Faerie Winter

I set my staff down, put my gloves back in my pockets, and started to climb. Karin scanned the cliffs, then began climbing beside me. The icy stone was slippery beneath my fingers, and snow stung my face. Kyle’s blood streaked the most obvious handholds. How long ago had he climbed? He’d have climbed more slowly than Karin and I. It should have been easy for Elin to knock him from these cliffs.

She should have caught up with him well before the cliffs. How had Kyle gotten so far?

From above, I heard a faint singsong voice. “The ants go marching seventy hundred by seventy hundred …”

I climbed faster. Karin and I were higher than the trees now. Karin made her way onto a narrow ledge, and I followed, inching sideways, listening. “The ants go marching seventy-one hundred by seventy-one hundred …”

A foot or so above the ledge, there was a narrow hole in the rock, too small for an adult to fit through. Karin stopped and peered into the dark. “Kyle?”

The singing stopped. “Go away!” Kyle cried.

Of course he wouldn’t trust a stranger, not now. Karin must have realized that, too, because she moved farther along the ledge, and I moved to the opening. “Kyle?”

Silence. My fingers felt numb against the rock. Then, “Liza?”

“It’s all right, Kyle. You can come out now.”

I heard cloth scraping stone. Kyle’s boots emerged from the hole, and his legs scrambled down to the ledge as he grasped the rocks. Talons had torn the back of his coat, and blood seeped through. He clung to the stone as he turned to look at me, eyes wide, quia leaf still hanging from his neck. “Scared,” he whispered.

“I know,” I said. “Ready to climb down?”

Kyle nodded solemnly. He followed me along the ledge, and then we descended together. His scabbed-over hand began bleeding again, but he seemed to have full use of it. We jumped the last few inches to the ground. Kyle looked up at me, lower lip quivering. He was going to be all right.

He burst into sobs and threw himself at me.

My arms stiffened around him. For a wild moment I didn’t know what to do. I stroked his tangled hair, as Mom had mine when I was little. Such a small thing—it hadn’t seemed small when Mom had done it.

Karin jumped to the ground beside us. Kyle’s sobs turned to shivers as he drew away from me. Karin nodded solemnly. “It is good to see you well, Kyle.”

“Kyle, this is Karin. She—”

Kyle turned his back on her. His small body trembled. “I’m hungry,” he said.

I offered him some dried meat, but he shook his head. Tears streaked his face. “Not hungry for that.” He sat down in the snow.

I put the jerky back into my pocket; I had nothing else to offer him. This was no time to be a picky eater.

The snow fell harder. “We need to get him somewhere warm,” I told Karin. “Maybe we can find shelter among the cliffs.” A larger cave, nearer to the ground.

Karin nodded. The clouds were thick and dark, the day more than half done. I put my gloves back on. “Ready to walk?” I asked Kyle. His bleeding hand was already scabbing over again.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”

“We have to walk, Kyle. There’s no other way. I’m sorry.”

Kyle looked up defiantly. “Carry me.”

Carrying him would slow us down. I was tired and my ankle hurt and I didn’t feel much like walking myself—I drew a deep breath. “Would piggyback do?”

Kyle sniffed and nodded. I bent down, and he climbed onto my back, wrapping his arms and legs around me so tightly they hurt. I grabbed my stick from the ground for balance as I stood and started walking, Karin by my side.

I glanced back just in time to see Kyle stick his tongue out at her.

“Kyle!” I gave Karin an apologetic look as he buried his head against my shoulder.

“It is all right. He has little reason to trust me, and reason enough for fear, given what he’s seen of my people.” Karin smiled sadly. “Fear can be a sort of protection, too. Allow him to trust his instincts. He’ll work this out for himself, given time. As, I believe, did you.”

I looked away, ashamed of how little I’d trusted her and Caleb when we’d first met.

“She’s mean,” Kyle whispered into my hair.

Karin laughed at that, a lighter sound. “I am a teacher. I’m accustomed to being told I am mean.”

The wind picked up. I rubbed Kyle’s bare hands with my gloved ones. He sniffled, and snot dripped down into my scarf. The snow took on an icy edge. I saw gaps among the stones, but none were large enough to shelter us.

Karin pointed ahead. I squinted—there. A dull sheen of metal in the distance. As we drew closer, I saw that it was an old truck from Before. The truck’s nose was half-buried in the dirt, past the front wheels, as if the earth had tried to swallow it whole during the War. The trailer was still good, though, the rust beneath the faded orange and white paint only beginning to break through the metal.

Kyle clung to me as Karin and I pushed the trailer door up. It creaked, and the oily old-car smell that made me think of Before wafted out. There were no wild animals living inside, just an empty metal shell about as tall as I was. A torn-up couch stood against one wall, its cushions gone. A few small, rusted cans were piled in one corner, and the words on them were from Before, too: Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Red Bull. A hole in one corner of the ceiling let the cold in, and bird droppings streaked the wall beneath it.

I carried Kyle inside, and Karin closed the door behind us. “When you can, Liza, we need to look at his back.”

I nodded. Like all raptors since the War, hawks had poison in their talons. At least, real hawks did; I didn’t know about a hawk that had started as a girl. I got Kyle onto the couch. He crawled into my lap, clinging still. Karin drew a pair of stones from her pack, the smaller of which glowed with orange light. She tapped the small stone against the larger one, and the larger one began to glow as well. Kyle’s eyes widened. He reached for the light, then pulled away and gave Karin a suspicious look. Karin set the larger stone down on the arm of the couch. Its light was warm, taking the edge off the cold around us. We wouldn’t have to waste time coaxing a fire from wet wood. Karin lit a second stone the same way. I remembered that there was a child in her town who could bring light to stones, too.

I unbuttoned Kyle’s coat. “Let’s take this off.”

“No.”

“Please, Kyle.”

Kyle bit his lip and looked up at me. “Will it hurt?”

“It might.” I couldn’t lie to him. I didn’t want to—I’d always hated when adults said that things wouldn’t hurt when they would. I searched for words that would help him, thought of the time Mom had pulled a dozen dandelion thorns from my arm, one by one. “You’ll have to be very brave,” I told Kyle, remembering what Mom had said then. Her words had surprised me; more often Mom told me it was okay not to be brave, but the thorns had had to come out. “Can you do that, Kyle?”

He gave me a suspicious look, then nodded. Mom had given me some of Jayce’s whisky before she’d begun work, but I didn’t tell Kyle that. He winced as I eased off his jacket and the clotted blood beneath it tore away. “You are brave,” I said.

There was more blood on his sweater—Kyle screamed when I pulled it and his undershirt off. He fled my arms to huddle in a corner.

I followed him. “I’m sorry. But you have to let me look at your back. It will hurt worse later if you don’t.”

“Hurts worse now,” Kyle whimpered.

“I know.” I reached out my hand, and he took it. Somehow I got him back to the couch and lying on his stomach. His back was a mess of puffy red gashes and dried blood. Even if there was no poison, the wounds were clearly infected.

“Cold,” he muttered as I stroked his hair.

His skin didn’t feel cold. It felt fever hot. Karin moved, frowning, to my side. “Kaylen would make quick work of such injuries.” She handed me a water skin from her pack. “Clean it as best you can. I’m no healer, but I know