Faerie Winter (18 page)

“Is that all human lives are to your people?” Anger was with me still, in my every word. “A game?”

“Your people played no games, that is true.” I couldn’t read Karin’s expression. “They were always in earnest, from the moment they asked to meet with us. Perhaps they wept when their fire fell from Faerie skies.
Perhaps they did not laugh as my people did. Their tears saved no lives.”

I looked to Kyle, who clutched his brother’s hand in silence now. “We have to stop her.”

“Oh, yes.” Karin’s voice was cold as falling ice. “I am through playing my mother’s games. She will be stopped, no matter the cost. You have my word.”

“Good.” But I took a step back, uneasy beneath her hard gaze. Just then, I didn’t doubt she’d once commanded the forest to attack.

Kyle was crying again. I knelt by his side. Both footprints and paw prints turned onto the road, leading away from this place and toward my town.
The wolf is merely a toy
. How long did we have before the Lady decided Matthew’s life was worth no more than Johnny’s?

I laid my hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “We have to go.”

Kyle looked up, nose running, eyes rimmed with red. “Take him with us.”

“We can’t take him, Kyle.”

Kyle pressed his lips together. “Carry him.”

“We can’t. I’m sorry.” Johnny was too close to my height and weight. I couldn’t carry him for long.

I thought Kyle would argue, but he only said in a small voice, “Later?”

“Later. I promise.” I eased Johnny’s hands from around my knife, then hesitated. Would carrying a knife
put us in more danger, should the Lady use glamour against me? The power she’d have over my magic would be far more deadly if it came down to that. Until then, I would wield every weapon I could. I pulled the knife free.

It slid cleanly from Johnny’s chest, as if he were no more than a deer felled on a hunt. I fought a wave of nausea as I wiped the blood from my blade in the mud. For an instant some hint of shadow seemed to cling to Johnny’s cold skin. I blinked hard, and it was gone.

I sheathed the knife in my belt. Kyle took the frog from his pocket and set it carefully on Johnny’s chest, over the wound. “Later,” he whispered, then looked up. “Carry
me
?” His voice was forlorn, as if he knew it was too much to hope for.

I was so tired—it didn’t matter. “Carry you,” I agreed. I knelt so Kyle could wrap his legs around my waist and his arms around my neck. He sighed and leaned wearily on my shoulder as I stood.

Karin knelt by Johnny’s side. “Powers protect you,” she whispered, and it sounded like a prayer.

I focused on following footprints and paw prints through the slush, on pushing through the bleak fear that chilled me even as melting ice dripped from the branches. Kyle sniffled against my neck.
I chose
, I realized.
I chose Kyle over Matthew and Johnny both when I gave him the leaf
. I thought of how Mom had chosen
the other children—and her memories of Faerie—over me, of how Karin had chosen a town full of humans over Elin. How did anyone ever choose one person over another? How did they live with those choices afterward?

Kyle shifted to look behind us, then all at once cried out, “Johnny!”

“He’s gone.” My throat ached. How often had I wished Johnny would just go away?

“Not gone.” Kyle’s voice was stubborn. “Down,” he said.

“Kyle—”

“Down!” He wriggled from my back and ran toward Johnny. I turned and ran after him, past Karin and Elin.

My breath caught. A dark shadow rose from where Johnny lay. Legs, arms, and face took shape out of that darkness as Kyle ran at it. I tried to grab him; so did Karin. We were both too late. Kyle threw his arms around the darkness. He shuddered, as with cold, then drew back and reached for the shadow’s hand. Shadow fingers wrapped around his. Kyle’s shivering eased, and he lifted his head to look at me. “Told you, Liza.”

The shadow was growing more solid, like a charcoal sketch of the boy Johnny had been. I reached for his other hand, but my fingers went right through his, and cold knifed up my arm. I jerked away. This shadow wasn’t for me—it was for Kyle.

It didn’t matter who Johnny’s shadow was here for. I reached for his hand again, but he drew back. “I’m sorry, Johnny.” I wasn’t sure how I managed to speak. “But this isn’t real. And I can give you rest.”

The shadow shook his head. Johnny always had been stubborn.

“He promised,” Kyle said.

I’ll take care of you. Promise
. “That was before, Kyle. He can’t—”

“Not sleeping,” Kyle said firmly, and squeezed his brother’s hand.

I thought I’d shatter like old plastic if I spoke a single word. I began walking again, and Johnny and Kyle walked beside me.

This was so wrong. I looked to Karin as she joined us.

“I cannot tell you what to do here.” Karin stroked Elin’s feathers. The bird shrank from her touch. “I know no more than you what is right. I know only that the shadow appears to be doing Kyle no physical harm.”

Kyle’s father had shivered to death when he’d held a shadow too close. Yet I’d carried a shadow once, too, when there had been need. Kyle only held Johnny’s hand now; he hadn’t tried to hug his brother again. Perhaps he knew what was right better than either Karin or I. He was happily babbling to his brother: about the ice storm, about how he’d hidden in the rocks, about how I’d taken
care of him in the trailer, about how he’d used his magic to keep Elin away.

I pressed on through slush that was giving way to mud. The sun was sinking, gold light reflecting off dripping ice.

Matthew watching as Johnny took my knife to his chest. His wolf’s eyes showed little interest as steel pierced skin and blood bloomed around it. The Lady moved to Matthew’s side, and Matthew leaned into her touch—

Matthew—a younger Matthew, who’d just turned into a wolf and back again for the first time—looking small and lost as he stood naked at the edge of our town, his skin crisscrossed with ragged cuts and his wrist punctured by blackberry thorns—

Matthew running, running away on swift paws as I called his name. His shadow trailed behind him, dissolving like dust in the sun, and I knew I’d lost him, lost him beyond recall, for all that I kept running after him—

I stumbled, caught myself, and walked faster. I’d failed him. I’d lost him. I brought my wrist to my face. Matthew’s hair tie still smelled faintly of wolf. He wasn’t lost yet. “Karin, are visions always true?”

Karin didn’t slow her pace as she turned to me. “What have you seen?”

Karin was the one who’d taught me that visions had less power if put into words, yet I feared speaking
this vision aloud would only turn it true. “Matthew’s in trouble.”

A dead sycamore leaf fell from a branch. Karin caught it in her free hand. “The seers did not expect me to survive the War.” She stared at the leaf’s brown veins. “No future is entirely fixed, though neither are visions easily or often averted.”

I had to avert this. Wind began to blow, with a wet, bitter edge that cut through my jacket. I couldn’t fail Matthew like I’d failed Johnny.
Not Matthew
.

The world didn’t care what I needed or wanted. It knew only that some people could be saved and others couldn’t, and that all we could do wasn’t always enough.

Kyle kept talking to Johnny. His voice and the wind were the only sounds in the forest. Kyle bent into that wind, but Johnny didn’t seem to notice it.

The road narrowed as we turned to follow the river outside my town. Snow and ice were nearly gone, and the sun dipped below the horizon, making it glow. Soon the light would be gone.

Elin shifted restlessly on Karin’s glove, as if she knew that as a hawk she didn’t belong out at night. Kyle fell silent at last, but he didn’t let Johnny’s hand go. I slowed my steps, watching for any sign of a trap that had been set for us. The trees grew thicker. A grove overflowed the forest onto the path.

That wasn’t right. I knew this path. I’d followed it on hunts. There should be no trees here. I looked at the oaks and maples, willows and birches, poplars and dogwoods. Some of them were river trees, some slope trees, some trees of the forest flats. They didn’t belong together.

Karin stopped, letting the sycamore leaf slip from her fingers. There was something strange about these trees’ shadows. I softened my gaze, trying to see more. Karin put one hand to the bark of a brown locust tree.

The shapes of the shadows; that was what was wrong. Within each tree shadow I saw something more, something human, a rough outline of arms that pressed against wood, of legs that turned to roots and disappeared into the earth.

Karin drew a sharp breath. “Jayce?” she asked softly. She touched another tree. “And Kate. You know these names?”

A chill ran down to my sodden feet. Karin walked among the trees, whispering the names of more townsfolk. Their clothes were scattered among the dead leaves, as if they’d been carelessly discarded.

The Lady couldn’t only change people into animals. She’d said as much when she’d spoken of turning me into a tree. Still, I hadn’t thought—

She’d changed the townsfolk, changed them into
winter trees. The wind died and silence thickened around us. “Are they all right?”

Karin brought her hand to another tree, and another. Elin’s head twisted around, watching her. “They are weary, as are all the trees in the forest,” Karin said. “Like all the trees, they slowly die of winter.”

“I can call them back.” I let Kyle go and reached for Kate’s tree, a furrowed brown sassafras.

Karin set her hand over mine, stopping me. “They have been trees for some hours now. That would not be long in a different season, but they have been listening to winter’s voice all that time, and I have spoken with enough trees these past months to know how powerful a voice it is. As trees they endure, because trees die slow. As humans they might return to life—or they might die faster, remembering winter still. If we can wait for spring, it would be safer to call them out then.”

Cold shivered through me. I felt a faint spark of life in Kate’s shadow reaching toward me.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I stepped away, not sure Kate could hear. Was Mom trapped among these trees, too? Was Matthew? No, I saw wolf prints continuing through the mud.

Kyle knelt on the ground, digging his hands into the brown leaves around a dead log, while Johnny stood watchfully behind him. I pulled Kyle to his feet. He gave
me a sullen look and shoved one muddy hand into his pocket. With the other he reached for Johnny’s shadow once more.

We followed Matthew’s and the Lady’s prints beyond the grove and into town as the sky turned to gray. The houses were silent, no windows being tacked shut, no lanterns being lit. We found more trees behind Kate’s house. “Hope,” Karin said. “Seth. Charlotte.” Other names, of other Afters. There were scuff marks and splashes of mud around them—they’d fought the Lady before she’d overcome them. That hadn’t been enough to save them. Within the trees their shadow hands pressed against the bark, as if trying to push free.

“The Afters won’t be able to help us,” I whispered.
The Lady changed them all
. She’d condemned them all to winter. A thick brown chestnut tree had even pushed through the roof of the shed where Ethan had been, though if any shadow remained alive within it, it was hidden by the shed’s metal walls.

I lifted Charlotte’s cane from the ground. The end had reshaped itself into a sharp point. I almost handed the weapon to Kyle, but he wouldn’t know how to fight with it. “If anyone tries to hurt you,” I told him instead, “I want you to run. You can yell animals away, but run from everyone else.”

Kyle nodded seriously, tightening his grip on Johnny’s shadow hand. “I’m good at running.”

The light was swiftly fading. Karin took Charlotte’s cane from me and set it down against an ironwood tree. “There is no time for turning back now, as my mother is no doubt aware, but all is not yet lost. Allow me to do the speaking when we meet her, but be alert for any danger, in words and actions both. If this goes badly, there is another plant speaker in my town. She is new, young and untrained, but she may be able to help you call spring.”

“Goes badly how?” I demanded.

Karin didn’t answer, just shifted the hawk from one fist to the other and walked on. Kyle, Johnny, and I hurried after them. “Whatever you do, Liza, do not let the Lady touch you. You too, Kyle. She can only change those she touches.”

“I’ll run,” Kyle agreed. His face was streaked with mud.

A third set of prints joined Matthew’s and the Lady’s as we left Kate’s house behind. Kyle began humming his ant song again, but Johnny squeezed his hand, and he fell silent. We followed the path out of town. The first stars came out, and the waning moon rose, yellow giving way to silver. We came to a familiar hillside, thick with blackberry and sumac, their thorns blurred in the dim
light. In a clearing among them, a smooth-barked quia tree stretched bare branches toward the night sky.

This tree wasn’t the Lady’s work. It was mine. I’d called it to life and called autumn into this world with it. I didn’t need to soften my gaze to see the shadow that clung to the quia’s trunk and branches, sharper and clearer than any shadow I’d seen. How had I not noticed before? I’d visited this tree often enough this winter, seeking signs of life within.

Something in the quia’s shadow reached for me, and the cold shimmering thread of magic between us felt familiar, as if the quia and I were old friends.

Melting ice dripped from the quia’s branches. How long could we keep walking into this trap? The Lady surely knew we approached. Was she near enough to see us?

Was she near enough to
hear
us? I stopped abruptly. Maybe we didn’t have to do the walking. Maybe there’d be something to gain by meeting the Lady at our call and by our choosing, rather than the other way around.

There was only one thing we needed first. I turned to Karin and asked, “What is your mother’s name?”