She knitted her brows.“What are you thinking?”
“We borrow it,” Jago said.“Just long enough to get to the neighboring town.We can leave it there.It mightn’t be legal, but these people owe us.”
Sienna didn’t disagree.“Pa won’t like it.”
Jago snorted, his cat ears pricking.“You kidnapped Liam.”
“Yeah, okay.”Sienna pulled a face.“Fair point.The mayor has a campervan.”
“Huh!If the mayor is smart, he will have taken his wife and kids and gone already.I’ll talk to Papa and Mama.”Jago squared his shoulders.“Wish me luck.”
Jago waved a hand and knocked on their parents’ bedroom door.“Mama?Papa?We need to talk.”
Jamie returned to the kitchen table, where Sienna’s arrival had interrupted his work, threading ribbons through clay hearts.She sat beside him, her hands automatically taking up the task as she listened to the muffled voices from the bedroom.
“Leaving?”Papa’s voice rang out, thick with disbelief.“Jago, this is our home.”
“It’s not safe anymore, Papa.They’re hunting us.”
“This land’s been in my family for four generations,” Papa said, his tone sharpening.“My great-grandfather built this cottage by hand.Every stone, every beam.”
“The clay here is unique,” Mama added, voice tight with worry.“Without it, we’re ordinary potters competing with mass production.How will we survive?”
Jamie’s fingers stilled on the ribbon he was threading.Sienna caught his eye and saw her own anxiety reflected there.
“At least here we know which people to avoid,” Papa continued.“Out there, we’ll be strangers everywhere.What if we can’t find work?What if the boys get sick on the road?”
“Kitto and Calan are missing, possibly hurt, and you’re worried aboutclay?”Jago’s voice cracked with frustration.“I’m tired of being ashamed of what we look like.Maybe somewhere else, we could live instead of just survive—thrive.”
A long silence followed.When Mama spoke again, her voice was smaller.“We have no references, no connections.Who will hire a family like us?”
“The Pascoes didn’t hesitate,” Jamie said, his voice carrying loud enough for Sienna to hear.“They left.”
Sienna suddenly felt too hot.She pushed back from the table.“I need some air.”
The evening had grown cool, mist beginning to creep in from the moor.She wrapped her arms around herself and walked to the edge of their small garden, where the land dropped away toward the valley.In daylight, she could see for miles: rolling hills dotted with sheep, the glint of the stream where she and her brothers had played as children, and the tor where Papa had taught them to shift safely away from prying eyes.
How many times had she stood in this spot?As a child, dreaming of adventures beyond the horizon.As a teenager, yearning to escape whispers and stares.Now, facing the reality of leaving, all she could see were the memories soaked into the rocky soil: the old oak where Kitto had fallen and broken his arm, Mama’s herb garden, its scent carried on every breeze, and Papa’s workshop, where clay became magic in her family’s hands.
Behind her, voices rose and fell in the cottage, Papa’s resistance crumbling under the weight of reality, Mama’s fears giving way to fierce protectiveness.They would leave.She knew it with the same certainty that she knew this view by heart.
A night bird called from the copse of trees near the stream, its cry lonely in the gathering darkness.Soon, even that sound would be a memory.
Sienna pressed her hand to her chest, trying to hold on to this moment—the familiar ache of home, the bittersweet knowledge that sometimes love meant leaving everything you’d ever known behind.
When she turned back toward the cottage, golden light spilled from the windows, warm and welcoming.But for how much longer?
“Sienna?”Jamie’s voice drifted from the doorway.“They’ve decided.We’re leaving tomorrow.”
She inclined her head, silent, before taking one last look at the valley that had formed her life.
“Where are you, Liam?”she muttered, peering toward the town.She prayed that he and her brothers were safe because she couldn’t live with herself if something happened to them.
Then she walked toward the light, toward her family, toward whatever the future held.
“Jago and I will do a quick run to camp and return tomorrow with the equipment we should take with us,” her father said.“Jamie, would you like to come?”
Jamie nodded.
