Moonkind (Winterling) (12 page)

Twenty

She knew Rook wasn’t really trustworthy, but when he had told her that the stilth was dangerous and deadly, she had believed him. It was her responsibility too, and she had to figure out how to deal with it.

Until Grand-Jane woke up, Fer needed time to think without anybody interrupting her. Rook had fallen asleep the moment they’d come through the Way from the human world, so she didn’t have to worry about him. She looked after her grandma, and before dawn she and Phouka rode deep into the forest where the trees were old and strong and quiet, where nobody would bother her. After a while, she slid off Phouka’s back and walked on alone. She hadn’t had any breakfast, so her stomach felt hollow. The air was chill and gray. The trees still had leaves, but they’d thinned, and she kicked through drifts of red-brown oak leaves and crumpled, yellow birch leaves and another kind of leaves shaped like little, brown mittens.

The land was descending into the long chill of winter; it was like the moon turning from fat, golden full to an icy crescent. She loved this land with every particle of her being. Every Lord or Lady was connected to their land, just as she was. She couldn’t understand why the Forsworn and the other Lords and Ladies felt they had to
rule
their lands and their people, instead of just caring for them. But they did rule. They wore glamories that forced obedience and awe, glamories that turned the wearer as chill as winter moonlight. They didn’t want to give up that power. But they would have to, or all the lands would die.

Stepping off the path, Fer rested her forehead against the nubbly bark of an oak tree and closed her eyes. She felt the tree’s roots probing into the dirt, spread wide for soaking up water and nutrients. She felt its branches reaching into the sky, its few remaining leaves clinging to the tips of twigs. The first chilly breeze that came along would blow them away. She shivered.

Then she felt something else: just a breath of strangeness in her land. She stilled her breath and concentrated. She was the land’s Lady, and she could sense the tiniest beetle gnawing on a rotting log deep in the forest, and she could sense the forest itself, washing like a green tide over low hills and up to steep mountains covered with snow.

She clenched her eyes shut, trying to catch the strange something again.

There
. A sort of heavy feeling was seeping into her land from the Way—the Way that should be closed except at sunrise and sunset. The land nearest the Way felt still and silent under that heaviness. The trees drooped ever so slightly; the water in a stream slowed; a flock of sparrows huddled together on a branch.

Her eyes popped open. Was this the stilth? In
her
land?

“Oh, no you don’t,” she whispered to herself. Then, louder, “Phouka!” she called.

The horse crunched through the leaves to her side. “Back home, if you don’t mind,” she said, and swung onto his back. “Hurry.”

Something was on his ear. He twitched to flick it off and heard a telltale buzz, and the stupid bee landed on the tip of his ear again. Rook was snug and warm, curled up in his dog shape sleeping, and he was not waking up so the bee that wasn’t supposed to be talking to him told him something he didn’t want to know.

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 their 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?”