“Why?” Her voice sounded strange in her ears. Like a mirror breaking. “Why will I bring sorrow on everyone?”
Day bent toward her until their eyes were level. He wore no tasseled robes, but a knit gray sweater and trousers stained with dirt. He was only a caretaker, after all.
“Listen to me. . . .”
Eris wasn’t listening. She was panicking.
She’d always known she was no one important. She was an orphan, taken in out of charity. Because the weavers had made a vow to the Skyweaver: to harbor those who needed harboring.
But she never thought they would send her away.
“I can’t leave,” she said, her voice cracking. “Where would I go? I have nowhere to go, Day. I’ll be all alone!”
“Eris.” His strong hands came down on her shoulders. “You are never, ever alone. No matter where you are.”
She shook her head. Tears burned in her eyes. He didn’t say: Everything will be all right. He didn’t say: I won’t let them do this.
“You don’t want me either,” she realized then. She’d always feared it, deep down. But here was the proof. “No one wants me.”
“Eris . . .”
She didn’t want to hear any more of his empty words.
Pulling out of his grip, Eris turned and ran.
She ran hard down the halls—bumping into apprentices as she escaped the scrin. Beneath the setting sun, she ran up the dirt paths, through the silver boreal forest, along the rocky cliffs facing the sea. Her footsteps pounded the earth, trying to outrun what she’d overheard.
She didn’t stop running until she reached the meadow.
It smelled of juniper and sea salt up here. In the distance, far below, the sea roared as it crashed against the rocks.
Eris had just collapsed in the grass, weary from running so fast and so far, when a sound came from across the meadow.
She looked up to see Yew bumbling toward her. Bleating loudly, his stubby white tail bouncing as he ran across the field. He butted Eris’s shoulder with his soft white head, then proceeded to nuzzle her.
Eris threw her arms around Yew, breathing in his musky smell and burying her tear-streaked face in the sheep’s wool—which was fuzzy from being recently sheared.
“Why does no one want me?” she whispered.
As if in answer, Yew curled up beside her and put his soft white chin in Eris’s lap.
When she’d cried herself out, she lay in the golden grass, staring up at the blue sky. Picking up her knife—the one Day gave her for cutting scarp thistles—she ran her fingers over the embossed star pattern in the silver sheath.
“To remind you the Skyweaver is always with you,” he’d told her the day he gave it to her. “When you use it, say a prayer to her.”
Eris closed her eyes, thinking of the prayer Day recited with her every night before bed:
When the night descends . . .
I look to those who’ve gone before me
lighting my path through the dark.
When I am deserted and alone . . .
I know your hands hold the threads of my soul
and there is nothing to fear.
When the enemy surrounds me . . .
I remember you are with me.
And though they break my body, they can never take my soul.
They always spoke the last line together. Eris recited the prayer twice now and when she opened her eyes, she felt calmer. Less angry. But still hurt.
I should be grateful that they took me in at all, she thought. Me, a worthless orphan.
Using this thought as a shield against the hurt, Eris got to her feet. Spotting a patch of scarp thistles growing in clumps near the cliff edge, she drew the knife out of its sheath and went to cut some.
“As a good-bye gift,” she told Yew, who lay in the grass now, watching her with deep brown eyes. “For the weavers.”
Eris didn’t know when it had gotten so late, only that when Yew bolted upright, staring toward the sea, the sky was dark and the stars were coming out.
Eris let go of the thorny scarp stalk and lowered her knife, looking in the same direction.
Yew bleated, agitated. Eris laid her free hand atop his warm back, peering through the blue twilight. A silhouette came into view. Something—a man?—was walking toward them from the cliffs. Above him, a massive black raven soared through the air.
Eris frowned. There was no path up or down those cliffs. You had to climb the steps on the other side of the scrin.
So where had he come from?
Day’s warnings about strangers filled her mind and Eris stepped back.
“Who are you?” she called out.
She could see from where she stood that his gait was clumsy and stiff. As if he were limping.
He stumbled.
Eris sheathed the knife and ran to him. Yew trailed nervously behind her. As she got closer, she saw he was an older man, maybe Day’s age. His clothes were soaked and a hideous red gash sliced his forehead just above his right eye. Blood—now dry—had run down his cheek and neck, pooling in the hollow of his throat. That black raven circled above him.
“Are you all right?” Clearly, he was in some kind of trouble. “What’s your name?”
“Jemsin,” he rasped. “My ship . . .”
His hands shook, and Eris could see his fingers were scraped and bloody.
Had he climbed those cliffs? She looked from his hands to his face as admiration flared within her.
The raven dived suddenly, flapping its massive wings as it landed on Jemsin’s shoulder. It stared down at her with bloodred eyes. Growing strangely cold beneath its gaze, Eris stepped back.
“A wicked wind dashed us right up on the rocks,” Jemsin said. “Like we were nothing but a leaf. Where am I, girl?”
“Shadow Isle,” she said, eying the raven as she stepped carefully beside Jemsin, ready to catch him if he stumbled or fell. “The scrin isn’t far. They’ll help you. Where’s the rest of your crew?”
He shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “Eaten. The sea spirits got each and every one of them before they could swim ashore.”
Eris thought of his men, swimming through the cold silver waters as one by one their comrades were pulled under by clawed and scaly hands.
She shivered at the thought.
“Come on,” she said, taking his hand in hers as she led him back down the cliff paths, through the boreal forest, forgetting all about the scarp thistles. The raven flew from his shoulder and began to circle the sky above once more. But as they drew nearer to the scrin, something made Jemsin stop.
“Wait,” he hissed, grabbing her arm. Yew bleated at him. The man let her go, raising his hands. “Do you smell that?”
Eris sniffed.
The acrid tang of smoke hit her. She turned, looking in the direction of the scrin. Through the darkness, above the tops of the junipers, she could see a multitude of red sparks spitting at the sky.
Cold dread spread through her.
“No . . .”
The man reached for her again, but Eris was already running. Straight toward the fire.
Straight toward home.
Yew bleated somewhere far behind her.
It wasn’t long before she saw the flames themselves. Huge, ravenous flames. Orange and red. Devouring the scrin.
Swarming all around it, watching it burn, were men dressed in black, with silver blades strapped across their backs.