She finally met my eyes. “Don’t you ever do that again.” Anger burned in her gaze, and I knew she knew why I asked. She pressed her fingers to mine. There was a shimmer of silver light, too dim to show anything but Allie’s face and both our hands, and then it and the stinging were both gone.
“I could have told you it wouldn’t be enough light to see by.” Allie bent back over Caleb. “I never want to hurt anyone if I can help it. You ought to know that by now.”
Matthew had found a branch untouched by the fire and its crumbling. He knelt as he shredded its bark into tinder. “Go away,” I whispered into the dark, but it remained as thick as before. I scanned it for any hint of light.
Silver flickered at the corners of my sight, like some faint magic. When I turned to it, it was gone.
I turned away again, unfocusing my gaze, willing the flicker to return. I saw faint silver fibers, shining through the emptiness, the same shimmering threads I’d seen between Elin and me when I’d returned from the gray, thin as nylon thread.
Nylon thread was stronger than it seemed. Still not looking at the threads directly, I called, “Come here.”
The fibers flared brighter, shivered, and flowed toward me. By their light, I saw the darkness and dust that hovered all around us, the dead fire and Caleb’s backpack half swallowed by it, no gap large enough for us to get through. I grabbed the silver strands into my outstretched hand, as if carding light out of the dark. So cold that light—I gasped as I swiftly wrapped the bright fibers around my stone fist, which couldn’t feel the cold, wrapped them around it as surely as a weaver wrapped unspun wool around a distaff.
I wasn’t a weaver. I held my hand out to Elin.
“The threads of the world.” Her voice was so strange I didn’t at first recognize what I heard in it: wonder. “You feel them, too.”
I didn’t feel them, not as I felt the life in trees and people and shadows. But I saw, in the pulsing fibers, something more alive than simple light, something with a spirit of its own.
Matthew had stopped shredding the bark. He and Allie both stared at us. Elin kept staring, too.
“Can you use this?” I looked at Elin, at the crumbling all around us. “Against the dark?”
Elin’s eyes grew wide. Then, in a voice like a slow smile, “I can indeed.” She thrust her hands into the light I held, running her fingers through it, aligning fibers to pull them together into thicker strands. Cold brushed my face, and my breath came out in icy puffs. Elin drew the bright strands from my stone hand, which was rimed with frost, and she kept running her hands through that light, like a shuttle through a loom. Light stretched and grew, as a weaving on a frame, into a rectangle of bright silver light. I caught the faint winter scent of the sky before snow as Elin walked to the edge of the darkness. That darkness gathered and bunched, retreating from the light she held. She set it down, like a shining doorway, and then she plunged her hands into it once more, pushing threads aside, leaving the doorway open into the night. Through it, I heard the faint chirr of crickets.
Elin was shivering, but she didn’t seem to notice. A wry smile tugged at her face. “That should do well enough.” By the silver light, everything about her seemed to glow.
Matthew got to his feet. “I don’t know what the two of you did. But that was—amazing.” He tried to pull Allie to her feet as well.
Allie remained crouched by Caleb’s side. “We can’t leave him here.”
He wasn’t here, not anymore. Surely Allie knew that as well as me. Before I could argue, though, Matthew crouched to lift Caleb’s body over his shoulders. He walked through the doorway, and after a moment Allie followed. I went next. The stars on the other side shone so brightly, after the dark.
Elin went last, stopping on the other side to plunge her hand into the threads. “Return to the world from which you came,” she whispered, and the doorway gave way to shimmering fibers that dissolved into the night. She laughed softly, bitterly. “So you see, Grandmother. My power is not so small after all.”
We followed the path downhill, toward Karin and the Arch, eager to put distance between ourselves and the crossroads. Elin led the way, and we let her, knowing she could see better than we could.
Knowing she had just saved our lives.
The crumbling was thicker than when we’d climbed up, and we had to wind our way on and off the path, around larger and larger patches of it. The living trees we ventured among held dangers of their own, but I kept their shadows away from us with my magic.
To our right, the River flowed steadily south. “Liza,” it whispered, “you will not escape the dark for long. We shall meet again, and soon.” The water’s voice held hints of another voice, Rhianne’s voice, as if the River were a tear in the very world, one that let gray death through. Its pull was gentle now, easy enough to resist.
Allie pressed her lips together as she walked on; I couldn’t tell if the River spoke to her or not. She was back to not looking at me. Matthew hunched a little under Caleb’s weight. Where did we think we were taking him?
“We have no way to bury him.” Anger darkened my words: at Allie for not wanting to be saved, at Caleb for saving her, at myself for not saving her sooner, so that none of this need have happened.
“Why would we bury him?” Allie lifted her chin. “Do they bury people in your town? Never mind—I know they do. But Caleb’s not from your town, is he? We need to return him to the forest. That’s what we do in my town.”
“It is what my people do as well,” Elin said quietly. “Return him to the earth and the trees so that his body can become a part of life and growth once more.”
“Exactly,” Allie said.
I shivered as the path ended. From here there was only forest between us and the Arch. In my town we buried the dead, in hopes of keeping them from the grasping roots of the trees for as long as possible.
I looked to Matthew. Like me, he’d helped bury enough of those dead through the years. He just shrugged uneasily and said, “Would here do?”
Allie nodded, and she and Matthew followed Elin a few paces into the forest. I followed them in turn, continuing to keep the tree shadows at bay as I did. Matthew set Caleb down within a stand of river birches. Birches liked liquid, blood or water, it mattered little. We’d never leave anyone alone in such a place in our town, living or dead. I helped Matthew fold Caleb’s hands over his heart. His skin was clammy and cold, like plastic drawn from a winter river.
I saw a chain disappearing beneath his sweater and took it from around his neck. The coin Mom had gifted him long ago hung there. I traced the Arch that was engraved upon it. The coin was a human thing and held no magic, but it endured where Caleb’s leaf had not. I hung it around my own neck. Mom would want it.
Allie set something gently down beside Caleb: the owl’s skull. “Not the owl’s fault it wanted to eat,” she said.
A root broke through the earth and reached for Caleb’s arm. “Go—” The word caught in my throat. The trees would take him soon enough. What was I trying to save? “Go away!” The root retreated into the earth.
Elin started to sing, a wordless song filled with the sounds of wild things: wind through weeds, rain on parched earth, a crow’s beating wings, a running deer’s feet as they hit the ground. Allie turned to her, eyes moist, and then she added a low hum of harmony to Elin’s song. Elin blinked as if startled, but sang on.
Matthew and I exchanged a glance. We didn’t know this song in our town. We had prayers, words about ashes and dust, but those were about death, and this song was about living things, growing things. It wasn’t a human song—but Caleb and Karin must have thought it so, because who else could have taught it to Allie?
Abruptly Matthew raised his head, as if he smelled something. I didn’t smell it, but Elin stopped singing. “I suggest we leave now,” she said.
Dust trickled down one of the birches to land on Caleb’s boot. In the faint starlight, I saw the boot begin crumbling away. We moved swiftly away thr
ough the trees, leaving Caleb behind. Matthew grabbed Allie’s hand when she stopped to look back, pulling her on.
A whisper of stale air followed us all the way to the Arch. We moved to its base, as if it could provide protection. The stars were bright, a thin yellow moon just beginning to rise.
Matthew went very still. Elin’s bright gaze fixed on him, and she drew her knife. “Don’t move,” she said. The stale scent came from right behind Matthew now. Elin stepped around him, cautious as a cat, to grab the top of his ponytail and slice the blade through it. Matthew stepped quickly forward, his remaining hair falling loose to brush his ears, as Elin dropped the hair she’d cut.
The moonlight was growing brighter. I saw clearly enough as Matthew’s ponytail crumbled to dust. I pulled him into my arms. I was trembling, as if I’d been the one in danger of crumbling away.
“I didn’t feel it. If I hadn’t smelled it—” Matthew looked to Elin. “Thank you.”
Elin turned away, as if uncomfortable, and gazed up the curve of the Arch instead. “You all remain pledged to help my mother?”
“You know we do,” I said. We’d lost Caleb. I didn’t intend to lose Karin, too, not if I could help it. We’d go back for her first, and then I’d figure out how to go after Rhianne again. Maybe Karin could help me try to stop her. “Elin told you all that happened?” I asked Matthew.
“When she told Caleb, yes.” Matthew rubbed the back of his bare neck. “We had time.”
“With time enough left over for Kaylen and Matthew to tell me just how great a fool I was,” Elin said. “In considerable detail. They appeared to be under the misapprehension that I did not understand this already.”
“The trees are supposed to remember him.” Allie stared out into the night, as if none of us were there. “If they’ve all crumbled away, who will remember?”
“We’ll have to do the remembering,” I said. It seemed a small thing, and a great burden as well. I reached for Allie with my good hand, and this time, she let me take it.
Matthew took my stone hand in turn. He’d have no protection in Faerie, not with Caleb’s leaf gone, and the seeds might not protect him, either, because there was nothing in his shifting magic that could sense the life within them.
I pulled away from them both to feel for the seeds in my pocket. Gifts of protection, but not for humans, not unless our own magic helped us. Even then our magic could only do so much. The true gifts were only for the faerie folk who ate these seeds long ago.
We didn’t know that. I took a seed from my pocket, feeling its green life as I turned it between my fingers. There was only this seed and one more, plus the one Allie held. If we ate them as Mirinda had, would Rhianne’s gifts come to us, too? If they didn’t, I’d lose what protection I had, but the risk might be worth it, for Matthew’s and Allie’s sake.
Elin’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get that? I saw a seed before, the one you gave Caleb. There was no chance to question you then.”
“It’s from my tree.” I tightened my hold on the seed. Matthew moved close to me, sensing, as I did, the threat in Elin’s tense stance.
“And what do you plan to do with this seed?” Her voice took on a hard edge.
No matter that she’d saved us, I doubted Elin would want us having the same protection as her people.
“Your intentions are not hard to guess,” Elin said. “But you cannot imagine any quia seed would share its power with humans. It is deepest blasphemy for you even to hold one.”
“What power?” Matthew asked.
I was tense, too, alert for any sudden move Elin might make. “Faerie power came from seeds like this.”
“Like glamour?” Matthew rubbed the scar at his wrist.
“Not only casting glamour,” I told him. “Protection from glamour, too. And seeing in the dark. Hearing over distances. Long life.” It was long life, and the way Rhianne’s hold on death stood behind it, that had brought this crumbling to us. I should want nothing to do with such things. Yet eating the seeds would not increase Rhianne’s hold on death. That was already done, unless I found some way to undo it. If the quia seeds worked for us at all, they would merely grant us a share of the power whose price we were already paying.
“The seeds might well kill you,” Elin said. “I would, before I’d share my power with a human.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Allie turned back to us. “Not quickly, anyway.” She held out her hands. By the moonlight, I saw broken pieces of shell. “Because if the seeds were going to kill us, I’d already be dead.”
Chapter 16
“Allie!” I looked her over for any sign of harm, but in the dark, I couldn’t tell.
“Someone had to go first.” Allie rubbed the pieces of shell off against her pants. “And if I’m going back to Faerie, I need to know I’ll be safe this time. I can’t have anyone taking me over, not ever again. Besides, if I’m going to live—and it’s clear enough I am, because otherwise everything Caleb did would be wasted—the more protection I have, the better.”
“How do you feel?” Matthew’s face pinched with concern.
Allie smiled, a small, pleased smile. “Good. Really good.”
“What do you feel?” The edge remained in Elin’s voice.
Allie’s smile grew. “I see colors, even though it’s nighttime. I feel small shifts in the ground beneath our feet. I hear—”
I saw the change in Elin’s stance an instant before she lunged for the seed I held. We fell to the ground together as my sweater constricted, squeezing the air from my lungs. My sleeve constricted around my flesh hand, questing fibers trying to push between my fingers, to pry the seed free. Matthew leaped at us, shifting as he landed on Elin’s back, fur flowing over his skin, teeth growing just in time to dig into her shoulder.
“Elianna!” I forced breath into my chest and my words. “Stop!”
Elin froze, my magic holding her. I pushed her to her feet as I stood. Matthew moved to sit beside her, snarling.
Allie brushed fingers along Elin’s shoulder, which bled through her cloak. In a flash of silver light, the bleeding stopped. Elin’s cloak fluttered restlessly about her, but otherwise she did not move. She could not move. My magic held her, a cold thread stretched taut between us. “It is rather convenient,” she said, “that I have made vows not to harm you, but you have not once suggested you might offer similar vows in turn.”
I used my teeth to tear my sweater free from around my fingers. “Would you deny us every last protection from your people?”
Elin gave a brittle laugh. “I stand trapped before you as surely as a cat in a tree, yet you continue to speak of your safety. Your people did much the same during the War. Do you think yourselves the only ones who know fear?”
I wouldn’t forgo this protection just to make Elin feel safe. I slammed the seed against my stone hand. It cracked easily enough. Matthew growled, and his ears perked forward, a warning.
Elin couldn’t stop me now. I used my teeth to peel the bits of shell away. The shell was bitter, but the seed within dissolved to syrupy sweetness as I chewed, sliding easily down my throat. I felt the green life in it still, but missed the exact moment when that life became part of me, adding its power to mine until I could no longer sense it, any more than I could sense my own shadow.
Color crept into the night world: the green of Elin’s cloak, the red of Allie’s hair, the brown of Matthew’s pants and sweater where they lay on the ground. Matthew pressed his ears back against his head. Did he remain afraid the seeds would hurt us? “It’s all right.” I smelled damp earth, crisp leaves, droplets of water in the humid air, and behind it all a staleness that said none of this could last. I offered Matthew the final seed. He wouldn’t care so much about the shell as a wolf.
He shook his head. Silver light flowed over gray fur, and then he was human, shivering, gathering up his scattered clothes. I heard the chatter of his teeth, the River’s steady flow, the soft breath of someone watching from the forest—the
same watcher Elin had heard at the crossroads?
“You can let me go,” Elin said. “It’s too late for me to stop you.”
Elin and our watcher would both have to wait. I kept holding the seed out to Matthew. I couldn’t protect him from glamour, but the seed could. “I’m okay. Allie’s okay. Truly.” I felt fine. Better than fine.
“No.” Matthew drew on pants and boots. There was a sheen of sweat on his chest. I smelled its salty tang.
Why would he refuse? I could see so much, smell so much. I felt stronger, more alert than I’d ever been. “Take it.” I needed Matthew to take the seed. I needed him to be safe. “Please, Matthew.” My words turned soft and urgent.
Something sleepy slid across Matthew’s eyes. He reached slowly for the seed, as if he moved through deep water. Once he ate it, everything would be all right. He lifted the seed to his lips, but his soft eyes remained on me, his expression trusting as a child’s.
The seed was in his mouth before I realized what was happening. “Stop!” I released the connection between us, a connection so subtle I hadn’t felt it slide into place.
Matthew shuddered and spit the unbroken seed to the ground. It hadn’t been him wanting to eat that seed. It’d been me, using glamour to make him do what I wanted. Elin threw back her head and laughed, the sound wild as an autumn storm. Our hidden listener’s breathing slowed, as if to better watch us all.
The sleepy look had left Matthew’s face, replaced by something more stark. Fear. “You don’t want to make me do this, Liza.”
I didn’t—and I did. I wanted to protect him. Him most of all, of all those I sought to protect.
I glanced at Allie. Her eyes were wide, and I knew she understood what I’d almost done. I had precious little ability to protect anyone I cared for. The knowledge was cold and hard inside of me. I watched Matthew crush the seed beneath his boot. He didn’t trust me, not with this.
I felt the spark of life in the seed flicker out. He was right not to trust me.