Foxheart (30 page)

Q
uicksilver sat on a chair in the corner, watching Sly Boots cool his parents' faces with a damp cloth and spoon broth into their mouths.

Feeding them was a painstaking process, and it made Quicksilver irritated just to watch. Sly Boots had to hold up their heads and slowly pour in tiny spoonful after tiny spoonful so they wouldn't choke. He ended up covered in more broth than he successfully fed to them, but not once did he lose his calm manner. Quicksilver couldn't conceive of such patience—but then she thought of Fox, and Anastazia. Would she be able
to sit in patient silence and help them eat, if they were as sick as Sly Boots's mother and father?

The answer came to her at once: Of course she would, and gladly, for as long as they needed her.

Her bandaged leg throbbed with a dull, burning ache—but her chest ached even more. Would it ever stop aching? If only she had had the chance to care for Fox as he had cared for her. If only she had had the chance to say good-bye.

“I would have gotten you home to them eventually, you know,” she said.

Sly Boots jumped, dropping the spoon. “You scared me half out of my mind!”

Despite everything, Quicksilver smiled—the barest twitch of her lips. So she had managed to sneak into the room without Sly Boots noticing her. At least some things hadn't changed.

“I'm not sorry,” she said.

Sly Boots sighed and resumed feeding his mother. “I know you would have. Gotten me home, I mean.”

“Then why did you betray us?”

“I told you everything got strange after you used mind magic on the Wolf King? He was controlling me. His thoughts were whispering to mine.” He kept his gaze lowered, not looking
at her. “I know that's no excuse, though,” he added miserably. “I bet he wouldn't have been able to control
you
.”

“Maybe he wouldn't have been able to control you so easily, if you hadn't been so angry at me in the first place.” Quicksilver paused, her hands folded tightly in her lap. “You were awful to me, Sly Boots. You said horrible things.”

“I know.”

“How could you think I wouldn't do as I promised?”

Sly Boots put down the bowl and spoon, withdrew the Lady's heart jewel from beneath his shirt, and toyed with the necklace's sharp clasp as he gazed out the window, his brow furrowed.

“I don't have a good reason,” he said. “I know now that you would have kept your promise. All I can say is this: even though I suppose it's good that I went with you, because if I'd stayed behind, the Wolf King would have killed me, and Lars wouldn't have known to protect my parents, so they probably would have died as well—even so, even knowing all those things . . . if it had been you instead of me, if you'd been far away while Fox stayed back at home, hurt and alone, and you couldn't get back to him, and you were trying to pretend like you were all right but really you were going slowly mad inside,
worrying about him . . . wouldn't you have been the same way? Made the same mistakes?”

Quicksilver almost spat at him that no, of course she wouldn't have. She was better than that, and stronger.

But then she paused, and really thought about it, and knew he was right. If she had been separated from the ones she loved—from her dear Fox—she would have torn everyone and everything apart to get back to him.

“Maybe,” she said quietly.

Sly Boots turned to her. “I really am sorry for what I did. Maybe there's nothing I can say right now that will make it better. But I never wanted to hurt you, or Fox, or even Anastazia—the great old bat.”

Quicksilver smiled. “You liked her enough.”

“I liked her whenever I remembered she was you.”

Sly Boots's gaze dropped to the floor. Quicksilver watched him, a strange, warm feeling coiling deep inside her.

“Anyway, what I said to you the night of Princess Tatjana's birthday party . . . I shouldn't have said that, and I didn't really believe it. I was angry, and stupid.”

Remembering those words made Quicksilver stiffen. “You
were
stupid.”

“The
most
stupid,” Sly Boots agreed.

“Of all the boys, ever,” Quicksilver declared.

Sly Boots glanced up at her with a small smile. “Throughout all of time.”

Quicksilver worked very hard to keep from smiling back at him.

“Can you forgive me, Quicksilver?” asked Sly Boots.

She considered him—his long, skinny arms, his soft, pale hair, the freckles across his cheeks. He wore such a gentle expression just then. If she had to put a word to the look in his eyes, she would have chosen . . . hopeful.

“Not yet,” she said at last. “You really hurt me, Boots.”

He did not look away. “I know.”

“I don't know when I'll forgive you, in fact, or if I ever will.”

“That's fair. In the meantime, I'll wait, and do whatever I can to help you. I'll spend the rest of my life helping you, if I must.”

Quicksilver unfolded her hands, folded them again, unfolded them once more, and then realized she had no idea what to do with them. She fiddled with her boots so he would not see her flaming cheeks. “Yes, well. There's no need to be so weird and dramatic about it.”

A soft knock on the door alerted them to Lars's presence. He
poked his head in, smiling Olli's familiar smile. “Hello, you two. Quicksilver, you should get some sleep. We'll leave at nightfall, and the far northern road is a long and harsh one.”

Sly Boots shot to his feet, his back straight as a board. “I'm coming with you.”

“This is our fight, Sly Boots, not yours. You're not a witch.”

“No, but I'm Quicksilver's friend,” Sly Boots replied, “and I won't let her do this alone.”

Lars raised an eyebrow, his mouth twitching. “Quite an admirer you've got, Quicksilver.”

“He's hardly that,” Quicksilver said, her cheeks growing even hotter. “He's just feeling guilty, is all.”

Sly Boots stuck out his chin. “All right, so I feel guilty. But what does that matter? I can still help you. I know things about the Wolf King no one else knows. Let me prove to you how sorry I am, Quicksilver. Please?”

Lars shrugged, still far too amused for Quicksilver's liking. “It's your choice.”

Quicksilver headed to the attic without once looking back at Sly Boots. “I suppose he can come, if he must,” she said airily—but with a secret joy fluttering inside her. For she realized that, out of everyone alive, Sly Boots was the only person who
had known her and Fox as witch and monster. And there was something special, even precious, about that.

She supposed, then, that she might be moved to someday forgive Sly Boots, if only so they could share stories about Fox, and remember him through the words.

A
t first the journey north wasn't so terrible. They were six altogether, including Quicksilver, Sly Boots, and Lars. One of Lars's coven, an older witch with a bad knee, named Matias, volunteered to stay behind and care for Sly Boots's parents. They hoped, as frightening as it was, that the Wolf King would leave Willow-on-the-River alone and focus his attention on tracking the last monster skeleton—the ermine—stowed safely in Quicksilver's pack.

As they traveled north through Lalunet and then through Valteya, they joined with other covens who had been in hiding and waiting for Lars's arrival. These witches lived deep in forested
mountain canyons, and in underground compounds, safe from the Wolf King's pack.

“But now that you've gone back in time and changed this future,” Lars explained one cold night as they wound through a Valteyan forest of tall, whispering pine trees, “we witches are not so frightened as we once were.” He stopped and looked at Quicksilver, his eyes shining but serious, just like Olli's had been. “We've been waiting—for you, Quicksilver. We've been waiting to fight. And we're not afraid.”

Quicksilver didn't know what to say to that. The idea that generations of witches had been telling her story for so many long years, waiting for her to return so she could lead them into battle, made her feel, even after everything she'd been through, rather nervously floaty.

What if I mess things up for everyone after all this time, Fox?

No answer, of course—just the hissing pines overhead, the whispers and rustles of the coven, Sly Boots humming quietly to himself beside her.

Three days into the journey north, they stopped at a tiny mountain settlement of witches who lived in deep, narrow caves facing the northern horizon. The snow-covered mountains of the Far North loomed there—and somewhere
within them was the Wolf King's Black Castle.

Witches crowded out of the caves, quiet and wide-eyed, some with shy smiles, some with beaming ones.

“We're glad to have you back, Quicksilver,” said a man with faded rose-colored hair. “And glad to fight with you at last. Otto, at your service.” He took off his cap and bowed. His monster, a pink and downy vole, stared at Quicksilver long after Otto had moved away to give others a turn.

A boy around Quicksilver's age, with a shaved head and a scarred scalp, attacked Quicksilver with a fierce hug.

“I'm Tommi,” he said. “My father told me stories about you every night before bed, when I was little.” He looked up, grinning. His red cat monster wound around his ankles. “He would have loved meeting you, my dad. He was never afraid to stand up to the Wolf King.”

Quicksilver tried not to recoil at Tommi's words, nor at the scars running down his face. It wasn't that they were ugly to her; it was that they looked, horribly, like claw marks, and she wondered how many people would have been spared the Wolf King's wrath, had she not so thoroughly angered him, long ago.

And what if, after all that, they could not defeat him, even now? He had six skeletons, and she had one. The ermine skeleton
in her pocket felt like a measly thing in the face of the Wolf King's power—and in the face of the losses these witches had suffered.

Two girls, a few years older than Quicksilver, one with faded grass-green hair, the other with pale sea-blue hair—but identical in every other respect—knelt at Quicksilver's feet.

“I am Irma,” said the green-haired girl.

“And I am Veera,” said the blue-haired girl.

“We are honored to fight for you, Quicksilver Foxheart,” said Irma.

“And have been training since childhood to do so,” said Veera.

“We will not fail you,” they said together, with solemn nods.

Their monsters—two raccoons, one green and blue, one blue and green—stared at Quicksilver from their perches on Irma's and Veera's shoulders, whispering excitedly to each other.

An older woman with a white streak in her dark hair came forward, holding a steaming bowl of stew. “Thank you for saving us,” she murmured. She clasped Quicksilver's hand and kissed it. “We won't fail you, Quicksilver Foxheart. My name is Karin, and I am ready to fight for you, as are all of us here.” Karin's mottled black-and-white bat monster hung off her shoulder and peeked out at Quicksilver from behind its leathery wings.

“Foxheart,” it whispered after her.

When Quicksilver bedded down to sleep that morning on the floor of one of the caves, she felt heartsick and tired. It had been a long night on the road, and then a long couple of hours talking to every witch in the settlement, accepting their thanks, accepting their careful hugs. Lars had finally steered Quicksilver away to a quiet corner of the cave, and given her a bedroll and a thick fur blanket, and instructed her to sleep.

But even though she was exhausted, Quicksilver found it difficult to shut her eyes. Her chest ached, her head ached; she felt hollow and brittle, like the slightest thing could break her in half.

After a few quiet minutes, the black-and-white bat fluttered over and curled up in the crook of her arm, its tiny claws hooked in her sleeve.

“What was he like?” asked the bat.

Quicksilver startled at the small voice, so near. “What?”

“Fox.” The bat gently placed one of its wings on Quicksilver's chest.
Foxheart.
“What was he like? Will you tell us?”

“Us?” Then Quicksilver looked around, and realized that all the monsters of their new, growing coven hovered or crouched or coiled nearby—Karin's bat, and Lars's soft orange-gold squirrel. Otto's pink vole and Tommi's thin red cat. Irma's and Veera's green-and-blue raccoons. All of them watched her, bright eyed and eager.

Quicksilver swallowed hard. How to put into words what Fox was like? How to explain to these monsters what it had been like to know with certainty that she, Quicksilver, would never feel love—and then to receive it from Fox every day, every hour, even when she hadn't realized it?

How blind a girl she had once been.

She spotted Sly Boots, sitting with Lars at the mouth of the cave, on first watch. His eyes met hers, and he waved, his smile lopsided.

Quicksilver waved back and then took a deep breath. “Well,” she began, “first of all, Fox was a dog, and so he of course loved sticks best of all. After me, of course.”

The monsters nestled closer to hear, and as the morning sun crept through the cave, turning everything soft and drowsy, Quicksilver talked about Fox until Lars told her sternly to get some real rest. Night would come sooner than she'd like, and then they'd be on the road again.

So she lowered her voice, whispering so Lars couldn't hear, and when her eyes fell shut at last, the monsters curled protectively around her, she slipped into a warm and gentle sleep.

Foxheart, the monsters called her, and it was true. For there he was, inside her, and he always would be.