C. Redwine: Outcast

Dragging my eyes from the man, I look at Dad. “Either way, he’s dead. But this way, maybe we keep a little piece of our integrity.”

Dad’s face grows ugly with rage. “You think protecting the village costs us our integrity?” His fist plows into me again. “We’re warriors! We’re respected because everyone knows what will happen to them if they don’t give us the honor we deserve.”

“Dad, don’t!” Willow tries to come between us, but he shoves her to the ground.

The dam of restraint I’ve built up over the years cracks as she sprawls at our feet, and I clench my fists. “What’s honorable about taking joy in killing? What’s honorable about torturing injured men to death just because they’re at our mercy?”

“We don’t show mercy!” He’s screaming.

I block his next punch, and catch his other fist as it swings toward my face. Crushing his hand in mine, I push him until his back is against the nearest tree. The air leaves his chest in a painful gasp as I slam him against the bark.

For a moment, he’s afraid. His eyes slide past me, looking for options, and for one terrible second, I imagine ending it. Breaking his neck. Freeing us from the disease that flows in our veins because of him.

“Quinn?” Willow is beside me, her hand on my arm, her voice worried.

My fury slowly seeps back behind the dam within me, and I shake away the thought of leaving my father dead on the forest floor.

He stares me down.

“I don’t know when you got to be so thick-skulled, boy. Lord knows I’ve tried to teach you. Lesson number one: Kill or be killed. Lesson number two: We. Do. Not. Show. Mercy,” he says, biting off each word to spit it in my face.

Meeting his eyes, I say with quiet clarity, “I do.”

I release him and step back. He shakes the hand I crushed, and glares at me. “You’re a coward and a fool. Now, clean up this mess. You no longer deserve our help.”

Wrapping his arm around Willow’s shoulders, he pulls her toward the village, leaving me with nothing but the echo of his words and the ghosts of those I’ve killed.

Something hard lands on my chest, jerking me out of a fitful sleep. Instantly, I lunge out of bed, landing in a crouch, fists clenched while I whip my head around to find the threat.

“If you take a swing at me, I’ll knock out your teeth.” Willow stands a few yards from my bed, her dark hair lit from behind by the morning sunlight that forces its way through the cracks in my wooden shutters.

“That’s harsh. My teeth are my one good feature.”

Willow cocks her head to study me. “You have a good feature?”

“Do you have to be so insulting this early in the morning?” I ask, forcing myself to relax, even though my heart still pounds a frantic tempo against my chest.

“I see we’re using the word ‘insulting’ when really we mean ‘incredibly smart.’” Willow smirks, but there’s a shadow behind her gaze. A shadow I know I’ll see in my own eyes when I look in the ancient, cracked mirror that hangs from the back of my door.

It’s the residue of death. Of scrubbing blood from your fingers and guilt from your soul.

A few days of peace will banish the shadow from Willow’s eyes. How long until a few days becomes a few hours? How long until, like our father, killing doesn’t bother her at all?

“You’ve got that look again,” Willow says quietly as I turn away from her and bend to pick up the object she threw against my chest.

“What look?” It’s a book—leather worn shiny and thin, spine cracked with age. I open it slowly and read the title page: The Collected Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson .

“The look that says you’re thinking things that are only going to get you into trouble.”

Ignoring her words, I thumb past a few pages. The paper feels slippery and frail. “This is poetry.”

Willow snorts. “You have a stunning grasp of the obvious. I figured it was something you’d like. Just don’t tell Dad. He said you didn’t deserve anything.”

“Where did this come from?” I look up from the book in time to catch the worry in her eyes before she blinks it away.

“From the loot we recovered last night.”

“The things we took from the highwaymen we killed,” I say, because I want her to remember that everything we gained had a price.

She nudges one bare toe against the braided rug that rests on my floor. “They were threatening the village, Quinn.”

“They were.” I hold her gaze. “But once they were injured and disarmed, they weren’t a threat anymore. Don’t you ever consider the possibility that we go too far? That Dad forces us to go too far?”

She shakes her head, a quick movement designed to cut me off before I say too much. “ Stop it. If you keep questioning Dad, he’s going to hurt you.” Her throat seems to close over the words, and she glares at me like it’s my fault she’s having trouble speaking.

“It’s not me I’m worried about.” I run my fingers over the book’s spine, feeling the jagged ridges in the well-used leather as they catch under my skin. “It’s you. He asks more of you every day.”

“I can handle it.”

“He pushes you—”

“I said I can handle it.” Her voice snaps, a quick flash of anger that isn’t really aimed at me. “I’m doing what I have to do to survive.”

I step closer to her. “So am I.”

The worry doesn’t leave her eyes. “What you’re doing is going to get you killed.”

“I can handle it.”

“Not if I’m the one Dad orders to do the killing.” Her voice is as hard as the wooden floor beneath us, but the death-shadow on her face darkens.

I close the distance between us and bump her shoulder with mine. “Do you trust me?”

Her dark eyes meet mine, and a long look—a look full of shared horrors and years’ worth of scars—passes between us. “You know you’re the only one that I trust.”

I nod my head, willing her to believe me. “We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I just need a little time to think things through and figure out how to handle Dad.”

“No one handles Dad.”

“I will. I promise.”

Hope flares briefly in my sister’s eyes and then fades as the sound of our father’s angry voice cuts through the house, his tirade punctuated by drunken sobs from our mother.

“I won’t hold you to that,” Willow says as she slips over to my window, pulls the shutters away from the opening, and climbs out of my room and into the spacious oak that serves as the main pillar for our tree house.

The shutters fall against the window as she disappears, leaving me with poetry in my hands, a promise on my lips, and my father’s fury ringing in my ears.

“Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence.” Dad’s voice is full of mean as I leave my room and walk down a short set of stairs to our home’s main room, which is built around the trunk of the oak tree. I push my shoulder-length black hair away from my face and skirt the edge of the trunk, heading toward the cooking stove in the corner where a pot of Mom’s stewed apples bubbles over a low fire.

The chill of the winter morning seeps in through the cracks in the walls. The scattered rag rugs, faded from years of use, do little to block the cold. I pull my leather coat tight, the book of poems securely tucked in an inner pocket far from my father’s prying eyes. Mom hovers near the stove, her eyes on her husband, her hands already shaking with the need for her next drink.

“Guess you were tired after having to do the cleanup all by yourself last night,” Dad says.