PROLOGUE
801 Words
PROLOGUE
Isla leaned against the tree, sucking in gulps of dry desert air as she tried to catch her breath. She twisted her neck to stare up the slope behind her, searching for any movement against the starry skyline. She saw nothing but boulders, creosote bushes, and the occasional juniper tree, the same kind that she was leaning against now.
Maybe he went back, she thought, trying to gather enough saliva to swallow. Her mouth was as sticky as a tar pit. Sweat ran freely down her cheeks, and she knuckled it away from her eyes as she studied the shadows.
It didn’t make sense. She had been returning with a bundle of firewood in her arms when, as she neared the house, a figure stepped out from the protective screen of a mesquite and made a clumsy grab at her. On instinct, she threw the bundle of sticks at her attacker before fleeing.
Not, however, before glimpsing the dark hollows of the stranger’s eyes, glinting with rabid intensity beneath the shade of his brow.
Now, pausing on the wooded slope, she tried to imagine who would want to harm her. Did someone have a grudge against her because she and Joseph were in love? He had no shortage of admirers in the community. One of the other girls, perhaps?
No. Much as they might have hated her, Isla didn’t think they had the guts to pull a stunt like this. Besides, they were too small. This person had been larger, more like…
A shudder passed through her.
No, she told herself. Joseph would never harm you. He was the one who invited you to the community, after all. Besides, he promised you’ll be together forever.
She might be only fifteen and he forty-two, but what did age matter when it came to love? Their love was true, their love was real, and it didn’t matter how many times her strung-out mother told her she belonged with a boy her age. She had seen what boys her age did, oh yes. They brought you behind the bleachers, and then they took you.
Yes, that was what it was: taking. Cutting you open, pulling out something you didn’t know you had in there, and consuming it right in front of you. Then leaving you like a crumpled pack of cigarettes at the side of the road.
Joseph would never treat her that way. He loved her, admired her. He spoke beautiful things to her in French that she didn’t understand, but she knew they were lovely because of how he said them. He saw the other girls sometimes, too, and this knowledge always sent a stab of pain right through Isla’s heart, but he assured her he was only nurturing them, like a gardener tending his plants. It was a sign of their neediness, not their worthiness. She, Isla, was his one and only.
And soon he was going to prove it by going away with her—forever. He had promised her that very thing just last night, and Joseph was not a man to break his promises.
Isla’s thoughts were broken by the clicking of a pebble as it came tumbling down the slope. A shadow detached itself from behind a boulder and began to ooze down toward Isla, soundless in the night air.
A bright burst of panic went off in Isla’s mind. She rushed down through the trees, her skinny legs trembling with the effort of slowing her descent. Fatigue built up like lead in her muscles until finally she stepped on a stone and her ankle rolled beneath her. She heard a popping sound as her full weight – not much over a hundred pounds, but still enough – came down on the ankle.
Crying aloud, she fell headlong across the stony ground and rolled to her back, panting. Throbs of pain came up from her ankle in waves. She lifted her leg and, to her horror, saw her foot dangling from it, unsupported.
Get up, get up! the voice of fear screamed in her mind. Another part of her mind, however, told her to stay down and play dead.
All she had to do was wait. Then, when she was alone again, she would hobble back up the slope and knock on Joseph’s window, and he would look after her. He would know what to do.
She closed her eyes, clamping down on the pain. When she opened them again, she saw an inky shadow leaning over her, blotting the stars. She could just make out a sketch of the face.
And to her terror, she recognized it.
Impossible, she thought.
She screamed. The sound cut through the trees and rolled across the slopes of the mountains.
No echo returned, however, but a cold, dry laugh.
- Writer
