Moonkind (Winterling)

by Prineas, Sarah

  It was like being pulled into pieces, this trying to stay true to Fer and to his brothers at the same time. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything of himself left at all.

  He led Fer and Phouka and the bees through the Way and into the land of the tree-giants. As before, the ground was covered with soft pine needles. The trees towered all around, blocking the sunlight. Rook walked past a root as tall as he was. It made him feel tiny.

  As they walked, pine needles from the trees drifted down around them. One landed on Rook’s shirtsleeve. It was green on one side, silver on the other, and surprisingly delicate coming from such a huge tree. The needles fell, gleaming as they tumbled through the faint light. They made a sound as they landed, like tick-tick-tick.

  He stopped. The pine needles were falling as hard as rain.

  Fer stepped up next to him. “What?” she asked, her voice quiet in the stuffy air.

  This wasn’t right. He held up his hand, and a few needles dropped onto it. “The stilth has come here, too,” he told her.

  A sudden, unexpected, unpucklike knot of worry clenched inside him. The stilth really was spreading, and it was spreading fast—way faster than he’d thought it would. He and Fer might not have much time before all the lands started falling into stillness and death.

  He led Fer and the bees and Phouka through the huge trees to the biggest tree of all of them, with the cave dug out of it. His brothers were there, some of them sitting around the campfire, others curled asleep in their dog shapes. He frowned. They were too quiet for pucks.

  As they got closer, Asher, Tatter, and Rip came to meet them. They didn’t bound this time, or shout out his name as they usually did.

  Rook stopped and studied them. Asher’s braided hair looked dull; Tatter didn’t smile; Rip didn’t growl at seeing Fer, and the flame in his eyes looked dim.

  The stilth was affecting them, clear enough. “Brothers,” he said.

  “Rook,” Asher replied; then he nodded at Phouka. “Brother,” he said to the horse. He looked at Fer, and his eyes narrowed.

  Rip grabbed Rook’s shoulders with two black-painted hands. “Pup,” Rip growled down at him. “We’ve been waiting for you.” He lowered his voice. “Why’d you bring that Lady with you?” He let Rook go and stepped back.

  Fer looked fiercely up at the taller pucks. “Hi, Robin,” she said to Ash. “Hi, other Robin,” she said to Rip, who bared his teeth at her. Then she smiled at Tatter, who nodded back. She rested the end of her bow on the ground and gripped its top. She looked strong and determined. “I assume you know about the stilth,” she said to them.

  “We do, yes,” Ash said warily. “We don’t see what it has to do with us.”

  “Then you’re being stupid,” Fer said sharply. The bees hovered over her head, grumbling. “When the stilth invades the lands, everyone will die.”

  “Then go and deal with the stilth, Lady, and leave us out of it,” Rip said, putting a bitter accent on the word Lady.

  Fer glanced aside at Rook. “I thought you said they would help.”

  He shrugged. “They will.” He hoped they would, anyway.

  She rolled her eyes. “They don’t seem very helpful.”

  “That’s because we’re not helpful,” Ash growled.

  Right, time for him to step in. “Fer, this is my brother Asher.” Then he pointed at Rip. “And this is Rip. You already know Tatter.”

  “Brother,” Ash growled. He didn’t like Rook telling Fer their real names.

  Rook ignored him. “They’d be thinking more clearly, Fer, but the stilth has come here.” He gave Asher a long look. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

  After a slow moment, Asher nodded. “We can, yes.” Then he shrugged. “We’re pucks. We don’t have to stay in one land. We’ll go somewhere the stilth hasn’t come to.”

  “There’s no such place,” Rook said. “I’ve been traveling to as many of the lands that I could get to. The stilth is in the Ways and it’s spreading everywhere, even the human world.”

  “We have to stop it,” Fer said. “Rook said you have a plan.”

  “It’s a puck-plan,” Rip said, with an edge of his old surliness. “It’s for making trouble. It’s nothing to do with this stilth of yours.”

  “He said,” Fer said firmly, “that you would help.”

  “They will, Fer,” Rook put in. “I just have to talk to them.”

  “You’ll have to talk fast, Pup,” Rip growled.

  Fer blew out an impatient-sounding breath. “Okay. Sure. Talk to your brothers, Rook.” She pointed at the biggest tree. “I’ll just go look at that cave over there.” Giving all four of them a glare, she stalked off.

  Ash, Tatter, and Rip closed in around him.

  “We don’t like that girl,” Rip said grimly.

  “You broke the thread,” Ash added, “but it’s clear, Pup, that she’s still got some kind of hold on you.”

  “A binding spell,” Rip put in.

  “No, I told you before,” Rook said. “That’s not it. I—” Curse it. This was where everything could go wrong. “I didn’t break the thread. She did. I wanted to be friends with her.” He took a deep breath. “Now I want to stay true to her.”

  “Stay true?” Asher asked, his eyes wide.

  “She’s not a puck,” Rip said flatly. “You can’t.”

  Rook’s fierceness flared. “I can,” he shot back.

  Ash shook his head. “You know what that would mean.”

  “I know, yes,” Rook said.

  All three of his brothers stared at him for a long, tense moment. The pine needles floated down around them.

  “You’d ask that of us?” Ash said softly.

  “I do ask it,” Rook answered.

  His brothers were silent. He knew how hard this was for them to understand, him staying true to Fer. The pucks were separate, alone. A puck never helped anyone but another puck. A puck never stayed true to anyone but another puck.

  He’d been like that, once. He was still a puck, but because of Fer—because of strange, stubborn, loyal, part-human Fer—he’d been changed. He’d learned how to care about other people. He’d found he could have friends who weren’t pucks, who knew his real name and called him by it. He’d realized that when there was something wrong, like the stilth, he could help to set it right.

  His brothers couldn’t understand any of that. They had their plan, and they couldn’t see beyond it.

  Ash glanced aside at Tatter and shrugged. “He’s always been a strange one, hasn’t he?”

  Tatter nodded. “He has, yes.”

  “Always out and about,” Ash said.

  “A wanderer,” Rip confirmed.

  The three of them stood looking at him; he waited warily to see what they would decide.

  Then Asher stepped closer and slung an arm over Rook’s shoulders. “Brother,” he said.

  Rip gripped Rook’s arm. “Brother,” he added, with a sharp grin.

  Tatter leaned in and kissed the side of Rook’s head, then ruffled his hair. “Brother.”

  Rook let out a shaky, relieved breath. No matter what strange thing they thought he was up to, they would always stay true to him, and he would stay true to them.

  That’s what it meant to be a puck.

  Twenty-Three

  Before the pucks told her and Rook their plan, they decided they needed to have supper. Fer told them she was a vegetarian, and after she had explained that vegetarian meant she didn’t eat meat, and the pucks had laughed with disbelief at that, one of them found a potato and put it in the coals of their campfire to cook; another brought out an apple he’d stolen from somewhere and gave it to her.

  They settled down to eat. Night had fallen and the air grew cooler, and Fer sat close to the campfire to stay warm. Sparks from the fire floated into the darkness and winked out. Her bees darted among the sparks, as if playing a game with them. The pucks roasted rabbit and squirrel meat over the flames. With gleaming eyes they watched Fer dig the potato ou
t of the fire with a stick. Then they watched her eat it.

  “Surely you’ve seen somebody eat a vegetable before,” she muttered, and they laughed.

  Even without salt or butter, the potato was hot and good, the skin charred from the coals. She saw Rook eat a rabbit leg and toss the bones over his shoulder. Phouka stood behind her, munching on a pile of hay one of the other pucks had brought him.

  Strangely, even while worry about her own land gnawed at her, and while she knew the stilth was continuing its relentless spread, she felt happy. She actually liked the pucks, especially seeing them all together like this. The baby, Scrap, was toddling around the circle, getting a kiss or a hug from each of his brothers before being sent on. They teased and laughed, and—she could see it clearly—they loved one another. In everything they did, they stayed true, just like Rook had told her they did.

  Across the campfire, Rook tossed a last bone over his shoulder; then he wiped his face on his sleeve and grinned at her. “Okay, Fer,” he said. “Now Ash is going to tell us the plan.”

  The puck Asher stood. The crystals woven into his long braids glinted in the firelight. “Lady,” he said, with a nod to Fer. “You know enough about us pucks to know that we can see through lies, and we don’t like the glamories.”

  Yes, she knew that. She nodded.

  Asher went on. “We figure that if the Lords and Ladies—all of them, not just the Forsworn—have their glamories stripped away, their people will see what they truly are, and they won’t be able to rule anymore. It’ll turn everything upside down.”

  Fer frowned. Stripping the glamories. It sounded like what Rook had done to the Birch-Lady with his web-stained hand. Which had been horrible and wrong.

  “Tell her how,” Rip growled. In his black-painted face, his orange eyes glittered.

  Asher gave a sharp-toothed grin. “Our Pup has told you about the shadow-spinner spider, hasn’t he?”

  She gave a slow nod—yes.

  “We’re going to kidnap the Lords and Ladies, starting with the Forsworn,” Asher said. “Then we’ll take them to the spider’s chasm and throw them in.”

  “It’s brilliant!” shouted one of the pucks. A few other pucks laughed.

  Fer shook her head. The weight of worry piled onto her shoulders again. “No,” she said firmly.

  The pucks stopped laughing. “What did you say?” Rip asked, his voice low and dangerous.

  “You can’t force them like that,” Fer answered.

  “We can, yes,” Asher said. He strode around the fire to loom over her like a storm cloud, his flame-colored eyes flashing. “They chose to rule. That means they have no choice about this.”

  Fer stood and faced him down. “They have to choose, pucks!” She cast a glance at Rook. “You saw what happened with the Birch-Lady, Rook. We could have killed her, destroying her glamorie the way we did. They are our enemies, but even so, we can’t risk killing the Forsworn.”

  Rook shook his head. “The Birch-Lady was bad, Fer, but the stilth is worse. My brothers are right. We have to do it this way.”

  “This is our plan, Lady,” Rip snarled. “Take it or leave it.”

  Pucks! She clenched her fists, ready to argue it out with them, except . . .

  Except they were right, sort of. The Lords and Ladies and the Forsworn were not going to choose to change—she knew that. They were stuck in their glamories, just like flies stuck in a spiderweb. She remembered the second time she’d worn a glamorie—taking it off had been so hard. It had set into her skin and bones as if it were made of fishhooks. Ripping it off had hurt. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, and she’d only been wearing the glamorie for a day.

  “Come on, Fer,” Rook said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Wait,” she said, holding up a hand as the new thought came to her. “I know the Forsworn are causing the stilth,” she said. “But what if they want to change and can’t?” The pucks stared at her with gleaming eyes, and she went on. “They’ve been wearing the glamories for maybe hundreds of years. Taking them off might be impossible for them.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Rook said. “It’s too late.”

  Rip gave her a sullen stare, and Ash shook his head. “We need to use the spider,” he said.

  “Ooookay,” she said, thinking. “I agree with that part of it. What if . . .” She smiled. The pucks were going to love this idea. “The nathe is the center of everything. It’s where the Lake of All Ways is, and it’s where the Forsworn have gathered, and so have all the other Lords and Ladies. If we want to stop the stilth, it has to be from there. What if we go and get the spider and bring it with us to spin its webs at the nathe?”

  Ash gave her a narrow-eyed glance. “And then what, Lady?”

  She went on, thinking it through. “We have to give them one more chance to choose. All of the Lords and Ladies, not just the Forsworn ones.” She shot Asher a quick grin. “It’d turn things upside down, wouldn’t it, if they did?”

  He barked out a laugh. “It would, yes!”

  But Rip still looked fierce and grim. “I like the part about trapping the spider and bringing it to the nathe,” he put in. “But we know the Lords and Ladies. They are not going to take off their glamories unless we force them to do it. Especially these Forsworn ones.” He glared around the fire at the other pucks. “You know I’m right, brothers.”

  Fer couldn’t argue with that. If Rip was right and the Forsworn refused to take off their glamories, it would mean death for everyone in all the lands. She would try as hard as she could to convince the Forsworn to fulfill their oaths, but if she couldn’t, she and the pucks wouldn’t have any choice. It wouldn’t be a good choice, but it’d be the only one left to them. “Okay,” she said.

  The pucks stared at her. “What?” Asher asked.

  “Okay means all right,” Rook explained.

  “Good!” Ash shouted.

  The other pucks got to their feet and crowded around her, talking and jostling and laughing. She stumbled as one puck tousled her short hair and another gave her an approving slap on the shoulder. For the first time in a long time she felt light and free and wild, not a Lady with terrible responsibilities, but a kid laughing with her friends. They grinned at her and she grinned back at them, and for just a moment she felt accepted—part of their pack, one of the pucks.

  Twenty-Four

  Night fell. Rook and his brothers hurried to get ready. All the pucks had something to carry. Six pucks together had the huge net that they’d woven from sturdy rope to imprison the captured Lords and Ladies in; now they’d use it to trap the spider. They strapped the net to two long poles that they hoisted onto their shoulders. Some had spears they’d stolen from various guards and fighters in other lands. Phouka had packs full of food slung over his back. Rook had a coil of rope over one shoulder and a bundle of firewood over the other, and he’d exchanged his lordly, silk shirt for a plain, gray shirt like the ones his brothers wore. Fer, he saw, had turned her patchwork jacket inside out; its lining was brown, and she blended with the night, except for her lighter shock of hair.

  As the full moon rose behind a veil of clouds, the ten pucks chosen to carry out the plan, plus Fer and Phouka, tramped through the land of the tree-giants, and out the Way. In the lands there were hundreds of Ways, and pucks knew all the shortcuts and all the secret, little-used Ways, and soon they were standing in a quiet crowd before the Way that opened only at midnight.

  It felt good to be with his brothers; he’d been away from them too much lately. Rook was glad Fer had agreed to come too. It made him feel less pulled into pieces to have her here with them.

  “It’s an excellent plan, isn’t it?” Ash said, and Rook saw a flash of Fer’s teeth as she grinned.

  “The plan is terrifying,” Rook said, and then he laughed. Capturing the muck-spider. A perfectly pucklike plan—and it had been all Fer’s idea.

  “You’re doing it again, dear Pup,” Tatter whispered from beside him.
/>   What?

  His brother reached out and touched him on the chest, and Rook realized that he was rubbing the spot over his heart where the broken thread was. Quickly he shoved his hand into his pocket.

  “It’s time,” Ash said with a glance at the sky. “You’re ready?”

  “I am, yes,” Rook answered.

  “And you, Lady?” he asked.

  “Ready,” Fer said firmly.

  They stepped into the Way that led to the land of the spinners.

  The moon, a little off full, spilled milky light over the smooth, black stone of the Spinnerlands. Fer kept up with the ten pucks as they trotted, and with Phouka, whose hooves clattered over the rock. She had her bow and quiver full of arrows, and they bumped on her shoulder as she ran. Rook pointed out to her the spire where the moon-spinner spider had woven its glamorie webs. As they passed it, she looked for the spider, but it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it really was dead. Leaving the spire behind, they hiked way out over the rock plain until they reached a wide hole in the ground that was so dark it sucked the moonlight into itself.

  “That’s it,” Rook whispered. The chasm where, he’d told her, the shadow-spinner spider lurked in its stench and muck.

  The Way out of this place wouldn’t open again until midnight tomorrow, so the pucks set up camp at the edge of the chasm. They’d wait until tomorrow night to carry out the plan. Fer tried to ignore the nagging worry she felt about the spreading of the stilth, and used the rest of the night and a good part of the next day to catch up on her sleep. Then, as Rook and his brothers practiced with the net and with their stolen spears, she set up a target and took some shots with her bow and arrows.

  Finally night came on again and Asher called them all to the edge of the chasm. Fer gathered her bees and told them to wait with Phouka, and then wedged herself into the huddle. The pucks around her were dark shadows with flame-bright eyes. “We’ve got to have the spider captured and back to the Way by midnight,” Ash whispered. “Rook’s been down there before. What can you tell them, Pup?”