Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner [5]
Kate poured me some tea. I sipped the bitter liquid as she looked me over, her mouth still set in that tight line. “Better?”
I nodded. “Thank you. I can work now.” Even my voice seemed steadier. I tried to stand, but again Kate stopped me.
An unreadable expression crossed the old woman's face. “Wait here,” she said abruptly, and disappeared down the hall. I heard the stairs creak as she climbed. She mostly slept downstairs and let Matthew, who lived with her now, do the climbing.
I finished the tea and stood, with less pain this time. I walked slowly around the room, looking at Kate's colorful wall hangings and at a bookcase filled with yellowed volumes. As I stepped past her loom something bright glinted beside it. One of the hangings had fallen askew. I drew it back and saw a rectangle of glass, taller than I was, set in a frame decorated with gold flowers. No, not glass—a mirror. I'd never seen a mirror intact before. They'd all been broken during the War; no one ever said why. I'd hardly seen glass at all, save for shards clinging to empty window frames and a few old drinking glasses. The mirror cast back an impossible, perfect reflection, clear as if I'd stepped outside of myself. The girl who stared back at me seemed a stranger: dark hair falling around her shoulders, dark eyes large in her sun-browned face, leather pants grown short about her ankles. I turned away, embarrassed by my own shy gaze. Yet after only a moment I glanced back, wanting to check what I'd seen, to remember who I was.
As I looked, the image in the mirror wavered and flowed away in rivulets of light. In the brightness left behind, I saw—
Myself, not in Kate's home but by the river that morning, my hand poised above a bucket filled with light—
My mother, hair tied back from her weary face, slipping out into the night—
A pale-haired young man, clearly touched by magic, walking through a sun-drenched forest. He showed no fear as a hawk flew through the leaves and landed on his outstretched wrist—
My sister, breathing her first cries while the midwife shook her head—
A girl walking through the night, her hair trailing in the wind. A girl who, for just a moment, turned, revealing a face like mine, only her hair was streaked pale as glass—
I tore my gaze from the mirror and threw my hands up to my face. Faerie magic. Cursed magic. Magic showing me the past, showing me things I'd never seen. My hands shook as I pressed them against my eyes. There was no denying now that magic had taken root somewhere inside me, perhaps on the night I'd gone out after Rebecca, perhaps weeks, months, or years before.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Kate clutching a small jar in one hand. “Liza.” Her soft voice reminded me of the touch of her fingers through my hair.
Had she seen my pale roots? Had she seen the visions in the mirror? I didn't know. But I did know that Cam's magic had destroyed Kate's family. Would my magic kill, too?
No, not if I could help it. No one would die from my magic but me. I turned from Kate's pitying gaze and ran.
“Wait!” Kate stumbled after me, but she was too slow. I fled from my town and the fields I'd known all my life. I fled into the woods and didn't look back.
Chapter 4
When Father taught me to hunt he said, “Never show fear. Animals and plants can sense fear in your every move. They can smell fear with your every breath.”
I'd asked him whether that was because of the War, but he'd only laughed softly. “No, Liza. That much has always been true. Difference now is that hunter and hunted look much the same. You can never be sure which is which, not until the hunt is through.” Plants hadn't been among the hunters Before, but Father didn't need to say that.
I didn't feel like much of a hunter: not when I reached the river and followed it at a run, not hours later when Kate's salve had worn off and my throbbing back forced me to a walk, not now as the sun dipped below the horizon. Tallow trotted along beside me, unafraid. She'd followed as I fled, and though I'd