Faerie Winter

Their clothes were scattered among the dead leaves, as if they’d been carelessly discarded.

The Lady couldn’t only change people into animals. She’d said as much when she’d spoken of turning me into a tree. Still, I hadn’t thought—

She’d changed the townsfolk, changed them into winter trees. The wind died and silence thickened around us. “Are they all right?”

Karin brought her hand to another tree, and another. Elin’s head twisted around, watching her. “They are weary, as are all the trees in the forest,” Karin said. “Like all the trees, they slowly die of winter.”

“I can call them back.” I let Kyle go and reached for Kate’s tree, a furrowed brown sassafras.

Karin set her hand over mine, stopping me. “They have been trees for some hours now. That would not be long in a different season, but they have been listening to winter’s voice all that time, and I have spoken with enough trees these past months to know how powerful a voice it is. As trees they endure, because trees die slow. As humans they might return to life—or they might die faster, remembering winter still. If we can wait for spring, it would be safer to call them out then.”

Cold shivered through me. I felt a faint spark of life in Kate’s shadow reaching toward me.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I stepped away, not sure Kate could hear. Was Mom trapped among these trees, too? Was Matthew? No, I saw wolf prints continuing through the mud.

Kyle knelt on the ground, digging his hands into the brown leaves around a dead log, while Johnny stood watchfully behind him. I pulled Kyle to his feet. He gave me a sullen look and shoved one muddy hand into his pocket. With the other he reached for Johnny’s shadow once more.

We followed Matthew’s and the Lady’s prints beyond the grove and into town as the sky turned to gray. The houses were silent, no windows being tacked shut, no lanterns being lit. We found more trees behind Kate’s house. “Hope,” Karin said. “Seth. Charlotte.” Other names, of other Afters. There were scuff marks and splashes of mud around them—they’d fought the Lady before she’d overcome them. That hadn’t been enough to save them. Within the trees their shadow hands pressed against the bark, as if trying to push free.

“The Afters won’t be able to help us,” I whispered. The Lady changed them all. She’d condemned them all to winter. A thick brown chestnut tree had even pushed through the roof of the shed where Ethan had been, though if any shadow remained alive within it, it was hidden by the shed’s metal walls.

I lifted Charlotte’s cane from the ground. The end had reshaped itself into a sharp point. I almost handed the weapon to Kyle, but he wouldn’t know how to fight with it. “If anyone tries to hurt you,” I told him instead, “I want you to run. You can yell animals away, but run from everyone else.”

Kyle nodded seriously, tightening his grip on Johnny’s shadow hand. “I’m good at running.”

The light was swiftly fading. Karin took Charlotte’s cane from me and set it down against an ironwood tree. “There is no time for turning back now, as my mother is no doubt aware, but all is not yet lost. Allow me to do the speaking when we meet her, but be alert for any danger, in words and actions both. If this goes badly, there is another plant speaker in my town. She is new, young and untrained, but she may be able to help you call spring.”

“Goes badly how?” I demanded.

Karin didn’t answer, just shifted the hawk from one fist to the other and walked on. Kyle, Johnny, and I hurried after them. “Whatever you do, Liza, do not let the Lady touch you. You too, Kyle. She can only change those she touches.”

“I’ll run,” Kyle agreed. His face was streaked with mud.

A third set of prints joined Matthew’s and the Lady’s as we left Kate’s house behind. Kyle began humming his ant song again, but Johnny squeezed his hand, and he fell silent. We followed the path out of town. The first stars came out, and the waning moon rose, yellow giving way to silver. We came to a familiar hillside, thick with blackberry and sumac, their thorns blurred in the dim light. In a clearing among them, a smooth-barked quia tree stretched bare branches toward the night sky.

This tree wasn’t the Lady’s work. It was mine. I’d called it to life and called autumn into this world with it. I didn’t need to soften my gaze to see the shadow that clung to the quia’s trunk and branches, sharper and clearer than any shadow I’d seen. How had I not noticed before? I’d visited this tree often enough this winter, seeking signs of life within.

Something in the quia’s shadow reached for me, and the cold shimmering thread of magic between us felt familiar, as if the quia and I were old friends.

Melting ice dripped from the quia’s branches. How long could we keep walking into this trap? The Lady surely knew we approached. Was she near enough to see us?

Was she near enough to hear us? I stopped abruptly. Maybe we didn’t have to do the walking. Maybe there’d be something to gain by meeting the Lady at our call and by our choosing, rather than the other way around.

There was only one thing we needed first. I turned to Karin and asked, “What is your mother’s name?”

Chapter 14

Elin screeched her anger and flew at me. I raised my arms to my face, but before I could send her away, Kyle shouted, “Stop it, stupid bird!” Elin squawked and wheeled off. Her injured wing strained, but this time the wing held her, and she fluttered to a low quia branch.

Karin’s shoulders stiffened. She climbed the hillside to the quia tree, blackberry and sumac branches moaning as they parted before her. She looked into her daughter’s eyes, but the bird turned her head away.

“I know, Elianna. I do not consider such things lightly. I never have.”

“She says you can’t choose humans instead of your own true people.” Kyle pulled Johnny up the hillside after Karin as he spoke. I ran after them.

“She says it’s bad enough you abandoned her,” Kyle said as he reached the tree. “She says you can’t—” He looked up at the bird. “She can do whatever she wants.” He stuck out his tongue.

“My people,” Karin said as if testing the word on her tongue. “Your people.” She looked at me. “It was Kaylen and Tara who first said separating our peoples made little sense. It was Kaylen who first wore his name openly among humans, though they did not understand the gift he offered them, and so insisted on shortening it. I did not understand, not until after the War, not until humans were born with magic.” She took off my gloves to stroke the vine wrapped around her wrist. A leaf curled around her finger. “It ought not have taken magic to make me understand. Even so, my mother’s name is tied up in vows that I may not lightly set aside.”

She promised not to tell, I thought. “You can’t speak her name, even if you want to.” My voice was flat. We were going to have to walk into this trap after all.

“Oh, I can speak it. The vows I took are not so simple as that. I can speak, but if I do, I sever the bonds between myself and my people.” Karin sighed; and the leaf uncurled. “In truth I severed those bonds when I entered a human town and allowed my life to become tangled with those of its people. I know why you ask this of me, Liza, and it is not badly considered. Still, I’ll not try this thing until no other choices remain. There are other ways of calling.” Karin set her pack down and lifted her head. “Mother! If you can hear me, come to me. Let us talk.”

A breeze rippled through the forest. The Lady stepped out from among the winter trees beneath us, silent, beautiful in the growing moonlight. Even without glamour, some part of me wanted to bow at her feet. I grabbed Kyle’s free hand, but he pulled away. Johnny hissed softly, the first sound I’d heard from the shadow, and moved closer to his brother’s side.

The Lady ascended the hillside, two slender glasses filled with dark liquid in her hands. Her hair was once again bound in its firefly net, and her gaze fell entirely on Karin, as if the rest of us were unworthy of her notice. Where’s Matthew?

The Lady turned her back to Kyle and me as she offered a glass to Karin. “So, Daughter. You have returned for the wine I promised. And I have returned to hear how my daughter comes to teach humans. Much has changed, in the short years since the War.”