The Taker by Alma Katsu Page A

groups. We looked for a line of footprints in the snow leadingaway from the house, hoping that Sophia’s path had not been trampled by those who had answered Jeremiah’s shot.
    My father found one set of tiny footprints that could have been Sophia’s and the two of us began to trace her steps. With my eyes trained on the snow, my mind raced ahead, wondering what had drawn Sophia from her house. Perhaps Sophia had stewed over my words all night and woke with her mind made up, to have it out with Jonathan. How could our confrontation not have something to do with her disappearance? My heart beat fiercely as we followed the footprints that I feared would lead to the St. Andrews’ house, until the snow disappeared in the deeper woods and with it, Sophia’s tracks.
    Now we followed no discernible path, my father and I, the forest floor a dizzying patchwork of bare, hard ground and thinly scattered scabs of snow and dead leaves. I had no idea if my father was picking up telltale signs of Sophia’s path—snapped branches, crushed leaves—or if he pushed on out of a sense of duty. We traveled parallel to the river, the sound of the Allagash to my left. Usually I thought the sound of water rushing over rock comforting, but not today.
    Sophia had to have been moved strongly by something to venture into the woods by herself. Only the hardiest villagers went into the forest alone because it was easy to lose your way in the sameness. Acre after acre of forest unfurled in a repetition of birch and spruce and pine, and the regularity of boulders pushing their way up through the forest floor, all covered with extravagant mosses or crackled with celadon lichens.
    Maybe I should have spoken to my father earlier, to let him know that his neighborly sacrifice was unnecessary and that in all likelihood Sophia had gone to see a man, a man whose company she should not keep. She could be safe and warm in a room with this man while we tramped through the cold and damp. I pictured Sophia rushing along the trail, stealing away from her unhappy home to Jonathan, tenderhearted and confused, who would undoubtedly take her in. My stomachtwisted at the thought of her tucked in Jonathan’s bed, the thought that she had won and I had lost and that Jonathan was now hers.
    Eventually we turned toward the river and walked a ways, following its contours. My father paused at one point, breaking a hole through a thin patch of ice to dip his hand in for a drink. Between sips, he eyed me not without curiosity.
    “I don’t know how much longer we will need to search. You can go home now, Lanore. This is no place for a girl. You must be freezing with cold.”
    I shook my head. “No, no, Father, I’d like to keep on a while longer …” It would be impossible to wait at home for news. I would go out of my mind or abandon all propriety to race to Jonathan’s house and confront Sophia. I could picture her, smug, triumphant. At that moment, I don’t think I’d hated anyone as much as I hated her.
    It was Father who spotted her first. He had been scanning the way ahead while I had kept my eyes trained on the dizzying ground underfoot. He found the frozen body trapped in an eddy formed by a fallen tree, almost hidden in a tangle of reeds and wild vines. She floated prone, caught in a mass of frozen cattails, her delicate body outstretched, the folds of her skirt and her long hair bobbing on the surface of the water. Her cloak sat on the riverbank, neatly folded.
    “Look away, girl,” my father said as he tried to turn me by the shoulders. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her.
    Father sounded the call while I stared dumbly at her corpse. Other searchers came crashing through the woods, following my father’s voice. Two of the men waded into the frigid water to pull her body from the embrace of the frozen grasses and the thin shelf of ice that had started to claim her. We spread her cape on the ground and laid her body on it, the sodden fabric clinging to her