Half Wild (3 page)

But it’s best not to think too much like that. Best not to think about what I can’t have.

I remember Gran too, with her bees, her boots and chickens, and the muddy kitchen floor. The last time I saw Gran was when they took me away. I was in the Council building and was told that Celia was going to be my “guardian and teacher.” That was the first time I saw Celia, the first time I heard her sound, her Gift that could stun me. It seems like a lifetime ago. Celia felled me with her noise and they carried me away and I had one last sight of Gran looking old and frightened, standing alone in the middle of the room where I had my Assessments. Now I look back, I think Gran knew she’d never see me again. Celia told me she died, and I know they drove Gran to kill herself like they did my mother.

I know now—

What’s that?

Footsteps! At night!

My adrenaline kicks in.

Control yourself! Listen!

Light footsteps. Light enough to be a Hunter.

I turn my head slowly. See nothing. The cloud cover is heavy and no moonlight gets through to me here in the forest.

More footsteps. More adrenaline.

Shit! That’s more than adrenaline—that’s the animal in me.

Then I see her. A small deer. Nervous.

And the animal adrenaline is ready to burst out, the animal in me wanting to take over.

Calm! Calm! Breathe slowly. Count the breaths.

One in slow and out slow.

Two in slow—and hold—and out slow.

Three in slow—and I can feel it in my blood, setting it on fire—and out slow.

Four in slow and it’s the animal in me, whatever it is that makes me change.

The deer moves away and is quickly lost in the gloom. But here I am, human, and the deer is not dead. I can control my Gift. Stop it anyway. And if I can stop it maybe I can allow it too.

I’m grinning. For the first time in weeks, I feel genuinely positive about something.

I’ve done well today, stuck to the lists, haven’t strayed too far onto the negative. I can reward myself with some good thoughts, things I reserve for special occasions. My favorite ones are of Annalise. And this is what I remember . . .

The two of us are sitting on the sandstone escarpment, our feet dangling over the edge. Annalise is fifteen; I’m still only fourteen. My leg is close to hers but not quite touching. It’s late autumn. We’ve met here once a week for the last two months. Since we’ve been meeting we’ve only touched once, the second time we were here. I held her hand and kissed it. I still can’t believe I did that. I was sort of carried away, I think. Now I think about it all the time, and I mean
all
the time, but I can’t seem to do it again. Annalise and I talk and climb and run around but even when we’re chasing each other I never catch her. I get close and then I can’t do it. I never let her catch me either.

She’s swinging her legs. Her gray school skirt is clean and pressed and neat. The skin on her legs is smooth and lightly tanned and the hairs on her legs above her knees are fine and blonde. And my leg is millimeters from hers but I know I can’t make it go any closer. I force myself to turn my head to look at something else.

The cliff is steep and the drop is long but doable as the landing is on sandy soil. The tops of the trees are moving and rustling, almost talking to each other, gossiping, and leaves fall in little gangs. A cluster descends toward us and even before she moves I know Annalise will try to catch one. She stretches out her hand, her arm, and then her body over the edge of the cliff. She’s going too far but she won’t get hurt if she falls, although maybe I should grab her, hold her. But I don’t move. She laughs and reaches out even further and catches the leaf, taking hold of my sleeve at the same time, and still I don’t touch her. I pull my arm back so that she’s safe but I don’t touch her.

She’s got the leaf. A small brown triangle from a birch tree. She holds it by the stem and twirls it in front of my face.

“Got it. No thanks to you! I nearly fell.”

“I knew you’d be OK.”

“Did you now?” She pats the leaf against my nose once, her fingers close to my lips. I move my head back away from her.

“It’s for you. Here, take it.”

I say, “It’s just a leaf. There are plenty of them around.”

“Hold your hand out. This is a special leaf. It’s one I caught, at great personal risk, just for you.”

I hold out my hand; I want the leaf.

She drops it into my palm.

“You never say thank you, do you?”

I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.

“And you never touch me.”

I shrug. I can’t tell her I think about every millimeter between us. I say, “I’ll keep the leaf.” And I push off from the cliff and drop to the ground below.

I’m at the bottom and I don’t know what to do now. I was hoping she’d jump down with me. I look up at her and say, “Can we talk about something else?”

“If you come back up here and ask nicely.”

I climb back up the cliff, fast as I can, showing off, but when I get near the top I stop. She’s moved to the place where I normally climb over. She’s blocking my way. There’s a different route to the left that’s harder and I go down a couple of holds and then back up and she’s shuffled along to be sitting there now.

“Hi,” she says, leaning forward and smiling at me.

The only way I can get up is by climbing over Annalise. “Excuse me,” I say. “Can you let me pass?”

She shakes her head.

“If I say please?”

She shakes her head again and is smiling a huge smile. “For a badass Half Code, you really aren’t very badass.”

“Please, Annalise.” My hold isn’t good: my fingers are already cramping and my toehold is slipping. I won’t be able to stay here for much longer.

“I can’t understand how you were expelled from school. You seem such a timid boy.” She says that in a teacher-ish voice.

“I’m not timid.”

She leans toward me, grinning. “Prove it.”

I have to either jump down or climb over her and I have to do one or the other pretty soon as my right leg is starting to shudder with the strain. I think I can get over her if I put my hand to the right of her leg but I’ll have to somehow pull up over her lap and—

“I can’t wait to tell my brothers what a frightened little thing you are,” she teases. I look up at her face and, even though I know she’s joking, just the thought of her speaking to her brothers about anything makes me mad. I see her smile disappear in an instant. I let go of the rock, turn in the air, and drop to the ground. She calls out, “Nathan! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have . . .” And she drops to the ground beside me, as graceful and light as ever. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was stupid.”

“If they ever find out we meet. If—”

“You know I won’t tell them anything. It was a stupid joke.”

I realize I’m overreacting and ruining the day, so I scuff around the sand with my boots and say, “I know.” And I smile at her and want to get back to having fun. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m really a wimp, will you? And I won’t tell them what a badass you are.”

“Me! Badass?” She’s grinning again and her feet scuff the ground too. Then she makes a long line in the sand and says, “On a scale from badass here”— she sticks her heel in one end—“to nice, polite, and timid over here”—she walks to the other end of the line, puts her heel down, and looks at me—“where am I?”

I mutter to myself, “Annalise, Annalise, Annalise,” and I move up and down the line. About three-quarters of the way to the timid end I stop and then shuffle a little nearer to the other end and then further and then further until I’m about a tenth of the way along the line from the badass end.

“Ha!” she says.

“You’re far too bad for me.”

She growls at me. “Well, most of my school friends would put me here.” And she jumps to a spot near the timid end.

“All your school friends are fains,” I say.

“But still capable of spotting a nice girl when they see one.”

“And where would they put me?”

I move out of the way as Annalise shuffles along the line almost to where I’d been standing, close to the complete- badass end.

“And your brothers? Where would they put me?”

She hesitates but then walks past the badass end as far as the cliff. She says, “The fain kids at school were scared of you cos you beat people up. You had a bad reputation for being wild but they saw you in class most days, sitting quietly, so they knew that if they left you alone you’d leave them alone.”

“But your brothers couldn’t quite work that out. To leave me alone, I mean.”

“No. But they were scared of you too.”

“They beat me up! Left me unconscious.”

“You beat them up first! But it’s more than that.” She hesitates and then says, “It’s who you are. Or who your father is. It all comes down to Marcus. They’re scared of him. Everyone’s scared of him.”

She’s right, of course, but it’s not as if he’s going to appear any minute and back me up in a fight.

Then she asks me, “Are you scared of him?”

I’m not sure: he’s my father. He’s dangerous and murderous but he’s still my father. And I want to meet him. I wouldn’t want that if I was scared of him. I say, “I trust you more than anyone, Annalise, but if the Council ever hears me talk about him, or my feelings about him, or anything . . . I just can’t talk about him. You know that.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I’ll tell you who I am scared of, though: the Council. And your brothers. If . . .” But I don’t go on. We know that if they find out we’re meeting both of us are in big trouble.

Annalise says, “I know. I have the worst, most messed-up family ever.”

“I think mine is slightly more messed up than yours.”

“Not by much. At least you have Arran and Deborah. You’ve got nice people. I don’t have any nice people. I mean Connor’s OK if he isn’t with Naill or—”

“
You’re
the nice people,” I say.

She smiles but it hits me then how sad and lonely she looks and how lucky I am to have Arran, Deborah, and Gran. And without even thinking I take her hand. I’m touching her! I’m surprised but it’s happening and I don’t want to overthink it. Our hands are similar sizes: mine’s wider; her fingers are longer and thinner. Her skin is soft and skin-colored—not dirt-colored.

“How do you keep your hands so clean?” I turn her hand over slowly and inspect it thoroughly. “I’m all covered in red dust but you and your hands haven’t even got a speck on them.”

“I’m a girl. We’re well known for being able to do amazing things, things that boys can only dream about.” Her voice is shaky; her hand is a little shaky too.

I’m scared now but I’m not going to stop. I trace my finger round the outside of her hand as she holds it in the air. Over the thumb, down between the thumb and forefinger, then up the finger and down between the next finger and up and then down and then up and down and finally along her little finger and down to her wrist.

She says, “You always surprise me with how gentle you are. You’re so far from the badass end of the line.”

I want to say something back but can’t think of anything that sounds right.

“You’ve gone quiet again,” she says.

“What’s so wrong with being quiet?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It suits you.” She moves her finger to trace round my hand like I did hers. “But sometimes it makes me wonder what you’re thinking.” She continues moving her finger round my hand. “What
are
you thinking?”

I’m thinking I like her doing that. It feels nice. Is that what I should say? I don’t know. I say, “I . . . you’re . . .”

She ducks her head down to look at me. “You’re trying to hide your face,” she complains. “Are you blushing?”

“No!”

She puts her finger on the end of my chin and turns my head toward her.

I feel a bit hot but I wouldn’t say I was blushing.

She says, “You’re so sweet.”

Sweet!

I say, “I think I’m quite badass.”

She giggles and gets up. “You’re sweet and you’re slow. You never catch me.”

And she runs off and I run after her and that day, for the first time, I catch her.

It must be past midnight. So that’s another day gone. Another day of thinking positively. Another day of thinking about Annalise but not getting any closer to helping her. Another day of sitting in a tree, waiting for Gabriel, and him not showing up. I should try to sleep but I’m not tired. I’m rarely tired at night. Instead I seem to come alive a little more, though I know I get a bit darker too.

I could do some lists or go back to stuff Celia taught me: how to kill with a knife; how to kill with my hands. That’s cheery. Or maybe facts. My family tree is a good one. Just recite the names over and over: Harrow, Titus, Gaunt, Darius, Leo, Castor, Maximilian, Massimo, Axel, Marcus, Nathan. Harrow, Titus, Gaunt, Darius . . .

Of course the list is a bit on the depressing side and I’m not supposed to do depressing but I can’t be blamed if they were all killed by Hunters or tortured to death by the Council. Though Marcus isn’t dead, or at least as far as I know he’s still alive and well and living no one knows where. And he was with me, and saved my life, and performed my Giving ceremony, but he left, left me on my own,
again, like my whole life
.

“You did well enough on your own,” he’d said.
Classic cop-out!

Mustn’t be negative. Got to stay
posi-bloody-tive.

Shit, I’m in a black mood.

I need to try more memory tests. Yeah, I could recite all the Gifts my father stole, one for each human heart he has eaten. And that man, that killer, that PSYCHOPATH, sat opposite me and talked with me and gave me three gifts. And I can’t hate him and I’m not even afraid of him. I’m . . . awestruck by him. That’s positive, isn’t it, to admire your father? Your father the psycho. Is he a psychopath? I don’t know. I don’t know what the definition is. Don’t know how far down the path of eating people you have to go before you officially become a psycho.

I’m biting my nails again, only there’s not much left to bite.

And here I am, sitting in a tree, biting my fingers—Nathan, son of Marcus, the kid who’s supposed to kill his father, the kid who tried to prove he wouldn’t hurt his father by returning the Fairborn to him but who cocked it up and lost the knife. And I know I wouldn’t even last a second in a fight against Marcus, but everyone thinks I can kill him; everyone wants me to kill him. I managed to escape Wallend and those White Witches who want me to do it and I ran to Mercury and guess what? She wants me to kill him too.

Shit! I need to think of something more positive.

I need to think about Annalise again. I used to think about her when I was in the cage. I fantasized about her, imagined touching her and having sex and stuff like that. Not that I’ve actually had any sex or even much stuff like that. And the last time I held her hand was when I was sitting next to her on Mercury’s roof, and then it all turned to shit and the wind was holding me back as Mercury lured Annalise onto the grass. I remember Annalise’s body lying there, her chest heaving, desperate for air, and that last gasp that looked so slow and so painful before she was still, and I hate it. I hate that last gasp.

And, while I’m thinking about hate, I can make a good list on that subject. There’s
my sister
, of course: darling Jessica. She has hated me from my birth with venom and I return the feeling in spades. There’s her boyfriend,
Clay
, leader of the Hunters, brutal and arrogant. What’s not to hate? And the other brute,
Kieran O’Brien
, Annalise’s oldest brother, who used to be top of my hate list but is now just hovering at number three most days. Number two on my hate list is
Soul O’Brien
, Council member. He told me he wanted to be the one to give me three gifts, which is, frankly, freakier than keeping me in a cage. He might well be some kind of psycho too. And, talking of psychos, numero uno on my hate list is
Mr.
Wallend
. The White Witch who worked on me as if I was a lab rat. The man who gave me my tattoos, which are the things I hate more than anything.

So that was positive!

Celia isn’t on the list. I don’t hate Celia anymore, which is a good thing, I guess. After all, to not hate someone who kept you locked up in a cage for nearly two years is positive. Surely. On the other hand maybe it shows that I’m totally screwed up by that whole experience. I don’t know. But Celia’s not on the list.

Mercury isn’t either. Mercury doesn’t inspire hate. It would be like hating the weather.

Mercury said she would free Annalise in exchange for my father’s head or his heart. I won’t deliver either. Somehow I have to find a way to get back to Mercury, find Annalise, break the spell she’s under, and escape with her. Sounds difficult and dangerous but I have a plan, which is another positive thing. Except the plan is crap and stupid and won’t ever work. And Mercury will kill me for sure.

Still, I shouldn’t worry about that. After all,
everyone dies sometime.

And at the moment I’ve got enough problems with the current plan. I’ve been here more than a month now and I’m struggling to imagine a positive scenario: a scenario where Gabriel can’t get here not because he’s dead or captured by Hunters but because he’s lying in a luxury king-size bed, reading a book and eating croissants.

If he had been captured they’d have tortured him and he would have told them everything. Everything about me, him, the Fairborn, Annalise, and most definitely where they could find me, about our meeting place here at the cave. I’d have told them under Retribution and so would he. There’s no shame in that. Retribution breaks everyone eventually and no one could hold out for a month. And yet the Hunters aren’t here. But neither is Gabriel. So that means he’s dead. Shot by Hunters that night when we took the Fairborn. Killed trying to save me. And here I am, sitting in a tree, trying to be positive.

Positive is pretty sick when you think about it.