Shadows Cast by Stars

“You shouldn’t mess with that sort of thing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up bleeding to death. Something you want to tell me?”

“Nope,” she says, crushing a leaf between her fingers before setting the bundle down. “I’m just making conversation.”

Right. Now I’m seriously annoyed. “Avalon,” I say, “what do you want?”

She turns toward me slowly. For a moment her eyes are clouded by mist and for the first time, I catch sight of her shade-a fox. A cunning vixen. It’s never occurred to me that she might have a shade, but there it is. She must have been hiding it all this time, a skill I would never have imagined Avalon to possess. Just what did Madda teach her?

“I want,” she says, “what everyone wants. I want a place to be. I want something to belong to. I want my life to be normal.” Tears well at her eyes and she brushes them away quickly. “Do you realize how incredibly selfish you are? Do you think you’re the only one who’s lost something? Lost someone?” Her words fly from her mouth, darts laced with venom, and each strikes me squarely in the heart. “You think you’re so special, but I’m sorry, you’re not.”

She storms out, slamming the door behind her.

I watch her run down the lane, dumbstruck. She’s right. I’m not the only one who has lost someone. Avalon has known loss too, and that’s shaped her into the person she is now. Does she have a mother? What does her father do? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. I’ve never thought about Avalon in any way except how she might harm Paul, or what threat she is to me.

Does that erase what I know of Avalon? No. I can’t forget the night when I saw her push that bottle into Bran’s hand. What kind of person would do that? Nor can I forget the way she treated Helen the day we arrived here on the Island. Or what she said to me about Paul.

But there’s a reason Avalon acts like that. Maybe, once, she was just a girl. Maybe, once, she was like me.

As Avalon vanishes from sight and I turn away from the window, I find that maybe I don’t dislike her as much as I did. Maybe I even feel a little sorry for her.

Thunder rumbles in the distance. It’s going to rain.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Ms. Adelaide arrives at the cottage just as the sky is turning a dusky purple. Helen’s not with her. My heart sinks as I rush to the gate and try to pull it open, but Ms. Adelaide just shimmies her way through. “Well,” she says, looking at the garden as we make our way back to the cottage, “you’ve got lots of work to do, huh? Gonna need some help.”

“I can do it.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “Honey, those are foolish words. No one gets through the cold months on their own around here-not even Madda. You’ll need a winter’s worth of food, because when the snows hit, no one goes anywhere. If you don’t have a healthy cache stashed away by the end of summer, you’ll starve before the thaw comes. Make sure you trade healing for a portion of the salmon run. I’ll teach you to smoke it. And get that Cedar to hunt you some venison.”

I startle at the mention of Cedar’s name. Why am I the only one who’s certain that my brother and Bran are still alive?

Ms. Adelaide stops by the door, waiting for me. I jog the last few steps. “Sorry,” I mutter.

“No apologies,” she says. “You got a lot on your mind.”

She lights the fire while I gather onions in the garden. When I return, she’s boning out the chicken, tossing skin into a bowl, humming to herself. I stand by the door, feeling like a trespasser. She’s the one who seems at home here.

She looks up at me. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I smile. “Not today.”

She takes the onions from me. “See them often?”

“What? Ghosts?” I shake my head. “No. Just people’s shades. Ghosts are Paul’s thing.”

“Hrumph,” she grunts as she halves an onion and drops it into a pot. “Now, let’s see.” She glances at the mess on the counter. “I need some garlic. Got any out there?”

“I think so. I’ll go check.”

A driftwood fence is the only thing that separates the back garden from the salmonberries creeping in from the forest, and they’ve decided a little driftwood isn’t going to stop them. I make a mental note to tackle them tomorrow before they run riot.

Garlic flowers twist like tormented swans at the far end of the fence. I rip one from the ground and the air blooms with sharpness. The bulb’s still a little small so I pull a second, straightening up just as a bat darts close to my head. A bat. I haven’t seen one of those in ages, I think, as it dips and weaves its way toward the forest, veering off just before it hits… a dzoonokwa. I rub my eyes, and blink. Yes, she’s there, almost hidden in the twilight shadows. I can just make out her bloodshot eyes and the flecks of spittle at the corners of her enormous lips. Gnarled knots of hair fall over her shoulders. A bark skirt hangs at her hips. She takes a step forward and in a rasping voice calls, Hoo, hoo.

I cannot move. My legs are clay; my tongue, gone. My hand pulls the pouch that holds the sisiutl’s pearls out from under my shirt and some small part of my brain has the wherewithal to hold it up so the dzoonokwa can see it.

She cocks her head, considering the pouch, and then takes another step forward. Another dzoonokwa joins her, and then, another.

“What do you want?” I whisper. “What do you want from me?”

“Cassandra?” Ms. Adelaide’s voice floats out of an open window. “You okay out there?”

“No,” I say. “Close the window and bar the door.”

“What?”

“Just do it.” My voice trembles. “There are three dzoonokwa standing at the edge of the forest, watching me.”

“Cassandra, come inside,” she says. “Just walk away like you never saw them.”

“No.” My voice stops trembling. My hands stop shaking. I hop the driftwood fence, garlic bulbs in hand, and walk toward the dzoonokwa. They murmur and mumble as I approach. My heart flutters in my chest. Which heartbeat will be its last?

The first dzoonokwa snarls as she fishes something out of a basket on her back.

How will they kill me? With their hands, like they did Madda? With a club hidden in that basket? Will they wait for me to stop breathing before they begin to gnaw on my bones? The dzoonokwa straightens up and howls. The others join in. Then they fall silent as the first one lobs something into the air. When it falls at my feet, they turn and run into the forest, the darkness swallowing them whole.

My heart thuds against my breastbone as I scan the trees and wait for them to return, but they don’t. My teeth have started to chatter, and only then do I realize just how scared I actually am.

Grass rustles behind me and then a hand falls on my shoulder. “Girl, whatever possessed you to do that?” Ms. Adelaide says.

I can’t answer.

“Damn stupid girl,” she mutters, shaking her head. “The stupidest and bravest thing I ever saw. Take that damn bundle they left you and let’s get inside.”

“The garlic,” I say, holding up the tiny bulbs.

She laughs. “The garlic? You come face-to-face with three dzoonokwa and all you can think about is garlic? Clearly we need to get some food inside you, because you’ve gone crazy.” With that, she steers me back into the safety of the cottage.

Once we’re inside, with the door locked and the windows shuttered, Ms. Adelaide sits me down and goes back to what she was doing as if nothing happened. The bundle rests on the table before me. Cedar bark, bound by