Moonkind (Winterling)

by Prineas, Sarah

  Fer took a deep breath and put some Lady-like snap into her voice. “What room is Jane Woods in?”

  The nurse raised eyebrows that had been drawn on her forehead in brown pencil. She checked a computer screen. “Two fourteen,” she answered. “And what do you want with her?”

  “She’s my grandmother,” Fer answered briskly.

  The nurse nodded slowly. “And you are . . . ?”

  “I’m her granddaughter,” Fer answered. Obviously. “Jennifer.”

  Rook bumped her arm. “Fer, this isn’t going to work,” he whispered.

  Yes, it was. “I want to see her now, please,” Fer said.

  “Uh-huh.” The nurse narrowed her eyes. “Ms. Woods’s granddaughter ran away from home a long time ago. She might have been about your age when she left, but that was years ago.” She pointed at a sign on the desk. “Anyway, visiting hours are over. If you want to see Ms. Woods, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  Fer felt a surge of angry impatience. “Fine,” she said, and spun on her heel, stalking to the door. The need to see Grand-Jane boiled up in her. She hurried down the sidewalk. The sun was setting, casting orange beams across the sky.

  Rook caught up to her on the sidewalk out front. “Fer, I’m not going to be much use to you if we stay here until tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said shortly. “We won’t be staying that long. Come on.” She led him to a bench across the street from the nursing home, where she sat down. She was still a little weak from the fever and her legs were shaking, so it felt good to sit, at least for a while. Rook sat on the bench next to her; after a while he pulled up his knees and rested his head on them. The human world was making him feel awful, she knew. He wouldn’t be able to eat or drink or sleep until they went back through the Way to the Summerlands, and he probably had a terrible headache on top of that.

  She shouldn’t be worried about him. He wasn’t her friend; he was here by his own choice; he wasn’t her responsibility.

  When Rook spoke, his voice was muffled; he kept his head down on his knees. “You said too much time has passed here,” he said.

  She nodded. “I think so. I didn’t think I was gone for this long.”

  “It must be the stilth,” he said.

  She thought about it. Back when the Mór had stained the Summerlands with the blood of its Lady, the bad things that had happened there had overflowed into the human world.

  “Humans are changeable,” Rook said. He’d propped his head on his arms to look sideways at her. Her bee had settled on his shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Old Scrawny told me that.”

  “They are,” Fer said. “We are, I mean.” Things did move fast in the human world. Humans loved new things; they loved change, progress. Sometimes that was a good thing, she thought, but it could be a bad thing too. She pondered it. The broken oaths of the Forsworn were making the stilth—stopped time—spread through their lands. They might be having an effect here, too—but the opposite effect. If the river of time was flowing faster in the human world than it should be, it was a good thing she’d come when she had. If she’d waited any longer, Grand-Jane might have been swept away, gone forever.

  While she thought, the sky grew dark, and a few cars drove past on the street. Rook lifted his head to stare at the headlights as they passed, but didn’t ask what they were. Even though the sun had gone down, the air was heavy with heat and humidity.

  Fer’s head ached just a little from coming into this world. She wouldn’t fade like Rook if she stayed here, but after not too long the headache would get worse and she’d get a rash, and everything would start looking grim and gray. Her own land, where she could feel every blade of grass and breeze and leaf in the forest, felt very far away. Her heart longed toward it.

  But it longed for Grand-Jane, too.

  Finally it was time.

  Nineteen

  It was the middle of the moonless night. The human town was silent and deserted and dark, except for a few magical glowing lights on poles and some other lights in the wrong-smelling building across the road.

  “It’s time,” Fer whispered. “I’m going to try this.” She stood and started toward the building.

  He jumped up to follow. “I can help,” he offered.

  She glanced aside at him, then nodded. “Okay. Come on.”

  He followed her across the road. It was clear enough that Fer was not feeling very friendly toward him. While they’d been sitting on the bench, she’d been rubbing at the place over her heart where the broken end of the thread was probably jabbing at her. She hadn’t seemed to realize she was doing it.

  He followed Fer around the side of the big building until they found a door propped open with a wedge to let air in. Fer led him through the door to a long hallway with flickering lights that made his headache even worse. His nose twitched. The care center smelled strongly strange and wrong, like sickness and something else almost like poison, but not quite. He growled a little, deep in his chest.

  “Wait here,” Fer whispered, and slipped through another door, leaving him in the cold hallway. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. His headache was still eating away at him with nasty, sharp teeth. He waited.

  A touch on his shoulder and he flinched and opened his eyes.

  “Shhh,” Fer whispered. “It’s on the second floor.” She led them farther down the hallway to some stairs and started up; he followed. She stopped at a landing beside a door. “Okay, Rook,” she said. Her eyes looked very large in her pale face. “Since you want to help, I need a distraction. Can you cause some trouble?”

  What kind of stupid question was that? “Fer, I’m a puck.”

  “Does that mean you will?” she asked.

  As an answer, he gave her a sharp grin.

  She didn’t smile back; instead she nodded and explained what she was going to do and what she needed him to do. “Got it?” she asked.

  “I do have it, yes,” he answered. All of a sudden he was starting to feel better.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Fer cracked open the door leading from the stairway to the floor where Grand-Jane’s room was; she peered into a dimly lit hallway painted dingy green. A little way down the hall to her left was a more brightly lit desk; she could see two nurses there, and an elevator. The nurses looked alert. If she had to stay in the hallway for too long, they would see her. Open doors and a few abandoned wheelchairs lined the hallway.

  A buzzer went off and a nurse came down the hallway. Fer held her breath. The nurse swished past, her shoes squeaking on the shiny floor. After a while the nurse came past again, shaking her head and muttering.

  This was going to be tricky.

  She put her finger up to her collar and let the bee crawl onto it. “Which one is the right room?” she whispered.

  The bee bumbled out through the crack in the door. Keeping low to the ground and near the wall, it flew down the hallway to a door not far from the nurses’ station. She might be able to get in there without being seen, but getting out was going to be a lot harder.

  Okay. Time to try it. She took a deep breath, waiting until both nurses were looking the other direction, then pushed the door open wider and edged out into the hallway. Like a shadow, Rook followed. That way—she nodded toward the nurses’ station. He shot her a quick grin and ghosted away.

  Fer put her head down and darted across the hall and down two doors to the room the bee had flown into.

  No cry of alarm. She let out a breath.

  The room was dim, lit only by a light turned low. There were two beds; from the first one came the snores of an old woman, sound asleep. Grand-Jane didn’t snore like that. Fer crept farther into the room to the second bed. All she could see was a blanket-covered shape. She edged closer and bumped her knee against a table, and something fell onto the floor with a clatter.

  She froze. The snorer in the other bed snorted and snuffled, and after a moment her snores started up again. Fer let out a re
lieved breath.

  In the second bed, she could see a white-haired head; in the dim light, two eyes gleamed.

  “Jennifer?” Grand-Jane whispered. “Is it you?”

  A sudden upwelling of relief and love and happiness stopped Fer’s breath for a moment. She wanted to fling herself into Grand-Jane’s arms for a hug. Instead she reached out to take her grandmother’s hand. It felt frail and bony.

  Fer cocked her head, listening for Rook’s distraction. She only had a moment. “Grand-Jane,” she whispered. “I’m asking for the third time. Will you come through the Way? Will you come live with me in the Summerlands?” She closed her eyes tightly and clung to her grandma’s hand, so afraid that she would say no a third time, because that would be the last time, and Fer would never see her again.

  From out in the hallway came a shout.

  Fer jumped—had she been discovered?

  She heard a scream. “It’s a dog!” somebody shouted. Then a series of fierce barks and the sound of running feet.

  Just the distraction she needed. “We have to go now, Grand-Jane,” she said, getting to her feet.

  She heard a papery-sounding laugh. “You brought that puck with you.”

  “Yes,” Fer whispered. “Will you come?”

  She heard a rustling of sheets, and the shadowy shape in the bed sat up. “Yes, of course I will,” Grand-Jane answered.

  Quickly fumbling in the dark, Fer found her grandma’s bathrobe and helped her shove her feet into a pair of sneakers, leaving the laces untied. The snoring in the other bed had stopped. “Jane?” asked a quavering voice.

  Another scream from farther down the hallway. “There’s a horse down here!” Then a deeper voice shouted, “Call security!”

  “Come on,” Fer said urgently.

  She heard her grandma laughing softly as she shuffled toward the door—so slowly. Fer went to steady her. They paused at the door and peeked out. At the other end of the hallway, a nurse ran past. She heard more barking and shouting. Her bee buzzed up and landed on her collar. Time to go.

  She and her grandma shuffled out into the hallway. The nurses were all looking away, toward the direction of the barking. Hurrying, Fer hustled Grand-Jane through the door to the stairs.

  “Nobody saw,” she whispered. Grand-Jane started quickly down, Fer at her elbow, helping her take each step. Rook would have to find his own way out.

  Outside, the bee hovered over her head as she and Grand-Jane waited in the shadows where she had first spotted the side door leading in. At the front of the building were flashing lights—a police car. Then a long wail of a siren, and a fire truck pulled up and firefighters swarmed out, followed by a police officer talking on a radio.

  Rook had made a much bigger distraction than she’d needed. If he didn’t hurry it might well get them caught.

  Still Rook didn’t come.

  She took a moment to look over her grandma. Grand-Jane was thin, and hunched where she should be tall, and her hair had turned all white, but her eyes sparkled. Carefully Fer hugged her, and Grand-Jane’s arms hugged her back with surprising strength.

  “I hated that place,” her grandma whispered. “Let’s get out of here, Jennifer.”

  “In a minute.” Fer glanced toward the nursing home again. Come on, Rook. They might not be friends, but she couldn’t leave him here.

  Finally the side door slammed open and Rook stumbled out, staggering across the sidewalk to where they waited in the shadows. He tripped and went sprawling on the sidewalk at Fer’s feet. “Ow.”

  She crouched beside him. “Are you okay?” She knew how hard it was for him to shift here in the human world.

  He laughed. “I went in a box all the way to the ground.” He sat up, blinking. “I think my head is going to fall off.”

  Fer glanced back toward the door. “Were you seen?”

  He climbed dizzily to his feet, still grinning. “They’re looking for horses and dogs, not me.”

  Of course. She stood, taking a deep breath. It was a long way from town back to the Way. “We’ll have to start walking,” she said. Maybe they could get there before the sun came up and it got too hot. She wasn’t sure Grand-Jane could even walk that far. . . .

  “Oh, sure, Fer,” Rook answered. He stumbled, bumping into her, and she protected her grandma with one arm and grabbed his shoulder with her other hand, steadying him. “Hello, Jane,” he said, still smiling.

  To Fer’s astonishment, her grandmother smiled back. “Hello, Puck,” she said. “Can you turn into a horse and carry us?”

  “If you don’t mind my head falling off on the way there,” Rook mock grumbled.

  “Stop fussing,” Grand-Jane said.

  In response, Rook laughed.

  Fer stared. It was almost like . . . they were friends. “You don’t have to do it,” she put in quickly. She didn’t want to owe Rook any more favors.

  “No, we need to hurry back,” he said. His hand went to his pocket; he snatched out his shifter-bone and popped it into his mouth. A blur of shadows, and a tall horse with a tangled mane and flame-bright eyes stood before them on unsteady legs.

  “You’ll have to help me get up there,” Grand-Jane said. Fer laced her fingers together to make a step, and her grandma pulled herself slowly onto the horse’s back and sat up, clinging to his mane with shaking hands.

  Fer jumped up behind her. She could keep her grandma from falling off while they ran.

  Rook gave a snort and they were off. Fer clung to Grand-Jane and to Rook’s mane as he raced through the streets, his hooves clattering on the road, the sound echoing off the buildings. Maybe in the morning the people who lived in town would wake up and wonder why they’d dreamed about magic and horses and the rushing of wind.

  It was still darkest night when they came to the ravine. Rook slowed and picked his way to the narrow path, then snorted and walked along the streambed instead, until they reached the moon-pool in its quiet clearing.

  Fer helped Grand-Jane get down and held her arm as they stepped closer to the moon-pool. Rook shifted back and then stood with his eyes closed as if his head really was about to fall off. Fer saw her grandma reach out to take Rook’s hand. He nodded without opening his eyes.

  Before opening the Way, Fer turned to look at the ravine, the path leading away to the gravel roads, the farms and cornfields, to Grand-Jane’s house at the end of its rutted driveway. This might be the last time she ever came here, to the human world where time flowed so quickly by. “Good-bye,” she breathed.

  She turned back to the moon-pool. In the darkness it looked like a well of bottomless shadows. Fer reached out and took her grandma’s hand.

  “I have always wondered,” Grand-Jane whispered, “what this would be like.”

  “Hold on,” Fer said, smiling, and they stepped through the Way.

  Twenty

  She knew Rook wasn’t really trustworthy, but when he had told her that the stilth was dangerous and deadly, she had believed him. It was her responsibility too, and she had to figure out how to deal with it.

  Until Grand-Jane woke up, Fer needed time to think without anybody interrupting her. Rook had fallen asleep the moment they’d come through the Way from the human world, so she didn’t have to worry about him. She looked after her grandma, and before dawn she and Phouka rode deep into the forest where the trees were old and strong and quiet, where nobody would bother her. After a while, she slid off Phouka’s back and walked on alone. She hadn’t had any breakfast, so her stomach felt hollow. The air was chill and gray. The trees still had leaves, but they’d thinned, and she kicked through drifts of red-brown oak leaves and crumpled, yellow birch leaves and another kind of leaves shaped like little, brown mittens.

  The land was descending into the long chill of winter; it was like the moon turning from fat, golden full to an icy crescent. She loved this land with every particle of her being. Every Lord or Lady was connected to their land, just as she was. She couldn’t understand why the Forsworn and the ot
her Lords and Ladies felt they had to rule their lands and their people, instead of just caring for them. But they did rule. They wore glamories that forced obedience and awe, glamories that turned the wearer as chill as winter moonlight. They didn’t want to give up that power. But they would have to, or all the lands would die.

  Stepping off the path, Fer rested her forehead against the nubbly bark of an oak tree and closed her eyes. She felt the tree’s roots probing into the dirt, spread wide for soaking up water and nutrients. She felt its branches reaching into the sky, its few remaining leaves clinging to the tips of twigs. The first chilly breeze that came along would blow them away. She shivered.

  Then she felt something else: just a breath of strangeness in her land. She stilled her breath and concentrated. She was the land’s Lady, and she could sense the tiniest beetle gnawing on a rotting log deep in the forest, and she could sense the forest itself, washing like a green tide over low hills and up to steep mountains covered with snow.

  She clenched her eyes shut, trying to catch the strange something again.

  There. A sort of heavy feeling was seeping into her land from the Way—the Way that should be closed except at sunrise and sunset. The land nearest the Way felt still and silent under that heaviness. The trees drooped ever so slightly; the water in a stream slowed; a flock of sparrows huddled together on a branch.

  Her eyes popped open. Was this the stilth? In her land?

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she whispered to herself. Then, louder, “Phouka!” she called.

  The horse crunched through the leaves to her side. “Back home, if you don’t mind,” she said, and swung onto his back. “Hurry.”

  Something was on his ear. He twitched to flick it off and heard a telltale buzz, and the stupid bee landed on the tip of his ear again. Rook was snug and warm, curled up in his dog shape sleeping, and he was not waking up so the bee that wasn’t supposed to be talking to him told him something he didn’t want to know.