She shrugged with a quivering of leaves.
Arenthiel leaned forward to whisper to Rook. “She didn’t give up the glamorie willingly, so we can’t know for sure until somebody goes to her land to find out.” He nodded meaningfully.
Rook knew what that meant—he was supposed to go and spy out what was happening in her land. Not likely. He felt a growl building in his chest. “Somebody shouldn’t go to her land, Scrawny. She should go.”
Instead of answering, the Birch-Lady sat there and shivered like a withered tree in a winter breeze.
He glared at her. “Your people and your land need you.”
“Look at me, Puck,” she quavered. She looked weak, but her eyes were malevolent. “What you did to me. I cannot rule them as I am. They will not welcome me.”
“You were that way before,” he said ruthlessly. “Any puck could see it. You just hid it with your lying glamorie.”
“Heh,” Arenthiel put in. “He’s right, you know, Marharren.”
“Fer’s right about rule, too,” Rook went on. “Lady Gwynnefar, I mean. You don’t need to rule your people and your land. They need you, and you should serve them.”
She didn’t answer, just hunched into herself and closed her eyes.
Stupid. The glamories must freeze their brains, too, so they couldn’t think.
At that moment, the stick-person brought in more food and tea. Rook picked out the meatiest things and put them on a plate. All the running around had made him ravenous.
“The broken time in the Sealands isn’t the only thing,” Rook said, after he’d eaten two more pastries. “I talked to some mouse-people who are calling the effect of the Forsworns’ broken oath the stilth. They said their Lord is afraid this stilth is spreading.”
Aren’s eyes widened. “Spreading?” he breathed. “Oh, dear. It’s worse than I expected.”
“That’s not all,” Rook added. He shot an extra glare at the Birch-Lady. “Out of fear of the stilth, some of the Lords and Ladies are closing the Ways and abandoning their lands and their people. They’re hiding here, at the nathe.”
“Yes, my servants tell me what’s going on in the nathe. I knew they were coming here,” Aren said grimly. “But I did not know why. With the Ways closed and the Lords and Ladies in hiding, the lands will be defenseless and divided from one another. That is bad. But if this stilth is spreading through the Ways from one land to another . . .” He shook his head. “Very bad,” he muttered. “Very, very bad.”
Rook wrapped his arms around his bent knees. He remembered the seal-people, staring forlornly out to sea. Thinking about them felt strange. Like a gnawing at his heart. “Is there anything we can do about the stilth?” he asked.
“We, is it?” Arenthiel said with a sudden, toothless grin.
Rook narrowed his eyes.
“Right, right!” Arenthiel said quickly. “That is the question, isn’t it.” He rocked back and forth on the cushion, thinking. “Maybe nothing can be done,” he murmured, as if to himself. “That would really end it all, wouldn’t it?” Arenthiel frowned, and for an instant Rook caught a glimpse of . . . was it power? Something ancient, anyway, or outside the flow of time. Maybe Arenthiel really was kin to the High Ones, as he claimed.
Arenthiel rocked some more, then seemed to shake himself and nodded at Rook. “Well, it’s clear enough to me, young Rook. If there is anything to be done, it has to be your Lady, Fer, who does it. For one thing, the broken oaths of the Forsworn were sworn to her, so she is the one who must see that they are mended. For another, she is part human. I don’t know how much you know about humans, but they are very different from us. Time passes quickly in their lands; they are always changing. Humans are, in themselves, forces of change and creatures of time. If anyone can stop the stilth from spreading, it is Fer, with your help, if you’ll give it to her.”
“Yes, but how?” Rook asked. “We know we can’t force them to give up their glamories. What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” Arenthiel said. “There must be a way. You’ll have to figure that out yourselves.”
“A lot of help you are,” Rook grumbled.
Old Scrawny grinned. “You’d better get on with it, my dear Rook.”
Rook nodded and got wearily to his feet. What he really wanted was a nap; instead he left the nathe and went to the Lake of All Ways. First he had to check to see how Fer was doing. And he needed to see how far into the lands the stilth had spread. And he’d promised his brothers, too, that he’d come back. They’d be impatient, waiting for him.
Truly, he might never sleep again.
Eighteen
This time when Fer woke up, it was dark except for a lantern set on her box of clothes and turned low. A brazier piled with glowing coals sat in the corner, warming her little house. Shadows gathered at the peak of the roof and in the corners where the ceiling met the walls.
Somebody was sitting on the floor, a dark head leaning against her bed. Not Tatter this time. She shifted to the side to see who it was. Rook, sound asleep. Seeing him made an ache in her heart where she’d broken their friendship.
He’d come back from his wanderings, had he? Why was he here?
She’d have to wait until he woke up to ask him.
For a long time she stared up at the ceiling, letting the guilt about the Birch-Lady nibble at her. After a while she remembered the question she’d had while falling asleep: How much time had passed while she’d been stuck in the time-spelled tower? It was fall here, even late fall, the doorstep of winter. Which meant a lot of time had passed in the human world. It might have been months since she’d last visited Grand-Jane.
She would have to deal with the Forsworn—she knew that much—and with the fact that she and Rook had killed the Birch-Lady. But first she had to go check on her grandma. After all, she had promised, and promises like that were binding.
That meant the sooner she was on her feet, the better. With shaking hands, she pushed back the blue, woolen coverlet and dragged herself up so she was sitting. Her head spun.
“What are you doing?” came a rough voice from beside her bed.
She steadied herself and looked up. “Hello, Rook,” she croaked.
He rubbed his eyes. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
When he pointed at the bed, she saw the black smudge of the shadow-web that crossed his palm. It made her shiver, reminding her of the death of the Birch-Lady.
Rook straightened. “I’ll fetch Tatter.”
“No, wait,” she said.
He gave a half shrug and stayed where he was. He still looked tired, she noted. “Thanks for saving my life,” she said.
His only answer was a wary nod.
She wasn’t sure what to make of him. The thread of friendship that had tied them together had been broken three times. He’d broken it twice, and she’d broken it the third time, and it wasn’t something that could be mended. Still, he was here, and he knew things that she needed to know too.
“Tell me about the Forsworn,” she said.
“Oh, right,” he said. “I meant to have Tatter tell you.” The flames in his eyes leaped. “The Birch-Lady isn’t dead. Old Scrawny cleaned the glamorie muck off her, and she was all right. She’s with him at the nathe.”
“Not dead,” Fer repeated. She felt as if something knotted inside her had been loosened. A half laugh, half sob welled up in her throat. “And there I was,” she said, her voice shaking, “thinking I deserved to be locked up in that tower for what I did.”
He held up his shadow-web hand. “What I did, Fer,” he said quietly. “I didn’t tell you about what happened to the moon-spinner spider. I promised not to use the web, but I did.” He bent his head so she couldn’t see his face. “It wasn’t meant as a betrayal.”
She stared at the top of his shaggy head. What could she say to him? It was too late for their friendship. Did his words even matter?
She wasn’t sure. It was easier, for now, to change the subject. “U
m, what about the Forsworn, then?”
He nodded and then told her about something called the stilth that might be spreading from the lands of the Forsworn, and how the Lords and Ladies of other lands were starting to close their Ways and abandon their lands for fear of it.
“The stilth is really bad, Fer,” Rook finished. He’d gotten to his feet and stood staring down at the floor as he talked, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his embroidered coat.
The stilth, as he called it, sounded terrible. It made sense that the lands of the Forsworn ones were stuck in this kind of stillness. They rejected change, so their lands didn’t change. But for the stilth to spread to other lands—that was a disaster. With a shiver, she realized that this stilth might come to her own land too.
“What about your brothers?” she asked. They were the ones Rook had betrayed her for—again—when they’d sent him to test his shadow-web on the glamorie; they were involved in this, somehow. “What are they up to?”
He shrugged and kept his head down. “They’re planning something. I think they won’t tell me the rest of the plan because they think I’ll tell you about it.” He hunched his shoulders and muttered something else.
“What did you say?” she pushed.
He gave her a quick, flame-eyed glance. “They’re right. I would tell you if I knew.”
She frowned. Before, Rook had always put his brothers first. Was he saying that he would put her first, for once? But how could he, without their bond of friendship?
She was starting to get sleepy again. She eased herself back onto her pillow and stared up at the shadowed ceiling. “Rook, somehow I have to deal with the Forsworn and the stilth. But first I have to talk to Grand-Jane.” Her grandmother might not know how to stop the stilth, but she was all human, and even just talking to her would help Fer to figure out what she had to do. Time passed so slowly in the human world that she’d be gone from this world for only a few moments; she could take the time that she needed. “Anyway,” she went on, “I promised Grand-Jane I wouldn’t stay away for this long.”
“Fine,” Rook said sharply. “Then I’m coming with you.”
No, she wanted to say. The human world made him sick if he stayed in it too long. And it would just be a quick visit. And they weren’t friends anymore. But she was too sleepy. She heard his footsteps going out before she could tell him not to come.
In the end it was three more days before she was well enough to go through the Way to the human world. From her bed she used her Lady’s connection to her land and sent her awareness out to sense if the stilth had come into the Summerlands. Her land hovered on the edge of winter—a bleak, quiet time—but though it felt still, it didn’t feel wrong.
Rook disappeared for the first two days—spying out the other lands, Tatter told Fer before he pronounced her well and left to go back to his brother-pucks.
Tatter hadn’t said, but she guessed Rook was meeting with his brother-pucks too, to help them with their plan, whatever it was. He stayed away from her, Fer felt sure, because he didn’t want her asking him questions that he’d have to lie to answer.
Still, he was waiting for her by the moon-pool when she came up to it. She didn’t bother arguing with him about whether or not he was coming with her through the Way to the human world.
“Hello, Rook,” Fer said quietly. The one bee she’d brought with her lifted from her collar and buzzed a happy circle around Rook’s head, and then came back.
He gave her an uncertain grin. “Think she’ll be glad to see me?”
That’s right, he’d spent some time with Grand-Jane, hadn’t he, when Arenthiel had sent him through the Way to die in the human world. She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered. Grand-Jane had never approved of pucks; specifically, she’d never approved of Rook.
It was the middle of a gray afternoon. The leaves of the trees around the moon-pool clearing were brown, and shivered in the breeze. Fer thought she felt a bit of winter in the wind; she hunched into her patchwork jacket, then bent to touch the moon-pool. Her fingertips tingled and the Way opened. She stepped through, Rook a half step behind her, and tumbled into the human world.
On the bank of the moon-pool she climbed to her feet.
Here in the human world it was late afternoon on a day of full summer. The stream was just a trickle. The leaves overhead were dusty and hung limp in the thick and humid air. With her fingers she combed her short hair, got the bee settled on her collar again, then set off down the path that led out to the road. A silent Rook took off his long, lordly coat, hung it on a low tree branch, and then followed a few steps behind her. After a short hike, they reached the culvert and climbed up to the gravel road.
Head-high corn stretched to the horizon in rich, green fields, with patches of darker green here and there that were soybean fields. In the misty distance she saw a few farmhouses and outbuildings, and a cloud of dust where a farmer’s truck was barreling down another gravel road. Cicadas sounded loud in the air and heat waves shimmered over the corn.
Rook walked beside her rolling up his sleeves, but not saying anything. He probably wasn’t feeling all that well, being in the human world like this.
At last they reached the long, rutted driveway leading to Grand-Jane’s house.
She got halfway down it before she realized there was something wrong.
Grand-Jane’s house was a plain, white box with a front porch and a row of beehives in the side yard. There should’ve been bees zipping from the nearby lavender field back to the hives, and maybe some sheets hanging out to dry on the clothesline, and a neat herb garden should be growing in the backyard.
But all was silent except for the buzz of the cicadas. Weeds and knee-high grass choked the yard; the windows were blank and closed. A patch of shingles was missing from the roof.
Oh, no. How long had it been?
“It was spring last time I was here,” she said aloud. But not the spring before this summer. Maybe the one before that. She’d been gone for over a year. “This much time shouldn’t have passed.” She led Rook around the side of the house to the kitchen door. Her heart was pounding with worry. She pushed the door open. “Grand-Jane?” she called, though she knew her grandma wasn’t in the house.
The kitchen was dark; dust covered every surface. The air felt heavy and hot. A lone housefly buzzed against a dirty windowpane. On the windowsill over the sink, Grand-Jane’s pots of herbs were shriveled and brown.
Grand-Jane wasn’t . . . she couldn’t be . . .
“Here’s a letter,” Rook said from over by the table. He held it out and she took it, then went outside the stuffy kitchen and into the backyard to read it. It was from a neighbor, a farmer who’d sold them eggs and had sometimes paid Fer to weed his kitchen garden. Fer shook her head; it seemed like such a long time since she’d been that girl living in this house in the middle of the cornfields.
Jennifer,
the letter said.
Your grandmother asked me to come by and leave you a note. She took sick and is living at the Windmill Care Center in town. She said to tell you to come see her if you can.
“Took sick,” Fer murmured. And she hadn’t been here to help.
Rook was reading over her shoulder. “What’s that mean, care center?”
Fer shook her head. “It’s a nursing home.” He wouldn’t understand that, either, so she added, “It’s a place where old people go to be taken care of if they can’t take care of themselves.”
“They don’t stay with their own people?” Rook asked.
Fer shook her head. It was too hard to explain how things worked in the human world. “I have to go see her.”
“Let’s go, then,” Rook said, and before she could blink, a black horse with a tangled mane and flame-bright eyes was standing on the grass where Rook had been.
Puck, she reminded herself. Not a friend; not to be trusted.
Still, she had to get to Grand-Jane. She grabbed his mane and swung onto his back.
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Rook raced along the gravel roads, staying to the grass on the side, following her directions as she shouted them. Her bee streaked behind them, buzzing loudly. As they neared town, he slowed down and she slipped to the ground, her bee settled on her collar again, and Rook shifted back to his person shape.
He staggered a bit and then straightened, panting.
She knew where the nursing home was—a three-story building in the center of town, across from the public library. She’d never been inside it.
She and Rook walked along the sidewalks; he was staring around with obvious fascination. It seemed like so long since she’d been here; it was easy to see how strange it must look through his eyes. The asphalt streets, the cracked sidewalks, the dusty windows of the storefronts, the parked pickup trucks, the barbershop with the striped pole out front, the fire station. A few people were around, but this was a farming town, so most people lived out in the country.
She led Rook up the front steps of the nursing home and inside. She was a few paces down the hall before she realized that he had stopped in the doorway. She turned. “Come on,” she whispered.
“It smells wrong,” he said.
She sniffed. The air was cool from air-conditioning. He was right, though—it did smell wrong. Like ammonia and floor wax and some kind of medicine that prickled in her nose. “I don’t like it either,” she said. “You can wait outside if you want to.” Not waiting to see what he decided to do, she continued down the hall to an information desk, where a redheaded nurse was talking on a phone.
After a moment, Rook stepped up beside her. He stared at the nurse. “Why is she talking to that thing in her hand?” he whispered.
Another thing too complicated to explain. “Shhh,” she whispered back.
The nurse hung up the phone and gave Fer and Rook a long, summing-up look. “How can I help you?” she said, and Fer could hear the doubt in her voice. For a second she saw what the nurse saw: a skinny girl with spiky blond hair and jeans with holes in them and a jacket made of patches with a huge bee buzzing on the collar, and a shaggy-haired, rather dangerous-looking boy with what looked like a black tattoo across his left hand.