“What’s going on?” I ask slowly. I’m suddenly afraid he’s going to have me butcher one of the pigs. I mean, I’m totally on board with eating them; I just don’t want to have to kill them myself.
Rey nods towards the pen. The pigs are running around, snorting like mad. If they could scream, I’m guessing that’s what they’d be doing.
And then I see why. They’re telling us that something has infiltrated their home. That danger has come for them. On the other side of the pen is a coiled-up length of scales and muscles. A viper. A lance head. Nasty little bastards with a habit of making their homes a little too close to humans. Once, in Martinique, I saw a boy who was thirteen or so—about my age, now—who was being carried on a backboard to the hospital. He was suffering from a lance-head bite. Well, suffering might not actually be the right word. He was unconscious, and the bottom half of his left leg from the knee to the foot was a mess of black and green, like he’d been bitten by a zombie or something. It was the only lesson I ever needed in keeping an eye out for slithering when walking through the forest.
It’s not the first one I’ve seen on the island. Usually Rey takes care of any that wander too close to us.
“Kill it,” Rey says.
I stare at the coiled snake. The last thing I want to do is get close to it. It’s not that I’m a coward. I just don’t want to end up losing a limb. And there’s something else: I’ve never killed anything before. Nothing bigger than a spider or one of the giant mosquitoes that plague us here.
“Why?”
“You have to,” Rey says. “If you don’t, it’ll kill one of the hogs. Or us. Either way, we’ll be in for more trouble than is necessary.”
“I . . . I can’t. I mean . . .” But I don’t have any real argument to make. My fingers uncurl from around the hatchet I’m holding and it falls to the sandy beach. The coconut falls beside it, and I realize I’m shaking. “You do it.”
Rey mutters something under his breath.
“You’re supposed to keep me out of danger,” I argue, trying to save some face. “I mean, that’s what your job is, right?”
“My job is to help you get prepared for what’s to come,” Rey says, snatching the tool from the ground with a chastising quickness. “If you can’t kill a simple snake, what are you going to do if the Mogs discover you and you find yourself up against an actual enemy, huh? One that can think and understand you. One that’s been trained to take you out? What are you going to do when it’s just you and no one—” His rant is interrupted by another fit of coughing, and Rey buries his face in the tattered sleeve of his blue linen shirt. When he finally stops, he spits blood on the ground.
Blood.
He talks softly, more to himself than to me. “Maybe I should’ve spent more time teaching you to fight instead of hiding. I thought I could hide you away until you were stronger. But I failed to make sure you developed like I should have. I was too weak. The other Garde . . . they’ll probably have already gotten their first Legacies by now. Probably masters of all kinds of weapons and combat.”
“Hide well enough, and you’ll never have to fight,” I say, parroting one of his favorite lessons. I’m trying to make him happy now, but I just keep thinking about the fact that he’s coughing up blood. That’s bad. That’s what always happens in the movies a few scenes before a character dies.
I ignore it and keep talking.
“We can start doing more fight training again. I’ll do it, I promise. I’ll get good at it.”
Rey doesn’t respond, just nods a little bit and turns away. The hogs squeal louder. The viper’s up and ready to strike now, warning off the animals and humans around it, its body swaying slightly in the air like a constricted S.
“I’m afraid I’ve failed you as a Cêpan,” Rey says. He holds a hand out and grips my shoulder, squeezing it once. He smiles, but it’s a sad, far-off sort of expression. When did he start looking so old?
Rey turns and throws the hatchet with a flick of his arm. It sails through the air, spinning horizontally. The blade hits the snake a few inches below its head, and then embeds itself into the side of our little shack. The pigs scramble to the far side of the pen as the serpent’s body wriggles frantically on the ground, its nerves working out the last of their power.
Rey just keeps walking, hunched over, with a shuffle in his steps.
I don’t respond to Rey’s comment. I don’t think he expected me to. Instead, I replay what he said earlier about how the other Garde would probably be so much more advanced than me. So much more prepared for the future.
I feel like a disappointment.
But then, part of that is his fault, too, right? It’s not just me. It’s not my fault.
The last place I want to be is inside the hut with him now—or anywhere near the dead viper in our backyard—so I grab the coconut and get an old parasol that’s leaning against the shack and head farther down the beach, to where the trees give way to nothing but sand and crystal-blue water. I sit near the tide’s edge and plant the giant umbrella in the sand beside me, unfurling it. I burn easily, even after a few years of living in the tropics. I’m not meant for this sort of environment. I should be somewhere else.
Rey seems to have decided that if we’re out of sight and hidden, we’ll never have to fight. Which is a good thing, since I don’t think either of us could stand a chance against the Mogs.