Page 135 of The Sister's Curse

He shook his head. His weight rocked back and forth, from his heels to the balls of his feet, as if he was thinking about rushing my mom.

The gun’s muzzle flashed white, and I jumped at the clap of thunder. The man cowered on the ground before my mom.

“No more warning shots,” she said. “Drink up.”

The man crawled toward a barrel, pouring sweet-smelling liquid into the ground. He cupped his hands to capture the poison and took a drink. He gagged.

“Drink,” my mom ordered. “Drink it all.”

He didn’t even come close. He drank until he retched, vomiting it up, and then Mom made him drink more poison. He begged her to let him go, but she was unmoved. She made him drink until he passed out.

I watched, fascinated. I knew what she was doing was right; my dad wouldn’t have permitted anyone to defile his beloved forest. But I was fascinated by my own power, that I could visit this punishment upon this vile person. I felt a bone-deep sense of satisfaction in that.

When the man had passed out, my mom dragged him to the river and shoved him in. Face down, he floated down the river.

In the distance, the Hag Stone looked on, her profile sharp against the sky.

“She likes blood,” Mom said, as she’d said when I’d sat with my bleeding feet in the sand.

The Hag watched silently as the man’s body floated to her, for her to devour.

I was my mother’s daughter.

—

I floated for a time, in the black between Rusalka and myself, in the water’s roar.

Eventually, she let me go. I had a sense of being pulled to shore, of the murmuring of women.

I felt solid ground on my back. Consciousness was fuzzy, and I knew I had to get help. Water shimmered before me, looking a lotlike the fluorescence of pollution under a UV light. In the distance, I saw burning. The river…the river was on fire. I could see the red and feel the heat from here.

“Hold still,” a voice said.

Tree branches swayed above me. I was being carried to higher ground by many sets of hands. I had the same feeling I’d had when I played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board at a slumber party as a kid, unsteady and weightless at the same time.

“Stay still,” a female voice said. “You’ve got a head injury.”

I reached behind my head, and my fingertips came away with hot blood. “How did you find me?”

“We heard the singing.”

That sounded like an entirely reasonable response.

“I’m so sorry about Viv. I was too late.” I turned my head to look upstream. “She was at the oxbow…with the men.”

“The island’s gone. All of it,” another female voice said.

“Jasper? He was here. Sumner and Lister, too…”

“They’re all gone.”

I squinted at the river. The roaring power I’d felt in my head and my lungs was gone. I stared down at my hands, pale and ordinary and bloody. “So is Rusalka.”

I sank into darkness.

30

Pawns and Kings