Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [53]
“It was a gift.” Karin sighed. “From her mother.” She fastened the clip into her own hair, above her braid.
In Clayburn ice sheathed the burned houses, sheathed, too, the burned bodies around them. Kyle dug his fingernails into my hand. Karin’s steps grew slower, more deliberate—there was anger there. On her shoulder, Elin craned her hawk’s head this way and that, as if so much death were a matter of mere curiosity, as if those deaths weren’t all her fault.
“She says they smell bad,” Kyle whispered.
Karin stroked Elin’s feathers. “I know,” she whispered, though the smell was faint now, decay slowed by the cold and the ice.
I held Kyle’s hand firmly as we turned onto the path away from Clayburn. Tracks broke through the ice: a human foot, a wolf’s paw. Trees creaked around us. Even if spring came, some trees would die beneath this winter ice.
A younger Elin with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why won’t you allow me to go with you? I do not lack the courage—”
Karin, lips pressed firmly together. “You are too young for this battle, Elianna. I will protect you a time longer, if I can. There is a chance you might survive this War, while I know that I will not—”
Kyle pinched my arm, harder this time. I slipped and fell butt-first onto the ice. Kyle laughed. Karin reached out a hand. I looked up at her as I took it and struggled to my feet. She’d left her daughter, too, left her because of the War, but stayed away to teach human children. I glanced at the hawk on her fist, but Elin’s head was hidden beneath one wing. The other hung awkwardly by her side.
The air grew warmer as the sun edged past noon. Light glinted off a water droplet that hung, half-frozen, from a branch.
Matthew—eyes bright, soot-streaked hair falling into his face—saying, “I’ll go faster alone—”
I focused on setting my feet down on the ice and making sure I didn’t fall again.
Too soon we came to shards of white bone poking through the snow. The ashes of the dead children gave a sickly-gray cast to the ice that covered their remains.
Elin made a strange, strangled sound I’d never heard any bird make. “She’s crying,” Kyle whispered.
Crying wouldn’t bring them back. Elin was responsible for the things she did, too.
We found my pack among the ashes, coated with ice. I pulled out the dried meat within and shared it with the others. Someone—the Lady?—had severed my bowstring. I hesitated—Father had helped me make that bow, and it could be restrung back home—then left it and the pack where they lay. They’d only weigh me down.
“Tired,” Kyle muttered as we left ash and bone behind. The snow turned to slush, and we walked faster. Through the trees I caught glimpses of the wider road that would lead us back to my town. I rubbed the leather around my wrist. Soon we would be home. What would we find when we got there?
Something at the meeting of the path and the road caught the light, something slick and liquid. I slowed my steps, squinting for a better look. Karin moved to my side as I realized what lay there.
No. “Get back, Kyle.” I didn’t want him to see this.
I forced myself to keep moving forward. The afternoon sun seemed distant and cold. I didn’t want to see this.
Johnny lay on his back, hands clasped around the knife—my knife—that was plunged through his heart. A smile was frozen on his face, and he’d clearly been dead for some time.
Blood spread like a bright red flower from the wound, glinting in the sun. More blood stained Johnny’s wrists and his throat.
Kyle howled and threw himself at his brother. Elin screeched and flapped from Karin’s shoulder, her injured wing, with its torn feathers, straining. She missed the branch she aimed for, landing on a lower one instead. Karin scarcely seemed to notice. Her face held no expression as she knelt and thrust her hands into a clump of mud and brown grass.
I ran to Kyle’s side. He was shaking Johnny as hard as his small hands could. “Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
“Johnny!” I called, but I knew I was too