Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [11]
I brought the sack home and set it down on the couch along with my scarf, hat, and gloves. Before this winter, I wouldn’t have dared bring acorns within walls until they were soaked and ground into meal, but I felt no more life in these seeds than I’d felt in the others.
The morning’s fire had burned down to hot coals. I unbuttoned my coat but kept it on as I set yesterday’s cornmeal mush over the heat. There was some squirrel left in the mush, and my stomach grumbled as it simmered. I took the pot from the fire, filled two bowls, and brought them upstairs along with a couple of spoons.
Father’s—no, Mom’s—door was open. I stepped into the chilly room. Ethan slept on the feather bed, more easily now, his bandaged hands resting loosely atop the covers. Mom sat in a chair beside him, darning holes in old socks. I handed her a bowl. From the dresser, a small oil lamp added its light to the sun shining in around the nylon-tacked windows.
“Lunchtime already?” Mom set the mending aside and took the bowl absently into her lap. She tilted her head toward Ethan. “Kate gave him something to help him sleep.”
I put a spoon into Mom’s bowl and sat beside her in the room’s other chair. Mom sighed and swallowed a mouthful. Once she ate, I did, too. My stomach’s grumbling eased.
Too soon, Mom stopped and handed me her bowl. “You finish it, Liza.”
I shook my head, though my bowl was empty and I could easily have scraped Mom’s clean as well. “I’ll save it for later.” Mom was eating too little as it was. I took both bowls downstairs and spooned the cornmeal back into the pot. Grabbing the acorn sack and a nutcracker, I headed back upstairs, where Mom was wiping Ethan’s face with a wet cloth.
“Do you think he killed Ben?” I asked her.
Mom set the cloth aside. “I think it likely.”
My damp socks were cold. “Do you wish I’d left him in the forest?”
“There are those who would do that in this town and not regret it. I know that well enough.” Mom looked at Ethan as she spoke. “I am glad to learn my daughter is not one of them.”
Ethan whimpered in his sleep. Wisps of smoke escaped the bandages around his hands. Mom scrambled to her feet and grabbed a water basin from beside the bed. She shoved it into my hands, pulled Ethan up, and plunged his hands into the water, which sizzled at the sudden heat. Ethan cried out and fought Mom, but she didn’t release him until the sizzling stopped. Tears streamed down his face as he fell back to the bed. I returned the basin to the floor as Mom moved Ethan’s arms back to his sides. Neither of us spoke until he’d settled back into sleep.
Mom sighed as she straightened his blankets. “He has far less control than Jayce’s granddaughter did. That worries me. I don’t know as much about the wilder magics, like those that deal with fire and plants. If I did, maybe our firestarter would have lived.”
I drew an acorn from the bag. Caleb’s sister Karin was a plant mage. “Karin’s magic isn’t wild.” She had better control than anyone I knew.
Mom picked up her darning from where it had fallen to the floor. “I still can’t imagine Karinna teaching humans.”
I opened my mouth, strangely stung. It was Karin who’d first taught me about magic, while Mom had still been keeping her teaching secret from me. “Karin saved my life.” When mulberry trees had attacked Matthew and me, she’d rescued us. I thought of how harsh she’d been to Caleb in my vision. That vision didn’t match the woman I knew. “Karin was kind to me.”
“But not to me,” Mom said.
She is only human, Kaylen. You do her no harm, any more than hood and jesses do harm to a hawk. It was Mom Karin had been speaking about. That didn’t fit what I knew of her, either. Karin taught an entire town full of human children.
But before that, Karin