Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [70]
“You’re going to be all right, Liza. You know that, don’t you?” Allie sounded so tired. “Only you need to rest now. I’m sorry, but you do.” The darkness that wrapped around me was warmer now. Gentler. I fought it, but it pulled me under just the same.
* * *
I woke to a feather mattress beneath my back and a dull aching pain that filled my whole body. From someplace out of sight, I heard talking.
“You said you could heal her.” Elin’s voice was bleak.
“And so I have.” Caleb’s voice, hard and grim. His being here made no more sense than Allie’s being here.
“Why should this world be saved,” Elin demanded, “while ours falls to dust?” Caleb had no answer for that.
I opened my eyes. Light stung them. Bright afternoon sunlight, shining around the shutters of Kate’s bedroom window. From a chair at my side, Mom reached for my hand. Her face was covered in scratches, her arm bandaged, her wrist in a splint. “You’re hurt,” I said. Why was she hurt? The plants hadn’t attacked her.
They had attacked me. Memory returned slowly, in tattered bits and pieces. Karin and I had called the plants back into the world, but then they’d attacked, because that was what plants did when they were awake.
In a chair at the foot of the bed, Allie jerked awake, and she hurried to my other side. Mom released my hand.
“Allie, what are you doing here?” Allie had followed me before, but that had been long ago, before winter.
Her red hair was tangled, and her eyes were shadowed, but she gave me a lopsided smile. “Taking care of you, of course. I’m your healer, remember?”
Caleb stepped into the room, his clear hair falling to his shoulders, a coin from Before hanging from a chain over his sweater. He looked no older than Karin. His silver eyes were sunken with weariness, but he smiled when he saw me. “Liza. It is good to see you awake.” He and Mom exchanged unreadable looks, and I thought of how he’d held Mom under glamour, how Mom had fled when he’d let the glamour go—but when he moved to Allie’s side, I also saw the healer who’d saved Mom’s life. Mom’s hand brushed the leaf she wore, as if for reassurance.
Allie drew the blankets back. I wore a loose nightshirt. A green plastic frog, a yellow duck, and a pink pig were all tucked in beside me. Scar tissue peeked out from beneath the shirt, and I felt more scratches, itchy and half-healed, rubbing against the wool. I reached for them.
My hand wouldn’t listen. Something was wrong—it was too heavy, too stiff. “Oh.” I lifted my arm toward me and stared at the gray stone where my hand had been. My stone fingers were half-curled, as if they still clutched the Lady’s hand. My hand itched, somewhere deep inside, but when I touched it, I felt nothing. I couldn’t hold a bow with such a hand. I couldn’t hunt.
Allie bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Liza. There’s nothing there to heal. It’s stone, but it’s perfectly healthy stone. Maybe one day you can find another changer to fix it, but I can’t. I tried.”
I traced the stone where it softened into skin just above my wrist. I would get used to this. I had no choice.
I shouldn’t even be here. “The plants killed me.” I’d fallen into their green embrace.
Allie laughed then. “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”
“Karinna’s command stopped the plants in time,” Caleb said soberly. “Or stopped them enough that Tara and Elianna could pull you free.” He reached out and ran his hands over my body, not quite touching me, sending a shiver over my skin just the same.
“It is well,” Caleb said. “You’re going to be sore for a long while, Liza, but Allison has healed the worst of the damage the newborn plants did to you, as well as the deeper hurts that came from touching the winter sleep that held them.”
Allie let out a breath and clutched the edge of the bed. “Told you you were going to be all right.” She was shaking, as if she hadn’t been as sure as she’d sounded.
Mom held my good hand tightly. “You’re hurt, too,” I told her.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Not all