by Jim Butcher
Mother Winter was cackling.
“So,” she said. “So, so, and so. Perhaps thou art not entirely useless after all, eh, manling?”
For all I knew, Mother Winter had a whole cutlery set over there. I gathered my will into a shielding spell, but I didn’t release it. Magic was like air and water to the fae. I had a feeling Mother Winter would have been able to home in on it.
“That was a test?” I whispered—behind my hand, so that it might not make it utterly obvious where I was standing.
“Or a meal,” she rasped. “Either would suffice.”
And then brightness flooded the room.
I thought some massive force had inundated the area I stood in, but after a second I realized that it was a door. The light was sunlight, with the golden quality that somehow felt like autumn. I had to shield my eyes against it, but after a moment I realized that I was standing in a small, simple medieval-looking cottage—one in which I had been before. Everything in it was wooden, leather, clay, and handmade. The glass in the windows was wavery and translucent. It was a neat, tidy place—apart from one corner with a large, ugly, raw-looking rocking chair. Oh, and a spilled shelf of small clay pots with wax-sealed mouths.
“You can be so overly dramatic, betimes,” complained an old woman’s voice, as gentle and sweet as Mother Winter’s was unpleasant. She came into the house a moment later, a grandmotherly matron dressed in a simple dress with a green apron. Her long hair, silver-white and thinning, was done up in a small, neat bun. She moved with the slightly stiff, bustling energy of an active senior, and if her green eyes were framed by crow’s-feet, they were bright and sharp. Mother Summer carried a basket in one arm filled with cuttings from what must have been a late-season herb garden, and as I watched, she entered, muttered a word, and a dozen tiny whirlwinds cleaned thick layers of soot from the many-paned windows scattered around the cottage, flooding it with more warm light. “We’ll need a new cleaver now.”
Mother Winter, in her black shawl and hood, bared her iron teeth in a snarl, though it was a silent one. She pointed one crooked, warty finger at the window nearest her, and blackened it with soot again. Then she shuffled over to a chair beneath the window, and settled into the resulting shadow as if it were a comforting blanket. “I do what must be done.”
“With our cleaver,” Mother Summer said. “I suppose one of our knives wouldn’t have done just as well?”
Mother Winter bared her teeth again. “I wasn’t holding a knife.”
Mother Summer made a disapproving clucking sound and began unloading her basket onto a wooden table near the fireplace. “I told you,” she said calmly.
Mother Winter made a sour-sounding noise and pointed a finger. A large mug decorated with delicately painted flowers fell from a shelf.
Mother Summer calmly put out a hand, caught it, and returned it to the shelf.
“Oh, uh, Mother Summer,” I said, after a moment of silence. “I apologize for intruding into your home.”
“Oh, dear, that’s very sweet,” Mother Summer said. “But you owe me no apology. You were brought here entirely against your will, after all.” She paused for a beat and added, “Rudely.”
Mother Winter made another displeased sound.
I looked back and forth between them. Centuries of dysfunction in this family, Harry. Walk carefully. “I, uh. I think I’d prefer to think of it as a very firm invitation.”
“Hah,” said Mother Winter, from her hood. Her teeth gleamed. “The Knight knows his loyalties, at least.”
Mother Summer somehow managed to inject her voice with profound skepticism. “I’m sure he’s overjoyed to owe loyalty to you,” she said. “Why did you bring him here now, of all times?”
More teeth showed. “He summoned me, the precious thing.”
Mother Summer dropped her herbs. She turned her head toward me, her eyes wide. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, dear.”
Mother Winter’s rocker creaked, though it didn’t really seem to move. “He knew certain names. He was not wholly stupid in choosing them, or wholly wrong in using them.”
Mother Summer’s bright green eyes narrowed. “Did he… ?”
“No,” croaked Mother Winter. “Not that one. But he has seen the adversary, and learned one of its names.”
Calculation and thought flickered through those green eyes, faster than I could follow. “Ah, yes. I see,” Mother Summer said. “So many new futures unwinding.”
“Too many bright ones,” Mother Winter said sullenly.
“Even you must think better that than empty night.”
Mother Winter spit to one side.
It started eating a hole in the dirt floor a few inches from one of my feet. I’m not kidding. I took a small sidestep away, and tried not to breathe the fumes.
“I think,” Mother Winter said, “that he should be shown.”
Mother Summer narrowed her eyes. “Is he ready?”
“There is no time to coddle him,” she rasped. “He is a weapon. Let him be made stronger.”
“Or broken?” Mother Summer asked.
“Time, time!” Winter breathed. “He is not your weapon.”
“It is not your world,” Summer countered.
“Excuse me,” I said quietly.
Green eyes and black hood turned toward me.
“I don’t want to be rude, ma’am,” I said. I picked up the fallen wooden shelf from where I’d knocked it down, and put it back on its pegs. Then I bent and started putting the sealed jars back onto the shelf. “I’m still young. I make mistakes. But I’m not a child, and I’m not letting anyone but me choose which roads I’ll walk.”
That made Mother Winter cackle again. “Precious little duck,” she wheezed. “He means it.”
“Indeed,” Mother Summer said, but her tone was thoughtful as she watched me restore the fallen shelf to order.
I kept on replacing jars, lining them up neatly, and spoke as gently and politely as I knew how. “You can take my body and run it like a puppet. You can kill me. You can curse me and torture me and turn me into an animal.”
“Can,” said Mother Winter, “and might, if you maintain this impertinence.”
I swallowed and continued. “You can destroy me. But you can’t make me be anything but what I choose to be, ma’am. I don’t know exactly what you both are talking about showing me, ma’am. But you aren’t going to shove it down my throat or put it up on a shelf out of my reach, either one. I decide for myself, or I walk out the door.”
“Oh, will you?” said Mother Winter in a low, deadly whisper. Her overlong nails scraped at the wood on her chair’s arms. “Is that what you think, my lamb?”
Mother Summer arched an eyebrow and eyed Mother Winter. “You test his defiance against his very life, and yet when he passes you are surprised he does not leap to do your bidding?” She made another disapproving clucking sound. “He is brave. And he is courteous. I will show him what you ask—if he is willing.”
Winter bared her teeth and spit again, into the same hole, and more earth hissed and melted away. She started rocking back and forth, slowly, and turned her gaze elsewhere.
I picked up the last fallen pot and was about to put it away when I frowned. “Oh. I’m sorry, but there’s a crack in this one.”
I never heard or saw any movement, but suddenly Mother Summer was there beside me, and her bony, capable hands were wrapping warmly around mine. Her touch was like Lily’s but… gentler and more vast. It made me think of miles and miles of prairie soaking up the summer sun’s heat, storing it through the day, only to give it back to the air in the long hours of twilight.
As gently as if handling a newborn, she took the little clay pot from me and turned it slowly in her fingers, examining it. Then she exhaled slowly, closed her eyes for a moment, and then put it reverently back onto the shelf.
When she took her hands from the little pot, I saw letters written in silvery light upon it and upon neighboring pots, as if the letters had been awakened by t
he warmth of her hands.
The writing on the cracked pot said simply, Wormwood.
The letters began to fade, but I saw some of the others: Typhos. Pox. Atermors. Choleros. Malaros.
Typhus. Smallpox. The Black Death. Cholera. Malaria.
And Wormwood.
And there were lots of other jars on the shelf.
My hands started shaking a little.
“It is not yet the appointed time for that one to be born,” Mother Summer said quietly, and her hard eyes flicked toward Mother Winter.
She didn’t look back toward us, but her teeth gleamed from within her hood.
Mother Summer slipped her hand through my arm. I gave it to her more or less out of reflex, and walked across the cottage. She picked up her basket and then we went to the door. I opened it for her and offered her my arm again, and we walked together out of the cottage and into a modest clearing surrounded by ancient forest with trees the size of redwoods. They blazed with the colors of fall, their leaves carpeting the forest floor in glorious fire as far as the eye could see. It was gorgeous, but it wasn’t anywhere on Earth.
“I think she likes you, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I could tell, because of the cleaver.”
“It is her way,” Mother Summer said, smiling. “She rarely leaves our cottage anymore. She lost her walking stick. While your summons was impertinent, it was a necessity and you had the right. But it is terribly painful for her to travel, even briefly. You, a mortal, hurt her.”
Mother Summer’s words made the whole chopped-up-for-stew-meat situation more understandable. Beings like Mother Winter tormented mortals—not the other way around. I’d injured her pride along with the rest of her, and in the supernatural world such insults were rarely forgiven and never forgotten.
“She was balancing the scales,” I said quietly. “Is that what you mean?”
Mother Summer nodded approval. “You phrase it simply, but not incorrectly.” She stopped and turned to look up at me. “She cannot take you to the places we must walk if you are to understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked.
Her green eyes reflected the colors of the autumn forest. “What is at stake,” she said. “If you choose to walk with me, what is seen cannot be unseen, and what is known cannot be unknown. It may harm you.”
“Harm me how?” I asked.
“You may never know a night’s peace again. Knowledge is power, young man. Power to do good and power to do harm. Some knowledge can hurt. Some can kill.”
“What happens if I don’t have it?”
Mother Summer smiled, a gentle sadness in her eyes. “You keep the bliss of ignorance—and consign our fates to fickle chance. Do not choose lightly.”
I pondered it for, like, ten whole seconds.
I mean, come on.
I’m a freaking wizard, people.
“It’s better to know than not know,” I said quietly.
“Why?” Mother Summer challenged.
“Because you can’t truly make a choice without knowledge, ma’am.”
“Even if it may haunt you? Harm you? Isolate you?”
I thought about it some more and then said, “Especially then. Show me.”
An emotion flickered across Mother Summer’s face—gentle pain and regret.
“So be it,” she said quietly. “Come with me.”
Chapter
Thirty-three
I walked into the ancient forest with Mother Summer on my arm, following a wide, meandering footpath.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question while we walk?” Mother Summer asked.
“Not at all, ma’am,” I said.
“What do you suppose will happen to you if you do not heed Mab’s command?”
“Command?” I asked.
“Don’t be coy, child,” Mother Summer sniffed. “What my counterpart knows, I know. Mab commanded you to slay Maeve. What do you think will happen if you disobey her?”
I walked for a while before I answered, “It depends whether or not Mab’s still around when the smoke clears, I guess,” I said. “If she is… she’ll be upset. I’ll wind up like Lloyd Slate. If she isn’t…”
“Yes?”
“Maeve assumes Mab’s mantle and becomes the new Winter Queen.”
“Exactly,” Mother Summer said. “In time, the difference will hardly show. But in the immediate future… how do you think Maeve will treat you?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I could imagine that vividly enough—Maeve, high as a kite on her newfound power, giggling and tormenting and killing left and right just because she could do it. Maeve was the sort who lived to pull the wings off of flies.
And I was pretty sure whose wings would be the first to catch her eye.
“Well, crap,” I said.
“Quite so,” said Mother Summer. “And if you do heed Mab’s command?”
“Maeve’s mantle gets passed on to someone else,” I said. “And if… the adversary? Can I say that safely?”
Mother Summer smiled. “That’s why we use that word rather than a name, Sir Knight. Yes.”
“If the adversary has taken Mab,” I said, “then it gets to choose an agent to take the Winter Lady’s mantle. Two-thirds of the Winter Court will be under its influence.” I looked back toward the cottage. “And that seems like it might be bad for Mother Winter.”
“Indeed,” said Mother Summer. “We are all vulnerable to those who are close to us.”
“I never figured Granny Cleaver was close to anyone, ma’am.”
The lines at the corners of Mother Summer’s eyes deepened. “Oh, she… What is the phrase? She talks a good game. But in her own way, she cares.”
I may have arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Kind of like how, in her own way, she likes me?” I asked.
Mother Summer didn’t answer that, as our steps carried us into a more deeply shadowed section of the forest. “It is at times very difficult to be so closely interwoven with mortals,” she said.
“For you?”
“For all of Faerie,” she replied.
“What do you mean?”
She gestured at herself. “We appear much as humans, do we not? Most of our folk do—or else they resemble another creature of the mortal world. Hounds, birds, stags, and so forth.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You are endlessly fascinating. We conceive our children with mortals. We move and sway in time to the mortal seasons. We dance to mortal music, make our homes like mortal dwellings, feast upon mortal foods. We find parts of ourselves becoming more like them, and yet we are not like them. Many of the things they think and feel, and a great many of their actions, are inexplicable to us.”
“We don’t really understand ourselves all that well yet,” I said. “I think it would be very difficult for you to do it.”
Mother Summer smiled at me, and it felt like the first warm day of spring. “That’s true, isn’t it?”
“But you’ve got a point to make, ma’am,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t have brought up the subject.”
“I do,” she said. “Winter is cold, Sir Knight, but never so cold that it freezes the heart altogether.”
“You’ve got to have a heart before it can freeze, ma’am.”
“You do.”
I walked for a little while, considering that. “You’re saying that I have a chance to stay me.”
“I’m saying many things,” Mother Summer said. “Do you have a chance to remain yourself despite the tendency of the mantle to mold your thoughts and desires? All Knights, Winter and Summer, have that chance. Most fail.”
“But it’s possible,” I said.
She looked up at me and her eyes were deeper than time. “Anything is possible.”
“Ah,” I said, understanding. “We’re not really talking about me.”
“We are,” she said serenely, turning her eyes away. “And we are not.”
“Uh,” I said. “I’m getting a little
confused here. What are we talking about, exactly?”
Mother Summer smiled at me.
And then she just clammed up.
We are? We’re not?
I kept a straight face while my inner Neanderthal spluttered and then went on a mental rampage through a hypothetical produce section, knocking over shelves and splattering fruit everywhere in sheer frustration, screaming, “JUST TELL ME WHOSE SKULL TO CRACK WITH MY CLUB, DAMMIT!”
Flippin’ faeries. They will be the death of me.
“In the spirit of balanced scales,” I said, “would it be all right if I asked you a question, ma’am?”
“I welcome the question. I make no promises as to the answer.”
I nodded. “Who are you, really?”
Mother Summer stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me. Her eyebrows slowly lifted. “That is a very significant question.”
“I know,” I said. “Blame it on Halloween.”
“Why should I do that?”
I shrugged, and we began walking again. “It’s just got me thinking: masks. I know of one figure from ancient tales who is alive and well and incognito. Why shouldn’t there be more?”
Mother Summer inclined her head, more a gesture of acknowledgment or admission than agreement. “Things change,” she said. “Immortals deal poorly with change. But it comes to everyone.”
“I called Mother Winter by the names Athropos and Skuld because they seemed to fit her,” I said. “I mean, she likes her sharp implements, apparently.”
Mother Summer’s smile appeared for a moment, dazzling me, and then was gone again. “It was not an imbecilic guess,” she said. “And, yes, she has been known by such names before. But you’ve only guessed the name of one of her masks—not our most powerful name.”
“Our?” I said. “Wait. I’m confused.”
“I know,” she said. “Here we are.”
We stopped in the middle of a forest path that didn’t look any different from anything around it. Mother Summer stopped and frowned at me. “You really aren’t dressed for the climate.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can handle cold.”
She let go of my arm, looked me up and down, then put a hand on the handle of the basket she carried over one arm and said, “Something a little less… informal would be appropriate, I think.”