Chapter Two

“Where have you been?” Stepan demanded, closing the door behind Jaren. He did a cursory inspection to make sure his son was unharmed, then let out a sigh of relief. “We thought the forest spirits had taken you.”

Jaren cast a sheepish glance at his father as he walked to the washbasin. “I wish I could blame my tardiness on sprites or will-o’-the-wisps, Father. But—”

Before he could go on, his entire family finished for him. “You got lost.”

He nodded. “I got lost.” He’d never spent a night in these woods before, and he was grateful he’d managed to find his way home when he woke with the dawn.

“Of course you did.” His oldest sister, Summer, smiled at him from where she sat whittling by the fire. She was as warm as her name implied, the gentlest of his three sisters. “You were daydreaming again, weren’t you?”

“Head in the clouds, feet in the mud,” his middle sister sang, tutting at his filthy boots. As twins, Story and Jaren were closest in both age and bond, though Story had been born first and liked to lord those eleven minutes over him whenever possible.

Their youngest sister, Sofia, was still the baby of the family at fifteen. They called her Tadpole, mostly because she’d been as wriggly as frog spawn from the time she could move, but also because she pretended to hate it. Currently, she sat on their sofa, braiding her long red hair. “You didn’t find any early spring flowers for me, did you? I’m so tired of all this.” She waved her hand vaguely toward the front door.

“You could look for flowers yourself,” Summer said.

“No flowers.” Jaren held up his basket. “But I did find some wild onions.”

Tadpole folded her arms across her chest, pouting. “I hate onions.”

Story yanked on her little sister’s braid, just hard enough to let her know she was being rude. “Then learn to cook your own food. It’s time you did something useful around here.”

Their father tapped a wooden spoon against the pot, his way of telling his children to settle down. Since their mother died, he had bravely taken over the cooking, and they’d all been surprised to find he was a much better chef than his late wife. None of them mentioned it, however. Stepan wouldn’t have wanted anyone insulting his darling Sylvie’s cooking, no matter how inedible.

“Leave Tad alone,” he called over his shoulder. “She’s tired.”

“From what?” Story asked, her brown eyes wide with incredulity. “Sitting?”

Jaren left his sisters bickering in the family room and climbed up to his loft to change. His sisters shared the sole bedroom, while their father slept on a pallet by the fire. The girls fought constantly, but Jaren sometimes envied their closeness. He knew he was excluded from their most intimate conversations because he was a boy, not because they didn’t love him, but it made him feel separate from them. The fact that he was a dreamer and easily distracted didn’t help.

He still couldn’t believe he’d missed one of the trail markers yesterday, taking him miles in the wrong direction. By the time he’d realized his mistake, it was twilight, and while he didn’t believe in fables and folktales like his father, he also wasn’t foolish enough to try to navigate a rocky trail in the dark. With his luck, he’d twist his ankle and be stranded until another passerby happened upon him. Which, considering he hadn’t seen anyone yesterday, could have been ages.

“Come eat!” Story called up the ladder. “The soup’s getting cold.”

Jaren pulled a clean shirt over his head and climbed down. He mumbled an apology, but the rest of the family was already dipping chunks of bread into their soup.

“Tell us,” Stepan said, curiosity replacing his concern now that Jaren was home. “Did you see anything of interest in your wanderings? You must truly have gotten yourself lost this time.”

“I found a beautiful lake,” Jaren replied. “By the time I settled down for the night it was too dark to see anything. But this morning, I was amazed at how perfectly clear it was. I’ve never seen that color blue before.”

Stepan raised his head from his bowl, leveling Jaren with a stern gaze. “What was the lake called?”

Jaren shook his head and fumbled a scalding piece of potato around in his mouth. “I have no idea. It wasn’t marked.”

“Closest town, then?”

“I was lost, Father. I honestly couldn’t tell you if I was still in this kingdom.”

Stepan’s expression remained stony. “You didn’t drink from the lake, did you?”

Jaren shook his head. “No, I filled my waterskin in a stream. Why? Do you know something about this lake?”

Stepan glanced at his daughters. “Klaus told me there is a lake in these parts, one that looks pristine but is actually full of poison.”

Jaren laughed, but his twin sister touched his hand. “I’ve heard of it, too. From the townspeople.”

Jaren was certain this was just another bit of local superstition. They had moved to the small village of Bricklebury a little over a month ago, after their mother died and Klaus, an old friend, invited them to rent his house for a good price. Jaren knew his father was too haunted by memories of Sylvie to stay in their old home, and Bricklebury was a perfectly nice town. But Jaren had never seen such a gullible, gossipy group of people in his life.

Considering his mind was always wandering in fanciful directions, Jaren himself might have been prone to believing in tall tales. But the stories Jaren told himself while he walked and worked weren’t fairy tales. They were stories of what might be or what could have been, conversations he wished he’d had or hoped to have one day. Maybe he only felt lost because he was surrounded by three headstrong girls who knew exactly what they wanted. But at eighteen, Jaren still had no idea where he was going.

He was tempted to tell his father just what he thought of this “magic lake.” But he also knew if he didn’t acknowledge his father’s fears, he’d likely send his sisters to do the gathering next time. Jaren hated chopping wood and hunting, the two other duties he might be tasked with.

“I won’t go back,” he said, and he meant it. There was no reason to go so far afield, and besides, he’d slept horribly last night. He vastly preferred his own bed to stones and snowmelt. “But you don’t need to worry, Father. I never saw so much as a squirrel out there. Spring is late this year.”

“It always comes late this far up the mountain,” Summer said, with the air of someone who knew something the rest of the family didn’t.

Sofia shoved a hunk of bread into her mouth. “Says who?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Tadpole,” Story said, elbowing her little sister.

Summer avoided their eyes. “I heard someone say it at the market.”

“It’s that carpenter, isn’t it?” Story grinned, her eyes glinting in the firelight. “I knew you liked him!”

While his sisters teased each other and their father tried to quiet them, Jaren’s mind was filled with a strange, mournful song he couldn’t place. He had no musical ability to speak of, so it wasn’t likely he’d made it up himself. And his mother, though she’d loved to sing, wouldn’t have chosen something so sorrowful.

“Yoo-hoo,” Story called, waving a hand in front of Jaren’s face. “Where did you go?”

He realized his spoon was dangling in front of him, forgotten. “Sorry.”

“You’re clearly exhausted,” their father said. “Get some rest. Your sisters and I will take over your chores for the rest of the day.”

Jaren nodded and mumbled an apology. But, though he did feel exhausted in every fiber of his body, he lay awake for hours, trying to tease out the melody of the strange song in his head.

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