Winterling

by Sarah Prineas

  The wolves paced toward her, growling.

  Fer stepped back, ready to run, when something else emerged from the mist, dark and person-shaped. It was the puck-boy. He spoke sharply to the wolves, and they faded back to the edge of the forest and lurked there in the mist.

  The puck-boy looked different from the last time she’d seen him. Before, he’d been ragged and sort of desperate and frightened. Coming around the edge of the pool to where she waited, he looked stiff and formal, wearing a black woolen coat a little like a uniform, with a black feather pinned to the sleeve.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  He stared blankly at her. “What?”

  “The wolf bites. Did you get them taken care of?”

  “Oh.” He frowned. “I did, yes.”

  In the trees all around, the crows sat silent. That was a strange way for birds to behave. Their watching silver eyes made Fer’s skin feel prickly.

  The wolves were watching too. One of them circled the pool, flowing like quicksilver over a dead log and around a tree. It yipped and another yipped back an answer—as if they were talking to each other.

  Keeping an eye on them, Fer spoke to the puck-boy. “Are those wolves going to attack us?”

  He didn’t even glance aside at them. “They are not. They’re under orders.”

  “Whose orders?” Fer asked.

  “I am sent to bring you through the Way,” the puck-boy said, ignoring her question. “The Lady invites you to come.”

  Fer’s heart jumped in her chest. “The Lady?” she asked. “Who is that?”

  “She is the . . .” He hesitated, then went on. “She is a Lady of that place. She wants to meet you.”

  “I know that my father went to be with my mother on the other side of the Way,” Fer said. “Is that why the Lady wants me to come? Did she know them? Does she know what happened to them?”

  “The Lady will answer your questions,” the puck-boy said again, his voice flat.

  Fer felt a flare of excitement. That’s what she wanted—answers to her questions. Like who she really was and what had happened to her parents. “I want to come through the Way,” she said.

  “Then come.” He held out a hand.

  Fer took a step toward him, then stopped. Wait. What about Grand-Jane? She couldn’t just disappear the way her father had. “I can’t.” She gave a frustrated sigh. “I have to go back and tell my grandma.”

  “She’ll not let you come,” the puck-boy said.

  He was right about that. But one way or another, Fer would get through the Way. “Just wait,” she told him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Chapter Five

  Fer ran all the way home. Grand-Jane was going to be so mad about her getting off the bus early and going to the moon-pool. Grand-Jane could shout all she wanted, but Fer was going through the Way. Maybe she could find out how, exactly, her father and mother had died. And she could learn from the Lady who she really was, what it meant to have a mother who had lived in that other land. Fer thought about her father’s hastily scribbled note. You know I never belonged there, he’d written. And I feel right when I am with Laurelin, like I am in the right place for the first time ever in my life.

  Fer knew what it was like to feel, like an itch under her skin or a faint ache behind her eyes, that she was wrong. The wrong person in the wrong place. She felt a rush of warmth for her father, even though she’d never known him. He had been just like her. Maybe, through the Way, it would be different.

  Fer ran crunch-splash-crunch through the puddles on the driveway. Crows had gathered in the branches of the oak trees and cawed at her as she went past. Ignoring them, Fer ran around to the back of the house, went up the stairs, and burst into the kitchen.

  Grand-Jane came out of the stillroom, wiping her hands on a rag. Without speaking, she leaned against the stillroom doorway, her eyes narrowed. Fer knew that look. Grand-Jane was furious.

  Fer caught her breath and rubbed the raindrops off her face with the back of her hand. She took a step farther into the kitchen.

  “Boots,” Grand-Jane said sharply.

  Fer bent over and slipped the muddy boots off her feet, then straightened. Might as well get it over with. “I went to the Way.”

  Grand-Jane froze.

  “I met the puck-boy again,” Fer said. “He asked me to come to the other place. I’m going.”

  Grand-Jane caught her breath and clenched her hands around the dirty rag. “You will not go,” she said fiercely.

  Fer gulped. Now that she actually had to tell Grand-Jane, it wasn’t so simple. A lump rose up in her throat, blocking her voice.

  “I will not lose you, my girl,” Grand-Jane said.

  The way she’d lost Owen, she meant. Fer tried another argument. “The puck-boy says a Lady wants to see me. I’m invited.”

  Grand-Jane didn’t speak.

  “I—” Fer started. Maybe this would work. “What if I promise to come back? Will you let me go then?”

  When Grand-Jane spoke, her usually sharp voice was a despairing croak. “Whether I let you go or not, you’ll go anyway, just as Owen did.”

  “I have to go. I have to,” Fer said. Grand-Jane could watch and protect and guard, just as she’d always done, but somehow Fer would get through the Way.

  A sigh shuddered out of Grand-Jane. “All right.” She shook her head, and that seemed to shake her out of her frozen despair. “All right,” she repeated more steadily. She set the rag on the counter with shaking hands. “I can see I have no choice. Say it.”

  Fer blinked. “Say what?”

  “Your oath,” Grand-Jane said impatiently.

  All right. “I promise to come back.”

  “This is not just a promise, Jennifer. It’s an oath. You are bound by that oath,” Grand-Jane said.

  “I’m not sure what that means, Grand-Jane,” she said shakily.

  Grand-Jane’s eyes narrowed. “You will have to learn the rules that govern the people through the Way. It is not the same as here. Now, we will pack some things and I will tell you as much as I know. I won’t let you go there unprotected.”

  The night was velvety dark. Her backpack weighing on her shoulders, Fer padded up the path toward the pool. A breeze rustled through the bare branches of the trees, and off to her left the stream gurgled. The rain had stopped and a chilly wind had blown the heavy clouds away. Overhead the crescent moon gave Fer enough light to see the path snaking along before her.

  As she came up to the pool, Fer slowed to a walk. Her sneakered feet were silent on the mossy bank. She felt jittery with excitement. The pool’s water was ruffled by the breeze, making the reflection of the moon wavery. It wasn’t a full moon reflected in the water, but the crescent moon.

  No puck-boy was waiting for her.

  Fer slung the backpack onto the damp ground and sat down next to the pool. He would come for her, and when he did, she’d be ready.

  Fer wore sneakers and jeans, a warm sweater, and over it, her patch-jacket. A spell-bag of protective herbs was in her pocket. Her backpack was stuffed with a change of clothes, a nightgown, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and, nestled at the bottom, the wooden box with OWEN on the lid. Grand-Jane had added bags of healing herbs and vials of tincture to the box and insisted she take it with her.

  While Grand-Jane had packed the clothes into Fer’s backpack, Fer hadn’t been able to sit still; she’d pulled clothes out of her dresser drawers and piled them on the bed.

  “Listen, my girl,” Grand-Jane had said. “I’ve lived close to the Way for my entire life, and I’ve seen things and read things that you need to know. In that land, swearing an oath is more than just making a promise. If you swear an oath to do something, you must do it, or terrible things will happen. If their land is like cloth, then a broken oath is like a stain on that cloth, a stain that will never come out. Do you understand?”

  Fer nodded. She understood. Oaths were bone deep, and broken oaths broke the land, too.
>
  “Good,” Grand-Jane said. “Now, did you notice that I ordered the puck three times to leave our house?”

  Grand-Jane had seemed very powerful in that moment. Fer nodded again.

  “Mmm,” Grand-Jane said, and looked at Fer with pursed lips. “Another rule of their kind is the rule of three. An order given three times requires obedience. An oath of loyalty given three times binds the swearer absolutely, until death. A question asked three times has power; it compels the one asked to answer. But it’s not a power to be used lightly, not with their kind, because you never know, with them, how your questions might bind you. You must be very, very careful who you ask, and what questions you ask them.”

  “What do you mean by their ‘kind’?” Fer asked. “You said they’re not human. What are they?” And what was she, exactly?

  “They are wilder than we are, and have animal or plant . . .” She paused. “Not spirits, exactly. It’s as if they evolved to become what they now are from different animals, like foxes and deer and eagles. Or from trees, like birches or pines. They were those things at one time, and are still tied to them. Some part of them remains a fox, or a deer, or a tree. It is a kind of magic we do not have here.”

  “So the puck-boy is really a dog?” Fer asked.

  “No, the puck is something else altogether. Pucks are loyal to no one and serve no one, except in very rare situations. That’s why he wouldn’t swear an oath to you, Jennifer, even after you saved his life. Pucks have many names and can change shape, which is why you saw him as a dog first. They make trouble wherever they go, and they go wherever they will. You must be very careful not to let the puck lead you into danger.” Grand-Jane went to Fer’s dresser and took out a pair of socks. “Here. Take an extra pair.”

  Fer took them and wedged them in beside the OWEN box. “And I’m one of these other people?” she dared ask.

  Grand-Jane gave her a curt nod. “There’s more of them in you than I realized. It is dangerous for you to go, but I see that we don’t have any choice about this.” Then Grand-Jane added three more things to Fer’s backpack: a bottle with a cork stopper, a pencil, and a tight roll of paper. For writing messages, she said, that Fer could send back through the Way.

  “I’m not sending you without protection,” Grand-Jane said. “I can’t do much from here, but you will have more questions. The Way is open, so I can send you what answers I have, if you need them.”

  Fer stared at the pool, thinking about oaths that bound. And about why she was going. Grand-Jane was worried and frightened, but she didn’t need to be. Fer felt something pulling at her from that other place, something she felt in her bones. Her father had said she belonged there. Maybe she did. And she had a story without an ending pulling at her too.

  The water rippled, and then it stilled. The night around her fell silent. She blinked, and the crescent moon reflected in the still pool water grew fat and round and yellow.

  Fer climbed to her feet and slung the backpack over her shoulders. The Way was open, the puck-boy had said. He was supposed to meet her. Where was he?

  The air grew taut with waiting. “Come on,” Fer whispered.

  Nothing happened. The night was so quiet, Fer heard the sound of her own heart beating. She gazed down at the pool.

  When the puck-boy and the wolves had come through the Way, the moon-pool had shattered. But the wolves hadn’t been dripping wet. The puck-boy hadn’t been wet, either. Just bloody.

  Fer rubbed her fingertips together, remembering the tingle of power she’d felt when the wolves and the puck-boy had come through the pool. The Way was open.

  Without a second thought, Fer took a deep breath, and jumped.

  Chapter Six

  She fell.

  Everything went dark. A bitterly cold wind rushed around her. She blew like a leaf, tumbling over and over again. The wind tore the pack off her back and flung it away; her braided hair unraveled and swirled around her head. The heavy smell of cold dirt filled her nose. The wind fell silent. She opened her mouth and reached for a breath and found no air, just emptiness. She floated.

  Then a sudden jolt.

  Fer gasped in a breath. She sat up and brushed tangled hair out of her eyes. The starry sky whirled overhead, then steadied. She was sprawled on the ground next to the pool, her backpack beside her. The water lapped at the same springy moss; the same tangle of bushes stood like a dark wall behind her and, overhead, bare-branched trees were silhouetted against the moonlight.

  It hadn’t worked. The Way hadn’t taken her through.

  Wait. Fer looked up. The fat, golden, round moon had moved up into the sky, and the silver-crescent moon from her world was reflected in the pool. And, she noticed, she wasn’t dripping wet. She had gone through.

  The bushes behind her rustled. “Well, it took you long enough,” a rough voice said.

  Fer scrambled to her feet. The puck-boy, his face just a pale blur in the darkness. “Hi,” she said.

  He stepped out of the shadow of the bushes. In the moonlight she could see him better, and he was frowning. “You look glad to see me.”

  “I am glad to see you,” Fer said. She really was, despite Grand-Jane’s warning about pucks. “I think you should tell me your name now.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” the puck-boy said.

  “People should know each others’ names,” Fer said. These others might have rules, but she had rules too. Like asking if somebody who’d been hurt was okay, and knowing what people called themselves. “You already know my name. It’s Jennifer. But it’s really Fer.”

  The puck-boy frowned again. “You gave me yours freely,” he muttered, “so I don’t have much choice about it, do I?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?” Fer asked.

  “I don’t,” he growled. “It’s Rook.”

  Rook? What kind of name was Rook? Oh, wait. What had Grand-Jane said about the pucks? “Do you have lots of different names?” Fer asked.

  Rook gave her a cagey look. “I’m known by other names in other places. Here I’m Rook. Can we get on with it?”

  Fer nodded. “Are you supposed to take me to the Lady?”

  Rook gave a stiff shrug. “Yes. And you are late. Hurry up.” He turned and headed down a path that looked just like the path Fer had used to come to the pool. Fer picked up her backpack, slung it over her shoulders, and followed.

  It had rained here, too, and the path was muddy and it was even colder and more dismal than at home. A brisk wind rattled the bare tree branches and tangled in Fer’s hair. She dug in her jeans pocket for an extra rubber band and tied her hair back into a messy ponytail.

  Rook didn’t talk, just led on through the moon-silvered darkness. In her world they would have come to the gravel road by now, or some farmer’s muddy field. Instead the forest grew thicker. Moonlight filtered through the branches, sending sharp-edged shadows across the path. Under Fer’s feet the ground felt more . . . solid somehow. The air felt cleaner, clearer. They left the stream, the path leading up a hill and down the other side. Fer’s backpack grew heavier, but her steps felt lighter.

  They came out of the forest and crossed a meadow rustling with waist-high dry grasses. In the wide, purple-black sky, the moon leaned toward the earth, getting ready to set. The meadow ended and the forest swallowed up the path again.

  Fer followed Rook through the waning night. All around her she felt the forest, dark and mysterious. The air felt wound tight, as if it was waiting for something. Fer felt her eyesight growing more keen; it was almost like she could see deep into the sharp slices of shadows between the trees. They’d been walking for what Fer guessed was another hour when Rook stopped suddenly and she bumped into his back. Peering over his shoulder, she saw two dark figures blocking the path. They stepped closer, into a patch of fading moonlight. A man and a woman, both dressed in gray, both with raggedy-rough gray hair and sharp eyes. Guards. The woman turned, and Fer caught a glimpse of a crow feather—the same kind of feather she’d
seen on Rook’s bloody sleeve back at Grand-Jane’s house—pinned to the sleeve of her gray shirt.

  “It’s the puck!” the man said.

  “Imagine that,” the woman said. “Hey-ho, Puck!” She grabbed Rook’s arm and he flinched. He’d been bitten on that arm, Fer remembered.

  Rook jerked his arm out of her grasp and reached back. Fer felt his fingers close over hers; then he tried to push past the man and woman. They blocked him. “What’ve you got there, puppy-puck?” the man asked, leering down at Fer. Beside him, the woman grinned, her teeth sharp and shining in the moonlight.

  Rook was taller than Fer was, and he looked older, like a high school boy. Next to the looming gray-clad guards he seemed slight and young. Ignoring the guard’s question, he gripped Fer’s hand tightly. She saw him put his other hand into his pocket. He’d done that before, hadn’t he? What did he keep in there?

  The guards stepped closer, crowding.

  “Back off,” Rook snarled up into their faces. “I’m under orders.”

  “So are we,” the woman said. “The hunt is on.”

  Rook dropped Fer’s hand. “What, now?” he asked.

  Both guards nodded, grinning.

  Something about their grins looked familiar. “Have I seen you before?” Fer asked.

  The woman turned her leering smile on Fer. “I don’t know, girlie. Have you?”

  Fer tried her trick, the one she’d used to see Rook better when she first met him, turning her head to look out of the corner of her eyes. She caught a quick glimpse of the woman’s face warping into a gray muzzle, the wide mouth full of teeth. Tufted gray ears poked up through her hair.

  The people of this land had once been wild, Grand-Jane had told her. Now Fer knew it for sure. This wolf-woman had chased Rook through the Way and bit him. Fer put her hand into her jacket pocket and gripped the cloth bag with the protective spell in it. “We’re supposed to go to the Lady,” she said. “And we’re late. You’d better let us go.”

  The wolf-guard flinched. “Aoooww!” She turned to the other guard. “This girl’s got a protective spell on her.”