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    Outcast
    Outcast
    Outcast
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Outcast

    By C. J. Redwine

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A thrilling, dangerous adventure, this digital prequel novella to C. J. Redwine's Defiance and Deception features Quinn, a popular character from the series.

    Quinn Runningbrook knows a hundred ways to kill a man and make it hurt. He can track, ambush, and torture his prey with terrifying skill—just like his father taught him. But every kill consumes another piece of him, and Quinn longs to stop, to save himself and his sister, Willow, from becoming like his father—a man who kills for entertainment.

    But when Quinn refuses to torture a group of trespassers caught too close to the Tree Village where his family lives and instead kills them quickly, he disobeys a direct order from his father . . . and Willow is forced to take his place. Suddenly, Quinn isn't the favored apprentice to the family business of "protecting" the Tree Village anymore. Willow is.

    When Jared Adams—a courier from the nearby city-state of Baalboden—is caught traveling too close to their borders, Willow is ordered to kill him. But Quinn knows that Jared doesn't deserve torture or death. And he realizes he has to take action . . . or the fate chosen for Willow and himself by their father will remain carved in stone.

    Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9780062306302
    Outcast
    Author

    C. J. Redwine

    C.J. Redwine is a New York Times bestselling author of speculative fiction, a diehard lover of going to the movies, and a believer in fairytales. She keeps a six-foot tall Loki figure in her office and will argue the merits of Batman vs. Superman with anyone she meets. She once accidentally punched herself in the face on a ride at Disneyland. She doesn’t recommend it.

    Read more from C. J. Redwine

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    Reviews for Outcast

    4/5

    197 ratings45 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Me encantó, toda la saga vale mucho la pena de leer
    • 3/5
      I avoid goodread reviews until I finish a book - and this time what a surprise! So many people advising other people not to read it. I began it with some trepidation - servants in every house, yet the book is post war and starts around the year I was born. 60 years later I don't think I've ever in my life known anyone with servants! I thought I wouldn't connect with the characters at all. But the structure kept me going and I really enjoyed it. Have another half a star.
    • 5/5
      I am truly hoping there will be another book to this one. I look forward to reading more. If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top
    • 5/5
      For such a great story, a lot of audience must read your book. You can publish your work on NovelStar Mobile App.
    • 4/5
      Another brilliant story in a series. If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top
    • 5/5
      Elizabeth and Gilbert Aldridge are an ill-matched couple but very much in love when he returns to her and their son Lewis after WWII. Elizabeth is a free spirit who clearly sees the pettiness of Dicky Carmichael, Gilbert's boss; Gilbert also knows Dicky for what he is, but his conventional ambition leads him to suppress judgment. Then, when Lewis is ten, Elizabeth drowns, with Lewis as the only witness, a little boy too small to save her. Suddenly Lewis is alone. His father withdraws from him and remarries a woman too young and too wrapped up in Gilbert to offer any help to Lewis at all.
      The book opens with Lewis at nineteen coming back home from a four year prison sentence to Gilbert and Alice who don't want him and can't not take him. Meanwhile, Dicky's daughters have grown up: Tamsin, lovely and shallow; and Kit, less obviously beautiful, but still in love with Lewis.
      The rest of the story shows Lewis - both before and after his time in prison - trying to connect with the world. It seems as though his assessment of reality is correct: "It looked like everybody was in a broken, bad world that fitted them just right." That is not the end of the story though, and the book ends with Lewis looking forward in hope.
      The Outcast is beautifully written in straightforward, understated prose. Flashbacks are skillfully done, and the whole thing moves forward to its bittersweet conclusion.
    • 5/5
      Did you ever want to grab a character from the pages of a book and hug him? I dare you not to want to embrace Lewis and tell him he's loved. The characters within this debut novel are so three dimensional that you feel for them, know them, and want to sit them down and straighten them out. A book I couldn't put down, but wanted to slowly read to enjoy every word. One of the best books I've picked up in a while. A wonderful book.
    • 4/5
      After two not-so-great reads, The Outcast was exactly what I needed to get over my reading slump. While definitely not a cheery book, The Outcast is emotionally moving, physically shocking, and beautifully written.Sadie Jones' debut novel tells the story of Lewis Aldridge, a nineteen-year-old boy who in 1957 has just been released from a two-year prison sentence. As Lewis returns home to the small English suburb of Waterford, Jones flashes back to Lewis' childhood and relates the events leading up to his imprisonment. At the age of ten, Lewis experiences a tragedy that changes the course of his life. The next seven years are a downward spiral of violence, self-mutilation, and extreme loneliness. At seventeen, he finally commits an act that sends him to prison - much to the delight of the inhabitants of his town, who always believed that Lewis was "no good."The Outcast also centres around Kit Carmichael, a girl who has loved Lewis her entire life. When he finally returns from prison, Lewis encounters Kit again and again. As Lewis attempts to return to a normal life, Kit is the only one who believes in him - who believes that he is good. As tensions mount in Waterford, Lewis and Kit hope for redemption, hope for freedom, and hope for a better life.Jones is a talented author whose style appeals to me. Her prose slips from descriptive to obscure, and the reader is left to make his or her own connections between events. Lewis and Kit have complex, intense emotions, and I often found myself mirroring those emotions. The supporting cast - Lewis' family and Kit's family - are all well-drawn additions to the plot. No character or event seems extraneous, and the ending, while not cut-and-dry, is a satisfying conclusion to the novel.Though not an overly optimistic novel, The Outcast does offer the reader a sense of hope. Jones expresses the idea that we all have our own set of personal tragedies, and while Lewis' are certainly harsher than most, as human beings we push on through the bad. We seek some form of atonement for our mistakes, we hope for an upturn in our fates, and we continue to live. Lewis and Kit do just this - though times are often bad, they continue to hope, to love, to live.The Outcast is a fantastic first novel, and I look forward to future works by Sadie Jones.
    • 5/5
      The best book I've ever read, besides Fall on your knees and Før du sovner. I am so in love with the boy in this book. You are taken in to his head and you're able to read all his thought through Jones' words. His loneliness is mine, his pain is mine, his love is mine, his confusion is mine, his happiness is mine. I Love every well spoken, well written word in this book. I live in it still, it's haunting me still, tempting me, loving me, sees me still. I carry it everywhere I go. I read parts of it over and over again. Every time I open it, it rips out my soul, and it seems I like it.Need to quote my favourite paragraph:"I see you. You think you're dark, and there's all this darkness around you, but when I look at you ... you're like a shining thing. You're light. You just are. You always were." (Kit says this to Lewis)
    • 3/5
      This is a good book, but not a great one - and I was hoping for a great one. Jones is a talented writer, and I found myself going back to reread some of her lovely phrases. But every character here is ridiculously dysfunctional, and many times I felt I had already heard this story (misunderstood, struggling, brooding young man) - and I did not believe the budding romance that comes near the end of the story. I don't feel I wasted my time reading this book, but I would not keep it in my library.
    • 5/5
      I got so caught up in [The Outcast] that I stayed up until 3:30 last night finishing it. That says something for the power of the book--even though, in terms of content, it is probably the most depressing book I've ever read. The novel starts in 1957, as Lewis has just been released from prison and returns home. We flash back to 1945, with seven-year old Lewis and his mother taking the train to London to meet his father, who has long been away in the war. Dad turns out to be . . . well, not exactly an affectionate father; and things go from bad to worse a few years later when Lewis's mother dies. (No spoilers or details, I promise!) Different sections of the novel cover pivotal events in the years in between and in the weeks following Lewis's return. There's only a sliver of happiness in the ending, so if you're looking for a light summer read, don't pick up this one. My main criticism is that it is a bit hard to believe that so many characters could be so cruel and downright abusive with no one seeming to notice or care and everyone blaming a ten-year old boy for his own misery. I know that the setting was 1945-57, but even then people might question some of the things that happen to Lewis. No one seems to figure out that his quietness has something to do with the fact that he witnessed his mother's death or that he's angry that his father remarries only five months later? Still, the author's ability to evoke a visceral response in her reader is the novel's strength. She made me physically experience the sadness and anxiety and hopelessness that Lewis must have experienced.
    • 5/5
      I approached this book with uncertainty based on reviews I had read. Once I began the first page, though, I was caught in the net of complicated characters and actions that all carried their consequences. There was not a single character whose life was left untouched by the others, some to their detriment, but others to their perceived salvation. True to life, the problems faced by these characters never came to a magical resolution, but instead shaped the people they would become...just as in real life. The book was superbly written with enough happiness at the end to leave the reader feeling comforted but not enough to ruin the story with a fairy tale ending.
    • 3/5
      In one house, a tragic set of circumstances lead to sad, disturbing behaviour and consquences; in another house, the bullying head abuses his mostly compliant family. A horrible, well-told story, which I could only read in small chunks, greatly relieved to get to the hopeful, final pages.
    • 5/5
      Lewis Aldridge was an outcast – shunned by his father who reminded him too much of his deceased wife, bewildered by his young stepmother and largely ignored by his peers in his home village. Alone and hurt, Lewis became a man torn between the hatred he felt for being cast out and the desperation to feel accepted. In her debut novel, The Outcast, Sadie Jones exposed parts of Lewis’s soul who were hard to read about, but like a bad car accident, you keep looking, hoping to learn more.Lewis will be a character that I won’t soon forget. Most of the time, he was a character worthy of sympathy – a terrible victim of cirumstance that was acting out against society. Then, Lewis would show uglier colors and deeper flaws. He did unforgiveable things. And his bad reputation made him the target for any accusation – from rape to theft – whether he committed the crimes or not.As I finished The Outcast, I realized that Lewis was not the only “outcast” in this book. His parents were sad and lost too. His friends’ parents, the Carmichaels, were unscrupable. When Lewis made this realization, he felt even more broken. The only good in the world, for him, was 15-year-old Kit Carmichael, who was the constant recipient of her father’s physical abuse. He was determined to help her, despite the personal costs.It’s hard to say one could “enjoy” this book. The characters, though real, were tragic. Their destinies did not seem optimistic. But the ending left you with a glimmer of hope that the strength of the human spirit could endure all.
    • 4/5
      The Outcast is a riveting story taking place in 1950's England. A mother dies and her son struggles with his grief and guilt. This is an amazing first novel from Ms Jones I look forward to more from this gifted young novelist.
    • 2/5
      Despite being set in the 1950s, this book has a number of modern-day themes including self-harming, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse and family relationships. At the age of ten Lewis watches his beloved mother drown. From that moment on he is made to feel unwanted and unloved and this has far-reaching consequences in the years to follow. This is a rather dark and depressing book, despite its corny ending, with detailed descriptions of violence and of self-cutting. Whilst I felt sorry for Lewis there were many times when I thought he deserved how he was treated. Because of this, I never really connected with him. In fact, there weren't any characters I actually liked. A disappointing read.
    • 4/5
      Sadie Jones’ debut novel is set in England in the years immediately following WWII. Lewis Aldridge lives with his mother Elizabeth and father Gilbert in a semi-rural commuter town outside of London. Gilbert served in the war and is the stiff-upper-lip type who keeps his feelings to himself. He is also strict and straitlaced (though a reluctant disciplinarian) and presides over a household to some extent held hostage to his moods. Free-spirited Elizabeth drinks. Tragedy strikes when Lewis is ten: he loses his mother in a drowning accident, an event to which he is the sole witness. Gilbert and Lewis are both devastated but exist in isolated emotional spheres and are so bottled up they are unable to provide any comfort to one another. In an effort to repair the damage, Gilbert quickly remarries and introduces young, needy, attention-seeking Alice to his son only a few months after Elizabeth’s death. With no outlet for his guilt and remorse, Lewis’s fragile emotional state festers; confused by resentment and anger that he can neither escape nor express, he finds solace in alcohol, self-mutilation and episodes of destructive rage. The novel’s most wrenching scenes take place in 1957, after Lewis returns home from a spell in prison for setting fire to the local church. Lewis and Gilbert strike a truce of sorts. Lewis promises to behave, and Gilbert gets him a menial position working for the company where he has built his career, which is owned by the odious Dicky Carmichael, a neighbour, whose two daughters, sultry Tamsin and gangly Kit, are childhood friends of Lewis. But Lewis, still lacking an outlet for feelings that he doesn’t understand, is ostracized by much of the community and gives in to wilfulness and destructive urges that won’t let him alone. The tone of the narration is controlled, the prose reminiscent of William Trevor at his most tersely lyrical. Sadie Jones has written a psychologically blistering novel that generates great suspense, presenting Lewis as the victim of the emotional failings of the weak and immature adults charged with his care and something of a ticking time-bomb. Though largely driven by tragedy and violence, the story concludes on an emotionally satisfying, hopeful note. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize and winner of the Costa Book Awards prize for first novel, The Outcast is a sophisticated and thoroughly convincing work of fiction that never lets the reader down.
    • 5/5
      For me this was a very powerful story. It’s fundamentally about a boy who at age 10 suffers the unbearable guilt of seeing his mother drown and not being able to save her, and then has to live with a father who can’t or won’t show him the love he needs to overcome his guilt. It’s also a wider story about bad parenting (mostly fathering) and domestic violence in upper class post-war Britain. It's also a story about how the justice system does nothing to really address the cause of crimes committed by a mentally disturbed young man. There were lots of times when I just had to put the book down, unable to bear the pain I felt for the main character, Lewis, but I was always drawn back in desperately hoping that Sadie Jones would provide Lewis with the believable and satisfying redemption that I hope can exist.
    • 4/5
      Sadie Jone's debut novel - The Outcast - is a disturbing and provocative story about loss, adolescent struggle for understanding, familial relationships and secrets, and finally redemption.When ten year old Lewis Aldridge loses his mother to a tragic accident, he finds himself on the outside of his father's love and understanding. Wrapping himself in a cloak of silence, and converting his grief to anger, Lewis detaches himself from his friends and family. Eventually, Lewis' anger boils over and he lashes out at not only himself, but a community which has turned against him. The novel actually begins with Lewis' release from prison after serving two years for his crime, then rewinds to his childhood to show the reader Lewis' relationship with his mother, the carefree Lizzie; and his cold and distant father, Gilbert. After Lizzie's death, Lewis' father remarries the younger Alice - a woman whose floundering self-esteem and desire to be "liked" results in further alienation of her stepson. The community where Lewis grows up is filled with damaged characters - all who believe primarily in "appearances," while harboring dark secrets. The Carmichael family (with the violent Dicky, and his two daughters and ineffective wife) parallel the lives of the Aldridges.Jones deliberately sets down the story of Lewis' early years, casting the narrative in an all seeing omniscient voice which gives the reader a sense of impending doom. By the time the reader has caught up to the present with Lewis returning home after his imprisonment, the story has taken on a pace of its own. The layers of Lewis' psyche begin to unfold, and the closely held secrets of the characters are exposed.Jones weaves her story with the careful precision of architect The characters - who are not terribly likable - demand to be read. The cruelty heaped upon Lewis seems interminable. And there were moments when I wanted to scream at his uncaring father and insipid stepmother. The intertwined lives of all the characters seem too broken and damaged to be mended, but Jones ultimately leaves the reader with the hope of understanding and redemption.The result of all of this is an emotionally driven and powerful novel which is compulsively readable. I can recommend this debut by Sadie Jones for readers who enjoy a character driven novel which explores the deeper meaning behind what it means to be human.Rated 3.5.
    • 4/5
      Compelling read. Well-drawn characters. Setting is 1950's England where "appearances" are most important. Theme is really "broken" or "wrecked" people. There' s alcoholism, child abuse, wife battering, religious hypocracy - all good family values."It looked like everybody was in a broken, bad world that fitted them just right".In the end all of the characters are doomed to this "broken, bad world" except Lewis and Kit who may have found a way out.
    • 4/5
      A compelling read which I thought was going to get an unheard of five stars, but by the end I was feeling overwhelmed by the hero's suffering and looking for more in the way of redemption . The hero is complex and well-drawn, but other characters offer little in the way of light and shade. Still a cracking read.
    • 3/5
      Simultaneously captivating and disturbing, British debut novelist Sadie Jones’ story of a young man’s attempt to reconcile great loss and great emotional distance, is similar to a pivotal event that takes place in the book. As with many dramatic events – and dramatic stories, one cannot watch, but one cannot turn away. The story is told mostly from the point of view of Lewis Aldridge, but is sprinkled with snippets in alternate voices, giving the story an interesting perspective. When we first meet Lewis it is 1957 and he is nineteen and just leaving prison after two years. The story then jumps back to 1945 when Lewis and his mother are going to meet his father, a virtual stranger to Lewis, after his demobilization. Formalities and rigid codes of behavior abound in this posh suburban London neighborhood, and Lewis’ ebullient mother watches the clock for the acceptable cocktail time. She and Lewis are close and after she drowns in front of Lewis life is never the same. Jones deftly coveys the ostracism of this closed and suspicious society and Lewis’ lonely self-doubt only adds to his mental troubles. Jones also captures completely the self-loathing and the almost incomprehensible need to turn emotional pain into physical relief as Lewis engages in self-harm by repeatedly cutting his arm. Revolving around Lewis are characters that run the gamut from cliché to complex. There’s Alice, his sudden new stepmother and her insatiable need to be pitied even as she tries to comfort Lewis. Neighbors and sisters Tamsin and Kit both involve themselves with Lewis over the years but neither one is simple or one-dimensional and the reader must continually question their motives. Their father, Dicky, on the other hand, is almost comically evil and becomes Lewis’ nemesis. And Lewis’ father Gilbert is an intense mix of compassion and strict doctrine, quiet direction and aggressive dominance. But perhaps the most memorable element of Jones’ book is a stylistic one. Her writing is terse, choppy, direct, and reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s in its stark emotions and run-on stream-of-consciousness. “He slept and he dreamed, but he didn’t know that he was sleeping, and when he remembered it later it never felt like a dream, but like something that happened to him, with all the clarity and beauty of truth, perhaps more clarity and beauty than that.” Tapping into abuse and emotional turmoil is never easy or particularly pleasant, but Sadie Jones has done an honest and lyrical job of bringing us into the minds and hearts of a handful of conflicted characters.
    • 4/5
      Gripping and heartbreaking and lovely all at the same time.
    • 4/5
      When The Outcast opens it’s 1957 and 19 year old Lewis Aldridge has just been released from two years in prison. He is returning home, the outskirts of London, to his father and stepmother, neither of whom wants him. The rest of the book is the haunting story of Lewis’ life, before and after this point, as the author weaves the story by moving back and forth in time, developing a narrative with tension and suspense that had me holding my breath and furiously turning pages.Lewis’ story is one of repression and loneliness. As a ten-year-old, he watches helplessly as his mother drowns in a river close to their home and without her to anchor him, he is lost. His father, Gilbert, marries a much younger woman, only a few short months later. Lewis struggles to fit in and control his anger, but he is a child in need of extensive counseling, and none is offered him.In the meantime, his father’s influential boss, Dicky Carmichael, is revealed as an abusive bully who is systematically beating his younger daughter, Kit. Lewis and Kit are unwitting partners in trying to escape their individual nightmare existences. And Lewis’ stepmother, Alice, has turned into a public drunk who is making sexual advances on him. It’s hard for a guy to keep his head up under these circumstances. Lewis does try, but the cards are stacked against him. My heart went out to him. Sadie Jones paints such a sympathetic character, flaws and all that I found myself wanting desperately for him to succeed. In the end, we’re left with hope, Lewis is left with hope. He has a future that could never have been predicted early on in the narrative. Sadie Jones produced a knock-out debut novel. Her spare prose, told with unnerving realism make for a riveting read that reveals the strait-laced life of the fifties wasn’t all it appeared to be. Very highly recommended.
    • 2/5
      This novel definitely falls in the category of Suburban Secrets Stripped Bare! Interesting story but overall the writing was weak and uneven. Specifically found her shifting of POV ineffective and, at times, downright clumsy. It seemed somehow rushed. It was pretty ambitious (ala McCarthy, Ishiguro, McEwan), so I stuck with it. But by the end the characters had become flat and colorless.

      This is a first novel, so I may check her out later down the road.
    • 4/5
      A very good story but very grim indeed. The main character Lewis is a young boy who loses his affectionate mother when she drowns while they are out swimming. His father is very stuffy and cold and the boy withdraws into himself. He feels isolated and becomes known to the town as the "difficult" boy and no one cuts him any slack at all. The novel begins with a Prologue where Lewis is age 19 and returning home from two years of prison. It's a book that is tough to read because you can tell Lewis is a really sweet kid who is just crying out for affection, only to be rebuffed time and again. Well worth the read.
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      This was an amazingly good book! It said on the back that it was a bit grim (or words to that effect) and - don't get me wrong - it was unbelievably relentlessly grim! Yet I kept the faith that there would be some kind of relief and I wasn't disappointed. It brought me to tears several times. She's an incredible writer. Oof!
    • 5/5
      When he was only 10 years old, Lewis Aldridge witnessed a terrible tragedy. Unable to express his feelings and shunned by his father, Lewis grew up a troubled young man. The Outcast opens with a prologue set in 1957, when 19-year-old Lewis is returning home after two years in prison. Sadie Jones then takes her readers back in time to recount Lewis' childhood and the events that led him to commit a crime.Lewis' father Gilbert served in World War II, and when he returned home in 1945 Lewis was only 7. He didn't really know his father at all, and struggled with his intrusion into the family and his close relationship with his mother. After the tragedy, Lewis withdrew into himself. The other children in his village didn't know how to respond to him, and the adults were disturbed by his silence. In his teens, Lewis expressed his intense grief and self-loathing in increasingly harmful ways, eventually leading to imprisonment.As Lewis' life fell apart, he couldn't help but compare himself with the Carmichaels, a model family in his village. Dicky Carmichael was Gilbert's boss; he and his wife Claire host an annual New Year's party and weekly Sunday lunches, all with plenty of cocktails to go around. Dicky and Claire's older daughter Tamsin is a beautiful young woman who knows how to use her sexuality; their younger daughter Kit is precocious and cares deeply for Lewis. But the Carmichaels have dark secrets of their own, which remain carefully concealed even as the Aldridge family's troubles are exposed to public viewing.When Lewis is released from prison, he is thrust back into village society and gossip, and struggles to find his way. He gravitates toward the Carmichael girls, even as their parents reject him because of his criminal record. Tensions escalate, particularly after Lewis discovers the Carmichael secret, and all hell breaks loose.I read this book in two days, because I just couldn't put it down. Lewis is a sympathetic character, and I was pulling for him throughout. He had been through so much, and had so little support. It was easy to see how he became so troubled, and I nearly cried whenever he began to go off the rails, or struggled with his place in society. The Outcast is intense, dramatic, and highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      The outcast of the title is a young man who returns home to his small, smug English village after serving two years in prison for arson. Poor Lewis Aldridge watches his mother drown when he is 10, and then lives under his father's silent blame and near-hatred. As he enters his teens, he starts cutting himself, drinking, and acting out violently. Nothing much changes when he is released from prison, and his only solace comes from his relationship with two girls next door, one of whom is routinely abused by her father.Nice, right? This book was very readable, but so dark and depressing that even I started disliking it, and I usually love dark and depressing. The somewhat hopeful ending redeemed it a little, so I won't say I disliked the book in its entirety. One of the blurbs evoked Atonement. It's an easy comparison because of the setting, but while Atonement is complex and breathtakingly realistic in depicting the psychology of its characters, The Outcast is a little too pat and by-the-numbers. Still, a bleakly interesting read.

    Book preview

    Outcast - C. J. Redwine

    Contents

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    Chapter Nine

    Chapter Ten

    Excerpt from Deliverance

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Back Ads

    About the Author

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Chapter One

    "Put your arms out to help you keep your balance," Willow says, lifting her own arms to demonstrate.

    I want a rope tied around my waist. The bravado in the boy’s voice quivers, though he glares at Willow as if daring her to notice. Several other children call out in agreement, and my sister turns to stare the class of First Learners into silence.

    If you use a rope when you’re learning to tree-leap, you’ll come to rely on it instead of relying on your own sense of balance. It will become a crutch, and then what will you do when you have to leap through the forest? Her gaze lands on the six-year-old boy who hovers at the edge of the platform I built on one side of the school’s small playground. You’ll fall. And if you fall, you’ll probably die.

    The boy swallows hard, his eyes flicking between Willow and the worn planks of the playground five feet below him as if trying to decide which he fears most. The school is built into the heart of our Tree Village. The bulk of it wraps around the huge cradle of an enormous oak, while the outlying classrooms are connected to the main hall by the same walkways that arc between the trees throughout our entire village, giving all of us access to every village structure without ever requiring us to touch the ground. The playground—a large square of smooth planks with a tetherball pole, a hopscotch grid carved into the floor, and a newly sanded collection of wooden bars, ladders, and slides—rests on support beams hammered into the trees beside the main classroom.

    "I could fall now," the boy says, the bravado in his voice seeping away as he looks away from my sister and down to where I stand.

    I’ll catch you, I say, and open my arms to show him I’m ready. The grateful trust on his face—a striking contrast to the poorly concealed fear the adult villagers show around me—makes something in my chest expand even as it aches.

    If Willow and I were from a different family, no one would have cause to avoid us while treating us with terrified deference. We’d have friends like the cluster of older kids our age we sometimes see sitting together on the northern walkways of the village at night, laughing and throwing twigs into the darkness of the Wasteland like they don’t have a single care.

    Maybe they don’t. I wouldn’t know. My entire life is a knot of worry wrapped in a shell of controlled calm.

    Tighten your stomach muscles, Eliah, and use the balls of your feet. Willow shades her eyes against the glare of the winter sun while a faint breeze plays with the black feather that dangles from her ear cuff.

    I earned a black feather for my first kill too. So have most of the villagers over the age of thirteen. The difference is that they earned it for hunting deer. Willow and I earned it for hunting people.

    Come on, Eliah, I say quietly, while the boy hesitantly stretches his thin, boot-clad foot off the platform and onto the maple branch—skinny, but strong—that extends from one edge of the platform to the top of the playground slide. Your teacher will want you back inside before long, and the rest of your class needs a chance to try it.

    His eyes, dark like mine but still filled with innocence, widen as he takes a wobbly step onto the branch.

    Keep going! Willow calls. "One foot after the other. Hands out. There!" She grins at me as Eliah moves jerkily toward the middle of the branch, his arms flailing madly while he struggles to keep his balance. Just shy of the halfway mark, his foot slips, and he plummets toward the ground with a sharp cry of fear.

    Got you. I snatch him out of the air and gently lower him to the playground floor. Nice job.

    I only got halfway across. His lower lip protrudes.

    I squat down to his eye level and put my hands on his shoulders. Last week, you wouldn’t even leave the platform. That’s a lot of progress. You’re very brave.

    A shy smile chases the pout from his face. Brave like you, he says before dashing off to recount his adventure for his waiting friends.

    His words burn against my heart as I open my arms wide to catch the next student. Brave is for those who stand up for what is right. Who protect their sisters even though it could cost them everything.

    Brave isn’t a word for those who obey a monster.

    After the last Early Learner, a wisp of a girl whose long braid reminds me of Willow’s, takes two shaky steps before plummeting into my waiting arms, Willow claps her hands once in a bid for silence.

    Quiz time. Willow glances past the platform to the school door, where Shawna Hawkeye stands laughing with another teacher, ready to call her students away from their weekly tree-leaping lesson and back into the safety of her classroom. Shawna is my age, and there was a time, long ago, when she played with Willow and me, stealing roasted almonds from Bay’s Mercantile at the southeast corner of the village and tree-leaping like it was a game instead of a necessity.

    That was before our family vocations caught up to us. Before her mother settled Shawna into a study routine with piles of textbooks salvaged from the ruins of cities long gone and prepared her to become a teacher.

    Before Dad put a knife in my hands and a bow in Willow’s and showed us what it meant to be a Runningbrook.

    The thought of my father is a poison that eats through me until I’m filled with fury and loathing. I clench my jaw and deliberately empty my mind of all but the task before me, forcing the anger back behind the wall of calm I need as desperately as others need air.

    Shawna glances our way and catches me watching her. Her mouth snaps shut, cutting off her laughter. She crosses her arms over her chest and presses against the door frame like she thinks somehow just attracting my attention is a death sentence.

    I want to ask her why she thinks the elders would allow us to teach tree-leaping to the Early Learners if we’re such a threat to everyone’s safety, but I don’t. Instead, I look away and tell myself it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. Not when there isn’t a single thing I can do to change the way the villagers look at us.

    Quickly, before your teacher calls you back inside, Willow says. Why do we live in the trees?

    Because of the beast, a little girl says.

    "And because we don’t want to obey a

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