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23

Havenwood Eleven Years Ago

“Grandma, I want to go to the fair,” Riley whined. “I’m twelve.” Not quite. Two more months. But she had explored every inch of the valley they lived in, climbed every climbable tree, crossed every creek, found every trail that had been forged.

But wherever she went, however high she climbed, all she saw was more trees. Sometimes, she felt they were the only people in the world.

Only certain people took their goods to the fairs. They spent all winter creating beautiful things—quilts and sweaters, carvings and paintings, jams and jellies. Riley wasn’t good at sewing, she cut herself every time she tried to carve wood, and she didn’t like to spend time in the kitchen. But she could draw, and her grandma said she had real talent. She drew everything she saw, and things she imagined. She wasn’t so good at painting, but for the first time the council picked her small charcoal drawings to sell at the fair, and she wanted to go and see who bought them.

She wouldn’t talk to anyone—people scared her. She’d never left Havenwood because her mother had told her about all the evil outside the valley. But she wanted to see more, to see what she had read about.

Her mother always said no. When Riley was a little girl, bad people tried to kill everyone at Havenwood. Riley still remembered her daddy Glen that day he told her to stay in the schoolhouse with Jane and the other children. He had been so scared, but he went out to help her mother and grandmother. He died, but he helped save Havenwood. That meant he was brave and strong. And no one had tried again! It had been forever. So why was her mother still scared?

Her grandma was an elder, and people listened to her. So if she could convince Grandma that she would be good and not talk to any strangers and do everything Daddy Robert said, then Grandma could tell her mother to let her go.

Riley had it all thought out.

She and her grandma were walking down an overgrown trail on the far side of Havenwood. Riley wasn’t allowed this far on her own, but she was with her grandma, so it was okay.

Grandma was quiet. She had been quiet a lot lately, ever since she was sick last winter. Riley didn’t want to think of her grandma as old . But Athena was the oldest person in Havenwood and that scared Riley. Old people could die. Young people could die, too, like when Peter fell from the roof of the barn three years ago. Or when Jennifer ate berries she wasn’t supposed to. Or the time Tom and Robert went to hunt a bear who had killed one of their horses, and Tom was attacked. Or when her mother was pregnant and lost her baby when the bad people came to steal from Havenwood.

“Grandma, if you talk to Mommy, she’ll listen.”

“Quiet, Riley,” her grandmother said.

She bit her lip. She didn’t want to be quiet. She loved time alone with her grandma. They used to always have time alone to explore and collect blackberries and her grandma would watch her draw and said she never got tired of it.

But they hadn’t had time alone as much as they used to.

After several minutes (it was only ninety seconds, but it felt like an hour), Riley said, “Where are we going? I’m not supposed to go this far past the south creek.”

Grandma didn’t answer. Riley frowned and followed. She ran ahead, then came back and walked with her grandma. Something was wrong.

“Grandma, you look sad.”

Her grandma sighed, stopped walking and looked at her. “Riley, you are the reason I made Havenwood.”

“Silly, I wasn’t born when you moved here.”

Her grandma smiled, but it was a sad smile, and that sadness made Riley sad. Her grandma was never sad. She was always full of joy.

“I’m an old fool,” she said quietly and turned into a small opening.

Riley hadn’t been in this meadow for years . She and the other children had been told that there was an old mine here, and they would fall into it and die and no one would ever find them.

She stood on the edge of the meadow because she was scared of falling into a rotted mine shaft.

Her grandmother walked into the middle.

“No, Grandma! Stop! It’s dangerous.”

She didn’t listen to Riley, and Riley wondered if she should run back to the village and get Daddy Robert to help her.

“Stay, Riley,” her grandma said as if she could read her mind. Maybe she could. Or maybe Riley spoke out loud and didn’t realize it.

The meadow terrified Riley, but it was beautiful, covered with wildflowers. Every color imaginable, but dominated by red poppies. Nothing this beautiful could be bad, right?

Her grandmother stood in the middle of the meadow, and the scene was so beautiful, Riley had to draw it.

Riley sat on a rock, pulled her sketch pad and pencil from her satchel, and rapidly started to sketch her grandmother. She worked fast, her hand almost with a mind of its own. She wished she had colored pencils with her, but she hadn’t brought them. Only a snack and her pad and two regular pencils.

She brought her grandmother to life on the page. The flowers, the field, and she hoped to remember the colors so she could add them later.

She didn’t think she’d ever forget.

When she looked up again, her grandmother was on her knees. Oh, no! Had she fallen? Was she hurt?

“Grandma!” Forgetting the fear of a mine she had never seen, she ran to the middle of the field as fast as she could until she reached her grandma. She squatted next to her. “Are you okay? Do you need Jasmine?” Jasmine was their doctor. She knew everything about the human body and would know what’s wrong.

“No,” her grandmother said, and that’s when Riley saw tears on her face.

“Are you hurt? Do you need water?”

She was staring at the dirt. Riley turned and it took a minute, but then she realized what her grandmother had been doing.

She’d pulled up flowers and dug a hole. In the hole was a stick. No...not a stick. It was a bone. Two. Three. It looked like a hand. But it couldn’t be a hand. It had to be an animal.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, Riley, I am a fool. We need to leave. Do not tell anyone—not anyone— what you have seen or where we went.”

Riley didn’t sleep well that night. She wanted to talk to her grandmother and find out what made her sad and why she was keeping secrets.

It was still dark when Riley finally got out of bed. She didn’t know what time it was, but the homes across the valley were quiet. Though late spring, it was cold at night, and Riley slipped into her warm boots and pulled her heavy coat around her pajamas.

She knew which stairs creaked and avoided them without thought. Her house was quiet and warm, the embers in the potbellied stove still smoldering. She would go to her grandmother’s cottage—it wasn’t far, and she wasn’t scared of the dark. Besides, each house had a light in the window, and each path was marked with lights. They were like tiny stars on earth, guiding her.

She stopped when she saw that there were more lights on in her grandmother’s small house than there should be. And voices. They weren’t shouting but they were angry.

Curious, but cautious, Riley walked along the trees to avoid being seen as she neared the house. She couldn’t see through the curtains, but as she stood under her grandmother’s window, she heard her voice.

“I’m leaving. You can’t talk me out of it.”

“They will listen to you, Mom!”

It was Aunt Thalia.

“Not anymore, darling girl. Your sister has turned enough souls to her. I just want to go. William tried to tell me...but I was more in love with my dream than I was with your father.”

“I will stand with you. I won’t let you face Calliope alone.”

“It’s not just Calliope. It’s Calliope’s partners. And others. Too many to fight, and I’m old and tired.”

“We can’t let her get away with murder.”

Riley gasped, then covered her mouth.

“I’ll walk away at the fair. No need to make a scene.”

“Mother—you’re not the only one who feels uncomfortable with the fact that we haven’t heard from people. If everyone knows that Calliope has killed our family —they won’t stand with her. We can banish Calliope and anyone who helped her. I think we have enough people to do the right thing.”

“But do you have violence in your heart? Would you kill another human being? Because they will take a life. They have done it before, it’s easy for them.”

“I have Robert on my side.”

Father? Riley didn’t understand everything they were talking about, but her daddy Robert had been as quiet and distant as her grandma the last few months.

“He has control over the money,” Aunt Thalia said. “We take control and tell everyone what you found, and she’ll leave. She’s weak.”

“Do not underestimate your sister. She will never leave Havenwood. She never has.”

“My half sister. If what you tell me is true, I will prove that she killed my father and all the others we thought left Havenwood.”

“The field of poppies is littered with their souls.”

“Mother, think on it. Everyone here respects you. Everyone, even the people Calliope thinks are on her side, they love and respect you more than anyone else.”

“I’m tired, Thalia. So very tired.”

A hand clamped down on Riley’s mouth and held her tight.

“Naughty little girls eavesdrop.”

It was Daddy Anton. She tried to kick, but she smelled something sickly sweet and suddenly was floating...and the world slipped away.

When Riley woke, she didn’t know what time it was. She felt sick to her stomach and could barely move her limbs. She heard crying downstairs.

Slowly, every step making her body ache, she went down the stairs to a roomful of people. Her mother had tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. Daddy Anton had his arms around her shoulders as she spoke.

“Athena, my mother, passed peacefully in her sleep last night. She hasn’t been well since the virus she caught last winter. We will have the funeral on Saturday. Fear not, as Athena will be one with nature. As she was in life, she will be in death.”

Riley started to cry. “Grandma?”

“Oh, baby,” Calliope purred. “You shouldn’t be up. You’ve been so sick.”

Her daddy Anton caught her as she swayed on the stairs and would have fallen. “I’m sorry, Riley. We didn’t tell you because you were delirious with fever.”

“No, no—I don’t remember. Where’s Grandma?”

She sobbed in Anton’s arms. Her head was a jumble of dreams and nightmares, and she didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. This had to be a nightmare. Grandma wasn’t dead.

Two days later Riley was still so weak from whatever illness she had that her mother didn’t want her to go to the funeral. But Riley insisted, and Robert carried her the entire way to the church. They called it church, but it wasn’t like a traditional religion, as her grandmother had explained. It was the spiritual center of Havenwood where people could go to pray or think, dream or hope, think about their place in the world and how they could best serve Havenwood and their brothers and sisters who chose to give up all to live there.

Riley didn’t want to believe that her grandmother was dead, but her body was on display, in a casket that the carpenters had made specially for her, with flowers carved into the sides. Everyone walked up and spoke to her, in a moment of privacy, leaving behind something they thought she would like. Mostly flowers. A carved bird from Timmy. A quilted square from Jane.

Riley was the last to approach her grandmother. She shuffled, felt sick, and Robert picked her up and carried her.

She stared down at the person she loved above all others, even above her mother and all her fathers. Riley didn’t know what they’d done to her grandmother’s body, but she didn’t look herself. She wore her favorite dress, the color of the midday sky, with tiny yellow and white daisies. As silent tears fell, Riley reached into her pocket and pulled out the last drawing she’d made, of her grandmother among the wildflowers. She put it next to her grandma’s hand.

Robert stared at it. “Where did you draw that picture?”

She buried her face into his shoulder. “I promised Grandma I’d never tell.”

A few days later, Riley was feeling better, but her head was still fuzzy. She no longer remembered standing under her grandmother’s window and hearing Aunt Thalia and Grandma talk. She had odd dreams, and some nightmares, and she slept hours during the day and longer at night. One recurring nightmare had her waking in a sweat. It was about her fathers, all of them but Robert, holding her picture of grandma in the meadow.

“She knows.”

And then Riley would wake and cry and the nightmare would slip away.

She’d slept through most of three days after burying her grandmother, and awoke at dinner that third night feeling hungry for the first time in...how long? A week?

A commotion outside caught her attention. She opened her window—the fresh air felt amazing to her, and she breathed deeply.

Her bedroom looked down into one of their many gardens. Her mother was standing in the middle, hysterical. “She killed Robert. She killed him as certain as I stand here!”

Robert? Her father, dead? How could that be? Who had killed him?

“We’ll find Thalia, bring her back,” another of her fathers said. “Lock down Havenwood until we return.”

Four men and two women left and Riley felt ill again. She heard things...odd things...over the next few weeks. Her aunt Thalia had killed Robert and taken all the money that ran Havenwood. Riley didn’t want to believe it, but why would her mother lie?

It wasn’t until two months later, on Riley’s twelfth birthday, that Riley found a note hidden in her room and learned the truth.

Thalia and Robert had left together and didn’t take her with them.

Dearest Riley:

I’m sorry to leave you behind, but I was in danger. Robert found the meadow you drew; he knows the truth. He, too, is in danger because of it. Don’t say a word. He is alive and free. One day, I’ll return for you. When you find the red poppy, go to your grandmother’s grave at dawn the next morning. I will be there.

Thalia

Enclosed in the note was a dried red poppy.

But it was months later when the snow cleared before Riley found a red poppy on her bed. She stayed up all night, ran to her grandma’s grave before the sun came up. She had a bag packed and she couldn’t wait to leave. She missed her daddy Robert so much.

Thalia came to her an hour later. She looked at her bag and said, “No, not you, not now. Riley, I need you here helping me. My eyes and ears. You are the only one who knows who we can trust, those who will leave and not return. Starting with Chris. Give him this letter. And in the fall, I’ll return for him.”

“I miss Daddy Robert. Please, Aunt Thalia! I want to go. I miss Grandma. Nothing is the same.”

“Do you know what happened to Grandma?”

Riley bit her lip. She had uneasy feelings about that whole week, but it was still so fuzzy in her head.

“Calliope killed her,” Thalia said. “And the only way you can help now is if you stay here and help me get people out.”

“What about me?” She was crying. She didn’t want to cry, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“You’re safer here for now. If I take you, I’ll have to hide forever. Calliope’s people will hunt me down to get you back. I can’t risk it.”

“Take me to Daddy Robert.”

“No. You have to trust me, Riley. You’re only twelve.”

So Riley trusted her. For years, she trusted her until she couldn’t live in Havenwood a minute longer. She faked her death and walked away and Thalia couldn’t stop her.