Bones of Faerie (15 page)

Yet as we reached the middle of the crossroads, light exploded behind my eyes. I fell to my knees, rubbing my temples, willing pain and light to go away. Rebecca
wailed, but the sound faded as the light brightened. In that brightness I saw—

Black roads buckling like leather, tossing away the cars that rode their surface. Roots breaking through black stone, twisting metal until blood streaked the steel like a child's mud paintings—

People running alongside tall buildings, falling as roots broke through the earth at their feet. Dirt churning like flour in a sieve, and the people slipping from view one by one, their hands grasping air to the last, leaving behind only dirt and roots and jagged bone—

Men and women with pale hair and silver eyes, chanting commands that brought light to stone, that made trees bend and sway, giving them strength, making them reach high and dig deep—

Screaming, screaming everywhere, choked to silence, choked to dust—

I screamed as well. Someone shook me. I pushed through the visions like a swimmer through water. Allie looked anxiously down, her hands on my shoulders. Tallow trembled against her neck. In the sling, Rebecca cried on.

I looked to the earth at my knees, knowing now what lay beneath it. Blood and bone, metal and glass, all
tangled with deep roots. The trees around this clearing had fed well during the War. When I looked up, I saw ropey shadows stretching from their branches toward us, not quite long enough to reach.

I heard a strangled sound and saw Matthew bent over beside me, retching. I stumbled to my feet, reached into the pack he carried, and handed him a water bottle. He drank, coughed the water up, and drank again.

“I can smell them,” he rasped. His face was very pale. “God, Liza, you can't believe the smell.”

“And I can feel them,” said Allie as she took Tallow in her arms and rocked back and forth. “So many people. This will never be right. This will never be healed.”

Something cold tugged my boot. I looked down and saw a shadow hand reaching out of the hill. I jerked away, but the shadow followed, stretching like rubber from Before. My stomach churned. I walked away, and after several steps the hand lost its grip and snapped back to earth. But still I felt it calling me. No, not calling. Yearning to be called. The shadows beneath this hill didn't want to be dead.

I walked faster. Matthew and Allie followed right behind. Tears streamed down Allie's cheeks while Matthew looked as if he might be ill again any moment.

Rebecca kept crying. I rocked her as I walked, not sure which of us I sought to comfort.

Wind blew around my ankles as we descended the hill. I didn't look down. I knew I'd see more human shadows aching for my call. Something in me ached with them. I held Rebecca close, not caring about the cold that seeped through my sweater.

The shadows beneath my feet subsided as we left the crossroads behind and continued along our road, which veered northeast. Rebecca sighed and fell silent. But the ropey tree shadows around us grew, lengthening as shadows do near sunset and hissing as they swung through the air. We walked on, not willing to camp amid those shadows and not willing to return to the crossroads. Light faded around us. The sun touched the horizon, and the clouds turned gold above the treetops.

“How much they must have hated us,” Matthew said.

“Who?” Allie asked. I heard Tallow purring on her shoulders.

“The faerie folk. To have done this.”

“But the fey…,” Allie hesitated.

I looked to the orange horizon. I looked to the swaying trees and their shadows. Had those trees really been
safe Before? “The faerie folk weren't human. Of course they hated us.” Us and all we'd built.

“But they didn't…,” Allie sounded puzzled. “I mean—they were no worse than we were, Liza!”

“What?” How could anyone, seeing the world as it was now, say that? Did Washville teach its children nothing? “You know all that the faerie folk did to us.” I remembered the men and women in my vision, chanting power to the trees. Men and women with clear hair and silver eyes. Men and women like—I stopped abruptly and turned. “Caleb,” I said. “Karin, too.” Caleb who walked so quietly I never heard him coming. Karin who saw clearly even in the dark.

“Of course,” Allie said. “I thought you knew. Dad thought so, too. How else could they know so much about magic?”

I'd assumed they were just humans touched by magic, like Matthew and Allie and me. The faerie folk were supposed to be monsters, with dark wings and gnarled tree-bark hair. They weren't supposed to look just like us.

“But Karin fought in the War,” I said, feeling stupid.

“Yes,” Allie agreed. “But, Liza, she didn't fight for us.”

I tried to picture Karin chanting to the trees, bringing the buildings down, watching as my people died. My throat hurt. “Karin saved our lives.”
Trees have always listened to me, since I was a child.
How long ago had that been? In the old stories the faerie folk lived forever.

Matthew reached out to scratch Tallow behind the ears, his expression troubled. It wasn't just me—he hadn't known, either. Matthew turned to the side of the road, pulling a dead branch from a hawthorn thicket but backing away before the living branches could slash at him. He took a sharp stone and began scraping bright orange mushrooms off the stick. The mushrooms glowed faint green, not poisonous but enough to make one ill. “We need torches if we're to walk much farther,” he said.

Tallow jumped from Allie's shoulders and batted at the falling mushrooms. “The fey folk lost as much as we did during the War,” Allie said. “You both know that, don't you? Everyone knows that.”

I wasn't sure what I knew. I took the pack from Matthew and rummaged through it, finding the plastic torch Samuel had given me. I showed Matthew how to use it, then doused the light. Samuel said the batteries would lose strength over time, and we had only one spare
set. Matthew took the torch and set his stick aside. We walked on in silence while the horizon faded to pink. Rebecca's breath felt cold against my neck.

Allie said, “Everyone was a little crazy during the War. That's what Dad says.”

Tree shadows narrowed the path. We walked single file between them. “My father says the War only showed people for what they really were,” I told her.

“He would know,” Matthew said, but when I glanced sharply back he looked away.

I stepped around a stone that glowed dandelion yellow. “Father saved our town.” Father and Kate had held Franklin Falls together during the War, and during the looting that followed, too. They'd brought back the old skills, like bow hunting and weaving and farming without machines. When outsiders threatened us, Father organized the townsfolk to turn them away. When magic was born among us—

I glanced down at Rebecca. “Father had no choice.” Yet Rebecca hadn't done any harm with her magic, any more than Allie or Jared had.

“The War is over,” Matthew said. “Ian doesn't understand that.”

“Over?” I felt something cold through my boots and looked down as a stray shadow hand released its grip and sank into the earth. How could anyone say this was over? “If it was over Cam couldn't have …” My words trailed to silence even as Matthew stopped and looked right at me. I stopped, too. There was nothing casual in the hunch of Matthew's shoulders now.

“Who's Cam?” Allie's voice squeaked as she looked uneasily back and forth between us.

“Cam was my brother,” Matthew said. He kept staring at me, his gaze so dark that I knew I didn't want to see what would happen if his anger ever did slip beyond his control.

“Oh,” Allie breathed softly. Then, just as soft, “You don't have any teachers in your town, do you?”

“No,” I told her.

“Yes,” Matthew said. I glanced back again—
what teachers?
—but this time he ignored me. “Not the sort of teachers you have, though,” he told Allie.

Allie nodded soberly, as if that explained a lot. I started walking again, faster than before. A moth fluttered past me, bright wings vibrating. Rebecca lifted her head and reached for it, but her hand passed right through.

The moth flickered out. Rebecca smiled as if she were an ordinary baby. My throat felt suddenly dry.

The road narrowed further. I stopped abruptly.

Ahead of us tree shadows crossed the road, weaving themselves into a net and filling the way with darkness.

Chapter 13

I
turned around. The way behind was dark, too. The only light seemed to be the twilight around us, which was already fading to gray. Matthew fumbled with the plastic torch. It flared to life, producing a wide beam of light. That should have dispelled the shadows nearest us, but they drew closer to the light, as if for warmth.

“Ow!” A length of shadow lashed at Allie's arm. She jerked back. Blood soaked through a jagged gash in her sleeve. She pressed her hand against it, muttering words I hadn't thought she knew.

Another shadow snaked around the torch. The torch sizzled like wet firewood, flickered, and went out. Around
us, trees began to groan. Something cold slashed my cheek, breaking skin.
“Go away!”
I shouted.

The shadows drew back. The trees fell silent. The twilight brightened around us.

Matthew drew a breath. “Keep saying it, Liza. Just— keep saying it.”

I did so, chanting like a child afraid of the dark.
“Go away.”
Matthew lit the torch once more.
“Go away, go away, go away.”
The shadows kept their distance, staying a few dozen yards back on all sides.

Magic flows in both directions, Karin said. If I could call things to me, I could also push them back.

“Go away.”
We walked on. I kept ordering the darkness back, and it kept retreating. That darkness happily would have swallowed us whole, if not for my words.

If not for my magic.

“Go away.”
Rebecca shifted in her sling and reached for my hair. Allie walked as close behind me as she could, her footsteps landing where mine had been. Her braid was in her mouth again, and she chewed it as she walked. On her shoulders, Tallow hissed and swiped at something in the dark. Behind them, Matthew's movements were slower, more fluid, even as he hunched beneath the pack.

“Go away.”
I prayed Matthew was right that magic could be controlled. Because my magic was all that stood between us and the dark.

We walked through the night. My voice grew hoarse as time passed. For a while the white torchlight held, much steadier than oil or burning wood.

Bluffs rose to either side of us, holding shadows of their own: a shadow arm with a dangling charm bracelet, a shadow boot kicking the air as if to get free, a shadow face staring at us from within a hillside, its mouth open as in surprise, a poplar root growing through one of its shadow eyes.

When the torchlight dimmed from white to yellow and then went out, we quickly changed the batteries in the dark while I shouted as loudly as I could to keep the trees away. My throat ached after that, and my chest, too, but I didn't stop.

“Go away.”
I thought of Mom, alone in this darkness with no magic to protect her. Yet if my visions were true, somehow she'd found a way through to the Arch.

An owl hooted, but it, too, kept its distance. The moon rose, casting thin beams of light through the dark
web around us. Rain began to fall, soaking my hair and turning the road to mud. That rain fell right through Rebecca and puddled beneath her in the sling. I drew the raincloak over her.

The trees started moaning again, stretching toward the water but drawing back at my words. The air grew chill, from rain or shadows, I couldn't tell. Clouds covered the moon.

“Go away.”
Each word took strength. As if it weren't only my words but something deeper inside me that pushed the shadows back. I grew weary with the effort of that pushing.

Ahead, through gaps among the shadows, I saw patches of pale light.

Dawn. My legs went weak at the sight. I stumbled but kept speaking. Allie bumped into me and let out a startled cry. Rebecca started awake and made small fussy sounds.