Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [1]
“I have vowed not to bind her. You know as well as I that I must hold to that.” A petal fell from Caleb’s hair.
Karin caught it and frowned, as if unhappy with the story it told. “Allow me to do it, then. I am not so reckless with my promises as you.”
“No.”
“She is only human, Kaylen. You do her no harm, any more than hood and jesses do harm to a hawk.”
“So I thought once, too.” Caleb stalked past her, in the direction my mother had gone.
Karin let the petal slip from her fingers. “What do you intend to do, then?”
“This is my responsibility, as you’ve reminded me often enough.” Caleb didn’t look back as he walked on. “I will mend it.”
“Liza!”
The vision broke up, like fog in the morning sun. I found myself crouched beside the town well and the bucket I’d drawn from it. I looked up, at a girl with an unruly red braid. Allie, who in my time was Caleb’s student, put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been looking and looking for you. Don’t you even want to say goodbye?”
“Sorry, Allie.” I’d gone to the well before dawn, hoping to avoid sun on water and the visions it brought, only to have the moon’s light catch me instead. I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to forget the fear I’d seen on my mother’s face. Whatever had happened in my vision, it was past. Mom was safe now.
“Are you all right, Liza?” Allie’s face scrunched up as I drew my hands away. “I’m your healer. If anything’s wrong, you have to tell me.”
“It’s nothing. Truly.” I stood and gave her braid a tug. The sun was just below the horizon, and the autumn leaves around us burned with color. Until a few days ago, I’d never known leaves to change color like this, even when the winter snows began to fall. Ever since the War—since before I was born—the trees had held their green leaves close in all seasons. I still wasn’t sure I believed that soon the leaves would drop from those trees, leaving their branches bare.
Allie sighed. “I’m going to miss you so much. You know that, don’t you?”
My arms strained as I lifted the bucket. “I’ll miss you, too.” I’d been as surprised as Allie to learn that she and Caleb were returning to their town, while Mom was staying in mine. Mom and Caleb had cared for each other Before, in Faerie. They’d continued caring through all their years apart, long past when Mom and Father met and I was born, each of them thinking the other had surely perished in the War between their worlds. When Mom had returned to Faerie at last and been poisoned by the War-tainted air there, Caleb had risked his own life to heal her. Yet yesterday Caleb had said he wasn’t willing to leave his students to stay with Mom, and Mom had said she wasn’t willing to leave hers to stay with him. I glanced uneasily into the bucket, wondering, for the first time, what they both hadn’t said.
The first rays of sunlight reflected off the water, but neither Caleb nor Mom appeared in its bright surface. Instead I saw Karin, staring in the direction her brother had gone.
“The Lady will not like this,” she said softly. “And this time, Youngest Brother, I do not know how to protect you.”
WINTER
Snow crunched beneath my boots as I patrolled the winter forest, a gray wolf by my side.
Low on the horizon, a waxing moon shone through the trees, silvering the bare branches of oak and ash, sycamore and elm. Cold bit through the tips of my leather gloves, and my breath puffed into the still air. An oak branch swung at me, sleepy and slow. The wolf—Matthew—growled a warning, but I ducked out of the way easily enough. The oak sighed, but it didn’t try again. The trees were too tired to do much harm this winter.
I walked carefully over a line of fire ants melting a trail through the snow. Nearby I heard the clicking of termites chewing dead wood. Termites were among the few creatures who hadn’t gone hungry since the leaves had fallen from the trees.
Beneath a pine that had dropped all its needles, a patch of ice-frosted ferns shivered. Something dark moved among the ferns—Matthew’s ears stiffened into alertness. I slowed my