Winter, Faerstice

by Kevin Lawler

The cadet hefted into the air, whimpering less than before. She seemed to be collecting herself as if she knew this was it. Her body sagged where she was invisibly scooped under her armpits. She dripped blood on the carpet. Then her whole body began to melt. Her eyebrow slipped down in front of her eye. The cadet reached up to move it back into place, but her the sheath of skin on her arm was falling off too. The skin from her trunk began to slough off toward the floor, taking most of the rest of her skin along. Violet stood riveted, not wanting to miss any of it. That must have been the last thing the cadet felt, since she no longer moved as her body fell like putty to the floor.

  Agnes picked her papers up off the podium and started for the door.

  Chapter 15

  “This should be easy,” Topple said, “I don’t know why you’re having trouble with it.

  Winter stared at the green-brown leaf in her hand. “It’s the leaf I think. It’s too green. I need to get a deader one.” Winter went into the trees from where they were training in the clearing.

  “Digging around in the grass is not going to help you,” Topple said, “The only thing that is going to help you is you nutting up.”

  There was sand and ants and rocks and too much that was green to find good kindling. “I’m trying,” Winter said. She came back with a flat wood chip that she suspected was not too wet inside.

  “Listen, it’s not rocket science,” Topple said. She held a candle-sized stick she had broken off of a fallen log. “Step one, ignite the wood.” She sparked her hand and the flame caught at the tip. “Step two, shape the fire.” The flame bowed into a fat, slime-shaped caricature of a fire. Topple curled her hand and the flame twisted into an ’S’. She dragged the stick around and poked the S in Winter’s direction. The S sprang out and bobbed back in like a spring.

  “I’m just not getting it,” Winter said.

  “Try again.”

  Winter snapped at her wood chip over and over. It sat there brown and un-aflame as ever. Winter could see the inside of the chip. A thin layer of water keeping the chip from igniting. She knew it.

  “This one’s wet too,” Winter said. Topple was there immediately. She yanked the chip from Winter’s hand. Topple waggled all of the fingers on her free hand. The whole outer ring of the chip caught fire like a gas burner on a range. Topple tossed it into a patch of sand and stomped on it with her heel while she sucked the part of her thumb that had been burned.

  “See, I’m telling you,” said Topple.

  “Let’s skip over this part. Let me try the fire shaping. If I can do that maybe I can go back and do the igniting.”

  “No, if you can’t get the igniting part down you’re never going to get the shaping. Even animating objects is easier. You need to do the bits in the order I give them to you.”

  Winter didn’t say anything but she could feel her teeth clenched and what was probably a hint of a sneer in her face. She tried to control it.

  “Let’s try something else,” Topple said. “We can try animal levitation. Maybe you need a break from this for today.”

  “Should I get the pig out?”

  “It doesn’t work on familiars. At least not the one we know.”

  “Is there another one?”

  “Possibly? Nobody knows any of this. The pig would be too heavy for you now anyway. Let’s go find some chickens.”

  The chickens were everywhere on the island and they didn’t have to go many clearings over before they found a grouping of three rust-colored hens and at least twelve chicks, yellow and black, but Winter couldn’t keep them straight to count them all.

  “Let’s not do it on the chicks,” Winter said.

  “I’m not going to harass the little ones,” Topple said, exasperated. “It’s safer with the big ones and they can fly if they need to.”

  “Here’s the motion.” Topple whipped her hand up. “Now try on that hen over there.” Topple picked an especially plump hen who was pecking at the others.

  Winter made a motion like flipping a towel up.

  The hen rocketed into the air. She was flapping immediately in defense, so that it ruined Winter being able to see how high she would’ve launched her, but the hen came back down safely and ran off flapping to get away.

  “All right,” Winter said.

  “Don’t be too pleased with yourself. It’s not a catapult. You need to learn control. Don’t ‘blast’ them into the air. Try to raise them gently and controlled. You’re just getting one big push at the beginning but doing nothing for the rest of the time.”

  Winter tried again. She walked over the closest remaining hen and tried to raise her slowly and evenly. She lifted off the ground stuttering and stopping. It was an improvement over before.

  Winter couldn’t sleep and so she left their bunk and lit the gas lantern outside so as not to disturb anyone. Reading the diary was turning into a dirty pleasure for Winter and it felt appropriate to sneak away in order to read its pages.

  She had read only a few passages to this point, and somehow every one of them had captured her attention. The voyeuristic aspect of the diary appealed to her. Winter wasn’t in the habit of going through other people’s private thoughts. Having gotten a taste she now found it addicting. The gift of the diary was supposed to be an acceptable outlet for this kind of thing, but Winter knew the urge she was filling underneath was anything but wholesome.

  The entry that was available this time appeared to be from a new author, or rather two new authors, since both the woman who translated it and the original author seemed foreign to Winter.

  It went as so:

  Translator’s Note: A long gap preceded this entry, perhaps owing to Bridget’s time spent growing her empire. It isn’t clear whether she declined to write or whether those entries were lost in the materials that I have. Bridget’s entry follows. -y

  I can’t tell whether he is sincere or not, since in any event he is good at talking, charming, surprising, and of course he makes me laugh. In short, he is the thing I have been looking for, whether the genuine article or not, and if he is indeed a counterfeit, then that may be my own punishment for the pedestal I’ve built myself up on. It was never my intention to get to the place I am now, and in all fairness it was done out of necessity and the instinct to protect myself. But it was never what I wanted. I didn’t in fact know what I was looking for, there was not time to stop and reflect, but having shared time with him I am beginning to understand what it is that I had wanted all along, and now I worry that I am too far down another path to make any good of it. If so, well, I have the rare gift of being in control of my own destiny, and it means little to me whether my ‘empire’ as they are calling it waxes or goes away completely. If he is true, and loves me, then I can abdicate, I have plenty of willing seconds, and we ourselves can go and be alone as we can; and if he be false, and kills me, then that is also a way out, and either way I will be free of this.

  The reports of the month’s gem hauls are in and are as follows. From the mine at Liot’s...

  Winter closed the book. She expected a stale book smell or maybe a puff of dust in her face but instead the book closed and stuck like one new from the printer’s. Something in that last passage had struck a chord with her, though she wasn’t sure yet what. Stones...why stones? This was a weird book, certainly.

  Winter looked at the closed book and considered the draw it had on her. Nothing magical or in itself, the draw came entirely from inside Winter and from her human curiosity to know someone else’s business. Winter knew this wasn’t her best instinct, but she let herself be caught up in it, because it took her farther from worse obsession she was developing: revenge. She visualized herself killing Agnes again. She thought about it over and over. Murder seemed like a worse thing to obsess about.

  In the middle of Oskar’s court was a wounded miner explaining what had happened. Winter could see the leader of the Hunter’s Guild, Anson, off to the side.

  “What were you doing in that shaft? After I closed it?” Os
kar asked.

  “I—,” the wounded miner started.

  “I know what you were doing,” Oskar said, “I know what you were doing, you were going into business for yourself. Anyhow, go on. What happened? Another explosion?”

  “No, not an explosion. I saw her. She was...drooling gemstones. Like a river of crushed gem fragments. A witch. A mad witch. A banshee or another hellion. Not normal. Wild. An animal. A beast.”

  “A mad witch? There’s no reasoning with that. She’s not interested in tribute. We should collapse the mine on her. It’s the safest way.”

  This news made Winter uneasy. She could feel her face contorting. She had other designs on the witch. She wanted her for practice.

  Anson said, “We’ll lose the richest remaining vein that way. Perhaps permanently. And there’s not much left in that mine to begin with. We can go in, this is our purpose.”

  Oskar nodded, but then said, “No, there’s only a few of you. No sense in risking it when there’s a safer way.”

  Winter spoke, “We’ll back them up. I need the practice. One witch can’t be that bad, right?”

  Oskar looked at Cal for a read. “She’s been killing us. She sounds mad. It won’t be safe.”

  Cal gave him a steely look. “There’s a tradition of witches handling their mad,” she said.

  Chapter 16

  Green ferns hung over the path to the mine, which wound single-file through dense island growth. Winter tried her best not to come in contact with any of the plants. They looked oily and she remembered what had happened to Topple and Louisa.

  Yellow flowers grew along the path, and preoccupied-looking bees collected their nectar and flew off. Meadow took the sight of the bees as a reminder to call her bee-eater bird, Sprig, and Sprig appeared in mid-air and immediately went to snatching stray bees. As she walked down the path Winter looked back at Sprig hunting. Sprig would pinch the bees in her beak, land on a branch, and smash the bee against the branch until it died.

  “She’s removing the stinger,” Meadow explained.

  Sprig would flip the bee up in her beak a few times before gulping it down.

  When they reached the mine the entrance was not what Winter expected. There was nothing resembling a door or any kind of thoughtful entrance. Instead it looked like a jagged piece where the top of the Earth had been removed. The path below it descended into the recess, and that was where the first dripstone columns appeared. Plants and trees could be seen as if tumbling over the overhang. It looked like a cross-section of a two-story home. Greenery above, denser and denser forests of stalactite columns below.

  Piles of rocks and discarded ore littered the entryway. They party snaked through several piles before reaching the inner entrance to the mine’s true interior.

  Outside the entrance Anson, Darren, and the younger initiate Will, the representatives of the Hunter’s Guild, stopped. The rested their compound hunting longbows against the wall to the side of the entrance.

  “Nobody play around inside,” Anson said, “I don’t want to see any mistakes made. This mad witch is dangerous, but there are a lot of us, so this should go smoothly if everyone plays their part. Be on your guard. They’re amped up, unpredictable, and most of all crazy. She’s killed a few people, don’t be the next. Also, let me remind our guests that the stones inside are ours, and there are no freebies on this trip. I don’t care how many rabbits you can pull out of your bonnet.”

  Anson called the hunters together and they stood in a circle facing each other with their gloved hands over their chests.

  “By this oath I swear,” Darren started.

  “By this oath I swear,” the other hunters echoed.

  “To slay all witches I may come across, as best I may, no matter how dirty-headed or foul, no matter what beasts or vermin they may summon, no matter how steep the cost of risking their curses. I will hunt them and put them in the ground. This I swear.”

  The circle broke. Anson looked around. “Do we have everything?” he asked.

  “Do I have a dirty head?” Meadow whispered to Topple.

  They were laden with backpacks, rations, canteens of water, all heavy and awkward to carry.

  “Sure feels like we have everything,” Ipsy said to Anson.

  “If a vein collapses around you, you’ll be happy to have it,” Darren said. “The cave is dangerous, and the stones do weird things. So be ready.”

  “Will, you take point,” Anson said, “We’ll form the rear guard.”

  Anson and Darren moved to the back. From there they directed the crowd and made sure nobody wandered off. Will moved to the front, already calmly scanning for danger. Winter, the other witches, and Phil formed the middle.

  Just past the inner entrance the cave narrowed into a funnel. There was ambient light from the path behind, and a spotlight from an opening above where the sun peeked through. Winter left the party to inspect a flat stone surface that had a different color and texture than the surrounding area.

  “Fruit bats,” Darren said, “The acidity in the guano eats away at the stone.”

  Winter looked up. Five or six fruit bats hung upside down, close together, and very still. Amid the stillness one dipped his nose into his wing to clean himself.

  “You looking for a new familiar?” Anson asked, winking.

  Winter left her place at the stone and rejoined the group.

  Farther in, where the natural light failed to reach, the rooms of the cavern glowed with speckles of orange gemstones. The wall had been carved in specially selected places to reveal the phosphorescent deposits. Other orange stones had been left in piles on the floor, in sufficient number to illuminate the room. The stones must have been common to leave them lying about. Winter had the sense that this area had been picked over thoroughly. It had the appearance of a campsite where all the low-hanging branches had been turned into firewood.

  There was a stray hen in the room. It had wandered in this far into the cave from the outside. Winter felt bad for her, and tried to shoo her towards the exit. The hen made only a little progress before Winter had to catch up with the party. They were going steadily down. Winter hoped the hen would find her way out on her own.

  They passed through room after room of orange, and with each room the orange hue deepened and darkened to near brown. The large cavern openings were each linked by narrower connecting passageways. Then what had been monocolor orange changed abruptly to light green. In the passageway leading out of the first light green room, part of the wall had been freshly exposed to reveal a patch of light green crystals, intermixed with the red-brown rock of the cavern wall. Gaps were visible where the best and largest crystals had already been harvested. Slightly off from the center was a smaller but nicely shaped stone that looked like it might prise loose with just a little more work. Meadow reached out her hand, ready to pinch at the crystal, but before she could touch it the gloved hand of Anson smacked hers away.

  “No touching,” he said.

  “Sorry,” said Meadow. “I didn’t mean to touch your super-secret stash,” she said, gyrating. But she didn’t touch the stones again. Instead she fumed quietly.

  As her eyes adjusted to the monocolors of the mine, Winter noticed the different animals and insects that inhabited it, the majority of them camouflaged against the rock. More obvious were the purple fireflies buzzing around, seemingly attracted to whichever rooms had gem dust floating in the air.

  Ipsy’s mongoose Otto stood on Ipsy’s shoulder, alert and watching for threats. He studied the purple whirl of the fireflies, waiting for something to appear. On occasion Otto crossed to Ipsy’s other shoulder or balanced on all fours on her head. He was quick and deliberate, surefooted even on a person’s shoulders.

  “The magic dust that results from the mining is typically not very good to breathe in,” Phil said, “Not that it stops some of the miners from experimenting. The animals here are drawn to it. You’ve seen the strange ones on the outside. The gems may have made them that way, or th
ey may have coevolved to eat the gems. I’m not sure. Either way, show caution around the creatures in the mine.”

  Water dripped into the cave.

  “And the water?” Louisa asked.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Phil said, “Well, probably. We are undersea. But if there was any danger of flooding it would’ve flooded already. The only thing to worry about are explosions letting the seawater in.”

  “Is that common?” Meadow asked.

  “It’s only happened a few times,” Phil said.

  “Did the miners survive?” Meadow asked.

  “Um. Not exactly,” said Phil, “They may have survived the explosion.”

  “You don’t need to tell them about the mine,” Anson said, “They’re just going to come back here and try to steal from it.” Anson turned and addressed Louisa. “Normally we don’t affiliate with witches, but we’re making an exception this time because Oskar asked us, and because of the mad witch.” The hunter shook his head. “Shame on the guild. A low point in our history.”

  The steady drip-drip of the water distracted Winter. It was happening in each room. In the passageways too, where the drips could not be avoided, and more than a few drops had landed on Winter’s scalp. They passed a room where a channel of waterdrops fell against a curtain of stalagmites rising from the ground. Where the water hit it had carved a path. Each time a waterdrop rapped the side of the curtain a fragile peal filled the room like a stone bell. Winter worried whether the drops that fell on her hair and eyebrows were harmful. She didn’t want to be burned. She also didn’t want to be poisoned. She imagined the channels where the water hit widening and cracking. In her mind water rushed into the room and flooded it. Meadow and Phil and all the people were in a jumble in the middle of the submerged room, barely illuminated by the stone walls, swirling, lost. Winter held her breath underwater, looking for an exit.

  Louisa called her dogs. Maybe she had considered Phil’s warning about the creatures in the cave. The two greyhounds Okeechobee and Okoboji appeared.