Bones of Faerie tboft-1

by Janni Lee Simner

  “Who is she?” Allie whispered. “Did you—did you call her, too?”

  “I didn't call anyone.” But the shadow kept crying, the sort of short choking sobs babies make when they know something's wrong but they can't tell you what. I wanted to run, to hide—but I knew I couldn't escape that sound any more than I could escape the memory of bones on a moonlit hillside.

  I felt Allie's hand on my shoulder and flinched as if burned. “You can't leave her there,” Allie said.

  “Go away,” I told her.

  “She's just a baby, she doesn't understand—”

  “Go away !”

  Allie scuttled backward as I turned, her eyes wide, and I realized I'd put command into the word, the same command I'd used to call her back. I felt as if something dark were coiled inside me behind that command. A wrong word, a wrong gesture, and I would set it loose, free to destroy as the faerie folk had destroyed. I clenched my hands into fists, forcing the tension inward. Allie sighed and stopped backing away.

  She was the one who didn't understand. My sister was dead. I'd seen Father take her away. I'd seen the cracked, bloody bones that were her only remains. Even those bones were likely gone now, eaten or buried by some wild creature. No one could call anyone back after that. No one had that kind of power, not the faerie folk, not humans—no one.

  Yet the shadow cried on. My fingernails dug into my palms, drawing blood. The pain released the coiled tension, giving it somewhere to go. I thought of the knife at my belt. For just a moment, I wished Father were here— to take that blade, to put an end to me and my magic, to keep me from having to face the shadow that waited on the other side of the river. I moved my hand to the hilt, taking comfort in its familiar grip.

  A wet nose nudged my hand away. I looked up, into gray wolf eyes. I reached out, meaning to shove Matthew away.

  Instead I found myself grabbing him, holding him. I fell to my knees, clutching his fur like Allie had clutched the ropes, not daring to let go. “It's not my fault,” I whispered. Then, louder, “It's not my fault!” My screams drowned out the choking baby cries behind me. “There was nothing I could do once Father decided! You know that, you were there!” My fingers dug into his fur, surely causing pain, but the wolf remained silent, steady.

  “Matthew.” I spoke his name aloud, thinking of the gray wolf, the quiet boy, knowing that they were the same. “You were there, Matthew.” I shivered as I spoke, feeling the power beneath the words, understanding them for the call they were.

  Fur shrank from my grasp. My fingers dug into Matthew's bare shoulders as he knelt before me. Still he didn't draw away. Human arms reached out and held me. My trembling subsided. “It's not your fault,” Matthew repeated gently. “It's his fault, Liza, not yours.”

  I remembered running from the hillside where Rebecca had died, screaming her name as I did. I'd called her as surely as I'd called Allie. “But I was too late.” My voice was flat and cold, the truth of the fact seeping into my bones. I could have called Rebecca back, if only I'd gone sooner. I even could have carried her back without magic, if only I'd arrived in time.

  Matthew looked at me, but there was no blame in his human eyes. Sunlight shone on his skin and loose hair. I drew back and stood, feeling a faint flush through everything else as I thought of how I'd held him, unashamed. Allie got the raincloak from my pack and draped it over his shoulders. He pulled it absently around himself as he stood. “You didn't know,” he said.

  But I knew now. Knew that I'd been too late but had called Rebecca back anyway. Knew that she'd answered that call, as much as she was able. Knew that I was responsible for the shadow that had followed me from home, touched Kimi, and forced Allie across the river.

  I walked to the river's edge and knelt to gaze at the patch of darkness on the other side. The cries gave way to gasping, troubled breaths.

  “Rebecca,” I whispered, and she fell silent at my voice.

  Allie was right. I couldn't leave her there. “Rebecca,” I called, louder, putting command into the word. “Rebecca!” My throat tightened around that call.

  The shadow surged forward, drew back. Then it shuddered, rose up, and flew across the water, gliding toward me like a small dark bird. I opened my arms. The shadow flew into them, and I drew it close. Shadow overflowed my arms like an old blanket.

  It was only a shadow. It had no weight, but it felt cold as ice. The cold didn't chill me, though, not like it had Kimi. This was my magic, I realized. I could handle it, as surely as Jared could handle his glowing stones.

  Jared's stones had burned him. I remembered Karin saying that.

  Still I carried the shadow to the fire. As I knelt by the flames it took shape, bits of gray resolving into misty legs that kicked at the air and misty fingers that flailed for something to grasp. Downy hair covered the shadow's head, not faerie pale now but cast in shades of gray. Dark eyes blinked up at me. The baby scrunched her face and began to cry again, even as her weight settled into my arms. Somehow I knew that no one else would feel that weight—their hands would pass right through her. This was my magic. It was my responsibility.

  I rocked Rebecca in my arms. I could see right through her scrunched-up face to where my hand cradled her head. A warm breeze blew. I wrapped Rebecca in my jacket and shifted her to my shoulder. She was larger than I remembered but not by much.

  “I can't heal this,” Allie said. “Caleb told me some things I couldn't heal, but I didn't understand. What do we do with her, Liza?”

  “We'll take her to Mom,” I said, having no other answer.

  Matthew nodded. Tallow sniffed his fingers suspiciously. If any wolf scent remained, though, she forgot it as soon as Matthew scratched her behind the ears. His hand moved slowly, and he stared at his fingers, as if getting used to being human again.

  I gave him my spare clothes. The sweater strained across his shoulders, and the pants ended well above his ankles. His feet remained bare, because I didn't have extra boots.

  Allie and I walked barefoot, too, our boots and socks tied to the pack to dry in the sun. I gave Allie the rain-cloak, which trailed behind her. Our clothes remained damp in spite of the fire, but we had no others left to wear. At least the sun was high. Our clothes would dry as we walked.

  Silently I scattered the fire and threw dirt on the coals. Matthew tied the pack closed and swung it onto his back. Allie put Tallow on her shoulders. I took Rebecca, the one thing no one else could carry. We walked swiftly away, agreeing without words to put as much distance between ourselves and the river as we could.

  After a time Rebecca's sobs subsided and she seemed to sleep, with her cold cheek pressed against my shoulder. If not for that cold, I could almost have forgotten she wasn't alive. I ran a finger along the back of her head. Her soft shadow hair was cool as wool beneath frost.

  We walked through the rest of the day and into dusk. When the sky grew too dim we camped in the road, away from the trees to either side. I piled dirt under my jacket before I laid Rebecca down. Her feet kicked the air as she slept on. Tallow batted at her ankles, drew back as if at cold water, and stalked off to follow Matthew as he scavenged wood from the roadside.

  “Your hands.” Allie said sharply.

  I looked down. The green river creature had left no mark, but my palms were torn and red where I'd dug my fingernails in. Allie took my hands in her own, running her fingers over the gashes. Silver light shimmered on my palms, then sank beneath the skin, taking the redness with it and leaving a faint chill behind.

  “With all you can do,” the girl said, “you could at least take care of yourself.”

  Rebecca slept through dinner that night, and through Matthew's watch as well. The moon was high and my own watch nearly through when she woke and started crying again. I took her in my arms and rocked her, ignoring the cold I felt. I sang songs Mom had sung to me when I was small.

  “Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,

  All through the night…”

  Allie stirred, c
ast her blankets aside, and padded over to us. “She cries so much,” the girl said.

  My singing trailed to silence. I couldn't remember all the words. Rebecca fidgeted in my arms. “That's what babies do.”

  Allie knelt and tossed pieces of dead grass into the fire. I'd been planning to make rope from them. “She's crying because she doesn't want to be dead.”

  Rebecca gripped my thumb and fell silent. Her hold was surprisingly strong. I saw my own finger through her fist.

  “I'm a healer,” Allie said stiffly. Her eyes were on the flames, not me. “I've seen people die. Caleb says you have to know when to let go and when not to. He says it's harder than knowing when to break a fever or set a bone. The patient doesn't always know the right time, but neither does the healer. I don't know how Caleb decides. I don't know how I'll decide when I have to.”

  I rocked Rebecca until she stopped fidgeting and her breath deepened into sleep. I wished I had an extra blanket. I wished a blanket or jacket were enough to keep her warm. “Your watch?” I asked Allie. She'd insisted on taking one again.

  Allie looked to the sky. Scraps of cloud drifted over the moon. “I'm glad you called me back, Liza. But next time you might want to ask first. Because for someone else it might be different. And the healer can't decide alone.”

  Our food was low with the loss of Matthew's and Allie's packs, so at dawn I went hunting. Samuel's bow served me well. I loosed my arrow with hardly a sound, bringing down a chubby woodchuck that would feed us for a couple days. When I returned to camp, Matthew and Allie were setting up a spit to cook the meat, as if they hadn't doubted my success.

  Matthew grinned. “Figures you'd beat my rabbit. You always were the better hunter.” I remembered that rabbit dangling from Matthew's jaws, remembered the sound of his teeth tearing fur and crunching bone. If the thought made Matthew uneasy he gave no sign, just asked for my knife so he could skin the woodchuck. I left him and Allie to that job and checked on Rebecca. She slept wrapped in my jacket, her arms and legs curled inward as if for comfort. At my approach she smiled but kept sleeping.

  I fashioned my raincloak into a sling so that I could carry her with me as I worked. She was only shadow, I told myself—but I'd felt strange leaving her behind when I hunted.

  We spent the morning cooking the meat and then carving it. We stored it in the same plastic containers where Samuel had packed the jerky and cornmeal, yellowed containers that cracked if you handled them wrong but whose lids sealed well otherwise. The meat would only keep a day or two, but we'd likely finish by then, anyway.

  We left a little after noon. Matthew took the pack again, Allie took Tallow, and I carried Rebecca. If Samuel's map was right, the Arch was less than two days away.

  Glowing stones appeared in the road again, lit shades of orange and red, green and blue. Sometimes the road's black rock glowed as well. We slowed down, keeping watch for those lights as we walked. Rebecca slept, cried, slept again. A few stray strands of my hair fell into her face, and when I drew them away they were clear instead of black.

  The road narrowed. Maples and sycamores stretched branches overhead, sun turning the edges of their leaves to gold. Had autumn been like this Before, green leaves turned to fire as if by the light? Bright maple seeds twirled to the ground, trailing sparks behind them. Saplings grew through cracks in the black stone, slowing us further as we walked around them, staying out of reach of their young branches.

  The sparks faded as the afternoon progressed. We reached a wider stretch of river. The bridge was gone here, too, but rockfalls had dammed the water. The crossing was difficult, but we managed. Allie clung to my hand all the way.

  On the river's far side we began a long, slow climb. Near the crest of a hill another road crossed ours. On the map there were more roads here, and they looped around each other in a complicated cloverleaf pattern, but there was no sign of that cloverleaf now. Light reflected off the dust in the air, making the place shimmer. The light brightened and I looked away. I didn't want more visions.

  Yet as we reached the middle of the crossroads, light exploded behind my eyes. I fell to my knees, rubbing my temples, willing pain and light to go away. Rebecca wailed, but the sound faded as the light brightened. In that brightness I saw—

  Black roads buckling like leather, tossing away the cars that rode their surface. Roots breaking through black stone, twisting metal until blood streaked the steel like a child's mud paintings—

  People running alongside tall buildings, falling as roots broke through the earth at their feet. Dirt churning like flour in a sieve, and the people slipping from view one by one, their hands grasping air to the last, leaving behind only dirt and roots and jagged bone—

  Men and women with pale hair and silver eyes, chanting commands that brought light to stone, that made trees bend and sway, giving them strength, making them reach high and dig deep—

  Screaming, screaming everywhere, choked to silence, choked to dust—

  I screamed as well. Someone shook me. I pushed through the visions like a swimmer through water. Allie looked anxiously down, her hands on my shoulders. Tallow trembled against her neck. In the sling, Rebecca cried on.

  I looked to the earth at my knees, knowing now what lay beneath it. Blood and bone, metal and glass, all tangled with deep roots. The trees around this clearing had fed well during the War. When I looked up, I saw ropey shadows stretching from their branches toward us, not quite long enough to reach.

  I heard a strangled sound and saw Matthew bent over beside me, retching. I stumbled to my feet, reached into the pack he carried, and handed him a water bottle. He drank, coughed the water up, and drank again.

  “I can smell them,” he rasped. His face was very pale. “God, Liza, you can't believe the smell.”

  “And I can feel them,” said Allie as she took Tallow in her arms and rocked back and forth. “So many people. This will never be right. This will never be healed.”

  Something cold tugged my boot. I looked down and saw a shadow hand reaching out of the hill. I jerked away, but the shadow followed, stretching like rubber from Before. My stomach churned. I walked away, and after several steps the hand lost its grip and snapped back to earth. But still I felt it calling me. No, not calling. Yearning to be called. The shadows beneath this hill didn't want to be dead.

  I walked faster. Matthew and Allie followed right behind. Tears streamed down Allie's cheeks while Matthew looked as if he might be ill again any moment.

  Rebecca kept crying. I rocked her as I walked, not sure which of us I sought to comfort.

  Wind blew around my ankles as we descended the hill. I didn't look down. I knew I'd see more human shadows aching for my call. Something in me ached with them. I held Rebecca close, not caring about the cold that seeped through my sweater.

  The shadows beneath my feet subsided as we left the crossroads behind and continued along our road, which veered northeast. Rebecca sighed and fell silent. But the ropey tree shadows around us grew, lengthening as shadows do near sunset and hissing as they swung through the air. We walked on, not willing to camp amid those shadows and not willing to return to the crossroads. Light faded around us. The sun touched the horizon, and the clouds turned gold above the treetops.

  “How much they must have hated us,” Matthew said.

  “Who?” Allie asked. I heard Tallow purring on her shoulders.

  “The faerie folk. To have done this.”

  “But the fey…,” Allie hesitated.

  I looked to the orange horizon. I looked to the swaying trees and their shadows. Had those trees really been safe Before? “The faerie folk weren't human. Of course they hated us.” Us and all we'd built.

  “But they didn't…,” Allie sounded puzzled. “I mean—they were no worse than we were, Liza!”

  “What?” How could anyone, seeing the world as it was now, say that? Did Washville teach its children nothing? “You know all that the faerie folk did to us.” I remembered the men and women in my vis
ion, chanting power to the trees. Men and women with clear hair and silver eyes. Men and women like—I stopped abruptly and turned. “Caleb,” I said. “Karin, too.” Caleb who walked so quietly I never heard him coming. Karin who saw clearly even in the dark.

  “Of course,” Allie said. “I thought you knew. Dad thought so, too. How else could they know so much about magic?”

  I'd assumed they were just humans touched by magic, like Matthew and Allie and me. The faerie folk were supposed to be monsters, with dark wings and gnarled tree-bark hair. They weren't supposed to look just like us.

  “But Karin fought in the War,” I said, feeling stupid.

  “Yes,” Allie agreed. “But, Liza, she didn't fight for us.”

  I tried to picture Karin chanting to the trees, bringing the buildings down, watching as my people died. My throat hurt. “Karin saved our lives.” Trees have always listened to me, since I was a child. How long ago had that been? In the old stories the faerie folk lived forever.

  Matthew reached out to scratch Tallow behind the ears, his expression troubled. It wasn't just me—he hadn't known, either. Matthew turned to the side of the road, pulling a dead branch from a hawthorn thicket but backing away before the living branches could slash at him. He took a sharp stone and began scraping bright orange mushrooms off the stick. The mushrooms glowed faint green, not poisonous but enough to make one ill. “We need torches if we're to walk much farther,” he said.

  Tallow jumped from Allie's shoulders and batted at the falling mushrooms. “The fey folk lost as much as we did during the War,” Allie said. “You both know that, don't you? Everyone knows that.”

  I wasn't sure what I knew. I took the pack from Matthew and rummaged through it, finding the plastic torch Samuel had given me. I showed Matthew how to use it, then doused the light. Samuel said the batteries would lose strength over time, and we had only one spare set. Matthew took the torch and set his stick aside. We walked on in silence while the horizon faded to pink. Rebecca's breath felt cold against my neck.