Faerie Winter tboft-2

by Janni Lee Simner

  “Find anything out there?” The blacksmith’s gaze remained on me, not Matthew.

  “A boy.” I rubbed Matthew’s ears. “Young, no more than three.”

  “And you took care of him?”

  I stared at the condensation frozen in Jayce’s bushy beard and brows. “Not just a shadow. We found a body as well.” I told him all that we’d seen. Sun lit the thin streaks of high clouds. If the cold didn’t break, in a day or two there’d be more snow.

  The blacksmith ran a hand over his bald head, which bore more scars. “Council meets tonight. I’ll tell them. If there’s time, maybe we can send someone to bury him—only once the snow melts, we’ll all need to be out planting.” If he feared that the spring crops wouldn’t grow, he gave no sign. Adults believed, somewhere deep inside, that spring would come, for all that they were careful of our rations. Some part of them couldn’t imagine that green wouldn’t return to the world, as if green was something we were born to. I did not understand it. Deep inside I felt as if this gray had surely gone on forever and the forests I’d fought all my life had been merely illusions.

  Jayce blew a puff of frost into the air. “It can’t be an easy thing, walking with ghosts. You’re a good girl, Liza. I always told your father so. I think he’d be proud of you, if only …” He shook his head. Surely he knew that Father wouldn’t be proud of me if he saw me using my magic so openly, no matter that I used it to protect my town. Father would have killed me for that magic if he could have, just as he’d killed my baby sister, even though I was too old simply to be left out on a hillside to die. He’d have drawn his knife across my throat, only I’d used my magic to send him away instead.

  “Take care Liza, all right?” Jayce hesitated, then looked at the wolf. “You too, Matthew.” He continued down the path toward his forge, and Matthew and I continued to my house.

  I heard voices out back. We walked around to find Mom and Hope crouched in the snow.

  “Gently,” Mom said. “A breath of wind, nothing more.”

  Hope closed her eyes and held out her bare hands. A breeze rippled over the snow, catching the thin blond braids that fringed her face. Tiny acorns clattered at the braids’ ends. A foolish risk, some said. I knew I wasn’t willing to trust an acorn enough to wear it so close to my face, winter or no winter. But ever since Hope and her new husband had moved into their own home, she seemed to have given up on caring what others thought.

  The white snow in front of her drifted upward. Hope grinned, a mischievous look that made it hard to believe she was older than Matthew and me. At nearly eighteen she was the oldest person in our town with magic.

  “Control,” Mom whispered. I tried not to focus on how loosely her down-filled coat hung about her shoulders, or the way the shadows around her eyes gave her face a sunken look that hadn’t been there last summer.

  Hope’s breeze gusted, blowing cold white powder into all of our faces. I coughed; Matthew shook snow from his fur. Hope laughed, brushed the snow from her jacket, and got to her feet. “This is gonna be hell once the baby starts kicking.” Her hands moved to her belly, though there was little sign yet that she was pregnant.

  Mom smiled. Did anyone else see the tiredness behind it? “That’s why you need to work on control now. Practice whenever you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hope said, but there was no seriousness in it. She ruffled Matthew’s fur. “You two getting into any trouble?”

  Matthew barked. My face flushed.

  “And why not?” Hope pulled on her gloves.

  Before I could answer, Matthew shrugged his wolf’s shoulders. Hope laughed again. “See you all later. I’ll practice, Tara, I promise.” She gave Mom a quick hug and headed home with a final wave.

  Mom hugged me, too, more tightly, as if determined to keep me close. I hugged her back, feeling her bony shoulder blades through her coat. She headed inside, and Matthew and I followed, through the back door and into the cold kitchen, where Matthew’s clothes lay scattered on the floor. He hung behind as Mom and I continued into the living room.

  Mom had built up the fire. I pulled off my gloves and warmed my chilled hands over the coals. I loosened my scarf, unbuttoned my coat, and shoved my hat and gloves into my pockets. The coat had no lack of pockets; it was Father’s old army jacket from Before. Wearing his coat felt strange, but I’d outgrown mine, and I welcomed the warmth of the bear-fur lining he’d added.

  Mom shrugged off her coat and pulled off her gloves, too. Without thinking, I searched for the silver leaf she’d worn all her life, a gift from Caleb—but she’d removed it the day Caleb had left our town, and I hadn’t seen it since. I’d not told either of them about the vision I’d had that day. I thought of Mom, trembling as she’d fled from Caleb—but she hadn’t seemed frightened when she’d taken off the leaf, only sad.

  I watched as Mom took a pot holder and removed the teapot from the rack above the fire. She poured hot tea into a mug and pressed the warm mug into my hands with a little too much force, as if that, too, were a way of holding me close.

  Heat spread through my chest as I drank. My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it. If I could wait until after my morning chores to eat, I’d be less hungry the rest of the day.

  Mom put her hands over mine. Her fingers were too thin, bone pressing against skin. “You’re cold, Lizzy. More trouble? You didn’t have any nightmares last night, so I slept right through your leaving.”

  I inhaled the mint-scented steam. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  Mom gave me a searching look. “What happened?”

  I looked at the mug as I repeated all I’d told Jayce. SeaWorld San Diego, it read. I wondered, not for the first time, where San Diego was, and whether it had survived the War, and how you made a world of the sea.

  Mom ran a hand through her lank hair. “I wish you didn’t have to go out there.”

  “I do what needs doing.” No one else’s magic could lay ghosts to rest.

  “We both do.” Matthew’s human footsteps crossed the room.

  I turned and saw that his frown reached to his serious gray eyes—he didn’t like Mom’s complaining about our patrols, either. I longed to run a finger along his down-turned lips, but I didn’t.

  Mom sighed. “I just wish I could keep you safe.” She filled a mug for Matthew, too, one with a picture of a thorny green plant that looked as if it shouldn’t have existed before the War. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the mug read.

  The tea burned my throat as I finished it. You never kept me safe.

  Matthew drank his tea in a few quick gulps. “Thanks, Tara,” he told Mom. His fingers brushed mine, and the light touch tingled over my skin. Matthew and I kept each other safe. He was the one person in this town I trusted beyond all doubting.

  “See you later, Liza?” A few strands had escaped his blond ponytail. I resisted the urge to brush the hair back from his face, even as I imagined drawing him near enough for our lips to touch as gently as our fingers had. As always, the thought made me feel strangely shy. What if Matthew could read it in my face, as clearly as I could read the angle of his wolf’s ears, the tenor of his bark? What if I acted on it, only to find he didn’t feel the same way?

  “Later,” I agreed. I stared at the way his shoulders stretched the fabric of his sweater and at the downy fuzz on his chin and cheeks, which had nothing to do with his shifting and which hadn’t been there when winter began. I’d buried my face against his fur often enough. Why did I hesitate so much more when he was human than when he was a wolf? I watched as he grabbed his coat from the couch and headed out to help his grandmother with their morning chores.

  Mom put her hand on my shoulder as the door shut behind him. “I thought we could practice control this morning, too. You’ve gotten so good with your calling this winter. Now we just have to work on applying that to your visions.”

  I wasn’t sure my visions could be controlled. The harder I tried, the more they caught me unaware. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure wheth
er it was the past or the future I saw.

  And where were you, Mom, when I started having visions? For more than two years, all the children in my town had known they could go to Mom and Matthew’s grandmother with their magic—except for me.

  Mom had no magic of her own. No human born before the War had magic; all those born After did. But Mom had spent time in Faerie Before—time with Caleb—and knew more about magic than most. She’d taught the others as well as she could, in secret so that Father wouldn’t find out. Matthew’s grandmother had helped her. Matthew and Hope and the others had been Mom’s students, and they’d all known about each other’s magic, though they’d never spoken of it aloud where those without magic could hear. Mom said she’d feared that Father would kill me if he learned I knew about the magic in our town, so she’d hidden that magic from me. She said she’d been protecting me and the others both. But after Father had abandoned my sister to die, Mom had run away to what remained of Faerie, leaving me alone with him. Sending Father away had fallen to me and my magic after all—the magic Mom hadn’t known I had until after she’d left.

  My throat felt dry. I picked up my mug and remembered that it was empty. “There’s work to do.” There was more work now that Father was gone.

  “I already brought in the water,” Mom said.

  “Mom!” My fingers tightened around the mug’s handle.

  “I’m not an invalid, Liza. You don’t have to do everything. I brought in the eggs, too. It’s not our turn with the sheep or goats, so we’re okay there.”

  I looked at Mom’s thin shoulders. “Caleb told you not to push too hard.”

  “Kaylen doesn’t know everything.” Mom used his faerie name from Before, as she often did. She took the mug from me. “I left you the firewood, if you really feel you haven’t worked hard enough today.” Mom set my mug on the shelf above the fireplace, beside other chipped mugs from Before. She reached for Matthew’s mug as well, then stopped short and clutched her stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” I grabbed her as she stumbled, and helped her over to the couch.

  “It’s nothing.” Mom sighed as she sat down. A hank of wool lay on a drop cloth beside the couch, and she took up a handful of it. “Go get that wood, if you’re so eager to escape your lessons.” She grabbed the metal-toothed hand carders from the table and began pulling wool through them.

  I watched her fingers grow shiny with sheep oil, fighting the fear that had stalked me ever since I’d found Mom and brought her out of Faerie, fear that Caleb hadn’t fully healed her after all.

  “I’m fine, Liza.” Mom didn’t look up as she continued carding the wool.

  I wanted to believe that, but Mom had lied to me before. How was I to know when to trust her? I stalked past her and out the door before I could ask the question aloud.

  The clouds were thicker now. I buttoned my coat and pulled on hat and gloves as I walked through the town and down a side path to the Store where we kept our firewood. I could barely make out the words General Mercantile above the door. The rest of the sign, proclaiming that the Store sold ice, fudge, and cigarettes, had long since faded away.

  The door creaked as I opened it, stepping into a dim room piled high with stacked firewood. Gathering wood had been easier with the trees asleep. Behind the Store’s metal counter, I heard whispers.

  I found Kyle there, lying on his stomach, talking to a row of black ants with a metallic blue-green sheen. Carpenter ants. Though they made no sound, I knew that the ants spoke to Kyle, too. Kyle was an animal speaker and, at five years old, the youngest surviving child in our town to have come into his magic.

  Anyone who could talk to carpenter ants knew they didn’t belong in a woodshed. Kyle looked up at me, as furtive as if he’d been caught dipping a finger into the honey. He had a streak of dirt across his nose, and a slick of black hair stuck straight up from his head. “They say the wood is warm. They say they want to stay.”

  “They can’t stay,” I told Kyle. His coat and rumpled pants looked like they’d been slept in. Perhaps they had—at the meeting during which we’d told the townsfolk about our magic, Kyle’s mother, Brianna, had wanted to force Kyle and his older brother out of the house, only their father wouldn’t allow it. It was their father who’d shivered to death holding his first wife’s shadow too close less than a month later. As far as I could tell, Kyle’s mother could barely stand to look at her children now.

  A half dozen ants climbed onto Kyle’s fingers, which were losing their baby thickness. If the ants feasted on our firewood—or the Stores’ timbers—we’d have a problem. “If they stay, we’ll have to lay down poison.”

  “It’s not their fault!” Kyle hunched protectively over the small creatures. “It’s cold outside.”

  It wasn’t a hawk’s fault it had to eat, either, but that didn’t mean I was obligated to let one gut me for its dinner. “There are other warm places. Tell them to find one.” Ants, like termites, had the entire sleeping forest to feast on this winter.

  Kyle stroked the ant crawling over his thumb, as if it were some tame creature, as if its colony couldn’t bring the Store down around our ears.

  “They’re ants, Kyle.”

  The boy stuck out his lower lip. “Don’t be mean.”

  Could Kyle talk to deer and rabbits, too? How would he hunt when he got older? One way or another, he’d have to learn to care less for the animals he talked with. “The ants will be fine. They’re good marchers.”

  Kyle’s face scrunched up, as if he was thinking about that. He cupped his hands, whispered words too low to hear, and set his hands down on the floor.

  The ants on his fingers crawled to the ground and began marching toward the door. Other ants followed, from the floor around Kyle, their insect legs moving in perfect unison. More ants emerged from the woodpiles—so many. Kyle hummed an old work song from Before under his breath. The ants go marching one by one …

  I smiled at that. “Where’d you send them?”

  Kyle flashed me a grin as he scrambled to his feet. “Into Johnny’s pants.”

  “Kyle!” Johnny was Kyle’s older brother. I tried to sound severe, but if there was anyone whose pants I’d not mind seeing crawl with ants, it was Johnny.

  “Ants in pants.” Kyle laughed as if he’d done the funniest thing imaginable. “They promised not to bite.”

  Did ants keep their promises? I doubted they could even find Kyle’s brother, given how hard Johnny’s stalking magic made it for anyone to find him lately.

  “Don’t stay too long,” I told Kyle as I headed for one of the woodpiles. “Your mom’ll be looking for you.”

  Kyle’s laughter died. “No. She won’t.” He looked down at his boots.

  I piled wood into my arms. At least Brianna was feeding Kyle and, as far as I could tell, not lifting her hands to him. Still, I glanced back uneasily as I stepped over the ants and out the door. Kyle’s focus was back on the insects; he didn’t seem to see me leave.

  Outside, the wind blew harder, carrying a faint burned-leather smell. From the forest beyond the Store, I heard a foot break the snow, a ragged breath caught and held. I set the wood down and turned.

  As I did, a stranger fled deeper into the forest.

  Chapter 3

  I ran after the stranger, a boy around my age. Snow flew up from our boots as we wove among the bare trees. Patches of his burned sweater fell into the snow behind him. Had he been caught in the same fire as Ben? Was he the one who’d buried the younger boy?

  The distance between us grew. “Stop!” I put my magic into the command. I’d been too late to save Ben, but I might not be too late for this boy. Remembering Ben’s final word, I called, “Ethan, come here!”

  The boy skidded to a halt in a small clearing, snow flying in his wake, and I knew the name was his. He turned and walked back toward me, steps as stiff as those of Kyle’s ants, eyes as wild as those of a deer trapped in a hawthorn thicket. His hands were shoved into the charred pockets of his pants an
d his tangled curls reminded me of Ben.

  “Is your town safe?” the boy asked.

  “Safe from what?” No town was wholly safe from fire—but the fire didn’t explain why Ben had fled after he’d been burned. I narrowed my eyes. “What happened in your town?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. The children—I tried—” Ethan’s legs trembled, and he crumpled into the snow. Beside him a redbud shivered its irritation, sighed, and was still.

  “What wasn’t your fault?” I crouched beside him. Whatever danger his town had faced, my town needed to know about it.

  Tentative footsteps came up behind me. Kyle reached out to touch the boy’s face. “Hot.”

  I put a hand to Ethan’s forehead. His skin burned with fever. “Get your mom,” I told Kyle. As the town’s midwife, Brianna was the nearest thing we had to a doctor.

  Kyle shook his head. “Not Mom.” He pointed to Ethan’s pockets. Wisps of smoke rose from them. The burned-leather smell in the air grew stronger.

  “Mom doesn’t do magic.” Kyle looked up at me, as if expecting some answer to that.

  “Get Kate, then.” Matthew’s grandmother knew some things about healing, too. “No—get Matthew.” Matthew could help carry Ethan to their house.

  Kyle nodded and ran into town, arms flapping at his sides. I reached to draw Ethan’s hands from his pockets, but he moaned and pulled himself into a tight ball. The smoke stopped.

  A few minutes later Matthew came running through the snow, Kyle at his heels. Matthew glanced at Ethan, gave my gloved hand a quick squeeze—his fingers were bare, as if he’d left in a hurry—and turned to Kyle. “Another firestarter?”

  Kyle bit his lip. “Is this one going to die, too?”