Carrie Ryan - Hare Moon

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2010, 2011 by Carrie Ryan

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in slightly different form in the collection Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love by Running Press Teens, an imprint of Running Press Book Publishers, Philadelphia, in 2010.

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eISBN: 978-0-375-97999-6

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v3.1

Its because the paths are forbidden that Tabitha always finds her way to them. Despite the Sisters warnings about what lies beyond the village fences, shes tired of being trapped. Tired of being told what to do all the time. Tired of hearing that the village is all there is of life.

She wants something more. Needs something more.

The fences exist, the Sisters tell her, to keep the dead at bay. Tabitha wonders whether they might also serve to keep the living docile and trapped. Lately she has begun to understand the claustrophobia of an unexplored life, and the only time she breathes easy is when she thinks about what might lie outside her tiny existence.

The first time she opens the gate its on a dare with herself, to see if shes truly strong enough to follow through on her awakening desires. She touched the gate once, as part of a bet when she was seven. To win she kept her fingers wrapped around the thin coil of metal for ten seconds, watching the dead shuffle toward her with vacant hunger.

As she counted off seven eight nine one of them reached out to her, ran his thumb over her knuckles, trying to pry her grip from the barrier.

She made it to ten, won the bet and had nightmares for a month. Until recently, the fence and path have been nothing but off-limits stretches of treacherous, forgotten land unfolding from the village proper. There is no such thing as life beyond the fences, Tabitha has been told her entire life.

Except that now shes not sure she can accept this edict.

As she approaches the gate, shed like to believe that she isnt terrified. That she isnt hesitant. That the dead along the fence dont frighten her, with their broken fingers reaching, always reaching, and their moans calling for her.

Its the sound of them that gets to herthe way it invades every part of her life. She hears them in her sleep, in her daydreams, during chores and services. She hears them when shes praying to God.

And on the path theres no escaping the Unconsecrated. They stumble along the fences on either side of her, pushing and pulling the rusted metal. Shes never known need like that in her life. Doesnt understand it.

Yet she recognizes it as more intense than anything she feels now, anything she has ever felt, and she begins to realize she wants to feel it as well.

Tabitha knows there are rules and that rules are meant to be followed. Every morning she attends the services at the chapel and every evening she recites her prayers. She respects her parents, cares for her younger siblings and completes chores without complaint. Well, without too much complaint.

During the winter months she does as shes asked and smiles demurely to the eligible young men her age, wanting one to choose her for a wife.

But they never do.

Tabithas okay with this, though. Because it isnt the young men who call to her at night. Its the Forest. Its the whisper of the trees that theres something else, outside the fences. That theres still a world thats bigger than any she could ever comprehend and all she has to do is find the strength to go after it.

At night she tosses and turns in her bed, listening to the Forest. Wanting it. Needing it until her cheeks burn red and tears run from her eyes. And in the morning she slows her steps as she passes by the gate on an errand. She promises herself that tomorrow she will sneak through it. Tomorrow she will taste the world beyond.

The first time she actually crosses out of the village and onto the path she pauses and waits for the siren to wail. The sound of the gate hinges screaming as she pried them open still sits too heavy in the air, and theres a moment of absolute terror as she realizes that she has taken an irretrievable step and broken a rule inviting unimaginable consequences.

But she doesnt turn back. Instead she takes one step forward and then another, until she is fully through the gate. She waits, moving only to breathe, and when no one comes after her, she experiences an elation unlike any she has ever contemplated.

This is true freedom, she thinks, feeling the draw of liberation. This is what it means to believe in yourself and reach for what you most desire.

She stays on the path for only a moment, the Unconsecrated coming near to press against the fences on either side. She stares down the path to where it disappears into the Forest and she wonders what lies on the other side of the forbidden horizon.

Tabitha knows enough to slip back through the gate quickly, though, and seals it shut as flakes of rust scatter from the abandoned metal latch. The feeling of those few moments, of being bare to the world beyond, vibrates through her, a new energy that ebbs too fast so that she immediately craves it again.

After that day she crosses through the gate again and again. Shes timed the Guardian patrol just right so that she knows when to slip away, when to sprint down the path. And the lightness of freedom is unlike anything shes ever known. It consumes her.

Sometimes she tells herself she wont ever go home. Yet she always does. Because shes a good girl, and there are still some rules shes not ready to break. But shes not so good that her skin doesnt start to feel tight and itch, as if her bodys shrinking and the only thing that will release the compression of it is to escape to the path.

So she does, pushing farther and farther into the Forest. She learns to ignore the Unconsecrated, who follow her every step; learns to listen instead to the way the wind tickles its way through leaves overhead, and to the chirps and whirs of birds.

The sun feels brighter and the shade cooler in the Forest, and she starts to wonder why its off-limits. She likes that she doesnt have to think about whats next when shes on the path: its just one step and then another, and the fences keep her moving straight ahead.

One day, she walks far enough to find a second gate and she stands for a long time staring at it, wondering if she should go through or if its a sign that shes wandered too far.

She sets her hand on the metal latch, feeling a pattern of rusty prickles beneath her fingers. She still hasnt decided what to do when a voice calls out to her. Youre here, it says.