6. Evangeline

6

EVANGELINE

T he words resonate through my mind, replaying themselves. I'm not sure if I'm more filled with panic or overcome with denial.

Leave by sundown, or we will make you leave.

Their faces have grown cold and cruel, their eyes staring me down and dissecting me. I feel small in their gaze.

Hard to believe I once trusted them to lead me. They feel more like predators than overseers.

"What say you, Miss Evangeline?"

Jeremiah's face is mutated with glee, his eyes small under the weight of his grin. I can see the satisfaction in his face, and wonder when he decided he hated me.

I look from one member to the other, wondering what the point is in even speaking.

And I realize that my vision has grown blurry, my eyes filling with tears. My lip quivers.

"Please don't," I beg. "This is all I know. If you take me out of this village, I'll die!"

The words are overpowering to my lungs. I can barely speak through the sobbing.

I want to wake up from this nightmare and return to my real life.

If this holds, my entire world is fractured before my eyes. Everything I know and trust will be reduced to nothing.

And I'll probably die in the frigid cold.

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before you broke our one greatest rule," Harold says, his face far sterner than I ever remember.

In my mind, he is dead to me. I almost can't stomach the betrayal. I struggle to hold back my nausea.

"Your one greatest rule?"

If I weren't buckling under my own weight, I imagine I'd feel terribly confident right now. But I know that I have nothing to lose.

"Where have you ever spelled this out?" I ask. "Many in your own village mock the custom. How can you say it's law when it's little more than superstition?"

"Do not challenge our customs, Evangeline," Hilda bites back. "They have kept us safe for decades. We built our home in the mountains so that our predators would not find us, creating many struggles for our people in the process. And you want to invite our enemies to our front door?"

"You know that I never meant to do that! How many times do I have to tell you that it was only a joke?"

"Well, we are not laughing!"

Hilda's reply is fierce and unwavering. I fix my posture, staring down at the hardwood floor, and the flickering shadows that threaten to consume me.

"As we've said countless times, we understand that you thought it was only a joke," Harold replies. "We're all too willing to listen to your testimony."

I bring my head up, almost afraid to look at Harold directly.

"But that doesn't change the facts. It was still a cruel joke played on a friend. And if that's how you treat your closest friends, how will you treat strangers? Or enemies?"

I shake my head insistently.

"Renee is not a friend! How many times do I have to remind you of that?"

"Well, she seems to think she is," Harold replies. "You should have seen how hard it was for her to come forward with this information."

I chuckle under my breath to myself.

I can think of Renee as an acquaintance, even somebody I trust. But she's rarely been kind to me.

"Be that as it may, how can you punish me for something I never did?" I ask. "Even if there was some kind of magical ritual I somehow channeled without my knowledge, nothing happened!"

I receive indifferent headshakes and grumbles in response.

"What Renee saw in the forest was enough to frighten her dearly," Harold says. "Are you saying she's a liar?"

At this point, I can hear the indignation in my voice rising up over my despair.

"Respectfully, Renee would be afraid of her own shadow," I reply. "It's the only reason I mess with her. She's so affected by everything?—"

"So you're admitting that you're a bully."

"I think we've heard enough, Harold," Hilda says. "Let's not drag this out any longer than we have to."

That's when my ears perk up. In the distance, I swear I hear the screams of an angry mob, gathering just outside the door.

My eyes turn toward the source of the commotion. For a moment, the noise stops.

The council is silent.

The candles in the room flicker violently, and I begin to fear that something supernatural might be taking hold of the room.

Has it come to take me?

That's when the door shakes and rattles.

The noise becomes louder and closer.

"How could they think we wouldn't want to have a say?" one angry man asks just outside the door. "Who do they think they are?"

"This is the fate of our village at stake! Get the purna out!"

I smile morbidly to myself.

Apparently, they think I'm a purna now.

It makes me feel a slight twinge of power, even as I feel shame and disgrace.

They only hate me because they're afraid of me.

That's when the door bursts open, and all at once, a gathering throng of people enters the small room.

"I'm so sorry," Ephemera says, addressing the council. "I tried to stop them from coming in, but they wouldn't give up!"

"Damn right, we wouldn't give up," a familiar voice says. "Some girl unleashes a curse upon all of us, endangering our families and friends, and you're going to let her off the hook?"

The commotion is deafening. I hear people screaming at me and see people lunging at me, halted by guards and my few remaining friends. I step back against the podium instinctively, desperately trying to escape their reach.

I wish I was a purna right now. Maybe then I could put an end to this.

"Silence!"

Tully speaks out over the noise, her voice striking like the caw of a karasu.

The noise stops suddenly. Everybody in the room turns their head suddenly, looking across the threshold. My eyes meet hers. They shine red in the darkened room.

Notably, Tully has been completely silent during the meeting. I hope against all hopes that she might be a bit kinder to me than the others.

"Now, I understand you are upset, and that you want to have a say in this girl's fate," Tully says. "But you know that's not how things have been done."

The mob redirects their attention toward Tully, and I almost feel sorry for her as she recoils slightly.

"We've already made our decision!"

But it's almost impossible to hear her over the noise now.

They must think that the council will take my side, despite all evidence to the contrary. I'm not even sure my closest friends will ally themselves with me anymore.

I see the council members deliberating in the face of growing hostility. I don't know how they can hear themselves whispering, as their eyes move from me back to the crowd.

I think the only way to appease this angry mob might be to burn me at the stake immediately in the town square.

I chuckle to myself, before realizing that it's not that outlandish that they might suggest that.

How did things get so far out of hand?

It was only intended as a joke!

I realize that I can't ever make them see reason.

"Okay," Jeremiah calls out to the room, repeating it once more with more volume.

The noise doesn't stop, but he's still able to project his voice enough that everybody can hear him.

"We already made a decision! But if this girl will just have a seat, we'll hear all of your thoughts!"

The crowd's racket abates. Against the pushing and shoving of a riot, I find a seat in the room, taking a seat at a chair in the back.

It's nice to see some order for a change, but I know that it won't make any real difference.

"She always struck me as a little odd," Jeb says, oblivious to my scowl. "I never once thought she'd turn on us like this, but it honestly doesn't surprise me."

He shuffles off the podium.

"I thought it was weird how she kept eating all my meat and not gaining a pound," Idel says at the stand. "But I always had a bad feeling about her. Doesn't surprise me that she was using magic powers to keep her weight down."

Harold looks to the other members, then shakes his head, his confusion apparent on his face.

"We don't suspect she has any magical powers," he says. "I'm not sure where you got that idea, but let's put it to rest now."

There's a small commotion in the back as Idel returns to standing, watching the proceedings.

My heart leaps as Alex walks to the podium, his dirty blonde hair looking positively golden in the candlelight. We used to play together as children.

"And you never once suspected that Evangeline might pose a danger to the community?" Polyn asks, his firm jaw visibly clenched.

"No," he says, unwavering even against the protest in the crowd. "In fact, from what I've seen over the years, she's always been incredibly nice to everybody in this town. I don't know why we're suddenly now turning against her."

He returns to his seat even against pushback.

Isabelle also takes the stand, defending me. But she can barely get a word in over the volume of the crowd.

"How are we even having this discussion?"

I feel my jaw clenching, watching as Renee takes the stand against me.

"You know what she's capable of. You've seen it. And I'm a harder worker than she'll ever be, so it's not like we're losing anything when she leaves."

I want to storm the podium, pushing Renee down to the ground. I can see myself beating her to within an inch of her life right now.

How can she do this to me?

Instead, I restrain myself and manage to walk to the podium, even as the gathering audience demands I be banished or killed.

"The only good thing about these proceedings," Harold says as I take the stand. "Is that at least now you'll be more prepared for our answer. I'm trusting you to keep your composure and accept the council's judgment now."

I tighten my fists, feeling them ball up so tightly that my fingernails are clawing at my palms.

"Evangeline, you're to leave town immediately and never return," Harold says. "If you're not gone by morning, we're going to have to take action."

My nostrils flare. Just as the first member of the audience stands up to leave, I feel myself bellowing out.

"You're not going to kick me out in the dead of winter when I've got nowhere else to go and I've worked this hard for what I have," I reply, my throat on fire now. "I'm not leaving."

The council just shakes their heads, tired of dealing with my case.

I prepare myself to fight, ready to defend what I've earned.

I won't be killed for some dumb superstition.