Faerie Winter (17 page)

Kyle held his head up high. “Now we find Johnny, right?”

“Right.” I climbed outside. The ground was slick with ice, and I grabbed the trailer for balance. Cold metal stung my palms. I cursed and jerked away. The clouds were gone, and through the trees I saw an orange glow at the horizon. I reached for Kyle and helped him out. He slipped, and I caught his hand, steadying him. Karin climbed out after him, green ivy hidden beneath gloves that met her jacket sleeves and hawk balanced on one leather-clad fist. She didn’t stumble as she landed silently on the ice.

The sun poked above the horizon, breaking through the trees. Light hit the branches around us, turning them bright as broken glass. The light hurt my eyes. I blinked hard against it, and as I did I saw—

Kyle, crying. Johnny holding him and whispering, “Hey, kid, don’t worry what she says. I’ll take care of
you.” “Promise?” Kyle sniffled. “Promise,” Johnny said—

The Lady, glowering down at Elin while ice fell around them both. “I told you not to return without the leaf. Why do you continue to disobey me?” Elin held up her hands, as if to explain, but the Lady grasped her wrist. In moments she was a red-tailed hawk once more, launching into the dark. Behind her the Lady whispered, “And so Kaylen will pay for his foolishness with the human girl at last—”

The Lady, marching through an ice-sheathed forest that glittered in the early-morning sun. Johnny marched by her side, a gray wolf at his heels—

“Liza.” Karin’s quiet voice drew me out of my visions as gently as Mom’s voice drew me out of nightmares. I opened my eyes to the shining trees around me. Kyle still held my hand.

“She found Matthew.” Had the Lady gone looking for him, or had he returned on his own, looking for Johnny and me? It didn’t matter. “We have to find them.” Matthew and I were supposed to keep each other safe. What was the point of whatever was between us if we couldn’t do that much?

“You are certain it was not the future you saw?” Karin asked. Elin hunkered down on her fist, talons digging into leather, as if she would deny us all.

“I don’t think so.” Though there was no wind, the
dawn was cold. “It was morning, and there was ice on the trees.”

“Best not to let any more time pass, then.” Karin looked at me. “Ice and sun will present challenges for you as a seer. Do your best not to focus on any one spot for too long—but do not try so hard that you are not careful of your footing. Kyle, if Liza stops walking, can you squeeze her hand? That will help wake her out of visions.”

Kyle nodded soberly. “Can I pinch her, too?”

A smile pulled at Karin’s lips. “If you wish.”

I kept a wary eye on Elin as we set out. Ice coated the limestone bluffs, the white snow, the path we walked. My steps were maddeningly slow over the slick ice. I wished
I
were a hawk, not bound to the slippery earth. My thoughts kept turning to Matthew, imagining the Lady’s fingers running through his fur, imagining Matthew trotting behind her, obeying her every command.

The glimmering ice tugged at my gaze, like a child eager to show all her toys. Fragments of vision flickered at the edges of my sight.

Elin, running through underground tunnels, younger, alone—

The Lady, her hands on Elin’s shoulders. “How dare you let your control of the firestarter slip? You will find
him. You will destroy him and all the escaped children who have caused our people grief with their magic this day—”

Matthew, running along a snow-covered path, running so hard his paws bled—

We crossed the river, Kyle and I making our way slowly over slick rocks, and even Karin choosing her steps with care. I’d hoped to cut through the forest and so gain some time, but the ground was too slippery. We followed the path toward Clayburn.

Elin watching Clayburn’s houses burn, her hand on Ethan’s arm—

Elin turning away from the sound of screaming, the sight of bright flames licking wood. Elin kneeling to throw up in the snow—

Ethan shuddering as if just coming awake, then creeping away from Elin’s side—

The sun rose higher, turning the sky a deep blue. “Stop,” Kyle whispered.

I stopped. “Why?”

Kyle pinched my arm. “That’s why!”

“Hey!”

Kyle giggled. Karin laughed, too. Elin twisted her head to glower at us. Karin shifted the hawk from one fist to the other as we walked on.

Darkness flickered within the ice-sheathed trees.
Shadows—the trees hadn’t lost their shadows with the coming of winter after all, any more than the seeds had. They’d merely drawn that last bit of darkness close, as if to hold it safe. I softened my gaze, focusing on the shadows instead of the ice, and the visions came less often.

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.

B
lood 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.”