Dead River - By Cyn Balog Page 0,68

away. I think I’ve lost her when she takes one step in the direction she’d been headed, toward the Outfitters, but suddenly she stops. “Stop hiding,” I say. “Come on out.”

She doesn’t move. I wait a minute, but nothing changes. Either the leaves are shuddering in the breeze, or she is.

I step forward, hands out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

When I’ve moved closer, I can see her eyes, wide and brown as the mud crusting her lips. There’s always fear there, but now it’s magnified. She’s shaking. I peer through the branches and see something lying on the ground beside her. A familiar powder blue. And blood, now crusted and dark, almost the color of the mud around it. And blond hair, now greasy and tangled and matted with pine needles and leaves. My body.

I gasp. “Vi. What are you doing with that?” But it’s obvious what she is doing. She’s moving it toward the Outfitters, not away from it, not where it can be buried in these vast woods and safely disappear forever. She’s bringing it to where the heart of the search party will be, where it will likely be buzzing with people.

She wants them to find my body.

Maybe she always wanted me dead, too, because one thing is clear. She wants me to stay that way.

Chapter Twenty-One

“What are you doing?” I shout at her, but she doesn’t listen. She grabs handfuls of greasy green hair and begins to drag my lifeless body through the mud. She’s so tiny, but when I reach for her, her elbow jabs between my ribs. It doesn’t hurt, but the little girl’s force shocks me. Her eyes narrow to slits. She opens her mouth only a sliver, and black filth drizzles out. I know that if she could, she’d be hissing at me to get away. I put my hand on hers, trying to pry her fingers up, but the hair is wound tightly through them. All I can manage to do is pull up a few strawlike strands that break apart in my hands. I grab the hair closer to the scalp and yank in the other direction. A whole lock of hair at the crown of the head rips free in a series of sickening pops, like a seam splitting, leaving a pinkish-gray bald spot there. That’s me, I think, wincing at the bloody clump of hair in my hands, and am so shocked for the moment that I’m not prepared for what comes next. She lunges at me, throwing me on my back and knocking all the air out of my lungs. When I recover from the shock, she’s straddling my waist and holding a finger up to her muddy lips. Quiet.

I struggle to move, but it’s useless. I’m pinned to the ground. This little girl, not four feet tall, has pinned me to the ground. She looks over her shoulder and before I can form another plan of escape, I hear the swish of feet along the grass. Someone is coming. I strain to see over the little girl’s shoulder, but can only make out a faint glow. Jack. I swallow when I hear his voice. “I’m going to wring that little brat’s neck.” He stops, points his head to the sky, and shouts, so loud it nearly shakes the trees, “Do you hear that? I’m going to wring your neck!” And then he continues on. Once he’s moved on, I exhale. She moves off of me and bends over the body again.

“Wait,” I say, finally understanding. “You want my body to be found so that my mother can’t bring me back to life. You don’t want Jack to become ruler, either, do you?”

She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.

I lean over and press my eyes into my knees. “All right. I’m totally confused.”

There’s another sound, nothing more than the crack of a branch in the distance, but Vi startles like a doe, stilling, her eyes filling once more with fear. She looks around and grabs a branch, then begins to scrawl something in the soft dirt. I watch each letter as it’s produced, eager to find some answer to the mystery, but what she writes makes no sense, even when it’s right in front of me, etched in mud.

Not Jack.

“What?” I shrug. “Then who?”

She stands and moves close to me, and for a moment I’m afraid, and the next moment I’m embarrassed for feeling that way in front of an eight-year-old. But I can still