Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner [52]
“It's like something's coming unraveled inside her. I don't understand. I need more time, but if I touch her too long—if I try to heal her—I'll start unraveling, too.”
“Don't,” Matthew said at once. Beneath the sun his face was ashy pale.
“We can't lose her,” I said.
Allie's hands clenched and unclenched. “Don't ask me again, Liza. If you ask again, I won't be able to say no.”
I bit my lip, swallowing my words. Wind blew through my silence.
Allie stood and backed away. “There's more. What ever made her sick, I think it's still in the air here. I think if we stay too long, we'll get sick, too.”
I brushed the hair back from my mother's forehead. Her skin burned beneath my touch. “Mom,” I whispered. I wanted her to tell me everything would be all right, but she closed her eyes and said nothing.
In a small voice Allie asked, “How do we leave this place, Liza?”
There was no Arch here, no way out. There was only dust and heat and ashes.
Matthew looked down at Mom, then up at me, and I saw despair in his eyes. But he only said, “Through the lake again, right?”
I nearly asked what he meant, but then I remembered my vision of Caleb stepping into burning water. I thought about how the water hadn't burned or drowned him. He hadn't died, not unless it was the future I'd seen.
I ran a hand through my hair. It was stiff—wind and heat had dried the water in it. I remembered the water on my jacket and on Tallow's fur. Of course we'd come through the lake. We had to step into this world from somewhere. Lost in the visions that had brought us here, I hadn't seen—but the way through had two sides. The Arch in my world. The lake in this one.
Fire flared through the lake's surface, bright against the blue sky. Tallow batted a pebble. Her paws were covered with soot. So were my hands and the legs of my pants. The fire receded, and the lake was still. Still as the drawn water in which my magic had first found me. Running water held little magic, but still water was like metal, like glass, like a mirror.
Yet if we stepped through the lake, emerging safely through the Arch on the other side—what then? It would be four or five days to Washville. Along the way we'd have to resist the River and hold back the shadows all over again, all while dragging or carrying Mom with us.
“How much time do we—does Mom—have?” I asked Allie.
Allie's face scrunched up, but her voice held steady. “No one can know that for sure, Liza. Caleb always says so.”
I forced myself not to flinch from the truth I heard there. “But you don't think it's very long.”
Allie turned and grabbed Tallow in her arms. The cat squirmed, but Allie didn't let go.
Matthew reached for my hand. Mom began coughing again. I thought of how she'd stepped through the Arch, trusting Caleb's quia leaf to see her through, not knowing that she might die on the other side.
Or maybe she had known. You should have left me there. Maybe she'd known all along.
“The War was stupid,” Allie said. “So stupid.”
I thought of the Arch, reaching like a mirror toward the sky. I thought of Mom, and the young woman Mom had once been, both stepping through.
“A mirror.” My hand had passed through Caleb's mirror easily enough, but it had been too small to let anything but my hand through. “Will any mirror big enough do?”
Still not looking at me, Allie said, “It's your magic. You'd know better than us.”
I glanced at Matthew. His eyes went wide. “Gram's mirror,” he said.
I nodded. Kate's mirror was taller than any of us.
“Gram said the mirror was a family heirloom, that she couldn't bear to destroy it during the War,” Matthew said. “Do you think it would work, Liza? Gram doesn't have any magic, but she does understand about healing. She might know what to do.”
Allie dropped Tallow and gazed into the water. “It looks deep.” She stepped back, shivering in spite of the heat.
“I know,” I said, thinking that Allie and I both knew too much about drowning. “If my magic fails—”
The girl whirled to face me, her expression fierce. “But if we stay here we'll die for sure.”
“That makes it easy, then.