Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [75]
I walked slowly toward him. “Matthew?”
He whined and buried his nose in his scabbed and bleeding paws. It was Kate who looked up with a tired smile. “It’s good to see you awake, Liza.”
“I’ll bring him home,” I told her as I kept walking, ignoring the rain soaking through my clothes. “Just like I promised.”
The wolf growled low in his throat. I stopped and held out my hands, stone and flesh. The wolf bared his teeth. His gray eyes were dull, reminding me of a land without color or life. Yet even in that dead land there was green to be found if you were willing to fight for it.
“Call him?” Kyle asked.
“No.” I didn’t know what would happen if we forced magic on Matthew now. He’d been under glamour far longer than I had. I searched his wolf’s eyes for some sign of the boy I knew. It wasn’t just that he didn’t know me—I didn’t know him, though the dark markings around his muzzle and eyes were the same as always. He could have been any feral dog. Matthew wasn’t there.
“Hurt inside,” Kyle whispered. I thought of my vision: Matthew’s shadow dissolving behind him as he ran. All things that live and grow have shadows. I crouched in the mud, rested my stone hand on my knees, and softened my gaze.
Matthew’s shadow wasn’t gone. It was dark and clear, a wolf’s shadow that fit beneath his fur, tight as skin. “Matthew?” The wolf didn’t answer to the name.
I softened my gaze further, eyes aching as I let all focus go. I thought not of the wolf I saw, but of the boy I knew, the one who walked by my side through dark forests. A second shadow came clear, a fainter, human shadow, huddling within the wolf’s shadow the way Karin’s shadow had huddled within the oak tree.
“Matthew.” I looked at the human shadow as I spoke, but I put no command into the words. “Matthew, look at me. Please.”
Slowly the shadow looked up. The hunch of his shoulders reminded me not of the boy I knew now, but of the younger child who’d stood, bruised and bloodied, at the edge of our town after changing to a wolf and back again for the first time. “It’s all right to be frightened,” I said, and only afterward remembered that Karin had spoken the same words to me. I reached out my hand. Matthew’s shadow reached out his. Our fingers touched—
Too cold; I jerked back. Matthew’s shadow burned colder than the human shadows I’d laid to rest on our forest patrols, colder even than Johnny’s shadow. It burned with the cold of winter unending, of the Lady’s gaze as she said worlds were winding down.
I had to try again. I had to touch him to have a chance of drawing him out. I became aware of people watching me—not only Allie and Kyle and Kate, but Mom and Caleb with Karin, and others as well. Keeping my gaze on the human shadow within the wolf, I drew a deep breath, then reached out with my other hand, the one made of stone.
The shadow drew back. “I watched,” he whispered.
“It wasn’t your fault.” The shadow shook his head, denying my words. Helping the Lady hurt others was probably the stuff of his nightmares. “It’s over,” I told him.
The wolf remained pressed to the ground, but the human shadow’s shoulders shook. “I watched him die.”
“I know, Matthew.” I didn’t deny that pain. I just kept holding out my hand.
Matthew’s shadow fingers wrapped around my stone ones. I stood, and the shadow stood with me. We faced each other, both of us trembling, both of us afraid. The wolf whined, and I saw Matthew looking out through those gray eyes. I reached down with my other hand, and he pressed his muddy nose into it. “Matthew. You’re Matthew.”
The wolf and his human shadow both bowed their heads, as if that truth were a heavy burden. There was a flash of silver light, and then a human boy stood before me, bare skin streaked with mud, pale hair wet and dripping, human fingers still wrapped around my stone ones. He stumbled forward, falling to his knees. I knelt and gathered him into my arms. His skin was so cold. I rubbed my good hand over his back, trying to warm