Moonkind (Winterling) (13 page)

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 hole 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.

It was like being pulled into pieces, this trying to stay true to Fer and to his brothers at the same time. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything of himself left at all.

He led Fer and Phouka and the bees through the Way and into the land of the tree-giants. As before, the ground was covered with soft pine needles. The trees towered all around, blocking the sunlight. Rook walked past a root as tall as he was. It made him feel tiny.

As they walked, pine needles from the trees drifted down around them. One landed on Rook’s shirtsleeve. It was green on one side, silver on the other, and surprisingly delicate coming from such a huge tree. The needles fell, gleaming as they tumbled through the faint light. They made a sound as they landed, like
tick-tick-tick
.

He stopped. The pine needles were falling as hard as rain.

Fer stepped up next to him. “What?” she asked, her voice quiet in the stuffy air.

This wasn’t right. He held up his hand, and a few needles dropped onto it. “The stilth has come here, too,” he told her.

A sudden, unexpected, unpucklike knot of worry clenched inside him. The stilth really was spreading, and it was spreading fast—way faster than he’d thought it would. He and Fer might not have much time before all the lands started falling into stillness and death.

He led Fer and the bees and Phouka through the huge trees to the biggest tree of all of them, with the cave dug out of it. His brothers were there, some of them sitting around the campfire, others curled asleep in their dog shapes. He frowned. They were too quiet for pucks.

As they got closer, Asher, Tatter, and Rip came to meet them. They didn’t bound this time, or shout out his name as they usually did.

Rook stopped and studied them. Asher’s braided hair looked dull; Tatter didn’t smile; Rip didn’t growl at seeing Fer, and the flame in his eyes looked dim.

The stilth was affecting them, clear enough. “Brothers,” he said.

“Rook,” Asher replied; then he nodded at Phouka. “Brother,” he said to the horse. He looked at Fer, and his eyes narrowed.

Rip grabbed Rook’s shoulders with two black-painted hands. “Pup,” Rip growled down at him. “We’ve been waiting for you.” He lowered his voice. “Why’d you bring that Lady with you?” He let Rook go and stepped back.

Fer looked fiercely up at the taller pucks. “Hi, Robin,” she said to Ash. “Hi, other Robin,” she said to Rip, who bared his teeth at her. Then she smiled at Tatter, who nodded back. She rested the end of her bow on the ground and gripped its top. She looked strong and determined. “I assume you know about the stilth,” she said to them.

“We do, yes,” Ash said warily. “We don’t see what it has to do with us.”

“Then you’re being stupid,” Fer said sharply. The bees hovered over her head, grumbling. “When the stilth invades the lands, everyone will die.”

“Then go and deal with the stilth, Lady, and leave us out of it,” Rip said, putting a bitter accent on the word
Lady
.

Fer glanced aside at Rook. “I thought you said they would help.”

He shrugged. “They will.” He hoped they would, anyway.

She rolled her eyes. “They don’t seem very helpful.”

“That’s because we’re
not
helpful,” Ash growled.

Right, time for him to step in. “Fer, this is my brother Asher.” Then he pointed at Rip. “And this is Rip. You already know Tatter.”

“Brother,”
Ash growled. He didn’t like Rook telling Fer their real names.

Rook ignored him. “They’d be thinking more clearly, Fer, but the stilth has come here.” He gave Asher a long look. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

After a slow moment, Asher nodded. “We can, yes.” Then he shrugged. “We’re pucks. We don’t have to stay in one land. We’ll go somewhere the stilth hasn’t come to.”

“There’s no such place,” Rook said. “I’ve been traveling to as many of the lands that I could get to. The stilth is in the Ways and it’s spreading everywhere, even the human world.”

“We have to stop it,” Fer said. “Rook said you have a plan.”

“It’s a puck-plan,” Rip said, with an edge of his old surliness. “It’s for making trouble. It’s nothing to do with this stilth of yours.”

“He
said
,” Fer said firmly, “that you would help.”

“They will, Fer,” Rook put in. “I just have to talk to them.”

“You’ll have to talk fast, Pup,” Rip growled.

Fer blew out an impatient-sounding breath. “Okay. Sure. Talk to your brothers, Rook.” She pointed at the biggest tree. “I’ll just go look at that cave over there.” Giving all four of them a glare, she stalked off.

Ash, Tatter, and Rip closed in around him.

“We don’t like that girl,” Rip said grimly.

“You broke the thread,” Ash added, “but it’s clear, Pup, that she’s still got some kind of hold on you.”

“A binding spell,” Rip put in.

“No, I told you before,” Rook said. “That’s not it. I—” Curse it. This was where everything could go wrong. “I didn’t break the thread. She did. I wanted to be friends with her.” He took a deep breath. “Now I want to stay true to her.”

“
Stay true?
” Asher asked, his eyes wide.

“She’s not a puck,” Rip said flatly. “You can’t.”

Rook’s fierceness flared. “I can,” he shot back.

Ash shook his head. “You know what that would mean.”

“I know, yes,” Rook said.

All three of his brothers stared at him for a long, tense moment. The pine needles floated down around them.

“You’d ask that of us?” Ash said softly.

“I do ask it,” Rook answered.

His brothers were silent. He knew how hard this was for them to understand, him staying true to Fer. The pucks were separate, alone. A puck never helped anyone but another puck. A puck never stayed true to anyone but another puck.

He’d been like that, once. He was still a puck, but because of Fer—because of strange, stubborn, loyal, part-human Fer—he’d been changed. He’d learned how to care about other people. He’d found he could have friends who weren’t pucks, who knew his real name and called him by it. He’d realized that when there was something wrong, like the stilth, he could help to set it right.

His brothers couldn’t understand any of that. They had their plan, and they couldn’t see beyond it.

Ash glanced aside at Tatter and shrugged. “He’s always been a strange one, hasn’t he?”

Tatter nodded. “He has, yes.”

“Always out and about,” Ash said.

“A wanderer,” Rip confirmed.

The three of them stood looking at him; he waited warily to see what they would decide.

Then Asher stepped closer and slung an arm over Rook’s shoulders. “Brother,” he said.

Rip gripped Rook’s arm. “Brother,” he added, with a sharp grin.

Tatter leaned in and kissed the side of Rook’s head, then ruffled his hair. “Brother.”

Rook let out a shaky, relieved breath. No matter what strange thing they thought he was up to, they would always stay true to him, and he would stay true to them.

That’s what it meant to be a puck.