Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [38]
The ice remained thin, but—there. A row of rocks jutted out of the half-frozen water. I followed the stepping stones across, careful of my balance on the slick rocks. Karin followed more gracefully, as if ice were a small matter to her. On the other side she leaned down and shoved her hands into the snow. Yellow Bermuda grass pushed through it to wrap around her arms. Karin closed her eyes, listening to something I couldn’t hear. “He passed this way,” she said.
The grasses sighed wearily and retreated back into the snow. “They’re not dead,” I said. “Not completely, not around you.”
“They are not dead.” Karin sounded as tired as the grasses had. “But they are dying. Tell me, Liza, do you believe that spring will come?”
Why ask me? I was no plant mage. “The adults in my town believe it.” They believed in spite of the gray trees and the gray skies, the failed crops and the too-long winter.
“So it is with the human adults in my town as well.” Karin held a hand out to the falling snow as we walked on. Snowflakes melted against her skin. “Yet I have never heard the trees so quiet. They yearn for darkness, and some have given way to it. Others slip into sleep, accepting that they may never wake. I am told this is the way of your world. It is not the way of mine. I have never known a forest that was not green. What do you believe?”
On the far side of the river, the bare trees were shadows through the snow. Nothing more can grow out of such death. And so the worlds wind down, and tragedy runs its course. “Does it matter what I believe?” If the world was winding down, it would do so no matter what I believed. A scrap of cloth lay on the ground ahead of me. Kyle’s bloodstained bandage. I picked it up. Did I dare believe he might be all right? If I couldn’t believe in spring, could I believe that much?
“Even if you had not called me, Liza, I’d have sought you out soon enough. What thin hope I have for spring is bound up as much in your magic as in my own.” Karin took the bandage in her hands and ran her fingers over the torn weaving, as if she could mend it. “And so I am reminded once more that those things that are going to happen will happen, though we cannot always see the path.” She laughed softly to herself; at what, I didn’t know. “But there will be time to discuss this later.”
I wrapped the bandage around my staff as we moved closer to the bluffs, picking our way among rocks to find a narrow track near the base of those cliffs. The snow was letting up. I saw a faint streak of blood against the white limestone, and another, higher up. Kyle had climbed these stones.
A winged shadow flew over us. I crouched, staff in hand, tensed to fight.
The hawk didn’t attack. She landed on an outcrop above us and glared down at Karin and me. I backed away, eyes on her sharp talons, gauging whether it’d be better to fight or to run.
Karin stepped forward, though. “Elianna.” She pronounced the name as strangely as she had Kaylen’s. “It has been many years, but surely you know me.” Karin held out her arm.
The hawk screeched and lifted her wings. There was blood on her talons—Kyle’s blood. Anger chased my fear away. I moved to Karin’s side as the hawk tilted her head.
I was suddenly aware of what a very pretty bird she was. I reached for her sharp beak.
“No!” Karin stepped between us. “Liza is my student and under my protection.”
The hawk’s yellow eyes flashed silver in the light. All at once she wasn’t pretty—she was deadly. She screamed and flew at Karin, talons outstretched.
I had her name now. “Elianna!” I didn’t call her to me. I called her to herself, as once I’d called Matthew from wolf back to boy.
The bird shimmered with light, feathers melting, talons drawing back into skin—it was a faerie girl who knocked Karin to the ground. Karin grabbed Elin’s shoulders, pulling the girl to her feet as she stood. Snow landed on Elin’s bare skin and in her tangled hair. She lashed out at Karin’s face, as if expecting talons at the ends of her hands.
Karin grabbed those hands in her own.