Chapter 19: The Same Hole

The silence on the shore lasted a long moment.

Then a murmur rose from the Holmberg line, and it had teeth in it.

"She won't go near it."

"She wore the pin for three months."

"Eli was eight."

Linnea turned in a slow circle, and every face she looked at turned away from her.

She looked at Garrick last.

He didn't move.

He stood with his arms at his sides and stared at her and did not blink.

"Garrick," she whispered. "Please."

Dag stepped into the gap behind her, and an elder lifted his cane.

"Hold her," the elder said.

She ran.

She didn't run toward the road.

She ran onto the ice, along the gray shelf and past me, because it was the only way open that wasn't a wolf.

I heard her boots go by, ten feet from the hole.

"Linnea!" Petra shouted. "Not that way!"

The ice past the yellow rope was the old rotten kind, black-veined and soft in the March sun.

She hit it at a full sprint.

It opened under her with a flat, wet crack, and she went in to her chest.

She screamed his name.

"Garrick! Garrick!"

It was the same scream.

I had heard it on the Solstice, from the edge of the broken hole, while my left hand hung in splinters at my side.

Garrick stood on the shingle with the water lapping at his boots.

He didn't take a step.

Every wolf on that shore was watching him not take it.

"Garrick, I can't feel my legs!" Linnea was clawing at the edge, and it kept breaking off in her hands. "Please. I'll tell you everything!"

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