Clarke’s father strode across the clearing toward the rough-hewn tables, pausing to wave at Jacob, an Earthborn farmer he was friendly with, then turned back to fix Clarke with a huge grin. His left arm was crooked around a bundle of brightly colored corn.
“Jacob says the rain will hold off long enough to get a good view of the moon when it comes up.” David Griffin laid the corncobs on the table and thoughtfully scratched his bushy new beard, peering into the sky as if he could already see it. “Apparently, it’ll be red along the horizon. Jacob called it a Hunter’s Moon, but it sounds like what our ancestors called a harvest moon.”
As a child, Clarke had sometimes grown weary of his endless Earth lectures, but now, after a year in anguished mourning for the parents she believed to be dead, his eager chatter made her heart swell with delight and gratitude.
Yet as he spoke, Clarke’s gaze shifted toward the tree line where, in the distance, a familiar, tall figure was striding out of the forest with his bow slung across one shoulder. “You know, I kind of like the sound of Hunter’s Moon,” Clarke said distractedly, a smile spreading across her face.
Bellamy’s pace slowed as he entered the clearing, scanning the camp. Even after everything they’d been through together, knowing that he was looking for her made Clarke’s heart flutter. No matter what this wild, dangerous planet threw at them, they’d face it together, survive it together.
As he came closer, she saw the bundle hanging on his back. It was an enormous bird with splayed neon feathers and a long, spindly neck. By the looks of it, it would feed half the group tonight. A surge of pride fizzed through her. Although their camp had grown to more than four hundred people, including a number of the Colony’s well-trained guards, Bellamy was still far and away the best hunter.
“Is that a turkey?” Clarke’s father asked, nearly knocking over a table in his hurry to get a better look.
“We saw them in the woods,” her mother said, appearing at Clarke’s side. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she watched Bellamy approach. “Northwest of here, last winter. I thought they were peacocks, with those blue feathers. Either way, they were too wily for us to catch one.”
“Bellamy can catch anything,” Clarke said, then blushed when her mother raised a knowing eyebrow.
Clarke had been a little worried about introducing Bellamy to her parents, unsure how they’d react to anyone other than her upstanding Phoenician ex-boyfriend, Wells. But to her relief, they’d warmed to Bellamy right away. Their own traumas made them sympathetic and even protective of Bellamy when he spent the night in Clarke’s family’s cabin, plagued by debilitating nightmares that tore him from sleep, rendering him a trembling, sweating mess—dreams about firing squads, blindfolds fused to his face, hearing Clarke’s and Octavia’s screams rattle his bones. On nights like those, her parents scrambled to mix herbal drafts to help him sleep while Clarke held his hand, neither of them ever uttering a word of caution to Clarke.
Both were waving cheerfully to Bellamy right now, yet Clarke felt her shoulders tensing. There was something off about his step. His face was pale and he kept looking over his shoulder, eyes wild and panicked.
Clarke’s father’s smile fell as Bellamy drew close. He reached for the bird and Bellamy dropped it into his outstretched arms without so much as a thank-you.
“Clarke,” Bellamy said. His breath was ragged, as though he had run here. “I need to talk to you.”
Before she could respond, he grabbed her elbow and pulled her past the fire pit to the edge of the ring of newly built cabins. She stumbled slightly on a jutting root and had to catch her balance quickly to keep from being dragged behind him.
“Bellamy, stop.” Clarke wrenched her arm free.
The glassy look briefly left his eyes. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?” he said, sounding momentarily more like himself.
Clarke nodded. “Yes, fine. What’s going on?”
The frantic look returned as he surveyed the camp. “Where’s Octavia?”
“She’s heading back with the kids right now.” Octavia had taken the younger children to play at the creek for the afternoon, to keep them from interfering with the preparations. Clarke pointed to the line of children holding hands while they crossed the clearing to the tables, black-haired Octavia leading the pack. “You see?”
Bellamy relaxed a fraction at the sight of his sister, but then, as his eyes met Clarke’s, his face darkened again. “I noticed something strange while I was out hunting.”
Clarke bit her lip, stifling a sigh. This wasn’t the first time he’d said those words this week. It wasn’t even the tenth. But she squeezed his hand and nodded. “Tell me.”
He shifted his weight from side to side, a bead of sweat trickling out from underneath his dark, tousled hair. “A week or so ago, I saw a pile of leaves on the deer path, on the way to Mount Weather. It seemed… unnatural.”