Edgeland by Jake Halpern & Peter Kujawinski

Author:Jake Halpern & Peter Kujawinski
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2017-05-17T23:00:00+00:00

Wren and Alec dropped to the ground, ducking behind the earthen wall to hide. A minute passed. Then another. In the distance, they could still hear the man inside the coffin, pleading with the graylings. But his voice became fainter and fainter. Silence returned. Wren and Alec decided to risk another look, and inched slowly up the wall.

The graylings had loosened the ropes that bound the sea coffin to the cart. Like an army of ants moving a hunk of bread, they worked together to move their weighty cargo. They lifted the sea coffin from the cart and marched it into the water, heading toward the other rusting cages that lay offshore. As they splashed into the sea, water reached the bottom of the box and began to rise up the sides.

Again, the voice from within the coffin called out. In the absence of any wind, it carried far. “I can explain! I can explain!”

The water around the sea coffin rose higher, and its occupant began to babble, then scream. The graylings waded deeper until the coffin was almost completely submerged. When they reached the area where the other coffins lay, they released the box.

Alec and Wren were so transfixed that they didn’t notice Flower, who had crept up behind them. She touched Alec lightly on the arm. Startled, he whipped his head around. She put a finger to her lips.

Let’s go, she mouthed, tilting her head back toward Bliss House Forty-Seven.

Neither of them needed any more convincing.

Flower hurried back down the path, hunched over at the waist, trying to remain hidden. Her pigtails swung about wildly. She was now wearing a small sealskin backpack—the kind of waterproof bag that sailors from the north favored—and it bounced on her back as she ran. Alec and Wren followed on her heels. They hustled past Bliss House Forty-Seven, then ducked down a narrow alley.

“Slow down,” whispered Alec, when he had finally managed to catch her.

Flower stopped abruptly and turned toward them.

“What was going on back there?” asked Alec.

“They were vanishing someone,” said Flower. “Someone who got on Ember and Shade’s bad side.”

“Vanishing?” asked Wren. She rubbed her shirtsleeve across her dampened forehead, wiping away the sweat. “You mean, drowning?”

“Nope,” said Flower. “I mean vanishing.” She wriggled her shoulders, readjusting the straps on her backpack. “You can’t drown the dead, can you? So how do you punish ’em? I’ll tell you. You put ’em in a box and shove the box into the sea. There’s something about being in a cage like that—underwater—it’s much worse than being in bliss. They say it’s like a never-ending nightmare. You can hear ’em crying under the water.”

Wren glanced back toward the seashore path and shuddered.

“What’d you mean when you said that guy might’ve gotten on Shade’s bad side?” asked Alec.

“It’s like this,” replied Flower, shaking her head as if annoyed by the stupidity of his question. “We’re all stuck on this island, right? Stuck in what seems to be an endless purgatory. Shade and Ember tell

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