Winterling

by Sarah Prineas

  She pushed him up to the path and helped him along it until they could climb onto the gravel road. The boy bent over, panting. Fer rubbed her shoulder, which was sore from him leaning on it.

  In the distance, the same dog that had howled before howled again. The boy straightened with a jerk. “Wolves,” he muttered.

  “No, that’s the Carsons’ dog,” Fer said. She took his arm over her shoulder again. “Come on. It’s not very far from here. Grand-Jane is there.”

  “Why is she grand?” the boy asked.

  “It’s her name,” Fer answered. “She’s my grandmother, and her name is Jane.” Fer had lived with Grand-Jane always, since she was a baby and her parents, Grand-Jane had told her, had “gone from this world,” which Fer had always assumed was a nice way of saying that they were dead. She had tried asking her grandma about her parents—how they had died, what they’d been like—but these questions just made Grand-Jane even more quiet . . . as if talking about them made her heart hurt. So Fer didn’t ask anymore.

  Her grandma wasn’t going to like Fer bringing home this strange boy and his wolf bites, not after Fer had run off into the night. Because of that, Grand-Jane would be full of sharp questions and boring punishments.

  But Fer couldn’t exactly leave an injured person bleeding to death in the bushes, could she?

  After what seemed like a long time, they came to the driveway that led to Fer’s house. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

  He didn’t answer.

  Ahead was the house, the windows blazing with light. On the front porch stood a dark figure, the porch light bright behind her.

  “Wait here,” Fer whispered, and, leaving the boy, squelched across the rain-damp grass to the porch.

  Grand-Jane came down the steps, her mouth open to scold. When she saw Fer she stopped.

  Silently Fer flung herself at her grandma, a quick, fierce hug, sorry-for-being-late, sorry-for-making-you-worry.

  Grand-Jane returned the hug, making Fer feel warm and safe, then set her back, arms on her shoulders, looking her over. “You’re wet.” Her eyes widened and her hands gripped hard with worry. “You’re bleeding!”

  Fer shook her head. “Not me.” She turned and pointed. The boy crouched there, a lump of shadow at the edge of the circle of brightness shed by the porch light. “It’s his blood. Wolves bit him.”

  “Wolves?” Grand-Jane asked sharply. She started across the dead, brown grass.

  Fer trotted beside her. “Yes, three wolves.”

  Grand-Jane reached the boy. He looked up.

  He had yellow eyes, Fer saw. Gleaming in the light, like they had little flames burning inside them.

  Grand-Jane stared at him. Fer stepped past her and took the boy’s arm, helping him to his feet. “Come inside,” she said.

  “No.” Grand-Jane held up her hand. “His kind is not welcome here.”

  The boy blinked. His yellow eyes narrowed, and he snarled like a dog at Grand-Jane.

  Fer looked from Grand-Jane to the boy and back. “What do you mean, his kind? He’s hurt.”

  Grand-Jane shook her head and folded her arms. In the darkness she looked like a stern column. Drops of drizzle shone in her gray hair like diamonds. “We can’t help him.”

  “We’re not leaving him out here,” Fer said. This was going to be like all of their arguments, wasn’t it. Fer protesting, her grandma like a brick wall, unmovable. “He’s bleeding. And I said I would help him. I promised.”

  Grand-Jane didn’t answer, but Fer saw a shadow cross her face. After a long moment, she spoke. “You are bound by that promise then, my girl,” she said slowly. “Bring him inside.”

  The boy sagged against Fer. “Come on,” she said to him. She dragged him past her grandmother to the porch and up the stairs. Grand-Jane followed. They brought the boy to the warm red-and-yellow kitchen.

  “Put him there,” Grand-Jane said, pointing at the braided rug next to the table.

  Fer lowered the boy to the rug, kneeling beside him. His eyes were closed. His face was pale, except for a smear of blood across his cheek.

  Clatter-crash, and Grand-Jane slammed the kettle onto the stove and lit the gas, boiling water. She leaned over and picked a few leaves off the comfrey plant growing in one of the pots along the windowsill. “Get the shirt off him, Jennifer.” She stepped out of the kitchen into the stillroom. She’d use herbs to make a poultice, and maybe tea for the pain and to protect against infection.

  The boy’s eyes flickered open.

  “Can you sit up so I can get this off?” Fer asked.

  “I’ll do it myself,” he said. Slowly he sat up, then pulled off the shirt over his head.

  She gulped. Two vicious slashes over his ribs, bleeding freshly now that the shirt was pulled away. On his upper arm, deep punctures welling blood, another bite on his shoulder. On his other arm, two deep slashes.

  The boy pulled the shirtsleeve away from the bites, wincing. The cloth was clotted with blood.

  Fer took the damp shirt from him. Something was pinned to the sleeve. She turned it toward the light to see better. A gleaming black feather, smudged with blood.

  “What did she mean, your kind?” Fer whispered.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “None of your business.”

  “It is too my business,” Fer said more loudly. “I helped you fight those wolves. I saved you.”

  Grand-Jane stood in the kitchen doorway, her hands full of bottles and bags of herbs. “You saved his life, Jennifer?” she asked. Her gaze shifted to the boy. “Is that how it is? You owe her your life?”

  He looked away.

  “Is it?” Grand-Jane asked. She crossed to the table and set down the herbs.

  He shrugged, then winced. “So what if it is?”

  Grand-Jane gave a grim smile. “I may not have much power, but I do have knowledge. I know what you are, Puck,” she said. “And I know the rule that binds you.” She pointed at the boy. “She saved your life. Now you must swear an oath to repay her.”

  The boy didn’t answer, just glared at Grand-Jane with his yellow eyes.

  “Swear the oath!” Grand-Jane said.

  Fer shivered, hearing the power in her grandma’s voice. She didn’t understand what these two were talking about. It was like they knew something she didn’t—something old and dangerous.

  “I won’t,” the boy snarled. He turned to Fer. His eyes looked straight into hers—wild eyes, wilder than the wolves or the shadowy black night. He opened his mouth to snap at her and then his eyes widened, as if he’d just realized something. “I can see,” he whispered so only Fer could hear. “I know who you are.”

  “I know who I am too,” Fer whispered back. At least, she thought she did. “I want to know who you are.” She leaned closer. “Wolves were after you, but we don’t have wolves here. You didn’t tell me your name. Where did you come from? What kind of person are you?”

  The boy shook his head, as if shaking off her questions. “You must come back with me,” he whispered urgently. “You’re the only one who can—” He broke off as Grand-Jane leaned down, putting herself between Fer and the boy.

  “Enough,” Grand-Jane ordered. “I will put a poultice on those wolf bites, Puck, but then you must go back where you came from and trouble us no more.”

  The boy looked up at Grand-Jane, and for just a moment he looked like a boy, still shaky from the wolves’ attack, frightened, and angry. Very angry.

  But when Fer blinked and turned her head slightly away, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, something else, something dangerous and wild, something tricky and not to be trusted.

  Something not a boy at all.

  Rook felt a snarl building in his chest. He wanted to take the shifter-bone from his pocket, pop it into his mouth, and feel it settle under his tongue. He would shift into a horse and trample the sharp-eyed witch and steal away this strange girl who didn’t belong on this side of the Way, and then flee on bloody hooves into the night.

>   If he were a wildling, he would do that. But he wasn’t. He wouldn’t swear an oath, but the girl had saved his life, and even a puck had to admit that he owed her . . . something.

  Growling, he picked up his bloody shirt and climbed shakily to his feet. Now that the girl had opened the Way, it would stay open until she closed it. He could go back through. Even with the Mór and her wolves after him, he was better off there than in this strange place. He’d heard his kind couldn’t live in this world for long, and now he realized why. This land had no magic. It was ordinary as bread.

  The girl knelt on the braided rug, staring at him with wide, gray-blue eyes. She had opened the Way, but he doubted she knew what she had done. He knew who she was, though, knew why the old woman was hiding her here. But he could see clearly enough that the girl was too young and ignorant, and she couldn’t do anything to help.

  Carefully he pulled the shirt on over his head.

  The old grand-woman had backed up a step. She was afraid of him. Good. She should be.

  “The Way is open,” he said. He meant it as a warning.

  The old woman blinked, and then scowled. “You must close it again.”

  He shrugged, feeling the sharp ache of the wolf bites. “I can’t.” He nodded at the girl, still kneeling on the rug. “It opened for her, not for me,” he said. “You know as well as I do what she is.”

  The old woman’s face went very pale, and she drew herself up. “She is my granddaughter, and that is all. Now leave here, Puck,” she commanded, pointing toward the door. “Go!” she said again. And a third time, she shouted, “Be gone!”

  An order given three times had power, even here. He didn’t have any choice about it. He went.

  Chapter Three

  Fer was brimming with questions, but after the boy left, Grand-Jane slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. “I can’t talk about this now, Jennifer,” she said, rubbing her eyes as if very tired. She pointed at the stairs. “Go to bed.”

  Fer went, but she lay in bed for a long time, wondering about the strange boy. Puck, her grandma had called him. Grand-Jane had seemed strong and powerful in the kitchen with the boy. And she knew things. Magical things.

  During the night Fer sank into the soft darkness of sleep and dreamed of the pool, glimmering with the moon’s light. Only this time, it wasn’t snarling wolves and a surly boy that came through, shattering the water, it was a woman who came through without a ripple, stepping onto the soft moss. The woman looked young, not much more than a girl, and wore green leggings and a long coat, and knee-high leather boots; her hair was the color of moonlight, and she glowed even more brightly than the moon.

  Fer gasped at the young woman’s beauty and woke herself up.

  “That was a strange dream,” she whispered to herself, and her voice sounded papery and thin in the velvety darkness.

  The next morning, Grand-Jane stood at the back door with her hands on her hips, surveying the empty fields that stretched to the horizon. A dusting of frost silvered the dirt, and heavy gray clouds covered the sky. Cold air blew in the open door.

  “Below freezing last night,” Grand-Jane said, frowning. “It’s late for that. We won’t plant the lettuce today after all.”

  Fer stepped up beside her, sniffing the cold breeze. She wrinkled her nose. It didn’t smell right. Didn’t smell like spring coming, as it had the day before. She rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. “Grand-Jane—” she started to ask, all of her questions piling up in the back of her throat.

  “Not now,” her grandma snapped back. “I have to think.”

  Fer swallowed down her questions—for now—and followed Grand-Jane to the stillroom, where her grandma collected herbs and started grinding them in a mortar. “We never should have let him in.” Her hands busy, Grand-Jane nodded toward the kitchen. “Get the honey.”

  “Why not?” Fer asked. She ducked into the kitchen and grabbed the pot of honey from the table. Bringing it back, she set it on the counter. “Where did the boy go? Do you think he’s all right?”

  “Oh, that one will always be all right,” Grand-Jane said. “Mugwort,” she said. “On the top shelf.”

  Mugwort. That was for protection, and to ward a place from danger. Was the puck-boy dangerous? And the honey, from Grand-Jane’s own bees. Fer knew from her lessons on healing lore and magic that the honey would bind the protection to this place even more strongly.

  Her grandma reached for a stoppered vial on the shelf over her head. Then she took another mortar and pestle and shoved it down the length of the counter to Fer. “Honey and pennyroyal,” she said. “And a pinch of rue. Until it’s a fine paste.”

  Fer gritted her teeth. Fine. If Grand-Jane didn’t want to answer questions, Fer knew well enough that there was no point in asking. Not now, at least. Fer pulled the step stool to the counter and climbed up. On the stool she was as tall as her grandma and could bear down on grinding the herbs. She set the mortar on the counter in front of her and poured in a dollop of honey, then added a heap of pennyroyal and a pinch of rue, and set to work. Honey was impossible. She blended herbs and honey until her elbow ached.

  After Fer had finished with the herbs and honey, Grand-Jane put her to work dusting the stillroom, from the shelves over the workbench to the boxes of beeswax candles, to the rows of distilling jars that lined the window at the end of the room. While she did that, her grandma took the herb mixture and marked the threshold of the front door and the kitchen door, and every window in the house, while muttering spells under her breath.

  “What does it protect against?” Fer asked, coming into the kitchen with an armful of dirty bottles and the sticky mortar and pestle. Grand-Jane stood on a chair smudging a finger-smear of paste along the top edge of the kitchen window.

  Grand-Jane dabbed the herb spell into the corners of the window frame. “Against uninvited visitors,” she answered.

  On Sunday, Grand-Jane sat Fer at the kitchen table. “Where I can keep an eye on you,” she said. She plunked down Hildegard’s Causae et Curae in front of her. “The section on vulnerary herbs.” She tapped the book with her finger. “All the way through. Read it aloud.”

  “I’m going outside after,” Fer said. Even though it was pouring down rain, the day pulled at her, the wind whooping around the corners of the house. She didn’t care if she got wet out there.

  “No, you are not,” Grand-Jane said firmly.

  While Fer slogged through the reading, Grand-Jane sat across from her at the table, reading glasses perched on her nose, stitching up the tears in Fer’s patch-jacket, the ones left by the brambles around the round moon-pool.

  Fer paused in her reading. The questions finally overflowed. “The puck-boy said the way is open,” she said. “What did he mean by that? What way is he talking about? Grand-Jane, what is going on?”

  “Never mind. Go on with your reading,” Grand-Jane said, and gave Fer a look over the top of her glasses.

  “No,” Fer said, slapping the book closed. She knew something had happened yesterday, something full of wild magic. And that something had to do with her, and maybe with that strange dream about the lovely woman coming through the moon-pool.

  Grand-Jane’s mouth set in a straight line. “Then go to your room until you can behave appropriately.”

  Fer jumped to her feet. For a moment she balanced there, half willing to obey, half ready to flee outside. If Grand-Jane wasn’t going to tell her anything, maybe she could explore the way, find out by herself what her grandmother and the boy were talking about. She took a step toward the door.

  “Stop!” Grand-Jane pushed back her chair. “It’s too—”

  “—Dangerous,” Fer finished for her. “Why, Grand-Jane? I’m only going outside. Why won’t you answer my questions? What are you so afraid of?”

  Her grandma paused for a long minute, gazing at Fer. Deciding. “All right.” She set her mending on the table and leaned forward in her chair. “Listen, my girl,” she said. “Did you think about whe
re that puck came from?”

  “I don’t even know what a puck is.” Fer clenched her fists. She would get answers. She would. “I know that the boy came from a place where they have wolves. That means he didn’t come from anywhere around here. And it looked like he came right through the pool. What is ‘the way,’ Grand-Jane? And what is a puck?”

  Grand-Jane fixed Fer with a sharp eye. “I can see I have no choice. I’d better tell you. Maybe it will make you less likely to go off and get into trouble.” She reached out and tapped the closed herbology book. “You know that spells and herbs have power, Jennifer.”

  Outside, a fierce gust of wind slammed into the house, rattling the windows in their frames. Fer shivered and nodded. Yes, she knew her grandma’s magic with the herbs and her bees was real.

  “We live here, my girl, because it is close to the Way, and echoes of its magic are felt here, in our world. The Way is—” Grand-Jane shook her head. “It is hard to explain,” she muttered to herself. “The Way is like a . . . like a road or a path to get to another place, another land, where the people are very different from us and are governed by different rules. Magic runs through them and their world.”

  Fer’s heart beat faster. This was so much more than just herbs-and-honey magic. “Another . . . place?”

  “Yes,” Grand-Jane said. “The Way has been closed for a long time. It is supposed to stay closed. It shouldn’t . . .” She glanced out the window, where rain was lashing down and the bushes beside the beehives were thrashing in the wild wind. “Maybe it will be all right,” she added in a low voice. She stood and started for the still-room.

  Fer followed, determined to get the rest. “You still haven’t told me what a puck is,” she reminded.

  “Oh, the puck.” Grand-Jane waved her hand, as if waving away a pesky fly. “Pucks are untrustworthy, and they are trouble. That puck didn’t like coming through the Way. You’ll never see him again.”

  The puck-boy had been a little frightening, but for some reason Grand-Jane’s certainty that he was gone from her life forever made Fer feel a little cold and empty inside.