by SFnovelists
*** ***
Three weeks after my sister's birth I hurried through town, my breath puffing into the chilly air and an empty bucket banging against my hip. The sun was just above the horizon, turning layers of pink cloud to gold. Most of the other townsfolk were already in the fields, their morning chores done.
I walked quickly past the row of whitewashed houses I'd known all my life. Their windows were firmly shuttered or else tacked with old nylon against the cold. My gaze lingered a moment on the gap among those houses, but then I rushed on, thinking about how I'd overslept again that morning, not waking until Father had slammed the door as he left the house-deliberately loud, a warning to me. I'd already been sleeping badly since Father had cast my sister out, my dreams filled with restless shadows and a baby's cries. Then a week ago Mom left us. Since then I'd hardly slept at all, save in the early hours for just long enough to make it hard to wake again.
I passed the last of our town's tended houses; passed, too, the houses we didn't tend, which were little more than tangles of ragweed with splintered wood poking through. At the fork in the path I caught a whiff of metallic steam from Jayce's forge. I headed left. The path skirted the edge of the cornfields, then narrowed. Maples and sycamores grew along its edges, draped with wild grape. Green tendrils snaked out from the grapevines as I passed. I knew those vines sought skin to root in, so I kept to the path's center, where they couldn't reach. Plants used to be bound firmly to the places where they grew, but that was before the faerie folk came to our world.
No one knew why they came. No one even knew what they looked like. The War happened too fast, and the televisions people once had for speaking to one another all died the first day. Some said the faerie folk looked like trees, with gnarled arms and peeling brown skin. Others said they were dark winged shadows, with only their clear hair and silver eyes visible as they attacked us. Hair like that remained a sure sign a child was tainted with magic.
But whatever the faerie folk looked like, everyone agreed they were monsters. Because once they were here they turned their magic against us, ordering the trees to seek human flesh and the stones to burn with deadly light. Even after the War ended and the faerie folk left this world, the magic they'd set loose lingered, killing still.
The path ended at the river, though another path, narrower still, continued both ways along its near bank. I clambered down a short rocky slope and dipped my bucket into the water. Our well had silted up again, so the river was the only place to draw water for cooking and chores.
When the bucket was full I drew it out again, set it down, and cupped my hands for a drink. As I did a wind picked up, and I shivered. Mom would be cold, out alone on a morning like this. I knew better than to hope she yet lived, but still I whispered as I dipped my hands into the bucket, "Where are you? Where?"
Light flashed. A sickly sweet scent like tree sap filled the air. I jerked my hands back, but I couldn't turn away. The water in the bucket glowed like steel in the sun, holding my gaze. The wind died around me. From somewhere very far away, Mom called my name. I grabbed a stone and threw it into the bucket. There was a sound like shattering ice, and then the water within was merely water, clouded by ripples and mud from the rock, nothing more.
My mother was gone. Why couldn't I accept that? I must have imagined her voice, just as I'd imagined the way the water had seemed to glow.
Yet I'd seen light like that once before.
The night my sister was born-the night I'd fled from the hillside, where I never should have been-I'd seen flashes at the edges of my sight, like lightning, though the night was clear. I'd ignored them and kept running, calling the name my mother had chosen but only once been able to use. "Rebecca! Rebecca!" My throat and chest had tightened, but I couldn't seem to stop.
The night Mom left there'd been lightning, too, more ordinary flickers from an autumn storm. That light had illuminated her tear-streaked face as she slipped quietly into my room. I reached for her, but she drew away, clutching the necklace she always wore-a metal disk on a chain, laced with narrow veins. I drifted back to sleep, thinking I'd only dreamed it, but when I woke in the morning, Mom was gone.
"She knew the rules," Father had said when she failed to return by nightfall. I searched his face for some hint of the grief he must have felt and saw a tightness around his jaw and eyes, nothing more. He knew as well as I how unlikely Mom was to have survived a night alone in the dark, yet he didn't cry. He said there was no sense wasting tears on things you couldn't change.
I did my own crying alone in the dark, where no one could see. Why would Mom leave without telling where she'd gone? I would have gone with her. I'm good with a knife and a bow. I'd have kept watch for her or done whatever else she needed.
I gripped the bucket's handle with both hands and climbed back up the slope. As I reached the top I saw Matthew emerging from the path between river and town. His fair hair was pulled back in a ragged ponytail, but as usual it had escaped and fallen loose around his ears. He smiled when he saw me-an easy, comfortable smile-but I looked away. I didn't find being around Matthew comfortable at all.
"Hey, Liza. Your dad's looking for you." Matthew rubbed at the jagged white scar around his left wrist, and his smile faltered a little. "Wondering why you're not to work yet."
I glanced at the sky. The sun shone like tarnished silver through layers of gray. When had it risen so high? Sweat trickled down my neck and made my sweater itch against my clammy skin. How long had I stared into the water? Had magic held me transfixed while time flowed on all around me?
No. I was tired, that was all. I'd lost track of the time.
"Need any help?" Matthew asked.
"I'm fine." I walked past him, back toward the town.
I'd pay for being so late, but that was none of Matthew's concern. He came up beside me anyway, matching my pace with his own loping gait. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his deerskin jacket and said, "Your dad's in one of his moods."
Of course he was. I kept walking. The sun grew brighter, turning the maple and sycamore leaves deep green. Mom said before the War, leaves had changed color in autumn, first blazing fiery shades of yellow and red, then falling softly to earth, leaving behind bare branches that shivered beneath winter snows. It would take a fire now to make any tree release its grip so easily.
Matthew lifted his head and sniffed the air. The scent of leaf mold was heavy around us. "I can go with you," he offered. "Maybe if I'm with you, Ian won't …" Matthew let the words trail off.
"You can go away." Water sloshed over the edges of the bucket. Bad enough that Father would likely lash me for being late. I didn't need Matthew to follow and see. He stayed with me, though, right up until we reached the edge of the fields. There, he hesitated and glanced at me. I scowled. Matthew shrugged uneasily and turned away, heading off along a side path between fields of corn. The stalks' long leaves rustled as he went by. In the distance, corn ears moaned as townsfolk pulled them free. The corn had grown well this year, and the squash and beans, too. They'd all fought our harvesting, and we had the bruises to show for it, but come winter we would eat well.
I continued back into town. This time when I reached the gap among the houses, I couldn't help it. I stopped, thinking of how Matthew smiled as if no magic had ever touched his life. I knew better. We all did.
Matthew's little brother, Cam, had called blackberry brambles into their house nearly two years ago now, though we didn't know he'd called them at first. We just knew we woke to the sound of Cam's parents screaming.
All the townsfolk came running, and by the lanterns we brought with us we saw Cam's house swarming with thorny blackberry stems. Wood walls creaked and snapped as the screams fell to silence, yet even as the house collapsed we heard Cam laughing. We couldn't get him or his parents out. We could only burn the house down to keep the blackberry bushes from attacking the houses around it as well.
Everyone thought Matthew had died with his fam
ily, until a few hours later when he appeared at the edge of town. His clothes were gone, his skin was crossed with ragged scrapes, and his wrist still bled where the thorny stems had grabbed him. At first he was too dazed to speak. Later he told us what had happened, though he kept insisting Cam hadn't done it on purpose. His brother was just a little kid, Matthew said, throwing a little-kid tantrum. Cam didn't know a blackberry plant had taken root beneath his porch. No one knew, for all that we checked for new growth as often as we could.
Yet the plant had heard Cam's cries. It had broken through the porch and headed straight for him. Father said Matthew was a coward for running away instead of going for help. He said even a few extra minutes might have saved Cam and his family. I didn't know what to think, just as I didn't know quite what to say to Matthew after that. Mostly I didn't say anything at all. After two years, it had become a habit.
Later Brianna the midwife admitted she'd seen a few clear strands in Cam's hair earlier that year, meaning it'd likely been Cam's magic that had called the plant, and not simple bad luck that it had come. Until then we'd thought magic showed up either at birth or not at all, but now we were more careful. Cam and Matthew's grandmother Kate gathered the town's children together regularly to check our hair for magic, just as she checked for lice and fleas. As far as Kate could tell, though, Cam had been the only one.
I turned away from the empty space where Matthew's family had died and hurried on to my own house. As I started up the creaking steps, I saw a yellow dandelion growing beside them. I set my bucket down and tugged at the green stem. A thorn sliced my palm. I brought it to my mouth, cursing the spiteful plant, then took the knife from my belt and cut the dandelion free with a single stroke. "I'll be back for your roots," I promised as I hefted the bucket again and stepped inside.
A streak of amber fur leaped across the living room. I dropped the bucket as Tallow, my old yellow barn cat, landed in my arms. In spite of myself I smiled and scratched her behind the ears.
"Where were you?" I whispered. Tallow had lived in our town since I was small. When she was a kitten she'd sneak beneath the covers with me at night, until Father found out. "She's no use as a mouser if she spends her days lazing on feather mattresses," he'd said. Tallow kept sneaking in despite my best efforts, though. Until last night, when she'd gone missing and I went out calling for her, afraid she'd left this world at last. I called until my throat grew itchy and tight, but Tallow didn't come.
Yet now she purred as if she'd never been gone. I held her close a moment, then gently carried her outside and set her down on the stairs. Tallow looked up at me, green eyes large, as if hurt that I'd even consider setting her out. "You have to earn your keep," I told her. "Just like the rest of us."
Tallow yawned, telling me what she thought of that notion, and curled up on the top step to sleep. I went back inside and carried the water past our couch-its cushions torn and patched and torn again- past a fireplace filled with cold ash, and into the kitchen.
Plastic bins of corn and dried meat lined the kitchen walls. Their labels were faded beyond reading, but like old nylon, old plastic endured. It was one of the things that had best survived the War. I set the bucket down beside the sink.
Light flashed off the sink's metal surface, even though the kitchen windows were shuttered. The light turned bright and clear, reflecting back my own face. Ice-pale hair tumbled over my shoulders, flowing like water into my outstretched hands-
"No!" I wrenched my gaze away and tore at my hair. The strands that came free were as black as they'd ever been, dark as rich soil, dark as a moonless night. Yet there was a hint of something paler at their roots. I sank to my knees and pressed my face to the cool, crumbling kitchen tiles. Had some of Rebecca's magic lingered on the hillside? Had that magic found me, even as I ran? Was I the one faerie-cursed now?
My hands shook. Whether I spoke of this or not, sooner or later someone would find out and destroy me and the magic both. Or worse, I would destroy them, just as Matthew's little brother had done. Magic always did harm sooner or later. I drew a shuddering breath and stumbled to my feet.
When I turned, Father stood in the doorway, watching me.
