Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [46]
The Realm will be avenged before this is through, and your frail human towns will fall, one by one. “She won’t stop until we’re all dead.”
“I will do all I can to stop her.” Karin’s voice was grim. “Do not doubt it.”
I looked right at her. “So will I.” The words sounded foolish as I spoke them. What could I possibly do against glamour? Even if I held Caleb’s leaf close, that wouldn’t protect anyone but me.
“There remains a part of me that wishes you would return to my town and be safe.” Karin pressed an ivy leaf between her fingers. “And there is the part of me that knows too much is at stake to refuse your help. Even so, I’ll not have you face the Lady again without your consent. This began long before you were born. It is not your battle.”
She was wrong about that. “The Lady has threatened my town, and my mother, and my—and Matthew. She has threatened all that I hold dear.” I was proud of how my voice held steady. “It doesn’t matter how this began. It is my battle, and I will not run from it.”
Karin looked away from my gaze. “It is hard, sometimes, to believe you are Tara’s daughter.” She shook her head, as if regretting the words. “I welcome your help on this journey.”
“I’ll save who I can, as I can, too. I promise, Karin, no matter how—”
“Careful, Liza. Words have power, for faerie folk and humans with magic alike. Even words spoken lightly may shape your actions later.”
There was nothing light about the words I spoke. “I will do all I can to protect my people and my town.”
Karin gave me a measuring look. Father had looked at me that way sometimes, and had always found me wanting. Karin smiled, though. “Very well. I’ll give you what tools I can before we leave this place. Tell me what you’ve learned of magic since we last met.”
I started with the shadows I’d learned to lay to rest this winter, but she had me go back further, to the first shadow I’d called, before I knew my power for what it was. The ice grew quieter. I huddled down in my jacket as I told Karin of my other callings as well, those that had succeeded and those that had failed. I told her of my struggles to control my visions.
“That much is no failure on your part, though it may feel like one,” Karin said. “Visions always begin untamed and unpredictable, and trying to fight them only makes it worse. As useful as a seer who could look willfully into the future might be right now, it will be some time before you have such power.”
“Mom said I needed to learn to control my visions.” I’d struggled with that.
Karin shook her head. “For a seer, control comes only with time. In the meanwhile, it is best to focus on your summoning. Indeed, it is your summoning that would have led me to seek you out even had you not called for my help. Tell me about how you called the quia tree again, Liza.”
I told her all I could remember about calling the tree—how I’d brought a seed home from the same gray land I’d called Caleb back from after he’d nearly died saving Mom; how the green within that seed had given me the strength to leave that lifeless place; how I’d tried to call the green from the seed into my world in turn, and how I’d called the reds and oranges of autumn into it instead. “Was I wrong to call the quia tree? Or is this just the way winter was Before?”
My hands were trembling. Karin took them in hers, stilling them. “I don’t know. I have spent many hours trying to make sense of the pathways by which your people say leaves fell from the trees Before. Their understanding differs from mine. I was taught that human plants have always looked to the Realm to remind them, in spring, how to grow, and so are but a faint echo of that which is real. Who can say which understanding runs closer to the truth? What I do know is this: what thread of life remains in the Realm is thin. There is little for human plants to look to, if they have lost their memory of greenness and of life.”
Wind tapped at the trailer door, as if trying to get in. “So it may be my fault the world