Summerkin (4 page)

Five

Rook lurked at the edge of the clearing, hand in a pocket of his shorts, the shifter-tooth and shifter-bone warming under his fingers. The sun was setting, the long, rosy twilight of midsummer. Shadows gathered under the trees, and fireflies flashed and floated in the air.

On the other side of the clearing, he saw Fer standing next to Phouka, who had once been Finn and a puck like Rook but was stuck now in his black-maned, fiery-eyed horse form. Fer was dressed in a shirt, shorts, and bare feet, and she wore her patched jacket on top, the one stitched with protective spells. Her hair hung in its usual long braid down her back. A swarm of bees circled her head, humming. She reached out and patted Phouka's neck but kept her eyes on the sky.

She was waiting, Rook knew, for the first star to appear. The Way in and out of this land began in the clearing, and it could only be opened at the turning of the day into night, or of night into day.

The Ways were like that—tricksy. Most Ways were like unlocked doors that stayed open all the time and could be used by anyone, even the pucks. A few Ways opened only on the longest or shortest day of the year. Some, like this one, could only be opened at certain times of day or night. The Way that went to the human world, where there was no magic, could be opened only by a Lord or a Lady, or by one of the High Ones.

Anybody could go through this Way to the nathe, where there was a meeting of all Ways, but a puck on his own would never get inside the nathe. The guards there would stop him from coming in.

Near Fer were her wolf-guards, all prick-eared and hackle-raised now that they'd spotted him in his patch of shadow. More of Fer's people gave him fearful glances and edged away, keeping Fer and the guards between themselves and him.

He felt a growl rising in his chest when he saw the fox-girls, Burr and Twig, flinch away. Afraid of him. Well, they should be; he was a puck, after all.

He'd woken up that morning in the puck cave in the Foglands, tangled in a warm, sleepy heap with the other pucks, some of them in their dog forms, others lying sprawled by the dying fire. Scrap, the baby, was curled against his chest in his puppy form. Home with the other pucks, where he belonged; how he'd missed it, especially his littlest brother.

And here he was, back in Fer's land again.

Asher had gotten the whole story out of him. Rook had told him and Tatter and Rip about how he'd sworn a thrice-binding oath to the Mór and how Fer had defeated the Mór by refusing to spill more blood in the land. And about the other thing.

“
Three
times?” Asher had asked, appalled. “You let that girl save your life three times?”

“I didn't
let
her,” Rook snapped. She'd just done it. First she'd saved him from the wolves, who would've torn him to pieces on the Mór's orders. Then she'd kept him on Phouka's back during a wild ride through the Way, when to fall off would've meant dissolving into dust. And then she'd healed him when the wolf bites had turned him feverish and would have killed him, like as not.

Asher's eyes narrowed. “What did you give her for it?”

“Nothing,” Rook shot back.

“You haven't made her any promises, sworn to do her a service, bound yourself to her, nothing like that?” Asher asked.

“I told you—no.”

“But she knows you're a puck and she lets you come and go as you will, is that it?” Asher went on.

“She does, yes,” Rook admitted.

“So, she's a fool,” Asher mused.

Maybe she was, trusting a puck. Calling him her
friend
.

Then Asher had gotten a keen look in his orange-bright eyes. “We can use this to our advantage, can't we, brothers?”

Rip, in his dog form, had growled. Tatter grinned and nodded. And then they'd come up with a plan, a devious and tricksy puck-plan to bring trouble to the High Ones and to get back at Lady Gwynnefar for stealing Phouka away from them. “And you, dear Rook,” Asher had said, “are the one who is going to make it happen.”

So, like it or not, back he'd come. Fer would get him into the nathe, and then he'd carry out his brother-pucks' plan.

Across the clearing, Fer looked like she was arguing with her wolf-guard. The big young female folded her burly arms and shook her head, saying no. Fer stepped closer and pointed toward the forest, in the direction of the Lady Tree. Ah. Fer wanted the guard to stay behind. That would make things easier, having no idiot wolf-guards around.

Rook narrowed his eyes, watching to see if she'd put on the glamorie to force the wolf-girl to obey her.

Then the wolf-guard pointed across the clearing, straight at him. Fer looked over, and seeing Rook, her face brightened. “Hi, Rook,” she called.

Her people fell silent at that, and, as he crossed the clearing toward her and Phouka, they edged deeper into the shadows. As if he wouldn't see them cowering there. Stupid.

When he reached Fer, the girl wolf-guard stepped forward, blocking him.

“Back off,” Rook snarled. He felt in his pocket for his shifter-tooth. She was younger than the other guards; in his dog form he'd be able to give her a good fight.

The wolf-guard leaned over him and showed her teeth. “Watch your manners, Puck,” she growled.

Rook barked out a sharp laugh. “Oh, sure I will.” He ducked past the guard and gave Fer a mock bow. “Lady Gwynnefar,” he said. There. How was that for manners?

Fer gave him a sunny smile, as if his coming along to the nathe made her happy.

Her happiness to see him made him feel prickly. “Are the idiot wolves coming too?” he asked.

“Just Fray,” she answered, nodding at the young female. “Who is not an
idiot
. And Twig,” she added, pointing at the fox-girl, who was strapping Fer's bow and quiver of arrows to the saddle of her own mount, a white goat with curly horns. “The rest are staying behind. Except Phouka.” Fer rested her hand on the horse's neck.

Phouka watched Rook with flame-yellow eyes. Almost like he suspected Rook of something too. Rook grinned at him, and Phouka stamped his hoof in reply and snorted. Phouka knew his brother-puck well enough to know he was up to no good.

“It's time, Rook,” Fer said with a glance at the sky. He could tell she was nervous by the way the bees whirled around her head. She was right to be nervous, being summoned by the High Ones like this. They would feel no friendship toward a half-human girl; he knew that much.

The sky had grown dark; just a shadow of pink and gray lingered in the west, where the sun had set. “Will you be able to keep up with us?” Fer asked him.

As an answer, he reached into his pocket, pulling out the shifter-bone, which he popped into his mouth. The feeling of the change washed over him, his hands and feet hardening into hooves, his back lengthening, his mane and tail flying free, and a blink later he stood beside Fer, a black horse with yellow eyes, stamping and snorting and ready to run.

Fer stood staring at him, wide-eyed. She'd never seen him shift into a horse before. Good. Maybe that would help her remember that he was a puck, and not some tame thing.

Then she looked away. A star had appeared in the sky, a spark hovering just over the trees. “Come on,” she said. Her bees zoomed around the clearing and then shot away, toward the star.

Phouka, taller and broader, shoved Rook aside with his shoulder. Fer grabbed Phouka's mane and swung herself onto his back. The wolf-guard, carrying a sack over her shoulder, climbed up after her, and they clung to Phouka's back as he reared. He hit the ground running, straight toward the star, and Rook pounded after them with the fox-girl and her mount falling into line behind him.

Stay close to the new Lady
, Asher had ordered.
Get through to the nathe
.

On through the forest they raced, dodging trees, twigs swiping across their faces, leaves and bushes and ferns blurring into a swirl of green and darkness. Ahead, Fer clung to Phouka's mane and lifted her other hand, waving it to the side as if she was brushing aside a curtain. Opening the Way.

Rook followed Phouka as he leaped, and they shot like arrows through the night, toward the star, which flew toward them, a bolt of lightning-brightness that was suddenly all around them.

Six

Fer felt the change as Phouka's hooves left the ground and swung up into the Way. She felt Fray's strong arms around her and knew the wolf-guard would not fall off. Beside them, Rook galloped with his mane and tail streaming behind him. Farther back, Twig and her goat-mount raced through the blinding star-whiteness.

Squinting, Fer spotted a shape like a glass globe hurtling through the air toward them; a blink, and the shape was a whole world, and then Phouka's hoofs landed like feathers settling on short, emerald-green grass.

Rook, still in his horse form, trotted up beside her, his ears pricked.

Behind them lay a wide lake gleaming in the summer sun like a huge silver mirror enclosed by low green hills.

Was this it? The
nathe
? It felt strange. The air was warm, but with ribbons of freezing cold twisting through it.

Lots of Ways opened here, she realized, in the lake. Ways to other lands like her own Summerlands, and—she could feel it like a shiver under her skin—to the human world. That would make sense, for the High Ones to live at the meeting of all Ways. She felt a tingling in her own hands and looked down at them. They looked ordinary—long fingers, ragged nails, a scabby scrape on the back of one she'd gotten climbing the Lady Tree. Her hands felt full of power, though, as if she could reach out in this place and sweep open all the Ways and step through to any land or any other world.

That was good, the power feeling. It might help her prove to the High Ones that she was the true Lady of the Summerlands. She clenched her hands around the power, as if she could hold on to it, so it would be there when she needed it.

Phouka snorted and stamped. Fer patted his neck and slid to the ground, which felt solid under her feet. She turned and saw, about twenty paces from the silver lake, what looked like a high wall. Fer walked closer to see it better. It
was
a wall, but it was made of leafy vines as thick as her wolf-guard Fray's burly arms. The vines were woven tightly together and they pulsed like bulging veins.

Overhead, the sky was the silver color of the lake, with lighter clouds drifting across it. A glassy sun leaned toward the west. The grass under her feet gleamed, as if tipped with crystal. The air seemed to glitter with a cold light, even though the breeze was warm.

“Is this it?” asked Rook, sounding doubtful.

Fer looked aside to see that he'd shifted from his horse form and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the wall. Keeping their distance from him stood Fray, Twig, and Twig's goat-mount. The waning sun cast their shadows long upon the ground.

“This has to be it,” Fer muttered to herself. It was where the bees had led them. But there wasn't any way to get in, at least not that she could see. The weird thing was, the vine-wall didn't curve, the way it would if it were built around something. It just went straight on in both directions.

Now what?

Her bees hovered over her head, weaving a pattern and speaking to her in a low grumble-hum.
Hmmmzmmm
. She still couldn't understand what they were saying, but they didn't seem angry or upset. Fer stepped closer to the wall, and the vines swelled as if the net was tightening, determined to keep her out.

“Careful, Lady,” Fray said.

“Careful,” echoed Twig softly.

“It's all right,” Fer murmured. She felt again the power in her hands—a Lady's power for opening Ways—and reached out to rest a hand on one of the ropy vines. It felt rough under her fingers, and clammy. The same tingly feeling she got when opening a Way swept through her. Blinking, she stepped back and wiped her fingers on her shorts.

After a moment, the vines twitched and pulled apart like a curtain rippling open, and three people stepped out right in front of her. All three were tall and as slender as willow trees, with rough brown skin and greenish-blond hair, two men and a woman. They wore embroidered coats and boots that reminded Fer of her mother's fine clothes, the ones she had packed in saddlebags on the back of Twig's mount. They were well armed, with long knives in sheaths at their belts and bows and quivers of arrows slung over their shoulders. Guards, then.

The willow-woman stepped closer and looked Fer up and down with glittering green eyes. Her lip curled a little as she surveyed Fer's patch-jacket and shorts and bare feet, but her eyes widened seeing the bees that hovered over her head.

“We greet you,” the willow-woman said with a graceful nod that Fer guessed really should have been a bow, to be proper. “You are Gwynnefar?”

Fer frowned. They hadn't called her
Lady Gwynnefar
. Not a good sign. She found her voice. “Yes, I am.”

“We are nathe-wardens,” the willow-woman went on. “We serve the High Ones and we are to welcome you to this place.” She looked past her at Fray and Twig. “These are your servants?”

Fer opened her mouth to say no, when Fray interrupted.

“She's our Lady,” Fray said, folding her burly arms. Twig nodded, and folded her skinny arms too.

“Very well,” the warden said. She examined them again, this time looking more carefully at Rook. She frowned, and her hand went to the knife at her belt. “What is that creature?”

“Don't you know a puck when you see one?” Rook said, grinning.

As Rook spoke, one of the willow-men whipped out his knife. “That's the puck who attacked me and stole the High Ones' letter!”

The other two nathe-wardens unslung their bows and jerked arrows from their quivers. Rook thrust his hand into the pocket of his shorts, grabbing for his shifter-tooth.

It was going to get bloody. “Stop!” Fer shouted, and stepped between them with her hands raised.

The wardens froze with their bows half-drawn. The other willow-man gripped his knife.

“The puck is my friend.” Her bees zoomed in a wider arc, circling around Rook and then back to her, weaving golden patterns against the silver sky.

“Ah,” the nathe-warden said with a sneer. “So the puck is tame, is he?”

In an instant, Rook's hand flashed from his pocket, the shifter-tooth was in his mouth, and a huge black dog lunged past Fer, knocking the warden to the grass. Her bow went flying. Rook put his paws on the warden's shoulders and snarled into her face.

Rook spat the tooth out and became a boy again. “No,” he growled down at the nathe-warden. “Not tame.” He climbed off the guard, shoving his shifter-tooth back into his pocket.

The warden snatched up her bow and got to her feet. “This puck is unbound,” she hissed, “with allegiance to none but his own kind.” She fit an arrow to the bowstring and drew it back. Her eyes were keen, sighting down the arrow, straight at Rook's heart. “He will
not
be admitted.”

“Just wait a minute,” Fer said, and turned and stepped between the wardens and Rook. If they loosed their arrows, they'd shoot her in the back. “That wasn't exactly helpful, Rook,” she said softly. “But if you want to come with me, I won't leave you behind. Do you still want to come?”

He hesitated. Then, “I do, yes.”

Why
did he want to come, that was the question. Was it really to cause trouble? He
was
a puck, after all. He'd been very careful to remind her of that. And she had both Grand-Jane's and Fray's warnings about pucks to consider.

But Rook was her truest friend. He hadn't done anything to change that. Not yet, anyway.

She looked straight into his eyes. She was taking a big risk, and she wanted him to know it. “They could turn me away, and then I won't be able to prove to them that I'm the true Lady of the Summerlands.”

He scowled. “Don't put that on me, Fer. It's your choice.”

“I know,” she answered. “I choose to trust you.” She turned back to the wardens. “You're right that the puck is not bound to me by an oath. He's here because he is my friend. Will you let him in?”

The leader of the nathe-wardens hesitated. “This is an unheard of thing, for a puck to be allowed into the nathe.” Then she lowered her bow. “But we are under orders to admit you for the competition, so we have no choice. If you will be responsible for this puck's actions, he will be admitted.”

Fer took a deep breath, hoping she wasn't about to make a big mistake. “I do take responsibility for him.”

“Very well.” The nathe-warden slid her arrow back into its quiver; then she turned and motioned gracefully at the opening in the vine-wall. The other two wardens moved aside. “Come,” she said. “Enter.”

Fer stepped into the nathe.