Cold Spell

back without hesitation, which usually results in her and the other person laughing together. Children watch us from inside tent doors, clustered together like nesting animals, eyes admiring Flannery while regarding me with a sort of wary fear. We’re getting closer and closer to the edge of the camp, away from the bonfire light. The snow on the ground is still thick here, though there’s a trail, as if Flannery has walked this path many times before. I turn my eyes to the tree line, wondering how far I’d make it if I got away and ran right now. After seeing the Fenris, the forest is infinitely more frightening, especially in the dark. Flannery looks over her shoulder at me.

“Afraid of the forest?”

“Yes,” I mutter.

“You should be,” she says. “Go in there and they’ll eat you up.”

“I know about them,” I say. “The Fenris. And the Snow Queen—your mother doesn’t want anyone to know, but—”

“Quiet,” Flannery says, teeth flashing in the dim light. “You won’t make it far here if you go prying into our secrets before you’ve earned them. And besides, I heard all about you. Talking trash about Grohkta-Nap, questioning her power.”

“It’s not that,” I say, trying to pander to her a little. “I’ve just always thought she was the queen of the Fenris. But you say she protects your people from them.”

“If she sees fit,” Flannery says, pushing her hair over her shoulders—though there’s so much and it’s so thick that the curls flounce back across her face in seconds. “The snow slows the Fenris down,” she continues. “She brings it down on us, tries to keep them away from our camp.”

“And you don’t care that she turns boys into wolves.”

“That work for her,” Flannery says, a spark of admiration in her voice. “And they don’t back-talk and question her the way the men here question my mother. The Snow Queen has real power.” I’m about to say more when up ahead, something near the trees moves. I jump, afraid, but no, this is small, thinner, lankier than a Fenris. We grow closer, closer, and I realize it’s a deer, held captive by a fence made of chicken wire on one side and a very beaten VW bus on the other.

“Hello, menthroh,” Flannery calls out; her voice is calmer now, as if the frenzy of the fight is falling away. The deer’s ears flick toward us, and she immediately backs up to the far side of the pen.

“She’s afraid of me,” Flannery tells me, though she doesn’t seem too sad about this. She reaches into the bag of crackers, tugs out a few, and throws them to the ground at the deer’s feet. I see her silhouette and wide, eerie eyes flicker as she drops her head and sniffs, then ignores them.

“You feed her crackers?”

“I feed her whatever I can find that she’ll eat,” Flannery says, and turns. “Don’t tell my mother. She gets pissed when she hears I’m giving them our food.” I’m about to ask what she means by them when it becomes abundantly, ridiculously clear.

The fence holding the deer goes on for several yards, divided every few feet, and there’s an animal in every section. The deer, then a fox, then a dog—no, not a dog, a coyote.

“I had an elk once,” Flannery says forlornly. “But he trampled me and ran away.”

“I’m… sorry?” I say, trying to keep the shock from registering in my voice. She’s crazy. Not just strange, not just eccentric, but actually crazy.

“Nah. Good for him, being strong enough to break out,” Flannery says, tossing some crackers into a pen with a badger. “Besides, now I have room for a bear, if I can catch one. It’s hard—I need a really old one or a baby, and both are hard to come by. Especially since women aren’t allowed to go into the woods. Gotta wait for them to wander close to camp, see one by the highway, that sort of thing.”

Crazy.

“Why do you want a bear?” I ask, unable to keep the alarm from my voice this time.

“Because,” Flannery says, drawing a knife from her waistband and running it across the chicken wire so it makes a tinkling sound. The animals’ ears spring up and they begin to pace. “Wouldn’t you be afraid of a girl who can catch a bear with her hands?”

I nod—though really, I’m fairly afraid of her as is; she doesn’t need to catch a bear to scare me, though I’d believe Brigit and the rest of the camp might be harder to convince. We get to the end of the pens and walk to the back of the bus. It was once pale red—I think. Maybe blue, or green—the paint is chipped and reveals that it’s been many colors in its lifetime.

“This is Wallace,” Flannery says, sounding pleased with herself.

“Why Wallace?”

“That’s what it says,” she answers, as if I’m stupid to not realize. She points to an assortment of faded bumper stickers on the rear door. Only one is still legible, the one that reads WALLACE FOR PRESIDENT in red, white, and blue.

Flannery opens the rear doors and climbs inside. There’s a table and a few benches, and the pop-top roof makes it possible to stand up straight in certain areas. There’s not room to do much else, though, because on every seat, every ledge, and every little table are cages, their occupants hidden in the darkness. Flannery reaches over and flicks on an electric lantern, temporarily blinding me. When I manage to open my eyes, I can’t stop a gasp.

Possums. Raccoons. Squirrels. Some sort of mink, and, in a pen by what used to be a bed, a beaver. They scramble for food, and I’m overwhelmed with pity—they look well-fed, cared for, but something about seeing a wild animal in a cage unsettles me.

Flannery reaches into the passenger seat and comes up with several boxes of cornflakes, which she dumps into the animals’ bowls; they eat hungrily, the raccoons far more brazen than the deer outside.

Flannery raps on Wallace’s wall fondly. “It runs and everything. My friend Callum and I stole it together last year. Took us six months to get it working. And another three to get my mother off my back about having a van just for my collection.”

“She doesn’t like it?”

“She says I’m greedy, wanting more while others have less.” She casts a hand toward the camp, fingers lingering in the direction of the smallest tents. “Says it’s not our way, that I’m acting like a buffer.”

“We’re not like that,” I say defensively.

“You’ll have a hell of a time convincing me of that,” Flannery says, laughing loud. “But I wager I’ll have a hell of a time convincing you we’re more than just thieves and vagrants, so we’re square.”

I’m not sure we’re square at all, seeing as how I’m being held prisoner, but I keep my mouth shut. Flannery sticks her fingers into the possum’s cage for a moment; when he ignores her, she speaks again.

“Maybe she’s right. More proof I’ll be a shit queen.”

“Shit queen of what, exactly?” I ask, voice rising in something too akin to disdain for Flannery’s taste. She whirls around and glares, and I see her fingers itch for her knife. It makes me jump backward; I trip over the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and my elbow hits the gearshift. I wince as she laughs at me, looking down. I’ll probably have an imprint of the little numbers on the shifter bruised into my skin.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I grumble, finding my feet. “I just don’t get it. Who are you people? What are you doing out here?”

Flannery relaxes and smiles—her smiles look so wicked. “We’re the Pavee. Tinkers. The Other Folk.”

“I don’t know what any of that means.”

Flannery snorts, puts away the cornflakes, and flips off the light. “We’re Travellers,” she says. “Well, mostly. We broke off from the other Traveller groups years ago, started a new clan when we came down to Kentucky.”

“And so you’re the… the princess.”

“The Princess of Kentucky,” Flannery says matter-of-factly. “But I’m shit at it, you know. So shit, in fact,” she says, pausing dramatically, “that my mother thinks if I don’t get married, have a husband to back me up when I inherit her title, that the clan’ll overthrow me, take my crown before she’s even cold in the ground.” Flannery jumps out of Wallace and waits for me to do the same.

“Is your mother married?” I ask as my feet hit the dirt.

“Nope,” Flannery says, snorting at the hypocrisy. “My dad ran off a thousand years ago, but when they tried