Faerie Winter (14 page)

Kyle didn’t fight me as I drew him back to the couch. I tore strips from my ruined sweater sleeves and wet them to clean his back as well as I could. Kyle cried and kicked the couch, but he didn’t try to get up again.

“Sorry,” I said, over and over, but I couldn’t tell whether he heard. I washed his scabbed-over palm as well, and cut Elin’s wool bandage to wrap it around his hand.

By the time I was through, I wasn’t sure whether to wish I had healing magic or to be grateful I didn’t. How did Caleb and Allie find it in them to treat pain, time and again, without falling apart utterly?

When Karin returned, her hair and shoulders dusted
with snow, I had Kyle wrapped in my coat and sitting up. Tears leaked out the corners of his eyes, more quietly now. “Johnny later,” he whispered to the frog.

The leaves around Karin’s wrist had curled in on themselves, as if against the cold. She drew dead plants from her pack, all familiar: willow bark for fever, birch bark and brown moss for drawing the infection out. If gathered while green, mosses could burn skin instead of healing it, but there was little risk of that this winter. The grasping branches of willows held dangers, too, but I suspected that Karin could manage those in any season. Plants listened when Karin spoke to them, in a deeper way than the simple calling or pushing away of my own magic.

I got Kyle out of my coat and lying down again so that Karin could pack the moss into place. He clutched his frog so tightly his fingers turned white, whether because Karin’s touch hurt or because he was still scared of her, I couldn’t tell. Karin laid birch bark over the moss and used bandages from her pack to tie it all in place. I helped her pull Kyle’s bloodied sweater on backwards over the bandages.

Karin ground the willow bark between a couple of rocks she’d brought in with the plants. I rummaged through the cans, found a Pepsi one without rust, and poured water through the small opening. A sweet scent
wafted out, like a memory of spring. Karin sprinkled the ground bark into the liquid. “The stones aren’t hot enough to boil water,” she said. “He’ll have to drink it cold.”

Kyle gave me a skeptical look when I handed him the can, and curled in on himself. I couldn’t blame him; few small children accepted willow bark without fuss. “You drink it,” he said.

I didn’t like willow bark any more than Kyle, even now. “How about if I go first?” I brought the can to my lips and took a swallow, then immediately regretted it. Willow bark tea was bad enough—I scrunched my face with the effort not to spit the cold bitter liquid up again.

Kyle burst out laughing. “Silly Liza!”

I held the can out to him as bitterness flowed down my throat. “Your turn.” Kyle grabbed the can and took a large gulp. He began coughing, spitting up liquid, but at least some of the medicine seemed to make it down his throat.

Karin pulled something else out of her bag: a thin silver blanket that crinkled like plastic as she wrapped it around Kyle. He stopped coughing to grab a handful of the strangely metallic fabric.

“The material is warmer than it appears, though I do not fully understand why,” Karin said. “It was crafted by your people, not mine.” She got Kyle lying on his side
and drew the quia leaf from his neck. Kyle didn’t seem to notice. He kept crinkling the blanket, more sleepily now.

“I doubt Tara even knew what my brother gave her.” Karin handed the leaf to me. “He told me he lost it during the War. I suppose in a sense he did. Keep it safe, Liza.”

I’d rather Kyle wore it, but the concern in Karin’s eyes stopped me from saying so.
It will protect you in dark forests
. “What is it?” Why was the Lady so eager to get it back?

Karin tucked one of the warm stones beneath Kyle’s blanket. “It is … a piece of our souls, you might say, though that is a human way of phrasing it. Better to say a piece of who we are lies in Faerie, bound into the First Tree, and this is the token of it. The leaf provides some protection, but carries some risk as well, for to harm the leaf is to harm its owner.”

The silver felt warm in my hand. “Caleb’s life is tied to this?”

“Indeed. He must have cared for your mother more deeply than I understood, to entrust her with it. I never trusted any of my consorts so, not through many long years.”

Yet Karin had parted with her leaf, too. It was in the Wall that protected her town—I’d seen that in my visions. How had the woman who’d once spoken so easily
of binding humans become someone who’d risk her life and soul to protect a human town?

I slipped Caleb’s chain over my head and tucked the leaf beneath my sweater. Would I part with it again, knowing that Caleb’s life was linked to it? I sat beside Kyle on the edge of the couch. Kyle let go of the blanket and grabbed my hand. “Stay,” he said.

Beyond the small hole in the ceiling, blowing snow hid the sky. “I’m not going anywhere.” I pulled on my coat and rolled onto the couch beside Kyle. He snuggled up against me, blanket crinkling.

“Look after him,” Karin said softly. “I will listen and keep watch.”

“I can help,” I said. “Just as soon as—”

Karin touched my shoulder. “You are helping. Hold to your task, and I will hold to mine.”

I wrapped my arms around Kyle, warming him, wondering how he could trust me so readily. “You know what?” I whispered to him.

“What?” Kyle’s voice was sleepy and slow.

“You’re not just brave. You’re also a fast runner, to escape from that hawk.”

Kyle giggled. “Not fast, Liza. I’m too little to run fast. But I’m a good yeller. I
yelled
the bird away!”

Before I could ask what he meant by that, he was asleep.

K
yle slept in fits and starts. I woke when he did, so slept in short snatches, never long enough to dream. Sometimes Kyle woke screaming, sometimes crying. Once he called Johnny’s name, telling him over and over that he was sorry about the ants. Another time he muttered, “No, no, no, no, no,” until he drifted off again. I held him, told him he was safe for now, and thought about all the ways I’d make Elin suffer for this if I ever saw her again.

Eventually the light outside faded. Much later, Kyle’s fever broke and he fell into a deeper sleep. I brushed his sweaty hair from his forehead. My chest felt strange and tight. I’d known Kyle all his life, but I’d never thought much about him before. Now I felt as if I’d do anything to protect him. That scared me—I knew well enough how little I could do to keep him safe.

When I felt myself slipping into deeper sleep, I gently pulled away from Kyle and stood, my head brushing the trailer’s rusty ceiling. I didn’t want to wake him with one of my nightmares.

Karin sat cross-legged by the door, the other orange stone beside her—its light was lasting a lot longer than the ones from Seth’s little sister did. Karin had unbuttoned her jacket, and I glimpsed another knife sheathed inside. She’d not carried any weapons I could see when last we’d met, but the trees had been awake then, and she’d had the entire forest at her command. Her shoulders were stiff, her expression watchful. I heard a faint pattering against the roof. Ice.

“I fear we will be here some time.” Karin offered me her water skin as I sat beside her. I drank, grateful for the cold water against my dry lips and throat.

“Kyle isn’t ready to travel yet anyway.” My stomach was grumbling again. I drew a strip of jerky—the meat Kyle had refused—from my pocket and split it with Karin. She offered me a handful of dried fruit in turn. “Blueberries,” she said at my puzzled look.

That was what I’d thought; I wouldn’t have hesitated otherwise. The berries should have burned my skin, but apparently they were quite dead. I set one hesitantly on my tongue, and tart sweetness flooded my mouth. Karin was the only person I knew who could harvest fruit
safely. I stowed the rest of the berries in my coat pocket, though I could easily have eaten them all. Maybe Kyle would like them better than dried meat. “Karin, do you think the Lady is looking for us?”

“The storm that stops us will stop her as well, for a time,” Karin said.

“What about after the storm?” I kept my voice low so as not to wake Kyle.

Karin stared into the dimness. “No. I don’t think she’ll look for us. I think she’ll look for your mother.”

I very much look forward to seeing your mother again
. Karin’s glowing stone couldn’t keep away all the cold.

“Liza, could you get Kyle to my town by yourself?”

I shook my head. I could, but I wouldn’t. I knew why Karin was asking, but I’d not abandon Mom to the Lady, not while my thoughts were my own. My hand went to the chain around my neck. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to bring myself to part with its protection again.

Karin sighed, and the leaves around her wrist fluttered restlessly. “I am willing enough to face my mother alone, and I cannot deny I would feel more at ease knowing you and Kyle were far away from her. She is almost certainly relying on your concern for your mother. She knows we’ll follow her to your town, and she has time enough to make plans against us that even the bond
between student and teacher cannot shield you from. It may be that the best way to thwart those plans is for you and Kyle not to appear.”

Ice tapped more loudly against the metal ceiling. “Karin, why does the Lady hate my mother so?”

Karin turned to me. “Tara did not tell you? When she returned?”

“She hardly told me
anything.
” I hated how my voice sounded, like a whining child who couldn’t get her way.

“You don’t want this story from me, Liza.” By the orange light Karin’s face looked less pale—more human. “The storm will not last forever, and we have other matters to discuss.”

The ice didn’t sound as if it were letting up anytime soon. “How long was Mom glamoured for?” I shivered in my coat. I understood now why Mom didn’t want to speak of glamour. I didn’t want to speak of it, either. “How long did Caleb—” I stopped abruptly, afraid Karin wouldn’t want to hear me speak badly of him.

“I do not know.” Karin lifted a stray screw from the floor and rolled it between her fingers. Its threads were thin and precise, as only work from Before was. “I paid little attention, in those days, to the games my brother and his companions played with humans. I ought to have paid more attention. If I had, I might have seen sooner what was happening between Kaylen and Tara, but I was
more concerned with trying to be what my mother needed than with protecting my youngest brother.”

I didn’t need to ask if she thought she’d succeeded in pleasing the Lady. I heard it in her voice. “I was never who my father wanted, either,” I said. My voice sounded too loud in the small space.

“Yet you stood up to him at the last.” Karin carefully set the screw down on the floor. It rolled away just the same. “Kaylen told me.”

I looked down, ashamed. “I didn’t send him away soon enough.” Caleb must have told her that, too.

“None of us can change what we’ve already done, Liza.” Karin’s hand brushed my shoulder. I flinched, and she drew respectfully away. “That the past cannot be undone was one of the War’s hardest lessons. We remain responsible for our actions there, but we have no power over them. We only have power over the thing we do next.”

“Even under glamour? Are we responsible then?” I traced a finger through the dust on the floor. Dust from Before—it smelled of oil, too. “Karin, how often did you—” I stopped myself. Karin had fought in the War. No doubt she’d used glamour in ways I could scarcely imagine, and other weapons as well.

“Never as a game.” Karin stared at the orange light between us. “And never since the War. Kaylen understood,
sooner than me, that your people are not mere toys. I did not understand until I heard their cries as they died. I did not understand until I came to a human town, and began to care for its people, and they for me. I understand now.”

Why should it take death to understand such a thing? Yet I hadn’t understood until a few months ago that Karin’s people weren’t all monsters, either. “Karin, Mom says you think she and Caleb started the War. Do you?”
Did they?

Karin laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Tara always did have a way of simplifying things. Fault and blame are complicated matters. Tara and Kaylen played a role, certainly. So did I, and my mother, and Tara’s father.”

The children of powerful people, nothing more
. “Who was Mom’s father?” I’d never known any of my grandparents.

“Who people are is never simple in your world,” Karin said. “Among your people, position is not defined by birth or strength of magic. Tara’s father was neither a wielder of power nor a maker of goods—he was merely a merchant, a procurer and seller of the goods others made, weapons in particular. In my world, such a person would be of little consequence. I did not understand how different matters were in your world until your
mother—” Karin stopped abruptly. “I cannot tell this fairly, Liza.”

“I’d rather hear it unfairly than not at all.”
Mom had her chance to tell me fairly
.

“I know less than you think.” The vine around Karin’s wrist unwound a little, creeping toward her fingers. “I did not note when your mother first found her way into Faerie. I do not know how she and Kaylen came to care for one another, even through the glamour my people use so easily upon yours that we do not even think of it as part of our magic. I don’t know what made Kaylen certain the caring was more than a part of the illusions he wove. My brother did not ask my advice in those days, and if he had, he would not have liked the advice I’d have given. I know only that Kaylen lifted the glamour from Tara at the last and, in doing so, swore an oath to never use glamour against your people again. I have since taken the same oath, though I was slower to do so.”