Moonkind (Winterling)

by Sarah Prineas

  Determined, he kept his eyes closed.

  Bzzzrzrzhmmmm, the bee said. Wake up.

  Not listening.

  “Hi, Rook,” he heard Fer’s voice say.

  His eyes popped open. The bee flew past and he made a mock snap at it, and its buzz turned teasing. He climbed to his four paws and then stretched and shook his head and, seeing Fer, felt his betrayer tail start to wag. Quickly he spat out his shifter-tooth and shoved it into his pocket.

  She was looking him over. Not frowning, exactly, but as if she was trying to see inside his head to what he was thinking. It made him feel prickly.

  “So you’re still here,” Fer said.

  “I am, yes,” he answered. They stood at the base of the Lady Tree. Fer’s bee had flown up into its branches to join the other bees, who waited there in a swarm. He yawned and rubbed the sleep-sand out of his eyes.

  “Hm.” She stepped past him and started climbing up to the platform where her little house was.

  He started to follow, then stopped with his web-stained hand on the rope ladder that led up the tree. It was just one little sound, Fer’s hm, but it said a lot. It meant she had changed. When she’d first left the human world to come to these lands, she’d been so stupidly trusting. She’d trusted the Mór, and then later she’d trusted Arenthiel, at least for a little while. And she’d trusted him, too, even when she shouldn’t have.

  And now that she should trust him, that hm meant she didn’t trust him at all, curse it.

  Fer went into her house, where Grand-Jane was lying asleep in her bed. She started preparing herbs and honey, ignoring Rook as he came in and settled by the door. She still wasn’t sure what to think about him. Being in the same room with him made her feel raw, as if her heart had been scraped all over and trampled on. Why was he even here? Shouldn’t he be with his brothers?

  Twig brought in a kettle of hot water and she brewed tea; when it was ready, she woke Grand-Jane and helped her sit up, then sat on the floor as she drank the tea. Letting Grand-Jane sleep would be best, but Fer couldn’t wait—she needed to be ready to go out and deal with the stilth as soon as the Way opened at sunset.

  “Better?” Fer asked.

  “Much better,” Grand-Jane answered, and sipped her tea. “Saint-John’s-wort and ginseng, I think. Excellent choice,” she approved. She looked around the room. “This is very nice.”

  Fer sat on a carpet woven of silk, with red-and-orange leaves on it that blended together like fire. Hangings of the same color covered the wall. It reminded her of Grand-Jane’s warm kitchen back in the human world.

  Grand-Jane’s eyes sharpened as she caught sight of Rook over by the door. “Good morning, Rook,” she said.

  He gave her a quick grin in return.

  Fer blinked. Her grandma hadn’t called him Robin, his false name. It was strange that he let her use his real name.

  Grand-Jane’s sharp gaze shifted to Fer. With a thin hand, she stroked the side of Fer’s head. “You’ve cut off all your hair.”

  “It kept getting tangled,” Fer explained.

  Smiling, her grandma shook her head. “I should have thought of that years ago.” She studied Fer carefully. “You’re worried about something, my girl.”

  Fer nodded. She hadn’t had time to explain it while they’d been in the human world, and her grandma had fallen asleep yesterday as soon as they’d arrived at the Lady Tree. She told about the stilth. “It’s because of the broken oaths of the Forsworn, and the glamories,” she said. “The stilth has started to spread here, into the Summerlands, too. I have to figure out a way to stop it.”

  “We have to make the Forsworn take off the glamories,” Rook put in. “That’s the only way to stop the stilth from spreading.”

  “Rook, I’m not going to force them,” Fer insisted. “You already know that. I have to find another way.”

  He looked away, then nodded.

  “I wish I could do something to help,” Grand-Jane said.

  “You can help,” Fer realized. “Grand-Jane, I have to leave to fight the stilth, but you’re human. If you stay here, your strength can protect the Summerlands. Will you do that?”

  Her grandma gave a brisk nod. “Of course. What shall I do?”

  Fer felt an easing of her worry. “Once I’ve gone, stay at the Way. If any stilth comes through, try to push it back. You should have the power to do that, at least for a little while.”

  “I will,” Grand-Jane said.

  Fer stood and gave her grandma one last hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re going into danger again, my girl,” Grand-Jane whispered back. “Try to be careful.”

  She knew she couldn’t promise that. “Don’t worry.” She turned toward the door.

  “I’ll come too,” Rook said, getting to his feet.

  She studied him. He seemed as if he was trying to help. But she still wasn’t sure whether she should trust him or not. Instead of answering, she shrugged and went out.

  At the bottom of the Tree, she paused and looked around. The dark-purple fallen leaves of the Lady Tree carpeted the ground; the Tree’s branches were silver against the gray sky. The air felt chilly and damp. She leaned against the Tree, focusing on her connection with her land. It felt . . . mostly all right, but the stilth was there in the way the land’s turn toward winter had slowed. The air felt stuffy and still.

  Rook dropped from the ladder, interrupting her. “Well?” he asked. “What now?”

  She straightened and rubbed a tired hand across her eyes. He was a puck, and that meant it was really none of his business. “I don’t expect you to help me. In fact, I don’t even know what you’re doing here.”

  “I know,” he answered. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stood frowning at her. “We need to go talk to my brothers.”

  “I don’t want to talk to them,” she shot back.

  “You should want to,” he said. “They have a plan, something to do with the glamories.”

  A puck plan? That was something she could do without. “No,” she said, and started walking.

  A bound and he’d caught up to her, his yellow eyes flashing. “Fer,” he said, grabbing her arm, “my brothers and I can help.”

  “Your brothers don’t even like me,” she said. She jerked her arm out of his grip. “They don’t like anyone. Why would they help?”

  He shrugged. “Because I’ll ask them to.”

  “Because you’ll ask them to,” she repeated slowly. “Oh, sure, Rook. You expect me to believe that they’ll help me just because you’re going to ask them to do it?”

  He flared up. “What do you know about it, Fer? You don’t know anything about pucks. You think you do, but you don’t.”

  She stepped up, toe-to-toe, and gave him just as much flame as he’d given her. “Then tell me!”

  He opened his mouth—to snarl at her, she was sure—but then he blinked and closed it again. “Oh.” He paused, as if thinking. Then he backed two slow paces away from her and stood with his head down. After a moment, he looked up. “Fer, what do we pucks seem like to you? I mean, what do you think of us?” He spread his arms, as if presenting himself for her inspection.

  And there he was, peering warily at her through the shaggy hair that hung down into flame-colored eyes that were smudged with weariness. The shadow-web tracked darkly across his left hand. She thought back to what she knew of the pucks. She thought about the way other people reacted to them. “You’re suspicious,” she said slowly. “You don’t trust anybody. Nobody trusts you. You lie and betray. You don’t want to help anybody; you just want to make trouble.”

  “We are like that, yes.” He was nodding.

  “But—” She’d just said awful things about pucks, and he agreed with her?

  “We have to be that way, Fer,” he went on. “You know we’re different from the rest of the people in the lands. We can’t be ruled, we see too much, we like to make trouble, so all the Lords and Ladies hate us, and fear us, and thei
r people do too. They hunt us. When a baby puck is born to any of their people, they leave it by the nearest Way to die.”

  What? Fer gasped.

  He went on, as if leaving babies to die was an ordinary thing. “Fer, part of being a puck is that we’re not bound together by oaths. We’re not friends with each other. We’re brothers. We are . . . we’re . . .” He paused and seemed to be watching her very closely. “We stay true to each other.”

  She shook her head. They stayed true? “What do you mean?”

  He stepped closer, scuffing through the fallen purple-brown leaves of the Lady Tree. “A puck is always true to his brothers. It’s part of who we are. It’s how we survive. I trust my brothers without question, and in return, they trust me. If I decide I have to do something, all of my brothers support me. All of them,” he added fiercely. “Always.”

  So that was staying true. Rook was snarly and annoying, but he was right that she hadn’t understood what the pucks truly were. It made her look at him differently. Their friendship was still broken and unfixable, but at least now she could see why. Every time he’d bumped up against his friendship with her, he’d stayed true to his brothers. They would always come first. It was part of who he was. Not a human boy. A puck.

  And now . . .

  He said he wanted to help her.

  She shook her head. She just wasn’t sure. Her head was telling her not to trust him or his puck-brothers. Her heart ached where the sharp end of the broken thread stabbed her.

  “Fer,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s your way to trust.”

  That was true. “But I’ve been too trusting,” she said slowly. “I can’t— I don’t think—” she started.

  And then she stopped. Two paces away, Rook stood scowling at her, his yellow eyes fierce, his shoulders hunched as if he was awaiting a blow. He was waiting for her to say no.

  A low buzz came from the collar of her patch-jacket. One of her bees had followed her and had landed there and was humming at the edge of her hearing.

  Rmmmzmrmmmmmzm.

  She blinked, realizing what it was saying. The bees liked Rook. With a little shock, she remembered that when she’d been imprisoned in the tower and she’d sent the bee to her friends, it hadn’t gone to Fray and Twig. It had gone to Rook.

  Trust him, the bee was telling her.

  She shook her head. “Rook, why do you care so much about it? The stilth, I mean. You never cared about anything before, except your brothers.”

  “I don’t know, Fer,” he answered. Then his face brightened. “No, I do know. It’s because of you. I used to be like what you said. I didn’t care about anything except being a puck. But you made me change.”

  “Oh,” she said. Her special human talent again, she realized. To bring change.

  “You can trust me,” Rook insisted. “I do want to help, and my brothers will help too. Can I come?”

  Slowly she nodded. She would give him this one last chance. On her collar, the bee gave a happy buzz. She didn’t feel like smiling, but something about her answer felt right.

  Twenty-One

  Fer had packed herbs and honey into her knapsack. Rook had told her that some of the people he’d seen were wildling, so she brought all of the herbs she had that were used for healing that particular sickness. She’d talked to Fray and Twig about where she was going and how long she’d be gone, and told them to help Grand-Jane defend the Way. She’d hurried to fetch Phouka from his grazing meadow. She’d summoned the rest of her bees. Then she’d found her bow and quiver of arrows. Herbs, horse, bees, bow. It wasn’t much, really, but it felt like she was gathering all her strength around her.

  “Is it time?” Rook asked. He’d been pacing around the clearing where the Way would open as soon as the sun set.

  “Almost,” she answered. Phouka stood strong and steady beside her; his black mane hung long and tangled, and his tail brushed the ground. The bees swarmed over her head, their anxious buzzing like a low growl of thunder. The clouds had thickened and a light rain drizzled down. She ran a hand through her short hair; it came away wet. “Here,” she said, handing the heavy knapsack to Rook as he paced past her.

  He nodded and slung it over his shoulder.

  Waiting by the Way, Fer straightened. The clouds hid the setting sun, but she could feel the slow turn of her land toward night. The Way trembled on the edge of opening. “It’s almost time,” she said.

  Rook stepped up next to her. “I’ll take you to my brothers.”

  “First I want you to take me to see the stilth,” she said. “I need to understand what it is so I can figure out how to stop it.”

  “It’ll be dangerous,” Rook warned.

  “I know.” The Way opened. “That doesn’t matter now. Come on.”

  Phouka pranced through. She was about to follow him when she felt the heavy, stuck-in-honey feeling of the stilth flowing through the Way, seeping into her land.

  Rook grabbed her hand, pulling her, and they stepped through the Way, stumbling into the land on the other side of it. Her bees zinged distractedly around the briar-edged clearing. Phouka snorted and shook his head.

  “It’s stronger than I thought it would be,” she said. Part of her wanted to go back and defend her land. But she knew she couldn’t abandon the rest of the lands to the stilth.

  Rook led her across the Briarlands on a path that led to another Way. They walked single file along a narrow path: first Rook, then Fer, and then Phouka behind her, his hooves clopping loudly on the hardened dirt. The Briarland they passed through felt still and silent. No breeze blew; no birds sang. “Where are all the people who live here?” she asked.

  “Hiding, maybe,” Rook answered. “Or at the Lake of All Ways. The Lady of this land fears the stilth, so she abandoned her land and its people and went into hiding at the nathe.”

  A Lady abandoning her land and people. Fer shivered at the thought.

  Finally they reached the Briarland’s other Way and passed through it, stepping into a forested land she’d visited a couple of times. Before, it had been full of trees with fan-shaped leaves, and here and there a meadow bursting with wildflowers and butterflies dancing in the sunlight.

  But now all was still, the air heavily silent. Looking around, she saw that thousands of caterpillars had covered the forest with their woven cocoons. The swathes of foglike web made the trees look like ghosts.

  Rook went over to one of the trees and reached into a sticky web. He came back to where Fer and Phouka waited. “Look,” he said. In his hand he held a brown cocoon. Phouka poked his nose over Fer’s shoulder to see it. Carefully Rook started to split it open.

  “No—” Fer started. He’d kill the butterfly if he broke its cocoon.

  But then she smelled something rotten. Rook picked apart the cocoon to show her what was inside. A slimy lump of a misshapen thing, half butterfly, half caterpillar. Dead.

  She looked up at the web-shrouded trees. The butterflies were waiting, waiting, waiting for a change that would never come. They were rotting and dead. “So this is the stilth,” she said softly.

  “It is, yes,” Rook answered. “But there’s worse.”

  “Show me,” she ordered. “I need to see it.”

  Fer let him lead her and Phouka and the bees through another Way, and then another. They passed groups of people, refugees with packs on their backs, headed for the nathe. In their frightened eyes she could see fever—they were wildling, all of them. Finally they came to another Way.

  Rook paused and shot her a worried glance. “This is the worst of it, Fer.”

  “All right.” Fer got ready to step through the latest Way.

  “They’d better stay here,” Rook said, pointing at the swarm of bees hovering over her head. “And you, too, Finn,” he said to Phouka.

  Staying alert, she left her bees and Phouka and followed Rook through the Way.

  They stepped out of it onto a rock ledge overlooking a plain of mud and rot. A virulently red sun burned a hol
e in the horizon. The sky overhead was soot black, with no stars, no moon. A stench of death washed over her; she choked for breath. Beside her, Rook stood without moving.

  “Rook?” she asked, but her words made no sound in the stuffy air.

  She turned—slowly, so slowly—and rested a hand on his arm.

  At her touch, he gasped, then choked in another breath. He said something that she couldn’t hear.

  She kept her grip on his arm. His head lifted; the flames in his eyes, she noticed, were dim, like a banked fire.

  They had to get out of this dying land. Gripping his hand, she turned them both around and faced the Way. With an arm that felt as heavy as stone, she opened it, then dragged him through.

  They stood coughing and gasping for breath on the other side. Phouka stood with stiff legs, snorting, as if he was worried. The bees circled Rook’s head, then settled over Fer, buzzing with alarm.

  “The Sealands,” Rook said, once he could talk again. He glanced over his shoulder at the closed Way they’d just passed through. “It’s worse than I thought it would be.”

  “It’s death,” Fer realized, and shivered with the horror of it. The stilth was powerful and inevitable. As it spread it would bring its unchanging stillness and silence to all the lands and all of the people who lived in them. What could she possibly do to stop it?

  But Rook was standing with his hands on his hips, grinning at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Did you see what happened there, in the Sealands?” he asked. “I was stuck, but you freed me. You have power against the stilth. Old Scrawny said you did because you’re part human, and changeable, and he was right.”

  Yes, she knew she had power, but it didn’t seem like much. Not compared to the hugeness and the horror of the stilth.

  Twenty-Two

  Rook knew he should have gone back to his brothers before this. They’d be impatient at having to wait so long. They’d want to carry out their puck-plan right away. He didn’t know what that plan was, exactly, except that it was supposed to turn everything upside down and had something to do with the shadow-spinner spider. His brothers didn’t know about the stilth, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care about it because they wouldn’t see how it might affect them. Somehow he had to convince them to change their plan—to work with him, and with Fer.