Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner [43]
Men and women with pale hair and silver eyes, chanting commands that brought light to stone, that made trees bend and sway, giving them strength, making them reach high and dig deep—
Screaming, screaming everywhere, choked to silence, choked to dust—
I screamed as well. Someone shook me. I pushed through the visions like a swimmer through water. Allie looked anxiously down, her hands on my shoulders. Tallow trembled against her neck. In the sling, Rebecca cried on.
I looked to the earth at my knees, knowing now what lay beneath it. Blood and bone, metal and glass, all tangled with deep roots. The trees around this clearing had fed well during the War. When I looked up, I saw ropey shadows stretching from their branches toward us, not quite long enough to reach.
I heard a strangled sound and saw Matthew bent over beside me, retching. I stumbled to my feet, reached into the pack he carried, and handed him a water bottle. He drank, coughed the water up, and drank again.
“I can smell them,” he rasped. His face was very pale. “God, Liza, you can't believe the smell.”
“And I can feel them,” said Allie as she took Tallow in her arms and rocked back and forth. “So many people. This will never be right. This will never be healed.”
Something cold tugged my boot. I looked down and saw a shadow hand reaching out of the hill. I jerked away, but the shadow followed, stretching like rubber from Before. My stomach churned. I walked away, and after several steps the hand lost its grip and snapped back to earth. But still I felt it calling me. No, not calling. Yearning to be called. The shadows beneath this hill didn't want to be dead.
I walked faster. Matthew and Allie followed right behind. Tears streamed down Allie's cheeks while Matthew looked as if he might be ill again any moment.
Rebecca kept crying. I rocked her as I walked, not sure which of us I sought to comfort.
Wind blew around my ankles as we descended the hill. I didn't look down. I knew I'd see more human shadows aching for my call. Something in me ached with them. I held Rebecca close, not caring about the cold that seeped through my sweater.
The shadows beneath my feet subsided as we left the crossroads behind and continued along our road, which veered northeast. Rebecca sighed and fell silent. But the ropey tree shadows around us grew, lengthening as shadows do near sunset and hissing as they swung through the air. We walked on, not willing to camp amid those shadows and not willing to return to the crossroads. Light faded around us. The sun touched the horizon, and the clouds turned gold above the treetops.
“How much they must have hated us,” Matthew said.
“Who?” Allie asked. I heard Tallow purring on her shoulders.
“The faerie folk. To have done this.”
“But the fey…,” Allie hesitated.
I looked to the orange horizon. I looked to the swaying trees and their shadows. Had those trees really been safe Before? “The faerie folk weren't human. Of course they hated us.” Us and all we'd built.
“But they didn't…,” Allie sounded puzzled. “I mean—they were no worse than we were, Liza!”
“What?” How could anyone, seeing the world as it was now, say that? Did Washville teach its children nothing? “You know all that the faerie folk did to us.” I remembered the men and women in my vision, chanting power to the trees. Men and women with clear hair and silver eyes. Men and women like—I stopped abruptly and turned. “Caleb,” I said. “Karin, too.” Caleb who walked so quietly I never heard him coming. Karin who saw clearly even in the dark.
“Of course,” Allie said. “I thought you knew. Dad thought so, too. How else could they know so much about magic?”
I'd assumed they were just humans touched by magic, like Matthew and Allie and me. The faerie folk were supposed to be monsters, with dark wings and gnarled tree-bark hair. They weren't supposed to look just