Winter, Faerstice

by Kevin Lawler

  Inside the caboose, with the door shut, Winter’s body was a steaming puddle on the floor. She was awake now and wouldn’t be getting back to sleep. She was angry. Her sister had to be avenged. She thought of her busted home and what must be happening in her town. Nobody knew where she was, except a collection of witches who were using her. Where could she go? She was on a train on an errand, and when the errand was finished, there she would be again, homeless, aimless. She was homeless on a train, like a hobo. Or an urchin. Her dog was gone and she tried not to think about it.

  Winter stayed up thinking until she heard someone trying to get into her car. Winter grabbed her knife. Both doors were locked, so they were never going to get in, and eventually they went away, but the disturbance had shaken Winter, and then she really stayed up all night.

  In the morning she got up exhausted and still angry. It had stopped raining. The light was out. She wasn’t ready to brave the outside yet, where someone may be waiting, and so put on fresh clothes and checked the neighboring cars she had stopped short of checking before. Merely one car over was a long padded bench that she could have slept on, chewed in places but still plenty good enough for sleeping. She rolled her eyes. Beyond the car with the bench was an open-topped car filled with the remnants of rock ore at the bottom, swimming now in a puddle of rain. Winter went back out of the caboose to get her belt. She checked carefully to make sure nobody was waiting for her.

  The front of the train was stopped against a downed tree. It didn’t make a lot of sense to Winter. Maybe it had rolled to a stop. Could trains do that? The tree bough, massive with branches inside branches filled with green spearhead-shaped leaves, was covering the grills of the cowcatcher and the rest of the front of the train, but the trunk of the tree itself was not touching anything, and the trunk did not appear to be dented or damaged in any way. Had this happened recently? Weird. Winter could’ve used the ride. The muffled bell was swinging like someone flipping a balloon by its knot. Winter turned to retrieve her belt from the tongue but decided to look in the train first without having to listen to the noise.

  This train was ancient. Winter tapped the iron side of the locomotive with her canvas sneaker as she climbed the ladder to the engine. Inside there was nothing like a coal furnace. Instead there was a large cavity, where something apparently important had been kept in the center. A stone? The box where whatever it was had been kept had exploded. A pedestal with pipes leading away stood under the box, leaning to one direction from the blast.

  This train wasn’t going anywhere. But why the tree? Winter scaled around the front of the locomotive to get clearance over the tree. She was going to have to hoof it.

  Winter walked along the tracks through the fields and hills. On the side of one hill she saw a dairy cow standing and grazing. A rabbit was under it, nursing at the cow’s teet. You could see where the milk traveled down the rabbit’s upturned throat. When it had had its fill it ploppped down to the ground and loped away over the hill.

  Winter continued along the tracks, stepping on the railway ties to break up the monotony of the hike. It occurred to her that no one had told her how to find the one-way tree at the end of the tracks. If this thing wasn’t marked, it would be easy for her to pass it. Then she might be going in a big circle.

  She thought back to the insistent feeling she had had once in the woods as a child. She wanted to grab that feeling again and capture it. It wasn’t there now but maybe it would surface again while she walked. She tried it now and then, looking at the forest edge that neared the path where the track went. The wood was still and said nothing about what was contained within.

  The morning sky was ice-pop blue and the cloud of the remnant moon showed through like the white arch at the base of Winter’s thumbnail. The moon, which moon? From her world or the next? She grabbed in front of her at the sky.

  If something happened to Winter out here, who was going to know? The witches didn’t seem to care much. Yet. Nobody could get out here. There weren’t going to be any emergency services. How would anybody even know? Winter was like a lost spacefarer, tethered to her ship, out making repairs. Where was this land, for that matter? In space? Or some closed off part of the Earth?

  She felt a tugging at the underside of her brain, as if a finger had pulled her head around to look, and she wandered toward a path into the forest where she knew the tree she needed would be.

  On the other side of the tree Winter could just make out what must have been the ceremonial pool at the edge of the horizon. She tried walking back into the tree she had come out of but it really didn’t work in reverse. She was going to have to figure out how to get back. She set off for the pool to get it out of the way, wishing she had had any sleep in the night before.

  The pool was long and rectangular, maybe eighty feet in length, set off from the grass by polished white stone. In the rear of the pool were two blackbirds bathing themselves from the ledge. At the front the base of the pool sloped up to meet the surface. The water in the pool was clear, and it looked almost like empty stone basin had been dropped in the grass in the middle of nowhere, except for the steam that was beginning to rise off its surface.

  Off in front of the pool there was a tall slab of stone, irregular and not quite rectangular, but flat on the front where an inscription had been carved. Beneath the slab were the bodies of four dead blackbirds, one newly dead, the rest nearly bones. Next to them was a dead coyote. Winter decided not to touch the slab.

  The tall slab was filled with old runes and Winter stared at it appreciatively though she had no way to understand it. It was then that the face of the slab shimmered and where there had been runes carved in the slab there were now English letters, or near enough, but the words they spelled were unintelligible to Winter, and it was all she could do but stare appreciatively at them again. A changing stone face, that was some trick. Winter tightened her mouth and nodded, as if she were being shown something an acquaintance was deeply proud of that she was compelled to hide her unfamiliarity with. The face of the slab shimmered again.

  “Young witch prove your worth,” it read.

  “There we go,” Winter said.

  The slab shimmered. “Go for the stone,” it read.

  Winter looked back at the pool. At the end she could make out a white stone on the white floor of the pool midway to the end. Winter guessed the water was about waist-level there.

  Winter walked up to the stone deck in front of the pool and took off her shoes and leggings, leaving them on the edge where they wouldn’t be splashed by the water. She pulled her hair up into a ponytail and cinched her skirt up with a second hairtie in a way that left the tops of her legs bare. She walked up to touch her toes to the top of the slope just out of reach of the water and gathered herself for what was about to come since she knew there would be a catch. She was going to do this without failing. She looked back up at the sky and reminded herself she was alone in this ridiculous outpost, with a group of strangers she barely knew all counting on her.

  Winter inched her toes up to where the water connected with the top of the slope. The water was hot on the pads of her toes. No worse than a hot bath. She wondered if the pool was caustic. She backed away into the grass and checked to see if the pads of her toes were melting off. They weren’t.

  “Don’t jump out,” read the slab, “It’s not permanent.”

  Winter walked around to the side to see if she could jump on top of the stone from the edge, but when she had it had disappeared. She walked back around to the front and she could see it again.

  Winter put her face on the ground to see if she could still see the stone. She could.

  She guessed this was it.

  Winter walked right up to the edge of the water. And then she froze. She tried to move her foot but her fright was fighting against her. She wasn’t going to let that happen. She thought about it logically and she raised her foot up from the ground and placed it into the pool. The water covered the whole foot. The top of i
t was just heating up but she could really feel the heat on the bottom of her foot where it connected with the pool. The bottom practically surged with heat. She brought her other foot around and placed it by the first, half for balance and half for getting some of the weight off her only foot pressing on the hot ground. There was a slight roughness of the stone against her toes. Winter waited there, taking the heat in.

  It was hot there in the water, for sure, but Winter’s mind was fixed ahead of her on what might be coming later. As she stood, and the heat balanced between her left and right feet, she began to feel the temperature taking hold on the tops, and she was conscious of the mixed hot-and-cold sensation at her ankles where the air and wet skin met the water. The pool was still except for the tiny ripples she had caused in the shallows. The blackbirds at the end had flown away with the steam.

  Winter took a few quick steps while she had the nerve. The downward slope was gradual but noticeable. The heat had increased. Her ankles were covered now, and she could feel the hot water there in the tiny folds. It was too much, like bathwater that was too hot. Winter needed to get out so it could cool down. She couldn’t. She held herself still and her skin tingled with the pain.

  It’s not so bad, she thought. I can do this. She ground her teeth, one more thing she wasn’t supposed to do.

  She stepped again towards the back of the pool. Her steps sloshed in the water around her. The surface of the pool was up to the middle of her shin now. The heat had increased as well. The water temperature was painful now, immediately painful. Scalding, even. It was all Winter could do to keep herself standing in the water. She was in touch with the pain now. The way the back of her leg burned felt like insect bites all along her calf—fire ants. She tried to focus instead of daydreaming. Waiting her was going to make it worse, and then she wouldn’t get very far. She made up her mind to keep going.

  Winter tried to keep her face emotionless but couldn’t. She shuffled forward again. The water was nearly up to her knee now, and her calf seared. It felt like pins and needles, but with added pressure. Her feet were numb and roasting, and with each step the stone felt unintelligible under her toes. Rough or smooth, it was impossible to say anymore. Winter tried to think about what was going on above the water.

  Above the water the surface steamed. Winter felt like she was being boiled, but looking at water she saw neither bubbling nor boiling. She only felt the sensation. “It won’t hurt you,” she had been told. There was still about forty feet to go. There was no way she was going to make it. She forced the thought from her mind. She had to try again.

  The water was almost up to Winter’s palms now. She could feel the steam on her hands. The pool was above her knee, and the tender skin in the fold at the back was being burned. Every part of her leg that was submerged was cooking. It was awful. It overloaded her senses. She didn’t want to go any further. Her thigh started shaking above the water.

  Every thought she had was about the heat on her legs. She tried to think about going forward and it was drowned out in the rush of thoughts about the heat. It was numbing in a way, letting the thoughts flood over her. Somewhere in the back of her mind her own voice poked through, urging her to step forward again. There was nothing rational about it, it was just there, prodding her to move along. She moved farther toward the end of the pool, and again the heat intensified. It was powerful, painful. It was past pain, actually. At this point she was merely registering damage.

  In front of her she could see the stone in the water. She bent over to make a play for it, wanting more than anything to be out of the water. She bent over, her hand went in slightly, and the water splashed her face like popping oil as she pulled her hand back, unprepared. She wasn’t going to be able to remain here for long and so she readied herself to go for the bottom. She reached in quick, and there it was, the stone on the bottom, she had caught it between her middle finger and the heel of her palm. She wrenched up out of the water and as she was coming up the stone fell out of her hand. She was almost done. She tried to see through the splash where the stone had went and she dove for it and missed it and pulled her arm out of the water and went for the side. She couldn’t take it anymore. She made several strides toward the left edge of the pool. It took longer than she thought it was going to. Leaving a pool always did. She felt every step. She began lifting herself out, it was still burning her where she was submerged. Finally she was up over the side, her legs resting on the stone and still scalding in the air.

  She looked down. Her legs were pink and cooked. The skin seemed intact at least. Whatever had happened, it didn’t seem to have caused real damage. Winter rolled on her back and pulled her knees up to keep her legs from touching the ground, and for a moment she lay there.

  Did I make it? she wondered. She didn’t feel like she had. She rolled around in the grass to get a good look at the slab from behind.

  “Hmm,” it read. A blackbird landed on the stone slab and then dropped dead to the base.

  Winter let her head hit the grass. She wasn’t in any state to argue. She waited for the pain to subside—mostly—and put the clothes she had removed back on. The skin was still sensitive and felt warm. The tops of her feet felt uncomfortable in her shoes.

  Chapter 7

  Winter walked through the swamp reflecting on her performance in the pool. She thought she had done pretty well while she was in there, but apparently she hadn’t. It had come as a shock to her. But what could she do? Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and that probably meant some kind of problem with getting the bird or some kind of long wait for her familiar. The others were going to be annoyed at her. They might even give up on her. Winter thought of the shame of it, why was she having to deal with this now? This was another set of problems she hadn’t signed up for.

  Swamps are stupid, Winter thought. Why not just make a forest and an ocean, why do you have to mix them? Mostly Winter was mad at herself. She had been following along the line from the tree to the pool to find her way back, maybe to the track, and then she had gotten lost in the swamp. Now she had no idea where she was going. She wished she had asked Cal for better directions, but it had sounded easy at the time, plus they had been in a rush.

  At any time the black earth of the swamp could turn to mud, and Winter’s canvas shoes were caked in it. Black sludge, old plants, different from the mud that been dredged up in Claremont. Here and there were tracts of pitcher plants shooting up from the ground like a crowd of tiny medieval trumpets. The swamp itself was black, black trees and mud, but the canopy high in the area was green, lit from above by the sun, which Winter could rarely see. It seemed stingy that the leaves were so high above, instead of closer to the ground where they might improve the character of the swamp.

  Larger birds lived in the swamp and Winter could here their guttural calls even when she couldn’t see them.

  Winter smacked her head. She pulled her hand back and there was a smudge of blood and the black remains of an insect she would never be able to identify. It was too large for a mosquito—what was it? The unknown identity gnawed at her, she hoped it wasn’t dangerous. Then again, there was nothing she could do out here anyway. She noticed the ground was getting wetter.

  Ants had been on her mind since her stinging in the pool. One of her earliest memories had been her first encounter with ants. The ants spiraled up her legs from their dirt. Her father had been right there, but it had happened so fast he hadn’t noticed. He plucked her from the hill and ran her over to the garden hose. Winter remembered the blast of the garden hose and her dad spot checking her for any remaining wriggling ants.

  Her thinking was interrupted by her stepping in a hidden puddle. But her shoe was still soaked from the rain, so what did it matter.

  Winter thought about the stone slipping from her hands. She hated that feeling of losing something in the water. In shallow water no less. She hated the feeling of losing. Even if nobody had seen. They would all know anyway.

  Winter had to b
egin veering to the right where the ground was dry enough to walk on. Ahead of her she could see the reason why the ground was getting soggier: there was a lake up and to her left, through a massive barbwire jumble of brambles. Her best hope was to go around it and she kept veering wider to the right.

  The lake was full of the birds with the throaty calls, and Winter got to hear what they sounded like up a register from panic or a fight: a flock of them took off together in a hurry from the lake, and their calls went up with them into the sky.

  There was some commotion coming from the lake and Winter stopped to see what it was. The squealing came first. Then from out of the undergrowth and brambles sprang a pig loping at top speed and letting out an unbroken squeal. He looked terrified and harmless, and he was running toward Winter. Winter stood her ground: The worst she would have to do was jump out of the way, but when he got to her he slowed down and circled around behind her, kicking up dead leaves as he spun around to peer through her legs. He was looking to her for protection. His squealing continued, broken now into insistent squeals, as if he were trying to warn Winter.

  Winter looked back at the brambles, trying to see what he was concerned about. Again the sound came first before Winter could make out what was coming, a shaking of the brambles and the grasses, and then a wide-faced alligator appeared out of the foliage, his body pivoting in its strange way as he made his charge. He stopped short of Winter, perhaps not expecting prey this large, and opened his mouth partway to let out a rumbling growl. The pig shifted behind Winter and squealed. The alligator was sizing Winter up, she had to act.