Elin turned back to us. “I can watch, if you trust me to do so.”
I didn’t trust her, but if she’d wanted to kill us, she could have left us to the weather and stayed safe and dry in her cloak. “All right,” I said. I didn’t know how long we’d have to wait for Matthew and Caleb, and I had to sleep sometime.
Allie and I huddled together beneath Allie’s cloak, which was only damp now. I was more tired than I thought. In spite of the cold and the wet and the knowledge that the land around us could crumble without warning any time, I slept.
When I woke, the wind had died and Elin sat watching the rain’s steady fall. Allie tossed restlessly in her sleep, as if at some bad dream. She’d rolled away from me. As I reached out to wake her, my good hand brushed her neck.
It burned with fever, hot as faerie wind.
Chapter 10
Allie blinked awake. “I don’t feel so good,” she whispered.
I wrapped the cloak around her as she sat up, fumbling to close it one-handed. She drained the last of the wine skin, and I held it to the dripping edge of Elin’s cloak to refill it with water. I drank, then handed the skin to Elin, who silently drank as well.
Allie shivered. “Liza, how long do you think it will take for Caleb to come?”
“I don’t know.” I offered her the orange stone as I crawled back to her side.
Her face went pale. She lunged for the edge of the overhang and threw up on the stones beyond it, into the rain.
I gave her the skin. Allie wiped her mouth on her cloak and took a few small sips of water, then pushed it away. My own stomach did a little flip. This was more than some reaction to the River’s voice. It’s the rain and the cold, I told myself. Or the food in Faerie. Lots of things could make Allie sick.
The rain was letting up. Elin drew a dried root from another belt pouch and handed it to Allie. “Chew this. It will help calm the stormy stomach that fire fever brings.”
Ice trickled down my spine. “You don’t know that’s what she has.”
Elin’s expression was unreadable. “The healer knows it.”
Allie bit off a piece of the root. “Sorry, Liza. The River said—but if Caleb arrives in time, it won’t matter. Even a river can be wrong, can’t it? I can’t heal myself, but Caleb understands fire fever better than I do anyway.”
“What did the River say?” The River had said many things to us last time, not all of them true.
“It knew before I did.” Allie wouldn’t look at me. She chewed with slow deliberateness. “It said it didn’t need to call me, because it would have me soon enough. It said … I didn’t mean to push too far! You know I didn’t!”
“Fire fever is not like other illnesses.” Elin’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “It is more subtle, almost as if it has a will of its own, one that is forever seeking a new way in. Our healers had much knowledge and many long seasons behind them, yet they all fell to it in the end. Nys told you nothing of this? No, of course not—and that I’d expect him to give you the same respect as our own healers shows that I grow soft indeed. My mother would be pleased.” Elin’s bitter laughter died on her lips. “Nys does not speak for our people, however dearly he might wish it. So long as my mother remains absent, that responsibility falls to me. Know then, Allie, that I will not forget the sacrifice you have made for our people. I will see that they do not forget it, either. It shall be remembered in our stories, for as long as we draw breath.”
I didn’t want it to be remembered. I wanted it not to be happening. My dead hand felt heavy in my lap. I could not fight fire fever, any more than I could fight the crumbling, and I could not use my magic to send it away.
“Thank you, Elin.” Allie’s voice was soft as the patter of rain against stone. “I know how much stories mean to your people. Caleb and Karin taught me that.”
Elin shut her eyes, as if the words pained her. “She has truly been with you. All this time.”
Karin had been with me when my own mother had failed me. I would not regret that. If she were here now, perhaps all would be well. I stared out into the night as the rain slowed. Karin’s magic would be no more use against fire fever than mine.
“Liza?” Allie moved closer to me, as if I were the one who needed comforting. “I could tell you the rest of the story, if you want.” It took a moment to remember which story she meant. Not the ones Elin had promised to remember her in. The one about the summoner Rhianne, whose shadow became tangled into a tree when she died.
“Which of us are you trying to distract now?” I asked Allie.
Allie laughed, but the laughter turned to coughing. I held her until the coughing eased, then offered her the water skin. She drank more deeply. “Karin says one of the jobs of stories is to take us away from where we are. It’s not their only job, but it’s an important one.”
“My mom thinks so, too,” I said.
Elin’s shoulders stiffened. “What story is it you speak of?”
“The one about the First Tree,” Allie told her. “Do you know it?”
The last drops of rain dripped from our shelter. Elin caught one in her hand. “I do indeed. You are not the only person my mother has told stories to.”
I wouldn’t feel badly for Elin now. I wouldn’t forget that if not for Elin, we would not be here.
“We were at”—Allie began coughing again—“the part where Rhianne’s daughter came.”
“Naturally.” Elin’s voice held a wry edge. “If I tell this story, will you save your strength and stop trying to speak?”
Allie raised her head. “I have strength enough for a story.”
Elin watched as the rain beaded on her hands. “I would tell it, just the same.”
Allie reached for the water skin, shook her head, and left it beside her. “All right.” She leaned against me.
Come on, Caleb, I thought. My visions had given no sense of how long his journey would take. I could take Allie and look for him, but if I took the wrong path and missed him she’d have no chance at all. I did the only thing I could: kept watch over us all while Elin told the story.
“After Rhianne’s shadow found its way back to the tree where her body had perished, Rhianne’s daughter—Mirinda—found her way to that same tree. Rhianne did not know her daughter at first, because Mirinda had been new-born when her mother went away.” Elin rubbed at her sleeves as she spoke, as if for comfort. “Mirinda knew her mother, though, whatever form she took.” Threads broke free of the fabric to wrap around Elin’s fingers. “That was because Mirinda had inherited her father’s magic and was as powerful a speaker as he. Mirinda called her mother with her magic, and Rhianne—the tree that was Rhianne—heard. Rhianne knew her daughter as well then, and she felt new grief at seeing her there. The grief of a tree is a strange thing indeed.”
I reached for one of the seeds in my pocket, took it in my hand. I’d so quickly grown used to their pull on me. These seeds know you, Karin had said. What did it mean, to be known by a seed or a tree?
“The tree answered Mirinda’s call,” Elin said. “It answered her grief. It stretched its branches down to offer Mirinda a single leaf, perfectly round, as quia leaves were not before summoner and tree were joined. Mirinda accepted that gift, which contained a small piece of the tree’s shadow, and of her mother’s shadow, and—through magic that even today we do not fully understand—some piece of Mirinda’s shadow as well. Mirinda coated the leaf in silver and wore it always, the only way she had of holding her mother close.” Elin scowled and let her sleeves go. They were riddled with tiny knots.
Allie hunkered down in her cloak. I dropped the seed back into my pocket with the others and wrapped my arm around her, offering what warmth I could. The clouds were clearing, and a bitter cold was settling more deeply into the air.
“It was many years before Mirinda realized that, while she wore the leaf, time stopped its forward march. She took no joy in this, though, for by that time she had life and loves of her own, and one by one she watched
them grow old and die without her.” Elin tugged at a knot. It dissolved at her touch. “Mirinda returned to the tree that was also her mother, and she pleaded with Rhianne to offer this gift of long life to all her people.” Elin kept melting the knots she’d made, one by one. “Mirinda said if her mother would not do this thing, she would remove the leaf she wore, and so follow those she’d already lost into death. Then Mirinda waited, not eating, growing thin, for she was stubborn indeed.”
Allie laughed, her breath rasping. “Just like Caleb. And Karin. Who are—” Allie started coughing again, and her face flushed with the effort.
My chest ached. I would plead, too, if I knew who or what to plead with.
“I thought you had agreed to let me tell this story,” Elin said sharply. “Karinna and Kaylen are descended from Rhianne and Mirinda, yes, as am I, as are many others who perished in the Uprising and whose names I’ll forever hold dear. All of that came later. In the time of the story, Mirinda waited, while the tree stretched its roots deeper and deeper, looking for the thing that would make Mirinda content. No one today knows all the places those roots went. We know only that at last the tree bore its first seeds—its only seeds, until the eve of the Uprising. Rhianne bid Mirinda to tell all those she cared about to eat those seeds. And so they did, save for those they planted, and thus my people received the precious gifts of protection that put us above other creatures, whether they walk on four legs or two.”
Including humans, I thought, and shivered at how casually Elin dismissed us.
“Those gifts,” Elin went on, as if she’d said nothing troubling, “included not only long life, but all the powers my people have in common, above and beyond their different magics—gifts such as night vision, and distance hearing, and silent walking, and all the ways in which we are both harder to hurt and harder to heal. Gifts that meant it was never again a simple matter for weather or sickness or attacks by lesser creatures to destroy us.”
“Glamour, too?” I pried a loose rock free of the asphalt and tapped it against my stone hand. The rock crumbled. Road stone from Before was weaker than it looked.
“Of course glamour, too,” Elin said, as if it were a small thing. Karin must have left glamour out when she’d first told Allie the story, because until recently, Allie had no more idea what glamour was than I had. Maybe Karin had thought her and Caleb’s own vows not to use glamour were enough to protect us and that we would never come upon other faerie folk who’d survived the War.
“Glamour’s not—it’s not—” Allie struggled for breath. I stroked her hair and made shushing sounds, but she ignored me. “It’s not—right. No one should use—that kind of—power.” She began coughing hard, coughing and spitting up splatters of phlegm.
“You, whose people sent fire raining down from the skies, would lecture me about right and wrong?” Elin’s voice held no gentleness now.
I rubbed Allie’s back. “Allie and I didn’t send the fires. You know that.” Somewhere in the night, an owl hooted. I tensed, but there was nothing we could do about owls except hope they didn’t notice us. Owls were silent as faerie folk, and since the War, they held poison in their claws.
“The fires were every human’s fault.” Elin sounded weary, as if repeating an old lesson. “Would you like the rest of this story or not?”
“The fires”—Allie coughed—“were wrong, too—”
“Shhhh.” I drew Allie close as I picked up another stone. Flint, stronger than asphalt. I could make a weapon of it, given time, or use it to start a fire.
“We are near enough to the story’s end,” Elin said. “In time Mirinda passed from the Realm, but her descendants, through all the ages of stone and fire, bronze and iron, inherited their mother’s gifts, though only those of the first line were granted leaves from what we now call the First Tree. As I, too, would have been had the tree not fallen to the fires.”
Mom wore Caleb’s leaf from that tree. Karin had a leaf from it, too, which she’d used to create the Wall around her town. “The First Tree stood that long?” Did Faerie’s trees, like its people, live so much longer than those in my world?
Elin smoothed the last snags from her sleeves. “It continues to stand, if one can trust Toby’s tangled words.”
I remembered the tree shadow in Faerie, branches reaching like fingers toward the sky. “Toby’s right.”
“So Rhianne suffers with her people still.” Elin sighed. Near the horizon, a waning quarter moon struggled to poke through the clouds.
The owl hooted again. Allie leaned her head on my shoulder. I dropped my flint to brush the sweaty hair from her face. Her breathing was uneven, her eyes too bright in the faint moonlight. I could call her back if I had to. That wouldn’t heal her, but it might buy us some time.
Elin lifted her head. “Someone watches us. You know this?”
I hadn’t known, though some part of me had been listening. I always listened, but I would never hear as well as faerie folk did. Rhianne had seen to that. What made Elin’s people so much more worthy of protection than my own?
“Of course you don’t know.” Elin spoke as if it were my fault no tree had ever offered my people such gifts. “I will go out, then, and see to what you cannot.” Elin slipped from beneath the shelter, crossing the black stone to the edge of the forest.
I crawled gently from Allie’s side to stand just outside, straining to hear what Elin heard, to see what she saw—to be something other than helpless and human. A shadow flickered at the edge of my sight.
I had an instant to throw myself to the ground before the owl’s talons pierced my back.
Chapter 11
There was fire in those talons, fire that burned deep as they dug into my shoulders, seeking muscle and bone. “Go—” My voice froze, just as my body did as I tried to beat the creature off. Emptiness swept through me, fire turning to ice as the owl’s paralyzing poison took hold. Wings flapped at the corners of my sight.
Footsteps scrabbled over stone. Allie stood before me, legs trembling, face glistening with sweat. Run, Allie. I couldn’t speak the words—any words—aloud.
She didn’t run. She reached for the owl on my back. There was a flash of silver light, brighter than any glowing stone, and the wings ceased their flapping.
Allie toppled backward. I tried to grab her, but my poisoned body wouldn’t move. Her shadow flickered out. Allie!
Motion blurred around me. Nearby, Elin. Farther off, some wild gray creature slower than the owl. I heard cloth tear as Elin pulled the owl from my shoulders and tossed it, lifeless, to the black stone. A gray muzzle nudged my face. Matthew. I couldn’t make my lips form his name. I couldn’t remember why it was so important that he come. He moved from me to nudge Allie, but she didn’t move. Elin crouched beside them.
Matthew threw back his head and howled. Caleb ran to his side, wearing an oilskin cloak and nylon pack. It was important that Caleb come, too. He knelt by Allie, his face grim, while Elin took the pack from his shoulders. He put his hands to Allie’s chest. Silver light bloomed, then flickered out as surely as her shadow had. Matthew whined. Caleb moved toward me. I saw his hands reach for my shoulders and back, felt a searing wave of fire. I found voice at last to scream as more silver flashed around me.
Numbness left my limbs, my thoughts. I rolled away from Caleb as the fire burned on. “Not me—Allie! It’s Allie who needs you!”
Caleb grabbed my wrists, flesh and stone, pulling me up to sitting. I fought him. Matthew gave a sharp bark.
“Liza!” Caleb didn’t let go. “If I do not heal you, you cannot call her back!”
His words washed over me like cold river water. Shadow. Allie had no shadow. Caleb couldn’t heal anyone without a shadow.
Only a summoner could call shadows back from the dead.
I slumped in his hold. Caleb returned his hands to my shoulders and back. Healing cold flowed through my wounds. Matthew leaned his head on my leg with a sigh. I dug my fingers into his ruff. There were orange leaves in
his fur and a long scratch down one side of his nose.
Elin remained by Allie. Behind them, the first hints of gray touched the sky. “She killed the owl,” the weaver said. “To save you.”
There’s only two times it’s okay to kill with healing magic. When someone is in pain and when someone’s causing it. Allie had used her magic on the owl, the magic that had already made her so ill. She’d pushed too hard at last, and she’d—
No. Caleb wouldn’t have spoken of calling her back if there wasn’t hope of saving her. His healing magic flared with a final icy gust and was gone, leaving me gasping. I released Matthew and crawled over to Allie. Her arms were spread wide, and there was a small smile on her face. I touched her brow. It was warm, as if her body didn’t know her shadow was gone. Matthew looked up at me, sorrow in his wolf’s eyes.
I wasn’t helpless, not now. My magic could yet set this right.
“Careful, Liza.” Caleb’s voice was stretched taut. “Do nothing you cannot do safely.”
“Allie!” I would set this right. I would protect her like I’d promised. “Allison! Come here!”
No answer. I called on all my magic, all my power. “Allison! Come back!” My voice rang through the growing dawn.
Some memory of shadow flickered beside her, like a wick reluctant to catch. “Allison!”
Something stirred deep within me. “Come here,” the River called to me in turn. “Seek sleep, seek darkness, seek rest.” Its voice urged me toward the depths and the gray. The seeds in my pocket fought that pull once more, urging me to the surface, toward sun and growth and light.
If I moved toward the light, I would lose her. “Allison!” The flickering shadow gained strength, took on shape: a gray girl in a loose nightgown, looking down at her physical body as if it were strange to her.
“Go to her,” the River said.
Of course I wanted to go to her. I reached for Allie’s shadow hand with my flesh one. Her hand passed right through mine, and ice knifed up my arm. Allie drew back from me like a wary cat. I reached for her with my stone hand, but her shadow passed through that as well.
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