Faerie Winter

tilted toward me.

I caught my breath. No matter how often I watched, I never got tired of this. I leaned down and put my arms around him. His fur had grown so thick this winter. I inhaled its musky scent. The smell of smoke was faint now. “Be careful out there,” I whispered. “Give Allie a hug for me.”

Matthew nudged my chest with his damp nose. He licked my chin, then turned and trotted for the door. I followed, stepping around pants and sweater, boots and wool underwear. I never could seem to catch the moment when his clothes were cast aside.

He stopped by the door and looked up at me. I laughed. Whenever we set out together, I had to open the door. As I turned the knob, Kate moved to my side. We watched together as Matthew made his way across the porch and down the steps. When he reached the path through town, he burst into a loping run. The moon was hidden by cloud, and he quickly disappeared into the dark.

Kate squeezed my shoulder. “I’m going to see to Ethan.” She went inside, gathered up her coat and the mug, and left. I lingered on the porch, staring out into the night, for a long time before I followed.

When I did, I found Kate outside the shed, talking with Hope. Hope’s little sister grinned beside them as she shifted from foot to foot for warmth. “I get to stay,” she announced.

Who better than a waterworker to have around a firestarter? Hope ruffled her sister’s fur cap. “Not alone. The rest of us will take turns with you. Keep guard, in case anyone decides they want Ethan leaving ahead of schedule. You too, right, Liza?”

“Of course.” I couldn’t run as fast as a wolf, but I could keep watch.

“Good.” A gust of wind tugged at the edge of the tarp. Hope absently held out a hand, stilling it. I slid the shed’s metal door open and went inside. More glowing stones lit the small space. Orange this time, they provided heat as well as light. Mom sat in a rusted folding chair, watching over Ethan.

He lay on an old army cot. More blisters had burst, and fluid seeped from his skin. There were no blankets around him now. I wondered how he even stood the touch of the soft sheet at his back. Only his face looked peaceful, eyes shut in sleep. His breathing was ragged, though, and the burned-meat smell lingered, along with a faint sickroom scent that made me suspect his wounds had become infected.

Mom looked up, then flinched, as if she feared my magic still.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Holding on.” Mom forced herself to look at me. “I don’t know how, but he is.”

There was no other chair, just a water bucket wedged into one corner beside a wobbly table. I slid the door shut to keep in the heat. “If all goes well, Caleb will be here by morning. He only need hold on until then.”

“Kate told me.” Mom frowned. “I wish Matthew hadn’t gone.”

My back stiffened against the hard metal door, though some part of me wished the same thing. “He only does what needs doing.”

“I know,” Mom said. “That doesn’t stop me from worrying.”

“I worry about you, too, you know.” It felt good to say so aloud.

Mom said nothing. How much had she not said through the years?

“Did you mean what you told me? About you and Caleb starting the War? Who were you?”

“The children of powerful people, Liza, nothing more.” Mom’s gaze grew distant, as if she were seeing all the way back to Before.

Ethan moaned and kicked the air. Mom made shushing sounds. She reached out to stroke his forehead, but then her hands moved abruptly to her stomach.

“Mom?”

“I’m all right.” She stood and pushed past me to open the door and run outside. I heard her throwing up behind the shed. I wondered what it was like to be able to lie.

Ethan kept thrashing at the air. His moans turned to sobs. I didn’t hear when Mom returned to the house. I kept watch, making sure Ethan didn’t fall from the bed, but otherwise not touching his damaged skin, until Hope and her sister came to take my place. By the time I returned to Kate’s house, Mom was asleep on the couch.

“She’ll be fine,” Kate said, but Kate had kept secrets from me, too. Once Caleb was through healing Ethan, I’d ask him to look at Mom. He’d know whether she was really all right, and, unlike Mom, he wouldn’t be able to lie about it.

In Kate’s house, as in mine, the downstairs rooms were warmer than the upstairs ones, so in winter everyone slept by the fire. Kate slept in her oversized armchair, while I wrapped myself in blankets on the floor. I kept drifting off only to wake whenever I thought I heard Matthew’s paws on the stairs. It was a long time before I slipped into deeper sleep.

When I did, I dreamed of flames roaring around me, of skin melting from my bones. Burning ash clogged my throat, choking my screams. “All human things must die,” a stranger’s voice said, and I knew I had no choice but to let the fire consume me.

I couldn’t let it consume me. I ran, and blistering heat gave way to a cold gray winter forest. A dark shadow lifted its head, and it wore my mother’s face. “Liza,” the shadow whispered.

I ran harder. I knew if I looked at that shadow again, Mom would be gone, and only the shadow would remain.

“Liza!” Mom called me again and again. “Liza, wake up.”

My eyes shot open. I bolted upright, blankets tangling around me. Mom sat beside me—she was real, not a shadow. “You’re all right,” I said.

Mom reached for me, her eyes seeking mine to make sure I was awake. We’d learned that if she touched me—if anyone touched me—before I fully woke from a nightmare, I’d lash out with my magic, not hearing those around me.

I threw myself into her arms, and she held me close. “I don’t want to lose you.” I choked on the words and began to cry.

“I know, Lizzy.” Mom sounded near tears, too. “I know.” She stroked my hair, as if I were still a child, and I let her.

The front door opened. Kate’s footsteps crossed the room. Pale light crept in the cracks around the windows.

First light. I was suddenly as wide awake as if someone had poured snowmelt down my back. I pulled away from Mom.

“Where’s Matthew?” I asked her.

Chapter 6

He hadn’t come back. I knew it even before Mom said so. Kate thought maybe he’d waited to return on foot with Caleb and Allie after all, but the shadows around her eyes told me she was worried, too. Matthew could no more lie than I could. He had to have meant it when he’d said he would run ahead of the healers.

While Mom tried to talk me into waiting longer, Kate helped me pack. Hope had left clothes for us. I rolled up the sleeves of a borrowed sweater and the legs of a pair of pants, and I packed another set of clothes in the backpack Kate gave me. I also packed dried meat, flint and steel for a fire, a couple of water skins, and oil and cloth for a torch. I stashed more meat in my coat pockets.

“At least take someone with you,” Mom said. She’d not complained when Matthew went alone. Matthew hadn’t given her the chance to.

There was no one for me to take. Hope shouldn’t be traveling too far, on account of the baby; Seth had three younger siblings he was looking after; and Charlotte couldn’t keep the pace I intended to set. I wouldn’t risk any of the younger children, not when I didn’t know what danger we might face.

Mom stirred the coals with a metal poker. “I can go with you.”

“No!” The word came out with more force than I intended. I tied my pack firmly shut. “Not when you’re ill.”