Bones of Faerie

whimpered in her sleep, but I only watched, doing nothing. Father descended the stairs, leaving darkness behind him. I turned from that darkness, and as I turned I saw—

A woman kneeling by a lake. Sun lit the blackened stubs of trees around her. Dark cinders coated the earth. Only the lake glowed red, fire dancing beneath the water, light reflecting off the woman's face—

My mother's face. “Liza,” Mom whispered, but she looked at the water, not me. “I was a fool, Liza. Leaving for a memory, a dream, a hope that should have died long ago.”

Caleb's fingers dug into my shoulder, holding me, hurting me.

“Hope has no place after the War. I should have remembered that.” Fire lit Mom's features, tear-tracks drying on her cheeks.

Something was wrong, more wrong than my mother's tears, more wrong than the dead trees and burning water—

“Lizzy,” Mom said, and the ache in her voice twisted knots in my stomach. “Forgive me, Lizzy.”

“Mom.” I reached toward her, and glass parted at my touch. I felt hot wind against my fingers. Caleb's grip tightened as the sense of wrongness thickened, like soup left too long on the fire. I reached for Mom's face, but she was too far away.

Mom leaned nearer to the burning water, hair trailing so close I thought it would catch fire. “Kaylen?” she whispered, then shook her head as if at some foolish thought. “So much time. So much grief —”

I reached for Mom again, aching to take her out of that place and bring her home. But flames rose from the water, hiding her, consuming her. In those flames I saw—

A girl falling to the floor, crying out as her knees hit hard tile. A man towered over her, raising his belt. “Weak,” the man hissed. “You're weak, Liza.” Father's belt fell, breaking skin. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, drew my arms over my head against more blows—

They didn't come. I heard shattering glass and a voice softly calling my name. I looked up into silver eyes.

Not Caleb's eyes. Caleb stood nearby, hands clenched, gaze drawn inward. Karin knelt before me, a broken mirror by her side. “You're a fool,” she whispered to Caleb as she helped me sit up. My neck was stiff—I'd been huddled down, just like in my vision. I gasped for breath but couldn't seem to get enough air. Splatters of cold rain fell on my face.

Karin took my hands in her own, her cool grip surprisingly strong. “Breathe slow,” she said. “Breathe deep. You can breathe. You just need to remember how. There you go. Now speak if you can. Give me some sign you've returned, and don't wander in visions still.”

I ran my tongue over my lips, tasted blood. I looked at Caleb. He looked back, his eyes bright mirrors that saw past skin and bone. Shame tightened my stomach. He'd seen. No one had ever seen when Father—no one. Not Kate, not Matthew, not even Mom.

“I did not know,” Caleb said stiffly, “that you were Tara's daughter.” How did he know my mother's name? I looked down but felt him watching me still. “We need to talk,” Caleb said.

“Let me,” Karin said. “You will talk to me, Liza, yes?”

I didn't trust myself to speak. If I spoke I would scream, or weep like a child. Yet I feared they wouldn't let me go at all if I didn't speak to someone, so I nodded.

“But she is—” Caleb began.

“Kaylen,” Karin interrupted, “you told me once that preserving the present is more important than redeeming the past. I hold to that now. Go.”

“I did what needed doing. And I hold to that.”

“That's War talk,” Karin said, her voice cold.

“You get to the root of Liza's shadow, then, before it touches any more of our children.” I watched Caleb slowly retreat. My cheeks burned.

“We will not rush this,” Karin said to me. She settled cross-legged onto the grass beside me. “Magic has its own rhythms and cannot be forced. Caleb should have remembered that.”

My heart pounded, as if any moment I might need to run. Raindrops trickled down my neck. I shivered and looked up at Karin. With her braid pulled back from her smooth face she looked far too young to have fought in the War.

“If you wish to tell me what you saw, I will listen,” Karin said. “Visions hold less power when put into words. But I won't make you speak. And you need not tell anything you don't want to.”

Trees, fire, shadow—I feared speaking would give my visions more power, not less. “I can leave,” I told Karin. “If the shadow is bound to me, I can draw it away.”

“You'll go nowhere,” Karin said. “Not at my urging. Whatever threatens you, if we can have it out, we can deal with it. There's no magic so terrible it cannot be laid to rest.”

The light rain stopped. Wind blew against my damp skin. “Ask Caleb. He saw everything. He was there.”

“I'm asking you. They're your visions. Only yours. Please trust me, Liza. Not for my sake, not for Caleb's, but for your own.”

Father said strangers couldn't be trusted, that trust was a child's tale swept away by the War.

“You called me,” Karin said. “When the trees attacked. You called, and I came. I don't know why, but put some trust in that, if in nothing else.”

The moon slipped deeper into cloud, turning Karin's face to shadow—all but her eyes, which remained bright as she watched me. I took a deep breath, like when I dove beneath the surface of the river. “I saw my mother,” I said.

Karin nodded, waiting. My voice grew low as the wind. “Mom told me she'd been a fool. She asked me to forgive her, for what I don't know. She told me—but she's dead. No one ventures out alone into the night and lives.”

“You did,” Karin said.

“I wasn't alone.” Without Matthew I would have drowned in the river or been devoured by the dogs. And Karin had saved us from the trees.

“Perhaps your mother found help, too.”

I shook my head. “She was alone.”

Forgive me, Lizzy. She was gone beyond anyone's forgiveness. Yet I heard myself ask, “Can visions be trusted?”

“Trusted how?”

“Are they real? Are they true? Can magic be trusted?”

“Magic can never be trusted,” Karin said. “Just ask Jared, who burned his fingers more than once this evening as he learned to control his light. But as for whether you see truly—that I cannot say. Even Before visions were never simple. They're often tied up with other magic. What of the other children in your town? Do any of them have visions, and are those visions true?”

“The others have no magic,” I told her, just as I'd told Samuel.

I couldn't tell whether she believed me or not. She laced her fingers together, rested her chin on them, and asked, “Could you tell where your mother was in your visions? That might help.”

Did I dare to hope? Hope has no place after the War,

Mom had said. Yet I so wanted to believe she lived. “She was in a place of—of ash and dead trees.” I should have found the memory of those blackened trunks comforting, but it only brought an acrid taste to the back of my throat. Crops wouldn't grow in so dead a place. People would die there, too. “What could kill so many trees?”

“Pray you never have to know,” Karin said. “Tell me what else you saw.”

I told her in bits and pieces, fragments that couldn't have made any sense. I told her what I'd seen, in this vision and in the others. A metal arch, bright as a mirror. A young woman and my mother, both stepping through the surface of that arch. Grasping trees whose shadows brought tall buildings down.

Tallow trotted to my side, a feather dangling from her mouth. I petted the cat as I continued to talk.

“Why Caleb?” I asked Karin. Caleb had been in my visions before. I dug my fingers into the damp dirt. Even