The young man was shouting now, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t want to know how close it was going to be. She was doing everything she could. A few moments later, she heard the sound of the hull scraping against the rocks and sand. Dawn was only minutes away. Sage would be here soon, and how would Leelo possibly explain this?

Without looking back at the boat, she dropped the rope, grabbed her knife, and fled.

Chapter Twenty

Leelo was breathless as she sprinted through the Forest toward home. Sage would be arriving for Watcher duty any second, and the council members would be returning for the boat soon. They would find it back on this side of the shore, either containing the remnants of an outsider, or empty. Despite what she’d just done, she was praying for the former. They would think an outsider had attempted to cross and failed, and she couldn’t be blamed for that.

If he wasn’t dead, he was certainly injured. The rough landing on shore would have made it impossible not to get any water on himself. She could only hope he was injured badly enough he wouldn’t remember that Leelo had helped him. It had only been for a minute or two, anyway. She wasn’t even sure that she had helped him. He might have made it to shore all on his own.

I should have killed him, she thought bitterly, but she couldn’t get the image of the young man’s panicked face out of her mind. She resented him for putting her in this position. He must have heard tales of Endla wherever he came from. What reason could he possibly have for coming here, other than to cause harm?

Leelo sobbed as she ran, her lungs burning. She couldn’t risk running into Sage in this state. She needed to calm down and come up with a plan.

She left the trail and headed into the Forest, which would at least help her avoid her cousin or a council member. She would skirt the pine grove and set a less direct course toward home. It would take longer, but it was her best option. When she was deep enough into the trees, she stopped to catch her breath and attempted to calm her racing thoughts.

The situation was bad; there was no denying that. But she had gone to the lake tonight for a reason: the wolf. Others must have heard it howling. And maybe it wasn’t her attack on the pine that brought it. Maybe the Forest had used it to alert the Endlans that danger, in the form of an outsider, was nearby. She should have woken her mother then, not come out here on her own. But her intentions had been pure, at least.