Faerie Winter

huddling over and glaring at us all through wild eyes.

The bandage on his left hand had come loose. Kate tightened it and gently took both his hands in hers. “Keep going, Liza.”

I poured the water more slowly this time. Ethan rocked back and forth, shivering still. “Not my fault,” he whimpered. “Not my fault.”

No one said anything wasn’t their fault unless they feared it was. I took the empty bucket into the hall. Kyle walked past me, head held high, hands barely touching his own bucket as it floated in front of him. Seth followed close behind him.

With three of us working—four, counting Kyle—it only took a few trips to fill the tub. Somewhere in the cabinets Kyle found a trio of faded green rubber frogs and balanced them on the tub’s edge. Ethan didn’t seem to notice. He stopped whimpering and stared, wide-eyed, at the ceiling.

“It’s all right,” Mom whispered to him, over and over again, just like she had when I was small.

Like me, this stranger knew better. “Not all right. Never all right.”

I thought of Ben’s burned body. “What happened?” I asked him. Mom gave me a sharp look. “We have to know,” I said.

“Time enough for that later.” Kate still held Ethan’s hands, keeping them out of the water. “Fever’s already down a little,” she said.

Ethan moaned. Mom made shushing sounds. “You’re safe here.”

The boy frowned, as if safety were a child’s tale he’d long ago stopped believing.

Once we got Ethan into bed, he fell into a fitful sleep. Mom kept watch over him while Matthew, Seth, and I headed off to other chores. Kyle followed me into the forest to gather acorns hidden beneath the snow. I let him. Gathering was a task a child could help with, now that the trees slept. In years past the oaks had held their acorns close or else flung them at passersby in hopes they’d root in skin and bone, but this autumn they’d fallen like rain from the trees—not only small acorns, such as those Hope wore, but larger ones as well. Soaked, acorn kernels made a bitter flour, one that had gotten us through a couple of hard years when I was small. Famine food, Kate called it. I didn’t look forward to eating such again, but if the spring crops didn’t come in, the acorns would give us a little more time, until they ran out as well.

Kyle really did help with the gathering, at least until he found a glowworm melting a trail through the snow and stopped to talk to it.

“Don’t touch it,” I warned him. Usually glowworms didn’t hold much heat, but with so much leaf litter for them to feed on this winter, they were burning hotter than usual.

Kyle gave me a long look, as though he couldn’t believe I’d think him so stupid, and turned back to the worm, leaving me to finish filling the acorn sack myself. When I was done, the worm was gone, but Kyle’s name was spelled out in worm trails in the snow. My stomach ached with hunger by then, and I wished I’d eaten before heading out after all.

As we returned to town, Kyle’s mother marched over to us and grabbed his arm. “What trouble are you making now?” Brianna demanded.

Kyle stared at the ground. I pointed to the acorn sack. “He wasn’t any trouble. He was a good helper.”

Kyle’s mother gave me a smoldering look. “You’ll do well not to tell me when my son is and isn’t making trouble, Liza.” She dragged Kyle away. He didn’t protest, just kept looking down with a sullen frown as his mother began muttering about what a useless child he was. I winced, though they were only words. I knew well enough that words could cut deep as blows.

I brought the sack home and set it down on the couch along with my scarf, hat, and gloves. Before this winter, I wouldn’t have dared bring acorns within walls until they were soaked and ground into meal, but I felt no more life in these seeds than I’d felt in the others.

The morning’s fire had burned down to hot coals. I unbuttoned my coat but kept it on as I set yesterday’s cornmeal mush over the heat. There was some squirrel left in the mush, and my stomach grumbled as it simmered. I took the pot from the fire, filled two bowls, and brought them upstairs along with a couple of spoons.

Father’s—no, Mom’s—door was open. I stepped into the chilly room. Ethan slept on the feather bed, more easily now, his bandaged hands resting loosely atop the covers. Mom sat in a chair beside him, darning holes in old socks. I handed her a bowl. From the dresser, a small oil lamp added its light to the sun shining in around the nylon-tacked windows.

“Lunchtime already?” Mom set the mending aside and took the bowl absently into her lap. She tilted her head toward Ethan. “Kate gave him something to help him sleep.”

I put a spoon into Mom’s bowl and sat beside her in the room’s other chair. Mom sighed and swallowed a mouthful. Once she ate, I did, too. My stomach’s grumbling eased.

Too soon, Mom stopped and handed me her bowl. “You finish it, Liza.”

I shook my head, though my bowl was empty and I could easily have scraped Mom’s clean as well. “I’ll save it for later.” Mom was eating too little as it was. I took both bowls downstairs and spooned the cornmeal back into the pot. Grabbing the acorn sack and a nutcracker, I headed back upstairs, where Mom was wiping Ethan’s face with a wet cloth.

“Do you think he killed Ben?” I asked her.

Mom set the cloth aside. “I think it likely.”

My damp socks were cold. “Do you wish I’d left him in the forest?”

“There are those who would do that in this town and not regret it. I know that well enough.” Mom looked at Ethan as she spoke. “I am glad to learn my daughter is not one of them.”

Ethan whimpered in his sleep. Wisps of smoke escaped the bandages around his hands. Mom scrambled to her feet and grabbed a water basin from beside the bed. She shoved it into my hands, pulled Ethan up, and plunged his hands into the water, which sizzled at the sudden heat. Ethan cried out and fought Mom, but she didn’t release him until the sizzling stopped. Tears streamed down his face as he fell back to the bed. I returned the basin to the floor as Mom moved Ethan’s arms back to his sides. Neither of us spoke until he’d settled back into sleep.

Mom sighed as she straightened his blankets. “He has far less control than Jayce’s granddaughter did. That worries me. I don’t know as much about the wilder magics, like those that deal with fire and plants. If I did, maybe our firestarter would have lived.”

I drew an acorn from the bag. Caleb’s sister Karin was a plant mage. “Karin’s magic isn’t wild.” She had better control than anyone I knew.

Mom picked up her darning from where it had fallen to the floor. “I still can’t imagine Karinna teaching humans.”

I opened my mouth, strangely stung. It was Karin who’d first taught me about magic, while Mom had still been keeping her teaching secret from me. “Karin saved my life.” When mulberry trees had attacked Matthew and me, she’d rescued us. I thought of how harsh she’d been to Caleb in my vision. That vision didn’t match the woman I knew. “Karin was kind to me.”

“But not to me,” Mom said.

She is only human, Kaylen. You do her no harm, any more than hood and jesses do harm to a hawk. It was Mom Karin had been speaking about. That didn’t fit what I knew of her, either. Karin taught an entire town full of human children.

But before that, Karin had fought against my people in the War. Allie had told me so.

I turned the acorn in my hands. I suspected that this was about neither Karin’s teaching nor which side she’d fought on. “Karin didn’t like you and Caleb being together, did she?” The vision had made that clear enough.

Mom moved her needle through the wool with slow, careful stitches. She never spoke of her time in Faerie, no matter how often I asked. The memory of how frightened she’d been in my vision kept me from asking too often, but it didn’t make my questions go away. “Can you at least tell me how the War started?”

Mom pushed her needle too hard; it punched through the wool to stab her finger. She cursed and brought her finger to her lips. “Right. I need a break. You up for taking a turn with Ethan?”

For years I’d thought I knew how the War had begun—the faerie folk had attacked us, for reasons of their own. Now that I’d seen the damage my people had done to Faerie in turn, I knew it couldn’t be that simple. “Why won’t you tell me?”

Mom stood and looked at me. A drop of blood had beaded on her fingertip. “There’s some who’d say