Free Witchlanders by Lena Coakley Page A

life was leavinghim somehow, slipping over the horizon with the setting sun. He wanted to reach out and call it back.
    â€œHow did she know?” he said out loud. “If there is no magic, if boneshaking is a fake, how did that girl know the bone was in the fire? What told her to look there?”
    He searched for a logical explanation, but his mind kept sliding back to the illogical ones, in spite of himself.
    What if everything he believed was wrong?

CHAPTER 6
MAIDEN’S WOE
    â€œKef needs to talk to you.”
    Skyla had come up beside him, trouble on her face. She had a rough pack slung over her shoulder.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œJust talk to Kef. He’s in the planting hills.”
    Skyla smiled weakly at him, but Ryder wasn’t in the mood for games. That pack was the one they took when they went away somewhere—when they spent the night in the village or took the tithe to the coven. Ryder yanked it from her shoulder and tore it open.
    â€œStop it!” Skyla said. Girls’ underclothes and a few other items spilled out onto the dirt at their feet.
    â€œWhere do you think you’re going?” Ryder demanded. He picked up a scrap of blue cloth and shook it in her direction. “Is this Pima’s dress?”
    Skyla bent down and gathered the fallen things,bundling them tightly into her arms. “The witches have invited Pima and me to stay in the coven for a while.”
    Ryder almost laughed. “Mabis would never agree to that.”
    â€œI just asked her, and she said yes. It’s an honor.”
    Ryder frowned in disbelief. Mabis would never let them go to the coven. But the look in his sister’s eyes said the opposite. Why would Mabis allow it? “Is this what you were doing this afternoon? Begging for an invitation? Well, I’m sorry, Skyla. This is no time for a pleasure trip.”
    â€œIt’s not . . . ,” Skyla began. “No, you don’t understand—”
    Ryder didn’t let her finish. “It’s all over, Sky. You were there. Mabis saw nothing. The witches can take our tithe up with them, we’ll get the rest of the crops in, and we’ll have just enough for the winter. We can finally go back to the way things were—you’re not going to ruin it by shirking out of the last of the harvesting.”
    He expected an angry retort, but Skyla only lowered her voice and said almost gently, “Do you really think everything can go back to the way it was?”
    â€œOf course.”
    His sister’s eyes were filling with tears. “You don’t understand. I didn’t either until they explained it to me.”
    Skyla hardly ever cried, and now it was twice in two days. The last time was in the hicca fields when she’d asked Ryder what he thought she wanted. A realization came over him. Maybe now he knew.
    â€œYou want to be a witch,” he said, even more certain as he spoke the words. “You want to stay in the coven for good. Study there.”
    â€œNo! I mean—well, yes . . . But it’s not about that.”
    It was so obvious now—Skyla always had been a romantic when it came to the witches—but he was surprised she could be so selfish. “You can’t, Skyla. We can’t always get what we want.”
    â€œOh!” she said, fully bursting into tears now. “Just talk to Kef!” And with that she ran toward the prayer hill, clutching her belongings to her chest.
    Yes, he’d talk to Kef.
    In the dying light, Ryder could see Kef’s dark silhouette at the top of the largest planting hill. He was waiting for him, pacing and looking down on the valley.
    â€œYou can’t have them!” Ryder shouted, climbing toward him through the rows. Most of the hicca was stripped now, and the bare stalks stood up like spines from the soft earth.
    Kef held up his palms in a gesture of truce and called down to him. “We need to talk.”
    â€œYou