Tasting Blood

The boat did not come the next day. That was the first thing that was wrong. I stood at the jetty from first light, and the horizon stayed empty, and Corbett came down at nine with a radio in his hand and a face I had not seen on him before.

"Storm system," he said. "Two hundred miles out, moving slow. The Meridian's not leaving port till it passes. Three days, maybe four."

I should have felt relief. I felt something worse, something with a shape I did not want to name. I had been given four more days on the island, and the island had been given four more days to keep its Code, and I understood, with a coldness that had nothing to do with the morning air, that the shape of my sentence was not a boat. It was a countdown, and the countdown had just been extended, and every hour of the extension was an hour in which the thing the Code held back could move.

It moved on the second night.

I was in the village, because I had not been able to stay at the Station, and the chant had gone through the yard at dusk, and the small one had held the line, and the night had settled, and I was asleep against a hut when the screaming started. It was not the shed sound. It was closer and worse, and it came from the edge of the village, and I was up and running before I understood that the screaming was a Kindred voice, and that it was screaming words.

I found them at the tree line. The Ravener had one of the gulls, and the gull was still alive, and the Ravener was not the low fast thing that had chased me on the inner side. He was one of the village, a broad heavy creature with a mouth that was always slightly open, and he had been keeping the Code with the rest of them, and now he was not keeping it. He was holding the gull up by its wing and tearing it, and the blood was on his face, and his eyes, when they found me, were the first eyes on that island that did not understand anything.

The Kindred were gathering at the edge of the yard, and they were not coming close, and they were not saying the Code, and I understood that the Code was the thing being tested, and that it was failing, and that it had been failing since the Brindle, and that the village had known it before I had.

"Ravener," the Shambler said, from the edge of the trees. "Put the bird down. The Code."

The Ravener looked at the Shambler, and the look was the longest look of its life, and then he did the thing that broke the village. He went down on all fours, with the gull in his teeth, and he ran, and he ran past the inner gate, and the gate was open, and the whole village watched him go the way you watch a verdict, and the scream he made as he went through the gate was not a word, and I understood that the inner side had taken the first one of the village in front of all of them, and that the taking had been witnessed, and that a witnessed breaking is not the same as a broken one. It is the proof that it can happen.

The village did not chant that night. They stood in the yard, and they looked at the inner gate, and the small one stood at her mother's side, and she was the only one of them who was not shaking, and I understood, standing there, that she was the only one who did not know yet that the Code could fail, and that her mother was keeping the knowing from her, and that the keeping was the bravest thing I had seen on that island.

Corbett came through the outer gate at midnight. He had a rifle over his shoulder, and he looked at the empty yard, and he looked at me, and he said, "The Warden wants you at the Station. Now."

"What's happened?"

"Kato found the Ravener," Corbett said. "On the inner side. He brought him back to the shed. The Warden is going to work on him, and he wants you to watch, and he says you can refuse, and he says it the way a man says you can refuse the tide."

I looked at the empty yard, and I looked at the inner gate, standing open in the dark, and I understood that I had been right about the countdown, and that it had not been about the boat at all.