Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [57]
She’d changed the townsfolk, changed them into winter trees. The wind died and silence thickened around us. “Are they all right?”
Karin brought her hand to another tree, and another. Elin’s head twisted around, watching her. “They are weary, as are all the trees in the forest,” Karin said. “Like all the trees, they slowly die of winter.”
“I can call them back.” I let Kyle go and reached for Kate’s tree, a furrowed brown sassafras.
Karin set her hand over mine, stopping me. “They have been trees for some hours now. That would not be long in a different season, but they have been listening to winter’s voice all that time, and I have spoken with enough trees these past months to know how powerful a voice it is. As trees they endure, because trees die slow. As humans they might return to life—or they might die faster, remembering winter still. If we can wait for spring, it would be safer to call them out then.”
Cold shivered through me. I felt a faint spark of life in Kate’s shadow reaching toward me.
“Sorry,” I whispered as I stepped away, not sure Kate could hear. Was Mom trapped among these trees, too? Was Matthew? No, I saw wolf prints continuing through the mud.
Kyle knelt on the ground, digging his hands into the brown leaves around a dead log, while Johnny stood watchfully behind him. I pulled Kyle to his feet. He gave me a sullen look and shoved one muddy hand into his pocket. With the other he reached for Johnny’s shadow once more.
We followed Matthew’s and the Lady’s prints beyond the grove and into town as the sky turned to gray. The houses were silent, no windows being tacked shut, no lanterns being lit. We found more trees behind Kate’s house. “Hope,” Karin said. “Seth. Charlotte.” Other names, of other Afters. There were scuff marks and splashes of mud around them—they’d fought the Lady before she’d overcome them. That hadn’t been enough to save them. Within the trees their shadow hands pressed against the bark, as if trying to push free.
“The Afters won’t be able to help us,” I whispered. The Lady changed them all. She’d condemned them all to winter. A thick brown chestnut tree had even pushed through the roof of the shed where Ethan had been, though if any shadow remained alive within it, it was hidden by the shed’s metal walls.
I lifted Charlotte’s cane from the ground. The end had reshaped itself into a sharp point. I almost handed the weapon to Kyle, but he wouldn’t know how to fight with it. “If anyone tries to hurt you,” I told him instead, “I want you to run. You can yell animals away, but run from everyone else.”
Kyle nodded seriously, tightening his grip on Johnny’s shadow hand. “I’m good at running.”
The light was swiftly fading. Karin took Charlotte’s cane from me and set it down against an ironwood tree. “There is no time for turning back now, as my mother is no doubt aware, but all is not yet lost. Allow me to do the speaking when we meet her, but be alert for any danger, in words and actions both. If this goes badly, there is another plant speaker in my town. She is new, young and untrained, but she may be able to help you call spring.”
“Goes badly how?” I demanded.
Karin didn’t answer, just shifted the hawk from one fist to the other and walked on. Kyle, Johnny, and I hurried after them. “Whatever you do, Liza, do not let the Lady touch you. You too, Kyle. She can only change those she touches.”
“I’ll run,” Kyle agreed. His face was streaked with mud.
A third set of prints joined Matthew’s and the Lady’s as we left Kate’s house behind. Kyle began humming his ant song again, but Johnny squeezed his hand, and he fell silent. We followed the path out of town. The first stars came out, and the waning moon rose, yellow giving way to silver. We came to a familiar hillside, thick with blackberry and sumac, their thorns blurred in the dim light. In a clearing among them, a smooth-barked quia tree stretched bare branches toward the night sky.
This tree wasn’t