Lies through the bitter snow.
Sing with me, my dear sweet child,
And for all time I’ll keep you.”
The storm quieted, as if it had been driven back from the mouth of the cave. Wynn felt warm. The warmth started on the top of her head and spread down through her body the way honey spreads through water. She took a deep breath, her chest feeling less constricted by fear as she waited in the darkness.
The melody of the song hung in the air, floating over her like a mother’s lullaby. They would find the Silver Gate. She knew they would.
“Wynn, wake up.” Elric shook her shoulder urgently. “I told you to tend the fire, not fall asleep.”
Wynn blinked her eyes open slowly, shielding them with her arm as she squinted at her brother. Her mouth watered. That’s when she noticed the smell.
The savory scent of roasted meat filled the small cave, and Wynn sat up. Her clothes were still wet, but not terribly so, and the chill had gone, except for a bit on her back. Elric hunched over the fire, turning several sticks skewered through chunks of sizzling lamb.
“Oh! Oh!” Wynn clapped and waved her hands in front of her. It smelled so good. Her tummy pinched, then growled. Elric pulled one of the sticks off the fire and handed it to her.
Wynn tasted it and burned her tongue, but that didn’t matter. She took a bite and chewed. She ate and she ate. Her jaw hurt from the effort of chewing, but she didn’t care. She had never tasted anything better.
Elric flopped next to her and lifted one of the sticks, but didn’t bite into it right away. He bowed his head and looked sad. The cuffs of his tunic were stained dark red. He took a bite and chewed slowly. It took a long time for them to eat. It always took Wynn a long time to eat because her mouth moved slowly. She didn’t know why Elric was so quiet. Finally he spoke.
“You did a good job on the fire. I’m sorry it took me so long to return,” he said, poking the healthy flames with a stick to stoke them higher.
“The Grendel came,” Wynn said. “He tried to blow it out, but I didn’t let him. But the Fairy Queen drove him away.”
“That must have been quite a dream,” he said.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said, wiping her hands on her leggings.
Elric ignored her. “I believe the village that old man told us about is near. If we’re careful and lucky, we may be able to stay in the woods. I can build us a hut here in the fells, and we can trade at the market. We can live by ourselves like Osmund does.” Elric stared out at the distant hilltops and mountains. He looked thoughtful as he helped Mildred preen her feathers with his fingers. She shook them out, sending several little tufts of fluff into the air. One caught on his lip.
He fought to get the tiny feather out of his mouth. When he finally got it on his hand, it stuck to his finger and he couldn’t shake it off. Wynn touched his knee to be sure she had his attention. Elric looked at her. “We are going to the Silver Gate,” she said.
“Wynn, we have to be real now.” Elric flicked the feather off his finger, only to have Mildred shake out her wings again and send new ones flying. He waved his hand in front of his face to keep them away. “Our best chance at survival is to find the village.”
“The Silver Gate is real.” Wynn wrapped her drying cloak around her legs. “I heard the Fairy Queen singing. She knows me.”
“You were asleep.” Elric gave her a look she’d seen many times before. The one he used when he thought she was being foolish. “You were even snoring.”
“No, it is real.” She knew what she saw in the shadows. She didn’t fall asleep until after she heard the Fairy Queen sing. “She wants me to come to her.”
“Wynn, think about it. Why would an all-powerful Fairy Queen, who has an entire realm of magical people to wait on her and do her bidding, pay attention to one girl sleeping in a cave?” Elric asked.
“She likes me.” Wynn crossed her arms. “Osmund said she is sad. I could help to make her happy.”
Elric rubbed his forehead. “Wynn, you are very good at being happy, but sometimes it is safer to stay with what we know,” he explained. “Don’t you want a home again? I will build us a hut like Mother’s. Mildred can hatch chicks in the garden. You can gather sticks for me and tend to the weeds. I’ll provide for us. We can’t keep running off into the wilderness and expect to survive. We’re starving out here.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Elric uttered a long growling sound that reminded Wynn of the times he pretended to be the Grendel. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Can you trust me to do what is right for us?” he asked.
Wynn thought about it. The Silver Gate was real. She knew she heard the Fairy Queen. But sometimes when she was right, it didn’t matter. She still didn’t get to decide.
Wynn sighed. “I trust you.”
Elric poked the fire with one of the sticks. “Good. We’ll find the village in the morning. This time, promise me you will stay near me and you won’t speak. We have a better chance of staying if people don’t notice that you’re different.”
A heavy feeling pressed down on Wynn. If they lived near the village, Wynn would have to stay inside again and not talk to anyone. She would have only Mildred to talk to if Elric was out working in the fields.
“Do you promise?” Elric insisted.
Wynn remembered the last time they visited a market. She didn’t want him to be hurt again. She knew that was her fault, but she didn’t know why. “I promise,” she mumbled.
Elric kicked his feet up on a rock near the fire and leaned back against the slope of the cave wall. “Don’t worry. Things will be back to normal before long.”
Wynn frowned. That thought made her sad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Elric
THE NEXT MORNING, WATER DRIPPED from the edge of the overhang, though the air was still, and the sky overcast. Elric hitched the sack up on his shoulder. “Stay close, and we have to be careful.” He kept his ax in hand as they crept slowly down the path toward the place where he had seen the felled tree. Someone had to be nearby. They were near the village. He knew it.
With warm rain falling on the icy ground during the night, the mist rose, creating thick tendrils of fog that shrouded the world in a soft gray veil. The woods sounded unnaturally silent.
Wynn didn’t say a word as she clung to his free hand and walked beside him. Not even twigs falling from the skeletal branches of the trees made sound as they hit the loamy forest floor.
“Hello!” Elric called as a creeping chill slithered down his neck. The air smelled damp and clean without the tinge of wood smoke. They walked on, the ground constantly sloping downward. A narrow path led down the hill and through the thinning woods. The mist grew thicker as the trees became sparse and they found themselves on a small rise.
“A lake of air,” Wynn said as she pushed her ragged hair out of her eyes.
Elric turned, and to his shock, a lake stretched out before them. The mist lingered low over the water, making the lake seem as if it had been filled with clouds. The mist churned like a river current, driven by a wind he could not feel. It was as if the quiet breath of the lake itself moved the swirling mist.
“It’s only fog,” Elric said as he started off down the rocky path. But fog hardly ever lingered through the day like this, in spring no less. He wiped the back of his neck. The fog clung to his skin, leaving a crawling feeling all over him.
Wynn took a minute before she followed. He could hear her singing the song under her breath, the mist on the lake dancing to the haunting notes of the softly whispered tune.
“My queen, my queen, though road be long,
And touched with bitter cold.
On mountain white, in argent grove
With leaves of shining gold.
Please grant to me your silver branch,
And through the gate I’ll find you.”
“We have to find the grove now,” she stated. “That is the way.”
“Wynn, enough!” Elric shouted, his voice carrying over the still air. It winged across the lake. “We can’t keep feeding this fantasy. It is getting out of control. Fairies aren’t real. There is no Silver Gate. This village is our only hope.”
Wynn blinked at him. “Father said I was from the fairies . . . a changeling.”
“Why do you listen to what Father said? Father wanted to sell you as a slave!” As soon as the words left his mouth, the burn of his anger flushed through his body and he turned from her to hide all the things he felt.
“What did you saying?” Wynn asked. It was a familiar phrase. One she used to say hundreds of times as she tried to learn to speak. Clearly she was upset. Well, she had every right to be.
“He sold you to work in the lord’s manor, where you would have had to beg for whatever bones fell from the table like a dog, be forced to sleep on the floor, and be beaten any time you did something wrong. That is why we had to run. So he wouldn’t find you and take you away from me.” Elric’s voice cracked as he said it. “I couldn’t let him take you.”
Wynn turned from him, hugging herself, her thick thumb stroking her shoulder. “No one likes me.”
He slowly turned to face her, feeling a burning tingle in the inner corners of his eyes. “I like you.”
“You yell.” She cast her eyes down and walked away.
“I don’t mean to.”
She gave him a skeptical look.
“It’s just hard when you don’t listen to me,” he admitted.
“I listen. You don’t listen. The Fairy Queen is real,” Wynn said. “She sings.”
“Your mind hears things.” Elric adjusted the strap cutting into his shoulder and started off down the road. “What you heard is your thoughts that you made up.”
“No.” Wynn skipped ahead as if she had no understanding of the significance of what he was trying to teach her.
“Fine,” Elric said as the pot in his sack clanged with each step he took. “The Fairy Queen likes to hear you sing. I hear you. That isn’t going to change the fact that our only hope of survival is this village. Maybe once we are settled, we can look for the gate in summertime, when the weather isn’t so treacherous. Will that make you happy?”
“The road to the Silver Gate is cold. Summer is warm.” Wynn joined him by his side, clinging to the strap of her sack. She brushed her hair out of her face with a swipe of her palm.
Elric let out a heavy sigh. “Village first? Please?” Now he was resorting to the shortened phrases he had once used when she was smaller and only understood certain things.
She gave him a skeptical frown, but followed him humming the slightly off-key notes as the melody drifted through the thick fog.
The heavy mist grew thicker with each tentative step down the hill. Mildred’s soft clucking from inside the sack punctured the ominous silence.
Elric saw something in the distance. Shadows that formed dark mounds in neat rows. Nature didn’t create such forms. The village! His heart stuttered as he pulled Wynn forward. They’d found it. Finally, they would have a home. The grazing wasn’t bad up through the forest. He could raise sheep again, and Wynn could tend a garden. There were plenty of trees. He could figure out a way to build a sturdy hut, and he could hide his sister away from anyone who would wish her harm. This would be perfect. But the air was heavy and dark, and the sky remained an iron gray.
Elric’s unsettled feeling grew as they came nearer and nearer to the worn buildings of the village. It was quiet. Unnaturally so. He should have heard the sounds of animals moving through the streets, or peddlers calling out wares. A village on a lake should have had fishermen pulling in nets and haggling with fishmongers on the distant pier.
Instead there was nothing, not even the dire caw of a carrion crow.
Something was wrong.
“Stay close,” Elric whispered as they came into the shadows of the dark wood buildings. Wynn pressed to his side, holding tight to his elbow.
“This place is bad,” Wynn whispered.
Elric swallowed a hard lump of fear that had wedged in his throat. “Something terrible must have happened here.”
“Where are the people?” Wynn asked.
“I don’t know.”
Row after row, the houses stood empty. It was as if everyone in the village had simply disappeared. They pushed on the door of the first house they came to.
“Is anyone here?” Elric called.
The door swung open with a groan that lingered in the stillness. A tangle of weeds surrounded the house, taking over neat rows of new spring vegetables and herbs sprouting in the garden along its side. Someone had to have planted them not long ago, but hadn’t tended the garden since.
“Elric?” Wynn clutched his hand tighter.
Bones stuck out of the soft earth near the garden. It wasn’t a bone pile, but a skeleton of small predator, a fox or a cat perhaps.
“The Grendel was here,” Wynn said with a shaky voice.
“That’s a story too.” Elric peeked in the house.
Cobwebs and dust had settled over the meager belongings. An overturned pot waited near the fire, clearly untouched from the moment it rolled to the floor. A spider lurked in the center of a perfectly formed web across the mouth of the cauldron.
“The Grendel is real, he was in the storm.” Wynn bumped into his side as she pushed close in the doorway.
“That was a dream.” Elric said, taking another slow step inside the dim interior of the house. “Nobody seems to have been here for a while.”
“I don’t like this place.” Wynn tucked herself closer to his side.
The door creaked again. Mildred poked her head out of Wynn’s sack, then slowly pulled it back in with a wary awwwwwwwwwwwk.
A loud crack shattered the silence. Wynn screamed as she jumped around to Elric’s front. A broom rested on the ground where it had fallen, knocked over by the door.
“Want to leave here,” Wynn said, tugging on his hand.
Elric resisted her pulls and inspected the dim interior of the hut more closely. Perhaps there were things here they could use. A pallet of straw lay in the corner of the hut, the blankets askew as if someone had gotten out of them very suddenly, then never put them right. They were tattered and moth-eaten, but might be salvageable.
It didn’t look as if there was any food, but maybe there was a tucked-away cellar for root vegetables and such. It was too early in spring to forage anything from the garden.
An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. Elric picked up the pot and the spider crawled across his hand. He let out a shout and whipped his wrist, sending the spider flying toward the old wooden planks covering a tiny window. The leather straps holding the shutters to the dark wood framing had been cracked with weather and age. The spider righted itself and tucked its dark body under one of the thick straps. Wynn stepped closer to the simple dirt hearth as Elric wiped the back of his hand down his tunic to rid himself of the crawling sensation there.
“Let’s go,” Elric said. “We can check the rest of the village. Someone has to be nearby.” Wynn was right, there was something very wrong about this place, but it couldn’t be the Grendel. Could it?
Wynn patted Mildred in her sack, then stooped under the low door frame and walked through the garden and into the road. Mildred let out a sharp squawk of alarm and struggled inside Wynn’s sack. Wynn turned to pat the kicking lump in her bag, but froze when a low rumble of growls reached through the fog. Elric’s heart thundered as his immediate thought was of an enormous man-eating monster, no matter how irrational that thought was.
“Elric?” Wynn scrambled behind him as he turned toward the sound.
Three rangy dogs stalked toward them with their heads low, their dark eyes fixed. One was shaggy, its fur matted and tanged with bits of briar and leaves. The other two had smooth, splotched coats that stretched thin over visible bones. It looked as if they hadn’t eaten in months.
“Run!” Wynn pulled on the
strap of his sack. “Run!” she screamed as the dogs rushed forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Elric
WYNN PUSHED ELRIC, BUT HE couldn’t seem to make his feet move. His instinct was to pick up a rock and search for his sling, but when he reached behind him, he grasped the handle of his ax. She clung to his arm and dragged him back as he swung the ax in front of them. Wynn pulled him into the nearest house.
As they scrambled through the door, Elric kicked it shut. One of the dogs threw its body against the thin wood, barking and snarling. Elric could see its muzzle dripping foam in the gap between the weathered planks. “Move the table!” he shouted at Wynn. “We have to block the door!”
The dogs scratched furiously at the warped and cracked wood, damaged by years of rain. Bits and pieces of the door splintered under the assault of the dogs’ claws. The gaps grew wider, giving Eric a clear view of yellow snapping teeth. The dogs attacked the wood, gnawing and pulling on the weathered planks with their sharp teeth. The sound of their snarls and barks filled the small house. The door shuddered as one of the dogs threw its body against it. The force strained the rain-swollen wooden pegs holding the door together.
Wynn screamed.
Elric looked back over his shoulder at where she was staring. A withered skeleton lay on the bed, clothes hanging off the bones like eerie skin.
Elric tried to fight down his sense of panic. They were trapped in a house with a dead man and murderous dogs fighting to get in. He couldn’t lose his head.
“It’s naught but bones. Bones can’t eat us. Get the table.” Elric couldn’t tear his eyes from the grinning skull, even as he felt the impact of the lunging dogs on the door.
Wynn’s lips pressed together as her brow furrowed in concentration, then she ran to the other side of the heavy oak table and used her back to push it to Elric. He let go of the door, threw himself over the table, and helped Wynn tip it up so the solid surface crashed onto its side, blocking the door with thick oak planks.
The dog managed to hold a broken chunk of door in its jaws as it viciously whipped its head side to side until the plank came free. It shoved its snout in the newly opened gap, but the oak table blocked it from pushing through. The dog jumped against it, reaching a paw in and scratching at the edge of the table.
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