Faerie Winter

by Janni Lee Simner

  Kyle shook his head. “Not Mom.” He pointed to Ethan’s pockets. Wisps of smoke rose from them. The burned-leather smell in the air grew stronger.

  “Mom doesn’t do magic.” Kyle looked up at me, as if expecting some answer to that.

  “Get Kate, then.” Matthew’s grandmother knew some things about healing, too. “No—get Matthew.” Matthew could help carry Ethan to their house.

  Kyle nodded and ran into town, arms flapping at his sides. I reached to draw Ethan’s hands from his pockets, but he moaned and pulled himself into a tight ball. The smoke stopped.

  A few minutes later Matthew came running through the snow, Kyle at his heels. Matthew glanced at Ethan, gave my gloved hand a quick squeeze—his fingers were bare, as if he’d left in a hurry—and turned to Kyle. “Another firestarter?”

  Kyle bit his lip. “Is this one going to die, too?”

  Matthew rubbed at the ragged scar around his wrist. “I don’t know.” The look that passed between him and Kyle was filled with the years they’d secretly learned about magic from Mom while I’d thought my town free of magic. Just as I’d thought Jayce’s granddaughter had died of a fever, and not from trying so hard to control her fire magic that it had burned her from within.

  “Council meeting’s at my house tonight,” Matthew said. “We have to take him to your place, Liza. Gram will join us there.”

  I doubted we could keep this stranger secret from the Council for long, even if we wanted to, but there was no sense asking for trouble. I helped Matthew lift Ethan into a fireman’s carry over his shoulders. Ethan whimpered as his hands fell free. They were covered with weeping blisters. Had his firestarting slipped beyond his control, and was that how Ben had died? Would it be safer to leave Ethan in the forest after all?

  I kept the thought to myself. I was done casting magic out if I could help it. I followed Matthew and Ethan to my house, picking up the firewood along the way. Kyle trailed behind me.

  Mom and Kate met us at the door and urged us all inside. I set the wood by the fire and helped Matthew settle Ethan on the couch. Mom brushed the tangles back from the stranger’s face. I saw no sign of the pain that had made her bend over earlier.

  Matthew’s grandmother, Kate, knelt by the boy’s side, her hair pulled back in its usual efficient gray bun. Once her knees wouldn’t have let her kneel, but Allie had healed them before she and Caleb left us. Kate frowned as she put her soft weaver’s hands to the boy’s forehead. “We need to bring his fever down. Matthew, get him upstairs into the tub. Liza, start filling buckets. Use water—snow’s too cold.”

  Kyle tugged on my sleeve as I headed for the door. “I can help.”

  “Buckets are too heavy for you.” Surely Kyle knew that, just as he knew ants couldn’t be allowed in the woodpiles.

  Kyle stuck out his lower lip. “I can.”

  Kate and Mom exchanged looks. “Let him go with you,” Kate said softly. “He’ll have to go home soon enough.”

  I sighed, but I didn’t stop Kyle as he followed me out the door. I grabbed a wooden bucket from around back and carried it toward the well. Kyle dragged a second bucket through the snow behind him.

  Another boy from our town, Seth, was there drawing water, one hand extended over the well shaft, the other absently turning the crank. At seventeen Seth was a year older than Matthew and me, with close-cut hair and a lazy look that made him seem half-asleep. The bucket moved toward him, but the rope was too slack for his cranking to be lifting it; he must have been using his object calling. He tensed at the sound of Kyle’s and my footsteps, as if the habit of hiding magic hadn’t wholly left him, but he kept using his magic to float the bucket out of the well. “Hi, Liza. Kyle. What’s going on?” He unhooked the bucket and it drifted to the ground beside him.

  Kyle let go of his bucket and said, “Liza found a firestarter.”

  How had Mom and Kate ever kept magic a secret with Kyle around? I hooked my bucket onto the rope and lowered it. “A boy,” I told Seth. “Found him just outside of town. Water’s to get his fever down.” Liquid sloshed into my bucket. As I started cranking it up again, I watched Seth’s half-lidded eyes, gauging his reaction. Like me, Seth had once helped turn strangers away from our town.

  “Firestarting. That’s rough.” Seth reached out a hand, and the tension left the crank. My bucket rose out of the well to hover in front of me. I nodded my thanks as I unhooked it. The bucket drifted gently to the ground.

  Kyle grabbed his bucket and held it out to me. I sighed, took it, and lowered it into the well. I lifted the full bucket out—Seth helped again—and set it down in front of Kyle. He’d see soon enough that he couldn’t carry it.

  Kyle pressed his lips together, looking determined, and reached for the bucket with both hands.

  It came up easily in his hold. Kyle grinned. So did Seth, who had his arm stretched toward it.

  I rolled my eyes. “He’ll never learn that way.”

  Seth shrugged. “Why make things harder than they have to be?” He hefted his own bucket without magic. “Come on. Show me this firestarter. Chores can wait—I’ll haul what I can. We Afters have to stick together.”

  Afters. Those born since the War. Seth and Kyle followed me back to my house. Outside, we met Matthew, who was frowning as he carried another bucket toward the well. I went inside ahead of Kyle and Seth. Kyle insisted on “carrying” his bucket all the way up the stairs behind me.

  Like all the upstairs rooms, the bathroom was cold, because houses built Before had fireplaces only on their lowest floors. Ethan lay naked and shivering in the claw-foot tub, his eyes squeezed shut. Mom rubbed his forehead with a damp cloth while Kate wrapped bandages around his blistered hands. The rest of Ethan’s body wasn’t burned, not even his chest, in spite of his charred sweater. That made little sense. Did magic somehow protect firestarters from their own fires?

  I was staring. I looked away, resting my bucket beside the tub, while Seth and Kyle waited in the hallway. Kate finished wrapping his hands and nodded at me. I began pouring the water in.

  Ethan screamed at the touch of cold water on his fevered skin. I drew the bucket back. He jerked upright, huddling over and glaring at us all through wild eyes.

  The bandage on his left hand had come loose. Kate tightened it and gently took both his hands in hers. “Keep going, Liza.”

  I poured the water more slowly this time. Ethan rocked back and forth, shivering still. “Not my fault,” he whimpered. “Not my fault.”

  No one said anything wasn’t their fault unless they feared it was. I took the empty bucket into the hall. Kyle walked past me, head held high, hands barely touching his own bucket as it floated in front of him. Seth followed close behind him.

  With three of us working—four, counting Kyle—it only took a few trips to fill the tub. Somewhere in the cabinets Kyle found a trio of faded green rubber frogs and balanced them on the tub’s edge. Ethan didn’t seem to notice. He stopped whimpering and stared, wide-eyed, at the ceiling.

  “It’s all right,” Mom whispered to him, over and over again, just like she had when I was small.

  Like me, this stranger knew better. “Not all right. Never all right.”

  I thought of Ben’s burned body. “What happened?” I asked him. Mom gave me a sharp look. “We have to know,” I said.

  “Time enough for that later.” Kate still held Ethan’s hands, keeping them out of the water. “Fever’s already down a little,” she said.

  Ethan moaned. Mom made shushing sounds. “You’re safe here.”

  The boy frowned, as if safety were a child’s tale he’d long ago stopped believing.

  Once we got Ethan into bed, he fell into a fitful sleep. Mom kept watch over him while Matthew, Seth, and I headed off to other chores. Kyle followed me into the forest to gather acorns hidden beneath the snow. I let him. Gathering was a task a child could help with, now that the trees slept. In years past the oaks had held their acorns close or else flung them at passersby in hopes th
ey’d root in skin and bone, but this autumn they’d fallen like rain from the trees—not only small acorns, such as those Hope wore, but larger ones as well. Soaked, acorn kernels made a bitter flour, one that had gotten us through a couple of hard years when I was small. Famine food, Kate called it. I didn’t look forward to eating such again, but if the spring crops didn’t come in, the acorns would give us a little more time, until they ran out as well.

  Kyle really did help with the gathering, at least until he found a glowworm melting a trail through the snow and stopped to talk to it.

  “Don’t touch it,” I warned him. Usually glowworms didn’t hold much heat, but with so much leaf litter for them to feed on this winter, they were burning hotter than usual.

  Kyle gave me a long look, as though he couldn’t believe I’d think him so stupid, and turned back to the worm, leaving me to finish filling the acorn sack myself. When I was done, the worm was gone, but Kyle’s name was spelled out in worm trails in the snow. My stomach ached with hunger by then, and I wished I’d eaten before heading out after all.

  As we returned to town, Kyle’s mother marched over to us and grabbed his arm. “What trouble are you making now?” Brianna demanded.

  Kyle stared at the ground. I pointed to the acorn sack. “He wasn’t any trouble. He was a good helper.”

  Kyle’s mother gave me a smoldering look. “You’ll do well not to tell me when my son is and isn’t making trouble, Liza.” She dragged Kyle away. He didn’t protest, just kept looking down with a sullen frown as his mother began muttering about what a useless child he was. I winced, though they were only words. I knew well enough that words could cut deep as blows.

  I brought the sack home and set it down on the couch along with my scarf, hat, and gloves. Before this winter, I wouldn’t have dared bring acorns within walls until they were soaked and ground into meal, but I felt no more life in these seeds than I’d felt in the others.

  The morning’s fire had burned down to hot coals. I unbuttoned my coat but kept it on as I set yesterday’s cornmeal mush over the heat. There was some squirrel left in the mush, and my stomach grumbled as it simmered. I took the pot from the fire, filled two bowls, and brought them upstairs along with a couple of spoons.

  Father’s—no, Mom’s—door was open. I stepped into the chilly room. Ethan slept on the feather bed, more easily now, his bandaged hands resting loosely atop the covers. Mom sat in a chair beside him, darning holes in old socks. I handed her a bowl. From the dresser, a small oil lamp added its light to the sun shining in around the nylon-tacked windows.

  “Lunchtime already?” Mom set the mending aside and took the bowl absently into her lap. She tilted her head toward Ethan. “Kate gave him something to help him sleep.”

  I put a spoon into Mom’s bowl and sat beside her in the room’s other chair. Mom sighed and swallowed a mouthful. Once she ate, I did, too. My stomach’s grumbling eased.

  Too soon, Mom stopped and handed me her bowl. “You finish it, Liza.”

  I shook my head, though my bowl was empty and I could easily have scraped Mom’s clean as well. “I’ll save it for later.” Mom was eating too little as it was. I took both bowls downstairs and spooned the cornmeal back into the pot. Grabbing the acorn sack and a nutcracker, I headed back upstairs, where Mom was wiping Ethan’s face with a wet cloth.

  “Do you think he killed Ben?” I asked her.

  Mom set the cloth aside. “I think it likely.”

  My damp socks were cold. “Do you wish I’d left him in the forest?”

  “There are those who would do that in this town and not regret it. I know that well enough.” Mom looked at Ethan as she spoke. “I am glad to learn my daughter is not one of them.”

  Ethan whimpered in his sleep. Wisps of smoke escaped the bandages around his hands. Mom scrambled to her feet and grabbed a water basin from beside the bed. She shoved it into my hands, pulled Ethan up, and plunged his hands into the water, which sizzled at the sudden heat. Ethan cried out and fought Mom, but she didn’t release him until the sizzling stopped. Tears streamed down his face as he fell back to the bed. I returned the basin to the floor as Mom moved Ethan’s arms back to his sides. Neither of us spoke until he’d settled back into sleep.

  Mom sighed as she straightened his blankets. “He has far less control than Jayce’s granddaughter did. That worries me. I don’t know as much about the wilder magics, like those that deal with fire and plants. If I did, maybe our firestarter would have lived.”

  I drew an acorn from the bag. Caleb’s sister Karin was a plant mage. “Karin’s magic isn’t wild.” She had better control than anyone I knew.

  Mom picked up her darning from where it had fallen to the floor. “I still can’t imagine Karinna teaching humans.”

  I opened my mouth, strangely stung. It was Karin who’d first taught me about magic, while Mom had still been keeping her teaching secret from me. “Karin saved my life.” When mulberry trees had attacked Matthew and me, she’d rescued us. I thought of how harsh she’d been to Caleb in my vision. That vision didn’t match the woman I knew. “Karin was kind to me.”

  “But not to me,” Mom said.

  She is only human, Kaylen. You do her no harm, any more than hood and jesses do harm to a hawk. It was Mom Karin had been speaking about. That didn’t fit what I knew of her, either. Karin taught an entire town full of human children.

  But before that, Karin had fought against my people in the War. Allie had told me so.

  I turned the acorn in my hands. I suspected that this was about neither Karin’s teaching nor which side she’d fought on. “Karin didn’t like you and Caleb being together, did she?” The vision had made that clear enough.

  Mom moved her needle through the wool with slow, careful stitches. She never spoke of her time in Faerie, no matter how often I asked. The memory of how frightened she’d been in my vision kept me from asking too often, but it didn’t make my questions go away. “Can you at least tell me how the War started?”

  Mom pushed her needle too hard; it punched through the wool to stab her finger. She cursed and brought her finger to her lips. “Right. I need a break. You up for taking a turn with Ethan?”

  For years I’d thought I knew how the War had begun—the faerie folk had attacked us, for reasons of their own. Now that I’d seen the damage my people had done to Faerie in turn, I knew it couldn’t be that simple. “Why won’t you tell me?”

  Mom stood and looked at me. A drop of blood had beaded on her fingertip. “There’s some who’d say Kaylen—Caleb—and I started the War. Last time I spoke to her, Karinna was among them.”

  She left the room before I could ask anything more.

  I shelled acorns while I kept watch over Ethan. Twice more his bandages smoldered, and I doused his hands in the water. The second time the charred bandages crumbled away. I wrapped new ones loosely around his burns. I could have called Mom up to help me, but I didn’t. How much longer did I have to fear hurting her with my questions?

  How could she and Caleb possibly have caused the War?

  The sun grew low as I continued shelling. I heard a soft creak on the stairs. Matthew stepped into the room with another nutcracker. I gave his hand a quick squeeze. His fingers were cold. He sat, and we shelled together.

  Matthew looked toward Ethan. “How is he?”

  “About the same.” I wanted to reach for Matthew’s hand again, to warm it between both of mine, but then I wouldn’t be able to work.

  Matthew picked at a stubborn bit of shell. “Gram’s going to tell them about Ethan at the Council meeting tonight. She says it’s best they hear it from her.”

  “Kyle probably already told his mom. She’s in a foul mood today. She’ll want to send Ethan away.”

  Matthew tossed the acorn shell into the growing pile beside me. “The Council will likely be split. Gram says it’s going to be a long meeting.”

  I listened to Ethan’s steady breathing as I took another acorn from the sack. If we sent h
im away now, he’d die in the forest and the snow.

  Matthew pressed his lips together. “We won’t let them make Ethan leave. I already spoke to Hope and Seth. Charlotte, too.” Those were all the older Afters. “If this town wants to send him away, they’ll have to get past all of us first.” He looked at me, and I knew he wanted to know if I’d stand with them. He’d always stood by me, even when I’d done little to deserve it.

  I hesitated, then voiced my fear aloud. “What if Ethan really is a danger to our town? We don’t even know that Ben’s death was an accident. And even if it was, it’s an accident that could happen again.”

  “We’ll deal with it.” Matthew sounded very sure.

  I envied his certainty. “I won’t let you stand alone, if it comes down to that.” My fingers tightened around the acorn. The Council made the rules for Franklin Falls. What would happen if we challenged them? “It’s risky.” I was shivering. I just couldn’t seem to get warm this winter. Matthew put his arm around my shoulders, and together we watched the rise and fall of Ethan’s chest.

  “Nothing’s safe,” Matthew said.

  I knew that better than anyone. I turned to him. Strands of blond hair fell around Matthew’s face, and his eyes were strangely bright. I shivered harder. Then, since I was already being brave, I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his.

  He didn’t pull away as I’d feared. With a soft sound he drew me closer, reaching up to run his fingers through my hair. His musky taste reminded me of the smell of his wolf’s fur. The acorn in my hand pattered to the floor.

  The rustling of blankets made us pull abruptly apart. Ethan sat up in bed, staring at us.

  Matthew’s ears flushed red. My face burned. I wondered if Ethan could see the way the taste of Matthew’s lips lingered on mine. The boy’s eyes hardened as he focused on us. He didn’t trust us.

  I didn’t fully trust him, either. “How are you feeling?”

  “How do you think I feel?” Ethan huddled down among the blankets. “But at least I’m still alive, right? I ought to be grateful.” His voice was bitter, as if maybe he wished we hadn’t saved him.