He paused to rest against a tree, his brow beaded with sweat. “I can’t explain it. I found the lake by accident, months ago now, and ever since then, since the singing, it’s like a part of me has been trying to come back.”

She had been rummaging in the undergrowth for something that would work as a walking stick, but she froze at his words.

Jaren was tall, at least a head taller than she was. She swallowed, grateful that he wasn’t big the way Hollis Harding was, in the way that felt menacing even when he was just standing there. “You heard us sing?”

She saw his throat bob as he, too, swallowed down his apprehension, as if her presence unnerved him. Then she remembered the bow slung over her shoulder, the knife at her waist. He was gravely injured, and she was supposed to kill him. He had good reason to be scared.

“That can’t be right. You would have gone into the lake, if you had.”

“That’s what everyone in Bricklebury said. But I heard it. Once at the festival, and once when you were... Well, I didn’t see anything, but it sounded like you were slaughtering animals.”

He’d heard the killing song? While some of Endla’s songs were more powerful than others, anyone who listened long enough would be drawn to the sound, some part of their brain searching for the source. Her mother had told her of foolish outsiders who’d been lured into the water by accident, simply because they wouldn’t stay away from Lake Luma’s shores. The killing song was one of their strongest; it should have spelled his doom. None of this made any sense.

Suddenly she heard the call of the starling, the same damn bird that had stolen her voice before. At least she knew she was close to the cottage.

“That,” Jaren said. “That song. That’s the first one I heard, the one I can’t get out of my head.”

The blood drained from Leelo’s face as she realized what he was saying. “You know this song?”

He started to hum the tune, and she slapped her hand over his mouth so quickly he startled and grabbed her arm. For one long, strange moment, they were connected, and Leelo wondered if Jaren’s arm was humming with a current the way hers was, emanating from the point where her hand touched his lips.

Stunned into something between wonder and horror, her hand slipped free of his mouth just as his released her arm.

“Be quiet,” Leelo said. “No one can know you’re here. If they find you, you’re as good as dead.”

He nodded, and she could only hope he hadn’t noticed that the voice coming from the bird’s throat was hers.

Chapter Twenty-Three