Eyes of the Woods (2 page)

I frowned. I would turn seventeen soon. It was unlikely Father would replace me with Jonathan. After a night of hunting, I would be expected to spend the day celebrating something that didn’t deserve to be celebrated, instead of doing something I enjoyed very much: sleeping. Mother would have me put on the ridiculous red dress that had been hanging in my room for months, and I would stand next to my father as he announced to the entire territory my betrothal.

Refusing to dwell on the cursed occasion, I returned to my room and slipped on a gray wool sweater and pants. Thick wool socks would keep my feet and legs warm up to my knees, and I made sure to knot my bootlaces twice. Father taught us many seemingly insignificant things that had proven to save lives. In my family there were a hundred ways to die. An untied lace was only one of them.

I yawned several times as I slipped the leather over my limbs and tied a thick piece around my neck. The night before had been a busy one. Father had stumbled into a nest, and it had taken teamwork and persistence to get us all home alive.

“What’s for breakfast?” Clemens asked as he walked down the hall to the kitchen.

I followed. “You’re asking me?”

Ursula hadn’t arrived yet. Even so, Clemens had been practicing his cooking skills for weeks.

“Eggs,” Clemens announced with confidence.

Jonathan was already sitting at the table waiting patiently, but his shoulders slumped. “Why? Why must Clemens have to cook? Isn’t that making Ursula useless?”

“She has plenty more to do than cook. Clemens really is trying. You might like his eggs today.”

“I’m suddenly not hungry,” Jonathan said.

I chuckled and smoothed down a piece of hair standing proudly at the crown of Jonathan’s head. His cheeks were still full with his remaining baby fat, and his sapphire eyes sat atop his round nose. He would be as handsome as Clemens one day, but now he as cute as a plump puppy.

Grease popped from the skillet, and Clemens pulled his hand back. He was known to be agile, but apparently he wasn’t fast enough to save the burned finger that went straight into his mouth.

“Eggs not cooperating this evening?” Evening. The Priory lived in a world opposite from everyone else’s. Breakfast for dinner. Sleeping during the day. Once I compared our lives to those of the nightwalkers, but quickly learned what a mistake it was to compare the Priory to savages. My father walloped me and sent me to bed before sunrise and without dinner.

Clemens laughed once. “They will one of these days. I refuse to starve to death if I’m ever stuck in the Glades for more than a night again. I’m learning to cook if it kills me.”

“If you’re starving, you won’t care if it tastes good.”

“I happen to know for a fact that you’re incorrect, dear sister,” he said. Clemens was the oldest at nineteen. He was weeks away from marrying Emelen, one of the most beautiful girls in all the six regions of our island. She was from the Toruna territory, mountainous and rugged. Like all young women who lived within the protected borders of the Priory, she was betrothed to my brother on her seventeenth birthday. By law they had courted all year. By choice they had courted a year before that.

Emelen was looking forward to her next birthday, which would also be her wedding day. I didn’t share her enthusiasm for the laws, although I could see why she was eager to marry my brother. Clemens was a good man: kind, patient, and as brave and level-headed as my father.

I left Clemens in the kitchen and made my way to my parents’ room. The bed was empty, and I could hear Mother humming in the bathroom. Out the window I could see Father below, checking and rechecking the weapons. Killing was a precarious occupation, especially if you brought your children along with you.

Anyone else’s children would have been a burden, but the offspring of Dyre Helgren were bred and born with strength and skill. Clemens was lethal with a sword. Lukas, when his hair wasn’t in his eyes, was frighteningly accurate with a bow, and Jonathan could pin a firefly to the bark of a tree with his daggers. I was astute in all three, but I prided myself on tracking and strategy. I had a knack for keeping us out of a corner, and when it was time to harvest our kills, I was the best at that too. Being the best didn’t mean I enjoyed it, or even had a desire to do it, but what else would a Helgren daughter do, if she didn’t hunt and process nightwalkers?

I smiled. Jonathan watched Clemens intently as he set the steaming plate of eggs on the wooden table. Just when he moved to stab his fork into the yellow heap, Clemens grabbed his wrist.

“I thought you weren’t hungry?”

Jonathan grinned. “I was kidding. Do we all lose our sense of humor when we get married?”

Clemens laughed once and released Jonathan. “I’m not married yet.”

“Practically,” Jonathan said, shoveling a forkful into his mouth.

Lukas wandered in and sat down, piling eggs onto his own plate. He was taller than I, but favored our mother. His cheekbones were high, his lashes thick, his lips plush, but he was broad shouldered and exhibited plenty of lean muscle. Already the girls of Ona were clamoring to catch his eye.

Jonathan elbowed his brother. “How many do you think you’ll down tonight?”

Clemens crossed his arms and rested his elbows on the table, watching the younger boys eat. “If we find another nest, maybe we’ll all get as many as last night.”

“I don’t know,” Lukas said with a smirk. “You’re moving awful slow today, old man.”

Clemens rubbed his shoulder. His cheek was still purple from the blow he took from behind. The nest we found was particularly vicious. It was the first time I’d seen young ones, and the adults had fiercely protected them. Father and Clemens didn’t hesitate, but I did.

It only took those few seconds for the nightwalkers to flank us. Our bows and daggers only slowed them down. Nightwalkers were only vulnerable to three things: separating the head from the body, engulfing them in fire, or Eitr, a second special serum our family had developed over the generations.

On my list of things I hated most, collecting for Eitr was second only to harvesting Vileon.

Clemens groaned, rubbing his shoulder.

“Still hurts?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I don’t like what we did. Maybe we should have—”

“Eris?”

I looked up at my eldest brother.

“Don’t.”

I nodded.

If the people saw what we saw, maybe they wouldn’t wish for the lives we led. The nightwalkers we downed and harvested every night were all shapes and sizes—and ages. I’d heard about the young ones from Father, but hadn’t seen them until the night before. The old ones kept them hidden away. It was Father’s theory that the young ones were being kept like cattle, fed on when the adults had been too long without food, but that didn’t make sense to me.

The old ones were definitely protecting their young last night. Once, when Father downed a small one, I saw a female nightwalker writhe in pain, and she howled in a way I never wanted to hear again.

You don’t risk your life for food unless you’re starving, and they weren’t, especially after the raid four nights before in Jergden, a tiny settlement two valleys over in the Gilsan territory. Every villager had been wiped out overnight.

Especially after massacres like Jergden, Father was proud to release the nightwalkers from their miserable existence. He often made us promise that if he were ever bitten, we would save him from such a horrendous fate. Clemens promised without hesitation. The younger boys and I had yet to agree, but Father trusted that we would.

“Did you need help with the equipment, Lukas?” I asked.

Lukas took a bite and shook his head. He was generally a happy child, so the absence of his laughter was always noticeable. His green eyes matched Father’s, but he had Mother’s golden locks, except his were unkempt and not nearly as shiny.

Mother stopped fussing over us after Lukas was born, and the boys ran around looking like heathens, with dirty faces and straggly hair. To see them, one wouldn’t know they were of Priory birth except for their pale skin, which was caused by lack of exposure to the sun—a symptom of our lifestyle.

Lukas offered me a half smile and spoke with his mouth full. “Thanks, though.” He was loyal and dependable, always quick to take my side, and there for me when I needed him.

Clemens ate what was left of the eggs, and then rushed out the door so he could see Emelen before we began patrol. She and her mother had traveled to Ona the month before in preparation for the upcoming wedding. No one spoke of it, but it was common knowledge that not everyone was happy with their betrothal. Clemens and Emelen had fallen in love, though, and she would meet him halfway each night before he left for a hunt.

Mother appeared with a tired expression, and she kissed my head. “I’m going to have Maven work on your dress again tonight. It’s going to be stunning.” She gathered the dishes, but Ursula arrived and shooed her away.

“I’ll just say good-bye to your father then,” Mother said, disappearing out the back door.

“Good evenin’, loves,” Ursula said. “Be havin’ a safe night.”

“Thank you,” Lukas, Jonathan, and I said in unison.

I turned to my brothers. “We should get downstairs.”

The boys followed me, mimicking my movements as I sidestepped the glass cases filled with vials of Vileon. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless, it had been our family’s lifeblood for generations. The wealthy would pay ten thousand chits for just one tiny bottle, but that was all they would ever need.

Vileon was lauded as a sort of fountain of youth. Found by our ancestors to possess ingredients that facilitated health and a youthful appearance like the nightwalkers had, it was worth every penny we charged to harvest it, but few knew exactly what had to be done.

When a human was bitten by a nightwalker and turned, their bodily fluids didn’t immediately leave the body. We had seen some bleed if they were downed just after turning. It took the acids in the stomach decades to absorb. While keeping the population of the nightwalkers thinned, the Priory had also learned those fermented stomach acids could be manufactured into Vileon.

The cousins guarded it carefully while we were asleep and hunting. Besides the twelve-foot-tall stone wall surrounding our property, our home had been fortified further with every generation. Iron gates, dogs, and dozens of bow-carrying cousins who took shifts walking the wall lines made up the Helgren compound, and it had yet to be penetrated.

On the north side, between the house and the stone wall, Mother had grown a vast, vibrant garden to contrast with our fortress. The boys and I used to play hide-and-seek in that garden, but as I grew, and hunting replaced our childhood, the garden reminded me of what was lost.

Separating the garden from the wall was a path that had been ground down by hundreds of cycles of patrols that went around the entire circumference of the wall. Two gates marked the front and back of the compound. Ladders were posted every fifty yards so the cousins could climb up and walk the wall.

The front gate was iron, attached to the front door by a wide, dirt path. Our great-great-grandfather had made the door tall, heavy, and intimidating on purpose.

Anyone who wished to enter must have courage, or strong motive, or both
, Father used to say.

The precautions were necessary. Processing Vileon took weeks. When Father and I weren’t sleeping in the daytime hours, we were processing the serum. Without taking great care to follow the exact method, those who ingested a substandard batch of Vileon would experience sickness and sometimes death. In worst cases a buyer would turn, and it was never good business to have to down a buyer. Our Vileon was the most trusted in all the territories. My late grandfather and Father spent many hours in the lower level of our home perfecting the manufacturing process, so every year our Vileon was even more pure, with quicker, more flawless results.

“
Eris
!” Lukas screamed, grabbing my shoulders from behind.

“What?” I asked, jumping at the same time.

Lukas grinned, satisfied he’d caught me off guard. Surprising me used to be impossible, but I had more on my mind these days.

“C’mere. I want to show you something.”

As I followed him, a whiff of the rancid mixture we dipped our arrows in mixed with the dank smell of the cellar and filled my nose. Eitr was the opposite of Vileon. Vileon was the death of death. Eitr was death to those who couldn’t die.

As inhumane as hunting and harvesting nightwalkers felt, gathering the blood of the dead for the Eitr was my least favorite part of the process. While Vileon came from nightwalkers, Eitr came from humans.

As leader of the Priory, Father had many responsibilities: hunter, protector, scientist, businessman, and the person to summon when a death was about to occur. When someone from our territory was about to die, they called upon my father.

Long ago, just after the Fall, the gathering of the dead was done so the freshly deceased wouldn’t attract nightwalkers. One night in his youth, my father’s father witnessed a starving nightwalker drink blood that was too far away from the last heartbeat, and then watched that nightwalker die. The Priory gained invaluable information that night. Deoxygenated blood was poison to nightwalkers, and so my family began harvesting it for hunting.

“Eris!” Clemens called from upstairs.

“Oh, it’s going to be one of those nights,” I said, startled again.

“But I have something to show you,” Lukas said. He tugged on me again, and although I looked up once to show I was needed upstairs, I gave in to Lukas’s sweet smile.

He squeezed my hand when we reached a corner of the room. He pulled out my beloved dagger. Father had given it to me on my thirteenth birthday. It had been missing for over a week, but I had kept it to myself, ashamed that I had misplaced such a special gift. Beautiful script was engraved into the blade, and I ran my finger over the sharp metal. It looked different than the last time I saw it, and I leaned in to get a closer look. A small attachment sat at the bottom of the grip. Lukas shook it twice, and liquid swished inside.