Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [0]
Bones of Faerie
Thief Eyes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Janni Lee Simner
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,
visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simner, Janni Lee.
Faerie winter / Janni Lee Simner. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Unable to get answers from her mother, sixteen-year-old Liza learns from Karin that while her own actions may have doomed the fairy and human worlds, she may be able to save them with more training, if the Faerie Queen can first be stopped.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89683-5
[1. Fairies—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
4. Coming of age—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S594Fae 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010014250
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For my nephews, A to Z:
Asher Theodore, Jacob Samuel, and Zachary Elia
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Autumn
Winter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Spring
Acknowledgments
About the Author
AUTUMN
The woman who would become my mother backed trembling away from the man who would save her life, and I did not know why. Around them, faerie trees held their bright leaves perfectly still, as if knowing, like I knew, that they saw something they shouldn’t.
“How long, Kaylen?” Mom clutched a blanket around her, woven of green rushes. “How long has this magic—”
“I’ll hold you no longer.” Kaylen, whom I knew as Caleb, looked no younger in this vision than when I’d left for the well this morning. His rumpled linen tunic was green as well, and white flowers were woven into his faerie-clear hair. His bright silver eyes watched Mom with concern but held none of the guarded caution I’d later see there. “I return all your choices back to you.”
“How could you hold me at all?” There were flowers in Mom’s tangled brown hair, too, dying blooms that fell to the forest floor. In my time she looked older than Caleb, but in this vision she seemed the same age as me.
Caleb dropped to his knees before her. “I was wrong. I see that now, and I beg your forgiveness.” He bowed his head. “I put your life before my own until I earn it.”
“More oaths. More bindings.” Mom’s voice cracked. One hand holding the blanket, she grabbed up clothing with the other—denim pants and cotton shirt, human clothes from Before. “I thought it was real, Kaylen. Everything I felt—” She whirled from him and fled into the trees.
“Liza?” A girl’s voice, from outside the vision, seeking to draw me back to my own time, my own place. I fought the voice’s pull, straining to see where my mother had gone. Instead I saw another woman, walking through the forest.
“That was foolish, Brother,” the woman—Karin—said. Her wrists and neck were encircled by green vines, and her brown dress was shot through with streaks of silver, like a child’s finger painting. I’d met her when I’d met Caleb.
“Can I do nothing without your spying, Eldest Sister?” Caleb stood to meet her gaze.
The angles of Karin’s face were harsher than I remembered. “Perhaps if I had begun spying sooner, you would not be in this tangle. You cannot simply allow your human captive to return to her world, free to speak of her time here as she will. Neither can you keep her in this world, dangerous as any caged animal,