Faerie Winter

mug read.

The tea burned my throat as I finished it. You never kept me safe.

Matthew drank his tea in a few quick gulps. “Thanks, Tara,” he told Mom. His fingers brushed mine, and the light touch tingled over my skin. Matthew and I kept each other safe. He was the one person in this town I trusted beyond all doubting.

“See you later, Liza?” A few strands had escaped his blond ponytail. I resisted the urge to brush the hair back from his face, even as I imagined drawing him near enough for our lips to touch as gently as our fingers had. As always, the thought made me feel strangely shy. What if Matthew could read it in my face, as clearly as I could read the angle of his wolf’s ears, the tenor of his bark? What if I acted on it, only to find he didn’t feel the same way?

“Later,” I agreed. I stared at the way his shoulders stretched the fabric of his sweater and at the downy fuzz on his chin and cheeks, which had nothing to do with his shifting and which hadn’t been there when winter began. I’d buried my face against his fur often enough. Why did I hesitate so much more when he was human than when he was a wolf? I watched as he grabbed his coat from the couch and headed out to help his grandmother with their morning chores.

Mom put her hand on my shoulder as the door shut behind him. “I thought we could practice control this morning, too. You’ve gotten so good with your calling this winter. Now we just have to work on applying that to your visions.”

I wasn’t sure my visions could be controlled. The harder I tried, the more they caught me unaware. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure whether it was the past or the future I saw.

And where were you, Mom, when I started having visions? For more than two years, all the children in my town had known they could go to Mom and Matthew’s grandmother with their magic— except for me.

Mom had no magic of her own. No human born before the War had magic; all those born After did. But Mom had spent time in Faerie Before—time with Caleb—and knew more about magic than most. She’d taught the others as well as she could, in secret so that Father wouldn’t find out. Matthew’s grandmother had helped her. Matthew and Hope and the others had been Mom’s students, and they’d all known about each other’s magic, though they’d never spoken of it aloud where those without magic could hear. Mom said she’d feared that Father would kill me if he learned I knew about the magic in our town, so she’d hidden that magic from me. She said she’d been protecting me and the others both. But after Father had abandoned my sister to die, Mom had run away to what remained of Faerie, leaving me alone with him. Sending Father away had fallen to me and my magic after all—the magic Mom hadn’t known I had until after she’d left.

My throat felt dry. I picked up my mug and remembered that it was empty. “There’s work to do.” There was more work now that Father was gone.

“I already brought in the water,” Mom said.

“Mom!” My fingers tightened around the mug’s handle.

“I’m not an invalid, Liza. You don’t have to do everything. I brought in the eggs, too. It’s not our turn with the sheep or goats, so we’re okay there.”

I looked at Mom’s thin shoulders. “Caleb told you not to push too hard.”

“Kaylen doesn’t know everything.” Mom used his faerie name from Before, as she often did. She took the mug from me. “I left you the firewood, if you really feel you haven’t worked hard enough today.” Mom set my mug on the shelf above the fireplace, beside other chipped mugs from Before. She reached for Matthew’s mug as well, then stopped short and clutched her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I grabbed her as she stumbled, and helped her over to the couch.

“It’s nothing.” Mom sighed as she sat down. A hank of wool lay on a drop cloth beside the couch, and she took up a handful of it. “Go get that wood, if you’re so eager to escape your lessons.” She grabbed the metal- toothed hand carders from the table and began pulling wool through them.

I watched her fingers grow shiny with sheep oil, fighting the fear that had stalked me ever since I’d found Mom and brought her out of Faerie, fear that Caleb hadn’t fully healed her after all.

“I’m fine, Liza.” Mom didn’t look up as she continued carding the wool.

I wanted to believe that, but Mom had lied to me before. How was I to know when to trust her? I stalked past her and out the door before I could ask the question aloud.

The clouds were thicker now. I buttoned my coat and pulled on hat and gloves as I walked through the town and down a side path to the Store where we kept our firewood. I could barely make out the words General Mercantile above the door. The rest of the sign, proclaiming that the Store sold ice, fudge, and cigarettes, had long since faded away.

The door creaked as I opened it, stepping into a dim room piled high with stacked firewood. Gathering wood had been easier with the trees asleep. Behind the Store’s metal counter, I heard whispers.

I found Kyle there, lying on his stomach, talking to a row of black ants with a metallic blue-green sheen. Carpenter ants. Though they made no sound, I knew that the ants spoke to Kyle, too. Kyle was an animal speaker and, at five years old, the youngest surviving child in our town to have come into his magic.

Anyone who could talk to carpenter ants knew they didn’t belong in a woodshed. Kyle looked up at me, as furtive as if he’d been caught dipping a finger into the honey. He had a streak of dirt across his nose, and a slick of black hair stuck straight up from his head. “They say the wood is warm. They say they want to stay.”

“They can’t stay,” I told Kyle. His coat and rumpled pants looked like they’d been slept in. Perhaps they had—at the meeting during which we’d told the townsfolk about our magic, Kyle’s mother, Brianna, had wanted to force Kyle and his older brother out of the house, only their father wouldn’t allow it. It was their father who’d shivered to death holding his first wife’s shadow too close less than a month later. As far as I could tell, Kyle’s mother could barely stand to look at her children now.

A half dozen ants climbed onto Kyle’s fingers, which were losing their baby thickness. If the ants feasted on our firewood—or the Stores’ timbers—we’d have a problem. “If they stay, we’ll have to lay down poison.”

“It’s not their fault!” Kyle hunched protectively over the small creatures. “It’s cold outside.”

It wasn’t a hawk’s fault it had to eat, either, but that didn’t mean I was obligated to let one gut me for its dinner. “There are other warm places. Tell them to find one.” Ants, like termites, had the entire sleeping forest to feast on this winter.

Kyle stroked the ant crawling over his thumb, as if it were some tame creature, as if its colony couldn’t bring the Store down around our ears.

“They’re ants, Kyle.”

The boy stuck out his lower lip. “Don’t be mean.”

Could Kyle talk to deer and rabbits, too? How would he hunt when he got older? One way or another, he’d have to learn to care less for the animals he talked with. “The ants will be fine. They’re good marchers.”

Kyle’s face scrunched up, as if he was thinking about that. He cupped his hands, whispered words too low to hear, and set his hands down on the floor.

The ants on his fingers crawled to the ground and began marching toward the door. Other ants followed, from the floor around Kyle, their insect legs moving in perfect unison. More ants emerged from the woodpiles—so many. Kyle hummed an old work song from Before under his breath. The ants go marching one by one …

I smiled at that. “Where’d you send them?”

Kyle flashed me a grin as he scrambled to his feet. “Into Johnny’s pants.”

“Kyle!” Johnny was Kyle’s older brother. I tried to sound severe, but if there was anyone whose pants I’d not mind seeing crawl with ants, it was Johnny.

“Ants in pants.” Kyle laughed as if he’d done the funniest thing imaginable. “They promised not to bite.”

Did ants keep their promises? I doubted they could even find Kyle’s brother, given how hard Johnny’s stalking magic made it for anyone to find him lately.

“Don’t stay too long,” I told Kyle as I headed for one of the woodpiles. “Your mom’ll be looking for you.”

Kyle’s laughter died. “No. She won’t.” He looked down at his boots.

I piled wood into my arms. At least Brianna was feeding Kyle and, as far as I could tell, not lifting her hands to him. Still, I glanced back uneasily as I stepped over the ants and out the door. Kyle’s focus was back on the insects; he didn’t seem to see me leave.