Faerie Winter (22 page)

Light drained from the world around me, moon and stars fading to dead gray coals. This wasn’t Faerie. Even the desolate Realm the War had left behind held more color and life than this.

Yet I’d been here before. I’d called Caleb back from this dead land where nothing grew. I’d thought I’d escaped it and brought him and the quia seed both back with me.

I thought of dead fields and bare trees, of white bone and gray ash. No one could escape such a place, not for good. All things wound down in the end. I was human. I would die. How could I ever have imagined otherwise?

I tried to think of green things, of living things, but green was only a word, and I no longer remembered what it meant. Winter and death pulled on me. I couldn’t fight their wordless call. I closed my eyes and let dead branches wrap around me. I wasn’t cold anymore. It wasn’t such a bad thing after all to see the worlds wind down.

“Quit it, Liza.” A boy’s voice, from somewhere behind me. Something about that voice made me angry. It had always made me angry.

“Go away.” There was no power in my words—in me.

“Nice try.” The boy spoke in front of me now. “Too bad I’m through with the whole disappearing act.”

I knew him, but I couldn’t call up a name. I curled up small among the branches, not caring as thorns dug into my skin.

“And you complain I hide too much? Seriously, Liza, enough of this. Get up.”

“I want to sleep.” I was warm and I was safe. Why couldn’t this nameless boy leave me alone like everyone else? Dimly I remembered that he’d never left me alone when I’d wanted him to.

“Okay, let’s try it this way.” Didn’t he ever give up? “Open your eyes.”

“Will you go away if I open my eyes?”

The boy laughed at that, though I couldn’t imagine what was so funny. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Fine,” I told him. It took a long time—my eyelids were as heavy as if they’d turned to stone, and even once I got them open, I struggled to focus on the boy who stood slouching before me. “Johnny.” He was as colorless as everything else in this place, but he looked real, not like a shadow. That wasn’t right. “You’re dead.”

“And you’re not. So you’re going to get up, and you’re going to get yourself back out there.”

I drew the branches closer around me. “Can’t.”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “This is Liza, who went off into the deadly forest all alone and came back alive, who saved her mother even though she wasn’t supposed to have any magic? Do you have any idea how tired I am of hearing about how brave you are? The least you could do is live up to it.”

I
wasn’t
brave, and I hadn’t been alone. Someone had been with me on that journey, but I’d forgotten his name as well. My chest hurt. I didn’t want to hurt. What was the point of pain when worlds were winding down?

“I know,” Johnny said, though I hadn’t spoken aloud. “Been a rough week for both of us. Come on.” He held out a hand.

He made everything sound so easy—I reached out and took his hand. His fingers were ice; I gasped at the cold that knifed through me. It turned to a painful tingling as
dead branches fell away. I tried to burrow back down among them, but Johnny wouldn’t let go.

“Sorry, Liza. You don’t get to take the easy way out.” He smiled sadly. “Only I get to do that. Promise me you’ll take care of Kyle?”

Kyle—there was pain behind that name, too. “I promise.” The words came easily. I already had promised that, hadn’t I?

Something stabbed at my eyes—light? Johnny shrank from it. “Also, tell Matthew it wasn’t his fault, okay? He’s like you and Tara—he always blames himself. Tell him.”

“All right.” I was standing. When had I gotten to my feet?

Johnny laughed softly. “So now you have no choice. You have promises to keep out there. And so I get to go. Thanks, Liza.”

The light was growing brighter. Suddenly I wanted light, wanted color, more than anything.
“Come here,”
I whispered, and I felt that light pulling on me, as strongly as the gray had. I wanted spring. I needed spring.
“Seek air, seek light, seek life!”

Light and color flooded me—too much. I staggered and fell to my knees, but I kept my hand pressed against the quia tree. I was surrounded by color: pink sky, orange dawn, a snaking green thread that yearned toward
me. I stood and pulled that thread, pulled it with all the magic I had. For a moment I saw Johnny, a shadow once more, watching me.
“Seek rest,”
I told him.

“Already planning on it,” Johnny whispered. Then he was gone, and bright leaves were uncurling all around me—on the quia’s branches, on sumac and blackberry, on the brown oak nearby. I needed to do something once I woke the oak tree. What was I supposed to do?

“Karin!”
I called.
“Karinna, come here!”

Sunlight spilled like liquid fire over the horizon. It had been night when I’d started this. How long had I been here? I kept pulling on the green, pulling it out of a land beyond both my world and Faerie, a place where nothing grew—the place where all growing began. The thread thickened into a green rope. The rope grew slippery, seeking to escape my magic’s hold. For an instant it did escape, and I slid after it, back down into the gray—

Then Karin was pulling the rope alongside me, and her magic wrapped around mine, adding its strength. Leaves exploded to life all around us. Brambles tangled my ankles. I ignored them. Nothing mattered more than holding on to that rope. We pulled harder, Karin and I, pulled the green out of quia and blackberry and sumac, out of trees farther and farther away. I pulled something more out of some of those farther trees, too, something human only I could call.

Each pull drained something from me in turn. Leafy branches circled my waist, my chest, but I didn’t stop. We needed the green. We needed light and life and growth. Thorns pierced my skin, drawing blood. Through the branches, a hand grasped mine. “Spring,” Karin whispered. There was so much joy—so much light—in that word. “This world will hold a time longer yet.”

I looked for Karin, caught a glimpse of green vines flowing up her neck, of thorns reaching for her eyes. “I’m … glad,” I managed to say. Green leaves sprouted between our fingers, pushing our hands apart. Tendrils wrapped around my ears, flowed over my face. I couldn’t see Karin anymore. I could only see green growth all around. I ached with the brightness of it.

“Enough.”
Karin’s voice was fainter.
“Leave be.”
She spoke to the plants now, not me.
“Let blood and bone go. Seek soil, seek water, seek—”

My ears rang. Very far away, someone called my name. I struggled toward the sound, but the plants were too strong. They dragged me down, and I fell into the green.

G
reen light burned against the insides of my eyes, spreading through my arms, my legs, my thoughts. Green things whispered to me, speaking of hunger and soil, of pounding rain and searing sun. Pinpricks of pain raced along my body, thorns being torn away.

“Hang in there, Lizzy. I’ve got you.”

I tried to put a name to the voice, but I couldn’t think through the whispers and the light.

“Wake up, Liza!”
A child’s call—it had no power over me.
“No sleeping! Wake up!”
The child began to cry.

Darkness threatened at the edges of the green. I fought it. I wanted light. I wanted spring. A wolf howled. I tried to answer it, but darkness closed in around me, darkness and ice.

“Come here, Liza.” A cold voice—the Lady’s voice. “The worlds wind down, and no mere human shall escape their fate.” I had no choice. I followed her down into the endless dark, knowing that winter took everything in the end.

“Oh, no, you don’t, Liza.” A girl’s voice. Silver light flooded my sight, chasing the dark away. “I tell you and
tell you that you can’t leave us but you just—don’t—listen.” The light grew colder with every word, a cleaner cold with nothing of darkness in it. My arms and legs tingled, as if thawing after a walk in the snow. The tingling
hurt—
I bolted upright, fighting it, sending new pain through my shoulder, over my torn and bleeding skin.

“Stay still, Liza! Caleb’s with Karin, so I’m on my own, and I don’t want to push too hard—” The girl drew a gulping breath.

I knew her then. “Allie?” That made no sense. Why was Caleb’s student here?

“Please, Liza,” Allie said. She eased me down again. “I know this is hard. Don’t make it harder.”

“Allie, how—”

“Later,” Mom said. I knew her now, too. “There’ll be time later.” Mom’s hand grasped mine—my right hand, because something was wrong with my left—as Allie’s light washed over me again. Too cold—I screamed, and for a time I did nothing but scream. After that, I heard someone crying, and I didn’t know whether it was Allie or me.

“You’re going to be all right, Liza. You know that, don’t you?” Allie sounded so tired. “Only you need to rest now. I’m sorry, but you do.” The darkness that wrapped around me was warmer now. Gentler. I fought it, but it pulled me under just the same.

*   *   *

I woke to a feather mattress beneath my back and a dull aching pain that filled my whole body. From someplace out of sight, I heard talking.

“You said you could heal her.” Elin’s voice was bleak.

“And so I have.” Caleb’s voice, hard and grim. His being here made no more sense than Allie’s being here.

“Why should this world be saved,” Elin demanded, “while ours falls to dust?” Caleb had no answer for that.

I opened my eyes. Light stung them. Bright afternoon sunlight, shining around the shutters of Kate’s bedroom window. From a chair at my side, Mom reached for my hand. Her face was covered in scratches, her arm bandaged, her wrist in a splint. “You’re hurt,” I said. Why was she hurt? The plants hadn’t attacked her.

They had attacked me. Memory returned slowly, in tattered bits and pieces. Karin and I had called the plants back into the world, but then they’d attacked, because that was what plants did when they were awake.

In a chair at the foot of the bed, Allie jerked awake, and she hurried to my other side. Mom released my hand.

“Allie, what are you doing here?” Allie had followed me before, but that had been long ago, before winter.

Her red hair was tangled, and her eyes were shadowed,
but she gave me a lopsided smile. “Taking care of you, of course. I’m your healer, remember?”

Caleb stepped into the room, his clear hair falling to his shoulders, a coin from Before hanging from a chain over his sweater. He looked no older than Karin. His silver eyes were sunken with weariness, but he smiled when he saw me. “Liza. It is good to see you awake.” He and Mom exchanged unreadable looks, and I thought of how he’d held Mom under glamour, how Mom had fled when he’d let the glamour go—but when he moved to Allie’s side, I also saw the healer who’d saved Mom’s life. Mom’s hand brushed the leaf she wore, as if for reassurance.

Allie drew the blankets back. I wore a loose nightshirt. A green plastic frog, a yellow duck, and a pink pig were all tucked in beside me. Scar tissue peeked out from beneath the shirt, and I felt more scratches, itchy and half-healed, rubbing against the wool. I reached for them.

My hand wouldn’t listen. Something was wrong—it was too heavy, too stiff. “Oh.” I lifted my arm toward me and stared at the gray stone where my hand had been. My stone fingers were half-curled, as if they still clutched the Lady’s hand. My hand itched, somewhere deep inside, but when I touched it, I felt nothing. I couldn’t hold a bow with such a hand. I couldn’t hunt.

Allie bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Liza. There’s nothing there to heal. It’s stone, but it’s perfectly healthy stone. Maybe one day you can find another changer to fix it, but I can’t. I tried.”

I traced the stone where it softened into skin just above my wrist. I would get used to this. I had no choice.

I shouldn’t even be here. “The plants killed me.” I’d fallen into their green embrace.

Allie laughed then. “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”

“Karinna’s command stopped the plants in time,” Caleb said soberly. “Or stopped them enough that Tara and Elianna could pull you free.” He reached out and ran his hands over my body, not quite touching me, sending a shiver over my skin just the same.

“It is well,” Caleb said. “You’re going to be sore for a long while, Liza, but Allison has healed the worst of the damage the newborn plants did to you, as well as the deeper hurts that came from touching the winter sleep that held them.”

Allie let out a breath and clutched the edge of the bed. “Told you you were going to be all right.” She was shaking, as if she hadn’t been as sure as she’d sounded.

Mom held my good hand tightly. “You’re hurt, too,” I told her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Not all the plants stopped at Karinna’s command, that’s all. Some of them fought
Elianna and me when we wanted the two of you back. They lost. Kaylen can heal me later, once he’s had time to recover.”

I glanced at her splinted wrist, her bandaged arm. Not all Mom’s injuries had come from the plants. More memories slid into place. Karin had broken her wrist, but her arm—I rolled away, unwilling to face her.

“Don’t you dare.” Mom reached out and brushed my hair back from my face. “I will not let you blame yourself, Liza. Not for this.”

I focused on the stone where my hand should have been. “You don’t—”

“I do understand.” The steel in Mom’s voice surprised me. She’d put a knife through the Lady’s heart—I shouldn’t have been surprised. “If anyone understands the effects of glamour, it’s me.”

Allie tugged on Caleb’s arm. “What’s glamour?” she asked. Caleb looked down, as if ashamed, and didn’t answer.

Mom rubbed my back. “I do not blame you,” she said firmly. “I will never blame you. I know what it’s like.”

I
knew what it was like now. I knew why Mom had been so frightened when I’d used my magic on her.

“Look at me, Liza.”

I’d once gone through fire and glass to save my mother, but just then, nothing was as hard as turning
back to her. “You have my word,” I said, speaking the promise she’d wanted before I’d left. “I will not use my magic to compel you ever again, not without your consent.”