Faerie Winter

by Janni Lee Simner

  Hope calling up wind, her hands raised high, her face grim. Only then her hands fell slack, and she smiled—

  Mom, standing on Kate’s back porch, looking into the Lady’s cold eyes. “Do to me as you will. I will fear you no longer—”

  It was hard not to walk too fast over the treacherous ice.

  As we neared Clayburn, Karin paused beside something silver that shone against the ground. Elin’s butterfly, feebly flapping its wings. “You kept it,” Karin whispered as she took the butterfly in one hand. She raised the hawk toward her, but Elin turned away.

  “Set it free.” Kyle lifted his chin toward the butterfly. A faint shadow clung to its metal wings.

  “If I set it free, it will die.” Karin frowned as she straightened a bent wing tip.

  Better to die than to remain helpless, trapped in silver forever. “Where did Elin get such an awful thing?”

  “It was a gift.” Karin sighed. “From her mother.” She fastened the clip into her own hair, above her braid.

  In Clayburn ice sheathed the burned houses, sheathed, too, the burned bodies around them. Kyle dug his fingernails into my hand. Karin’s steps grew slower, more deliberate—there was anger there. On her shoulder, Elin craned her hawk’s head this way and that, as if so much death were a matter of mere curiosity, as if those deaths weren’t all her fault.

  “She says they smell bad,” Kyle whispered.

  Karin stroked Elin’s feathers. “I know,” she whispered, though the smell was faint now, decay slowed by the cold and the ice.

  I held Kyle’s hand firmly as we turned onto the path away from Clayburn. Tracks broke through the ice: a human foot, a wolf’s paw. Trees creaked around us. Even if spring came, some trees would die beneath this winter ice.

  A younger Elin with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why won’t you allow me to go with you? I do not lack the courage—”

  Karin, lips pressed firmly together. “You are too young for this battle, Elianna. I will protect you a time longer, if I can. There is a chance you might survive this War, while I know that I will not—”

  Kyle pinched my arm, harder this time. I slipped and fell butt-first onto the ice. Kyle laughed. Karin reached out a hand. I looked up at her as I took it and struggled to my feet. She’d left her daughter, too, left her because of the War, but stayed away to teach human children. I glanced at the hawk on her fist, but Elin’s head was hidden beneath one wing. The other hung awkwardly by her side.

  The air grew warmer as the sun edged past noon. Light glinted off a water droplet that hung, half-frozen, from a branch.

  Matthew—eyes bright, soot-streaked hair falling into his face—saying, “I’ll go faster alone—”

  I focused on setting my feet down on the ice and making sure I didn’t fall again.

  Too soon we came to shards of white bone poking through the snow. The ashes of the dead children gave a sickly-gray cast to the ice that covered their remains.

  Elin made a strange, strangled sound I’d never heard any bird make. “She’s crying,” Kyle whispered.

  Crying wouldn’t bring them back. Elin was responsible for the things she did, too.

  We found my pack among the ashes, coated with ice. I pulled out the dried meat within and shared it with the others. Someone—the Lady?—had severed my bowstring. I hesitated—Father had helped me make that bow, and it could be restrung back home—then left it and the pack where they lay. They’d only weigh me down.

  “Tired,” Kyle muttered as we left ash and bone behind. The snow turned to slush, and we walked faster. Through the trees I caught glimpses of the wider road that would lead us back to my town. I rubbed the leather around my wrist. Soon we would be home. What would we find when we got there?

  Something at the meeting of the path and the road caught the light, something slick and liquid. I slowed my steps, squinting for a better look. Karin moved to my side as I realized what lay there.

  No. “Get back, Kyle.” I didn’t want him to see this.

  I forced myself to keep moving forward. The afternoon sun seemed distant and cold. I didn’t want to see this.

  Johnny lay on his back, hands clasped around the knife—my knife—that was plunged through his heart. A smile was frozen on his face, and he’d clearly been dead for some time.

  Blood spread like a bright red flower from the wound, glinting in the sun. More blood stained Johnny’s wrists and his throat.

  Kyle howled and threw himself at his brother. Elin screeched and flapped from Karin’s shoulder, her injured wing, with its torn feathers, straining. She missed the branch she aimed for, landing on a lower one instead. Karin scarcely seemed to notice. Her face held no expression as she knelt and thrust her hands into a clump of mud and brown grass.

  I ran to Kyle’s side. He was shaking Johnny as hard as his small hands could. “Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

  “Johnny!” I called, but I knew I was too late to bring him back. “Jonathan!” I couldn’t look away from the smile on his lips. He’d been glad to do what the Lady wanted, even as he’d died.

  Kyle stopped shaking his brother and looked at me. “Sleeping?” he asked.

  I couldn’t lie. I knew it beyond doubting now, because I wanted to so badly. “Not sleeping.” My throat hurt.

  Kyle’s lip quivered. He couldn’t lie, either, couldn’t deny what was true—it was too much. I knelt and reached for him, and he threw himself at me, fists raised. He punched my chest, again and again, with surprising force for such a small child. I let him. I could handle this, could handle it better than the way Johnny’s eyes stared at the sky.

  Kyle’s howls turned to shuddering sobs. I drew him closer, remaining alert for anyone whose approach might mean us harm, all the while knowing I wouldn’t hear the Lady if she chose to attack. I couldn’t do anything about that, so I did what I could: held Kyle until he cried himself out.

  At last he fell hiccuping against me. I rubbed his back and looked over his head at Karin. She drew her hands back from the dying plants. “They passed this way sometime before noon.”

  We were too late. Anger burned in me. Elin sat on her branch, watching us through unblinking eyes. This was her fault. She’d led us to the Lady. If not for her, Johnny would be alive.

  “Elianna!” I drew away from Kyle and scrambled to my feet. “Elianna, come here!” Elin trembled on her branch. I didn’t call her out of the hawk this time. I only called her to me.

  She fluttered down to my arm, her injured wing forcing her to take a jagged path. I glared into her yellow hawk’s eyes. She glared back, matching hate with hate, but she didn’t leave my arm. She couldn’t. I felt my command, cold and glimmering between us.

  “Liza.” Karin stepped toward us.

  Right here, right now, I could be rid of Elin. I might have been powerless with the Lady, but I wasn’t powerless now. I could command Elin to go so far away she would never wake again.

  The trees creaked softly. Elin’s talons tightened around my jacket. If I let go my control, even for a moment, she could shatter bone with those claws. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”

  “You must decide for yourself what needs doing.” Karin held her hands out in front of her. “I tell you only this: there is a difference between acting out of anger and acting out of need. Which is this, Liza?”

  Kyle held Johnny’s bloodstained hand, whispering words too low to hear. Who would dare take chances with this magic that controlled actions and thoughts? How could we not go to War against such power?

  “It is all right to be angry.” Karin had stopped moving toward me. “It is all right to be frightened.”

  “So long as you don’t let your fear show.” I repeated Father’s old lesson automatically.

  “No. So long as you don’t let your fear control you.” Karin looked toward Elin, then me. She held out her fist.

  I looked into the hawk’s eyes. Did she know fear, too? “I’ll still kill her if there’s need. I won�
�t hesitate.”

  “I know,” Karin said.

  My arm trembled as I whispered, “Go, Elianna.” She half hopped, half flew from my arm to Karin’s glove.

  Karin kept looking at me. “Save your blame for the one who most deserves it. My mother often tired of her human toys and sent them to horrible fates, but this is something more. With this death she tells us to turn back, knowing full well we will not heed her warning. That’s part of her game.”

  “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 outs
ide 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.