And through the gate I’ll find you.”
“Wynn, there were no hands. It was only a tree, and the next verse is impossible,” Elric said. “You can’t cross the clouds, and lakes aren’t made of air.”
“We found the hands and the stars,” Wynn insisted. “We will find the lake.”
Elric didn’t argue. He was looking for a village, a hamlet, or even a friendly recluse who could use an extra hand or two. He would have to hide Wynn away from others, the way Mother had done. He’d have to build her a hut deep in the woods somewhere, then come to check on her as often as his work allowed. They would find a way to survive. They had to. And once they were settled into a new life, Wynn would forget about their quest and they could move on.
Wynn picked up a stick from the old split oak and whacked the ground with it. “When we find the Silver Gate, you will believe me.”
“Sure, Wynn.” Elric took the oak branch and turned it over into a walking stick. “We’ll find it.” He could let her have her fantasies. He just wouldn’t count on them himself.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Elric
THE PATH NORTH BECAME EASIER, though they traveled for days without any sign of another village. Elric tried his hand at trapping food with Osmund’s snare, but too few small animals had come out of their winter sleep, water birds had not yet returned north, and the plants were only beginning to bud.
Their supply of food was growing thin.
The path began to climb as they came near the fells, great hills, and mountains that rose on either side of deep valleys and canyons. The sun had risen, but Elric couldn’t see it. A heavy dampness hung in the air. His stomach rumbled, but he ignored the pangs of hunger. He hadn’t eaten at all the day before, but Wynn hadn’t noticed. He didn’t want her to. Every night, he set the snare, and every morning he found it empty.
Wynn dragged her stick along the ground as the plants beneath their feet crunched under the still-dead ravages of the recent winter. “I’m hungry,” she said. “I want some cheese. I like cheese.”
“The cheese is gone.” Elric leaned on his own stick as he searched for a path up a steep hill. “So is the bread.” A narrow rut wove back and forth across the incline. They’d have to walk five times the distance to climb to the top of the ridge.
“What can we eat?” she asked.
Elric’s stomach cramped as he slid his sack off his shoulder. They had packed extra cloth and tinder in Wynn’s sack with a layer of dried grasses and moss for Mildred to nest on. He’d kept the food with him, just in case. Elric reached in the sack and found the last leathery bit of dried meat. Wynn didn’t like dried meat. She had a hard time chewing it, but it was all they had left.
“Here, have this,” he said, handing it to her.
She frowned, but took a bite without complaining. She must have been hungry. Wynn squinted through the blanketing mists at the trail ahead. Elric sighed as his stomach rumbled again. This time Wynn must have heard it, because she stopped. Without a word, she handed him the rest of the meat.
“You eat it,” he insisted. He could withstand a little hunger.
“No.” She waved it at him, and he took it from her hand.
He took a small bite, when he really wanted to rip half the chunk off with his teeth and gnaw on it until the cramping pain in his stomach ceased. But he knew the hunger would not end, so he handed the rest back to her.
Elric watched the last of their food disappear, and the gray fog around them seemed all the more bleak. He felt the strain in his thighs and shins as he leaned on his oak stick to climb up the mountain. Wynn slowed down, still chewing on the last bit of dried meat.
In the distance, they heard a clattering of pots. Elric held out his hand, and Wynn tucked herself behind him, now wary of strangers.
A swarthy, wizened-looking old man clattered down the road with a load of old tools hanging off his back. Elric stayed very still, keeping his hand on the handle of Osmund’s ax.
“Hello there?” Elric called out.
The old man didn’t answer. Elric gripped the ax tighter.
When the man finally reached them, he looked up through clouded eyes and blinked at them. “Does this road lead south?” he asked.
Elric glanced behind him, wondering if they could really call the path they were on a road. “Yes, at the bottom of the hill,” he said.
“Ah.” The old man nodded sagely, his tongue poking out through a gap in his teeth. “Do you have pots to trade?”
“No,” Elric answered. They had only one pot, and he wasn’t willing to give it up.
“Very well, have a good day.” The man wheezed as he waddled past them.
Wynn gripped Elric’s elbow, her eyes wide.
“Excuse me!” Elric called. It took the old man several moments to turn around, and Elric could swear he heard the peddler’s bones creak as he did so. “Is there a village nearby?”
“Hmm.” He turned back. “There is a village on the edge of the lake. I haven’t been there since the summer. They are fishermen. Wanted to trade for hooks and nets. I don’t need hooks and nets. Only pots.” He coughed out a laugh, then turned back around and started down the hill, and the clattering of his pots faded to silence.
Elric’s heart felt lighter than it had for months. He turned to Wynn. “Did you hear that? There’s a village nearby! At the top of the hill, we should be able to see the lake he talked about. We’ll have a home soon, and fresh fish for dinner.” His mouth watered at the prospect of a hot meal.
“I like fish,” Wynn said. “But not as much as cheese.”
Elric chuckled and gave Wynn a friendly push with his elbow.
“What do you think the Fairy Queen will be like?” she asked as they continued their hike.
“I don’t know,” Elric said. He focused on putting one foot in front of the next as he trudged up the hill. The trail turned steep, and they had to turn a sharp corner to track back up the mountain the way they had come. Back and forth, back and forth, they wound their way along the path.
Elric used his walking stick to brace himself as he gave Wynn a hand. Mildred had to flap her wings, but eventually she made it onto the path.
“Is she pretty?” Wynn tried again.
These sorts of questions served no purpose, and Wynn was full of them at times. But sometimes the only way to stop them from coming was to answer them, and he was more in the mood to humor her now that they had a goal. They would make it to the village soon.
He remembered the dream he’d had, and a vision swirling with the memory of heavily falling snow. “The Fairy Queen is very pretty.” The soft earth of the trail crumbled beneath one of his feet, slipping downhill. Elric took greater care placing his next step and held a hand for Wynn so she wouldn’t fall.
“What does she look like?” Wynn asked, teetering as she walked along the narrow path.
“Magical and very regal. She has dark brown skin and white hair that floats around her instead of falling to her shoulders,” Elric began. Another switchback in the trail forced him to help Wynn up the path and let her lead. He found himself leaning toward the uphill slope even though the mist hid the height that they had climbed.
“Really?” Wynn asked between pants. Her chest heaved with her breaths, and Elric worried that the climb might be too much for her.
He kept talking to keep her distracted. “It’s true. She has eyes that glow with different colors, sometimes blue like the sky, and sometimes gold like the fields of summer. But beware if they are red, for it means she is angry and determined to cause trouble.”
Wynn laughed, but it made her breath seem even more labored. The mist was thinner here. They had to be near the top. “She wears a dress of woven spiderwebs and dew, decorated with flowers and vines that grow up over her body.” Again, the memory of a world of winter white filled his mind. “Or sometimes in winter, her dress is made of frost and ice. It shimmers in the light, pure as snow.”
“Pretty,” Wynn said wistfull
y as her fingers slid over the frayed hem of her mutilated dress. They rested on the severed braid tucked into her belt. “Is she kind?”
What was Elric supposed to say to that? Every tale he had ever heard about the Fairy Queen said that she stole healthy children to keep as her own, and left . . .
He looked at his sister. She smiled brightly, her expression full of innocence and hope. He didn’t want to even think the word that their father had so often placed upon her.
A monster.
That wasn’t true. Wynn was the furthest thing from a monster that he had ever known.
Wynn didn’t seem disturbed by his silence. “I think the Fairy Queen is kind,” she said as the sun brightened the path ahead. She trotted forward, then climbed up an outcropping of rocks.
Elric sprinted to get beneath her to catch her should she fall. Instead she rose triumphantly on the crest of rocks and placed her hands on her hips like a conquering knight. “Oh, look!”
Elric found a handhold and tested a thin stone ledge with his toe before he scrambled up the rock and pulled himself beside her.
The morning sun shone brightly in the blue sky above them. As they looked down, the valleys were filled with thick mist. The fog stretched out before them like a blanket of the purest lamb’s wool, until it seemed as if they stood on an island of rock floating on an ocean of clouds.
Elric had never been so high above the world and wondered if this is what it was like to be a bird that soared beyond the gray that covered all of the world he knew.
Still, it was strange to see a thick blanket of fog at this time of the year. Patches of snow still clung to the ground. Usually mists followed the cool nights of the harvest, not the first warm rains of spring.
“It’s beautiful,” Wynn whispered. She drew her cloak around her shoulders and hugged herself. “Cross the clouds.”
“Huh?” Mildred flapped near his foot, and he lifted her so she could perch on his shoulder. Her soft feathers tickled his ear.
“The song. We cross the clouds.” Wynn pointed across the fell. A large peak rose up, still covered in spring snow. “To the white mountain.”
“Wynn.” Her name came out as an exasperated plea. “We have bigger problems to worry about than the song. We can’t see the lake with the fog in the valleys.”
The last thing they needed was to get lost in the fells.
Wynn seemed undeterred. She climbed down on the opposite side of the crag and started marching down the hill.
“Wait,” Elric called, tucking Mildred in the crook of his arm and hopping down rock to rock. The soil seemed looser on this side of the hill. Footing was tricky.
“We’re almost there.” Wynn didn’t heed the soil sliding out from each fall of her foot as it created heavy footprints in the new spring grass. “We will find the lake.”
Elric’s heart raced as he took long strides to catch up to her, but he had to place his feet carefully and couldn’t move quickly enough to reach her. “Slow down!”
“Hurry,” she called back. She took a bold step forward onto a mound of smooth dirt at the edge of a muddy runoff ditch created by recent rain. There was no grass there to hold the earth stable.
“Wynn, don’t!” he called, but it was too late. The earth crumbled beneath her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elric
“WYNN!” ELRIC DROPPED MILDRED AND jumped forward down the slope. He threw his feet in front of him so he could slide on his hip over the slick grass. Soft ground churned under his heel as he dug it into the earth to slow his descent.
“Help!” Wynn screamed from somewhere below him.
“I’m coming!” He slid faster down the hill, trying to follow the runoff ditch she had fallen into. Finally he saw her through the fog—at least, he saw her hands, and the top of her head clinging to an exposed rock on the edge of a drop-off.
Elric immediately flipped over onto his stomach and grasped for the grasses and weeds. They slipped so quickly through his hands, the stalks and thorns sliced through his fingers like knives. He kicked his feet and knees into the earth until he slowed to a stop as his foot pushed off the edge of the outcropping and hung over nothingness. Sweat dripped over his face as his heart thrummed in his chest.
“Hold on.” Elric crawled over to Wynn and flattened himself on the wet grasses and weeds. He reached out and grasped her wrist with one hand. He tried to lift her up, but he almost pulled himself down with her. He needed something to grasp on to. Reaching over his shoulder, he tugged at the ax, but it was tied too tightly to his sack.
“I fall!” Wynn cried. Mud and tears streaked down her face, and blood poured out of her cut lip.
“I won’t let you.” He squeezed her wrist tighter. “Don’t you let go.”
Elric pulled as hard as he could, and the ax came free. He didn’t have much leverage lying on his stomach, but he managed to swing the handle with enough force to anchor the blade in the soft earth. “I’ve got you.” He gripped the ax handle as tight as he could and pulled on her wrist.
Wynn pressed her lips together, blood streaking down her chin. With a determined look in her eye, she gripped his arm with her other hand.
“Pull,” Elric grunted as he strained to drag her back up onto the bank.
His grip on the ax slipped, and Wynn let out a terrified squeal. Elric heaved with all his might, dragging his sister back to safety. Her upper body landed on the grass next to him, and she threw her leg up. He grabbed her knee and pulled her the rest of the way.
Wynn scrambled next to him and clung to his tunic as he wrapped an arm around her and helped her up the slope away from the ledge. He could feel her shaking and crying against his shoulder, and all he could do was fall back against the cold ground and hold on to her.
“You’re safe.” His voice came out choked and uneven, and his arms felt as if they had lost all their bones. “I’ve got you.”
They rested on the grassy slope long enough for the sun to rise over the fells and burn away some of the mist. Mildred chortled happily as she stalked through the weeds, looking for bugs. When she reached the drop off, she hopped up on the rock that Wynn had been clinging to. With her head cocked to the side, she peered over the edge, and let out a low and cautious awwwk. Then she crept away from the edge with her head low and her wings hunched.
Even the hen knew a dangerous drop when she saw one. Elric pushed himself up and checked Wynn’s arms and legs for scrapes. “Are you hurt?” His muscles ached, and his hip felt bruised, but he didn’t think anything was broken.
She touched her lip, and her hand came away smeared with blood. She stared at it, but didn’t say anything.
“Here.” Elric pulled his sack over, glad that for the first time that it was mostly empty. Very little fell out when they slid down the hill. He found the small jar of honey. It was a miracle it hadn’t broken. Scooping his finger around the rim, he dabbed some on Wynn’s lip.
She tasted it and smiled, in spite of the fact the color hadn’t quite returned to her face.
With the mists in retreat, Elric took a peek at the ridge they had nearly gone over. He whistled low under his breath.
The drop-off made him dizzy as he helped Wynn up. “Whatever you do, don’t look down,” he said. They’d have to walk along the edge of it, until they could find a safe path down into the valley. “And next time you decide to fall off a mountain, learn to fly first.”
Wynn giggled nervously, but her hands still shook as she followed precisely in his footsteps, limping as she walked. She held on to his arm the entire way down. Mildred stayed far from the treacherous edge, still cooing in low and cautious tones. Once they reached the valley floor, Elric felt as if he had entered a strange and different world.
The air turned cool and hazy. It touched his skin, then lingered there, making him feel as if they were being watched, even though the valley was still. He remembered Osmund’s words, about how the presence of the Grendel felt like oil on his skin, and he hastily wiped his f
ace. The ominous feeling wouldn’t leave him.
“It’s quiet,” Wynn said, her voice hushed as if the stillness itself had somehow seeped into her. The rocks lay scattered about at the bottom of the hills, jagged and haphazard obstacles in their path, a reminder that at any moment another one could come rolling off one of the fells. It would be impossible to set a snare to catch food here, and even more difficult to find their way across.
“Don’t worry,” Elric said as he adjusted the pack on his shoulder so the ax lay flat against his back. “Once the mist burns off, the birds will come out. And in the better light, we’re sure to find a road. We’ll be to the village soon.”
Wynn took his hand and stayed close to his side. He didn’t say the truth that tumbled through his mind. They would find no roads here. No one in their right mind would choose to travel through this place. They were lost.
Even with the sun high, the mist lingered, isolating them in a lonely fog as they wandered through the fells.
Elric couldn’t tell how long they had been walking. Wynn hobbled along next to him as they climbed through the rocks of the bottom of a ravine. His head ached but not more than his stomach. Every time he had to lift his arms to haul himself over another stone, his body felt as if it were being pulled to the ground with heavy weights.
Wynn’s steps came slowly, and she had grown too quiet, staring at the ground, her eyes drooping sleepily.
“I’m hungry,” she mumbled as she pressed her arm across her middle.
Elric looked around. There was nothing but mist, rocks, grassy ledges up steep hillsides, and pools of stagnant water buzzing with insects. A dead tree clung to the side of the hill, reaching across the ravine as if it could find hope on the other side. A tiny rivulet fell over the rocks, splashing water onto moss-covered stones before it disappeared into the gravel.
“Let’s sit. We can rest.” He fell onto a rock, his stomach cramped. He hadn’t eaten more than a tiny bite of dried meat in days. It had taken so much out of him to climb the mountain, and he used up whatever energy he had left when Wynn fell.
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