Tom Isbell - The Capture

“Now I know you’re stalking me.” She laughs and snaps the branch in two. “Plus I couldn’t sleep, so I just, you know, walked around.”

“In the dark?”

“I think better that way.”

“Right.”

“Can’t say no to thinking.”

“Nope.”

Hope can hear the pathetic nature of her lies. They’re so obvious, so blatant. So bad. She tries to change the subject.

“I hear there are Skull People between here and your camp,” she says.

“That’s what we’ve heard.”

“You never saw them?”

Book shakes his head. “Hunters. Brown Shirts. Wolves. Crazies. No Skull People.”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

Her father once pointed out a camp of Skull People to Hope and her sister, Faith. With their painted skin and helmets made of animal skulls, they were the most frightening sight Hope had ever seen in her life. They were terrifying.

“How do we avoid them?” Book asks.

“Any way we can.” She means it as a joke, but Book doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even smile.

“What happens after?” Hope asks.

“After?”

“Once we free your friends?”

“Head back to the Heartland. Get everyone to safety.” He studies her expression. “Why, you have something different in mind?”

“No, just, you know … curious.”

“Oh.”

They continue to scrounge, their boots squishing in mud.

“Good luck sleeping,” Book finally says, and heads back to camp with an armful of branches. Hope’s face burns crimson.

He was right, of course. She does have something in mind—but she’s not ready to share it. Not with Book. Not with anyone.

As for what she and Cat do each night, well, she wants to break that to Book as well. She does. But there are some things she just doesn’t know how to say.

I SLOGGED BACK TO camp and released the branches from my arms. They clattered on the pile with all the rest. If Hope wouldn’t tell me what was really going on with her, maybe her friends would.

Of the seven other Sisters, Hope was close to three. Diana was tall and willowy, terrific with a crossbow, and never afraid to speak her mind. Then there was Scylla, who had never uttered a single word in all the weeks I’d known her. I wondered if she was even capable of talking. She was short and compact and basically all muscle—not someone you wanted to meet in a dark alley late at night.

The third friend was Helen, who was frail and shy and seemed always on the verge of being blown away by a gust of wind. Small in stature with strawberry-blond hair, she looked at Hope with adoring eyes.

It was Helen I decided to approach.

She was sitting on a log, fletching arrows. Next to her was a pile of goose feathers.

“I can’t believe you’re able to attach those tiny feathers with just animal guts,” I said.

She smiled shyly. “Sinew. Once it dries, it’s there forever.” She expertly split a quill in half, then wrapped a short thread of dried animal gut around the base of the quill and the arrow’s shaft.

I sat on a nearby rock. “Helen, can I ask you something?” She flinched slightly but said nothing. “Are you okay with heading back into the territory?”

“If it’s the right thing to do, then we should do it.”

“And your friends? They feel the same?”

“I think so.”

Her voice had a sudden wariness to it. Like Argos detecting an unfamiliar scent. I realized I was in dangerous territory here.

“Everyone’s on board?” I asked. “Everything’s normal?”

“Yes …”

“And Hope? She’s fine with all this?”

Helen’s body shrank in on itself, and I suddenly realized I’d crossed the line. I was asking about the very people she was closest to. Helen nodded quickly, her fingers deftly wrapping the animal gut around the top of the fletching. She placed the finished arrow in a pile.

“You’re close to Hope, aren’t you?” I asked.

“She saved my life.”

“Then you and I have something in common.”

I pushed myself up and walked away. Although I needed to know what was going on with Hope, it felt somehow traitorous to ask about her behind her back.

But I was still convinced that she was up to something—I just didn’t know what.

THE AIR IS MOIST and heavy, and Hope’s breath frosts with each exhalation.

Cat’s does too, as he walks beside her.

They glide through the damp, dark woods, easing around trees, stepping over stones, hurrying away from camp—the pale light of the moon their only illumination. Hope’s heart beats with a kind of feverish anticipation, and every so often Cat’s arm brushes against her own. A cadence of crickets accompanies their every step.

They’re not more than a mile from camp when they hear the creak of a branch. The sound is unmistakable, and they freeze. Something’s out there.

Some one is out there.

Cat doesn’t need to motion her to stay silent; she knows the drill. She was brought up in the woods. She and her dad and Faith were on the run for ten years. She knows what it is to go from hunter to prey.

As Cat reaches into his quiver and nocks an arrow, Hope readies the grip on her spear and finds the balance point. They stand there, poised to strike, their breathing shallow. There are footsteps now, scuffing through twigs and leaves. The snap of a stick.

“Don’t move!” Hope shouts.

The figure stops in place.

Hope and Cat approach from different sides, weapons poised, ready to cast their spear and arrow. The lone figure stands there, hands raised.

It’s Book.

“What the hell,” Hope says, and Cat rolls his eyes. They each release their grip on their weapons. “You coulda gotten yourself killed.”

“I didn’t know it was dangerous to follow your friends,” Book says.

“It is if it’s the middle of the night and your friends don’t know you’re following them.”

Book doesn’t respond, and Hope realizes he’s waiting for an explanation. She has no intention of giving one.

Cat’s gaze shifts uncomfortably between the two. He slips the arrow back into the quiver and lowers his bow.

“See you back at camp,” he mutters, disappearing into the woods, swallowed by the black. Hope turns to Book.

“So you are stalking me!” she says.

“Not stalking. Following.”

“Forgive me for not seeing the difference.”

“The difference is you lied to me. The difference is you said you went to the woods alone.”

“That was last night, and who says I wasn’t alone?”

“Were you?”

Hope averts her eyes. She wants to lie again … but she can’t. “No,” she says beneath her breath.

Book takes a step back as though he’s been punched. “That’s why I followed you—to see what you were up to.”

“And what’d you find out?”

“You tell me.”

Their eyes lock. Again, it seems that Book is expecting an explanation. Again, she doesn’t give one.

“Look,” he says, “you can do whatever you like with whoever you want—”

“We weren’t doing anything.”

“—but don’t tell me one thing and do something else. Don’t—”

He stops himself midsentence, but Hope knows exactly what he was going to say. Don’t kiss me one moment and then ignore me the next.

She wants to respond—wants to tell him everything—but she doesn’t know how, and before she knows it, the silence stretches to something long and awkward and painfully uncomfortable. When she does open her mouth to speak, she’s interrupted by a sound—something mechanical. A growling engine.