair.
No. Not Atara. Not the one friend who hadn’t deserted Caelia. Her legs trembled, threatening to buckle beneath her.
“The beast took her in the night.” Kenjin’s voice was wooden, as if he were speaking of someone else’s firstborn. Someone else’s daughter. His haunted eyes met Caelia’s. The emptiness there mirrored her own. She looked away first.
Papa exhaled and passed his hand down his face. More townspeople rushed up the hill as the sun crested the horizon. The harsh morning light robbed the world of color and set the frost to glittering. Everyone was silent. There was nothing to say. Nothing to be done. They all knew the pain of losing a girl to the beast.
The town parted before the town druid, Rimoth. With his pale, pointed face and sparse mustache, he looked like a dead rat. His silent daughter trailed after her father like a ghost.
“We must have a sacrifice,” Rimoth proclaimed. “Tonight.”
Girls tended to disappear in clusters. Two or three. Sometimes as many as five. As town lord, Papa would offer an animal for the beast to take to its lair and devour instead of one of their daughters. Caelia couldn’t see the point, as Rimoth always cut them down for himself come morning.
“We must go after her!” Kenjin cried. “Her prints are still fresh. If we hurry, we can find her before—” He choked, breaking off.
Before the beast tore her apart.
Ancestors, Atara. Why hadn’t she screamed? But none of them ever did. No one knew how the beast lured them into his forest. No one even knew what the beast looked like. All they really knew was that any girl who went into the forest never came out again.
“Papa,” Caelia murmured, a note of pleading in her voice.
Papa worked his jaw, his hands balling into fists.
“I’ll go after her.”
Everything inside Caelia stopped as Mal pushed to the front of the crowd. He was handsome as a midsummer day—eyes like a bright blue sky, hair straight and bright gold as a wasp’s stripes.
Caelia was not beautiful, and she’d been flattered by the attention of the best-looking boy in town. But he’d never loved her. He didn’t care about Atara either, not really. What he wanted was to prove something. All this time, and Caelia still wasn’t sure what that something was.
A half dozen other boys shouted their agreement, forming up behind him.
The townspeople’s gazes shifted between Caelia and the boy she had loved. In the excitement, the gossips had forgotten her. But now their heads ducked together, whispers a warning drone that made Caelia squirm.
“You go in,” Rimoth said in his high, rat voice, “and you’ll come back mad or dead.” As the town druid, he was their intermediary with the forest. And he wasn’t wrong. Less than a quarter of a mile inside the forest lay the stirring—the vile part of the forest that attacked anyone who dared breech her borders.
The village erupted in debate—some calling for sacrifice, others for action. As the town lord, it was up to Papa to decide.
“We will offer sacrifice,” her father shouted over the din. “Gather at the bridge at twilight. Now go home.”
Mal glared at her father. His gaze never once strayed to her. “We have a right to go after them.”
Papa squared off in front of Mal. “The forest take you, you will obey me, or you will spend your day in the stocks.”
The confrontation between her father and Mal had been building for months. More heads ducked together, more whispers buzzed. Caelia couldn’t appear to have a stake in this fight. She locked her hands together to keep from wringing them, every part of her so tense she felt certain she would tremble apart.
The magistrate stepped closer. Clearly sensing the man, Mal let out a long breath. He turned on his heel and pushed through the crowd, his cronies close behind.
Knowing he’d lost, Kenjin pushed his horse closer. “And what will you do, Lord Daydon, when the beast comes after your own daughter?”
Papa didn’t flinch. “We will honor Atara tonight, Kenjin. And I will mourn with you.”
The loss in Kenjin’s gaze shifted to fury that ran swift and cold as the heart of the river. “They disappear in clusters, Daydon. Keep an eye on your own child.”
Caelia wasn’t sure if the words were a threat or a warning. Kenjin turned his mount and rode away. A shudder shook Caelia hard.
“Caelia,” her father said with a start. “Get inside! You’ll catch your death.”
Only then did she feel the cold and realize she’d forgotten her cloak. She folded her arms tight over her chest. Shame crept up her skin, making her shiver. Her father would never face his daughter’s empty, cold bed. His daughter was safe. The beast never took broken girls. And Caelia was most definitely broken.
Chapter Two
Drum
Situated behind her father and next to her brother, Caelia joined the long procession of people moving to the river. Each held a small homemade lantern. Caelia had made her family’s this afternoon by pounding a nail to the center of a board, pushing a small candle into the sharp end, and tying a small paper dome over it.
West of the narrow bridge that spanned the river, Caelia came to a stop at the riverbank, the mud seeping into the leather of her boots and making her feet damp. Her father stood on her left, her brother on her right. The wind picked up, flaring her cloak behind her. Shivering, she gripped the collar tight.
Druid Rimoth took his place at the head of the bridge. Behind him, Kenjin stood dead-eyed with his family, his wife and children weeping. Rimoth began his tribute to Atara’s life by illuminating her beauty. Her grace. Her goodness. He obviously didn’t know her. Atara made an art out of cuss words and stomped everywhere she went. She laughed long and loud, her head tipped back with abandon.
How could it be that Caelia would never see her friend again? They would never sneak sips of brandy from her father’s liquor cabinet. Never slip out of their houses in the dead of night to meet their friends by the river, where they would take turns scaring each other witless with stories of the beast. Never plot Mal’s gruesome death while Caelia lay on her sickbed.
Bane’s chilly fingers found Caelia’s. He hadn’t held her hand in months. Not since he’d decided he was too old to be coddled. At that tender touch, all Caelia’s walls came down, and she wept softly.