Faerie Winter

  I stared at the vine that nuzzled Karin’s wrist like an affectionate cat. I’d heard Karin give the oath before, in her town, to a child who had just come into his magic. The words had angered me then, with their easy promises to do no harm with magic. They made me uneasy now. “I’m not sure I can.”

  Karin’s eyes narrowed, and the leaves around her wrist went still. “Do the words trouble you, Liza?”

  I met her level gaze. “No one can promise not to do harm with magic, least of all me.” I already had done harm with my magic: to Ethan, and perhaps to Mom as well. Magic was merely a weapon, no worse than the one who wielded it—but weapons slipped in the hand, arrows went astray, blades were blunter or sharper than expected, the wielder proved too weak for the task. “And if the Lady gets hold of me again—” I drew an unsteady breath. “Anything could happen then.”

  Karin looked at me thoughtfully. “I think perhaps you do not understand what the oath is for.”

  “Tell me, then.” There was a challenge in my words.

  “Very well.” Karin rested her chin on her hands. “The oath cannot protect against the error in judgment, the failure of knowledge, or the lack of skill. Avoiding harm is not so simple as flipping the switch linked to a human generator, knowing that light will always follow. What the oath demands is that you always choose with care, with the intent of not doing harm—and that when you cause harm in spite of these efforts, you do all you can to mend it. The oath may also provide some small protection against those who would sway your thoughts toward harm, but that has never been tested.”

  “Wait—the oath is protection?”

  Karin stroked her ivy leaves, and one by one they curled up. “It is no promise of safety, only of mindfulness. Yet mindfulness is a sort of protection, too.”

  “There are no promises of safety,” I said.

  “Even before the War, this was true. Will you give me your oath?”

  I nodded slowly, knowing that once I spoke the words, I had to mean them. “All right.”

  I thought of the child who’d taken the oath in Karin’s town, surrounded by family and townsfolk who’d known him all his life. Here there were only Karin and I, the soft creaking of wind through trees, and the softer sound of Kyle’s breathing. Karin spoke, her voice quiet and sure, and I repeated after her:

  Blessed are the powers that grant me magic.

  I promise to use their gift well.

  To help mend my world,

  To help mend all worlds.

  And should I forget to mend,

  Should I refuse to mend,

  Still I will remember

  To do no harm.

  My voice trembled at first but grew steadier as I went on. Something inside me shifted, not the terrible twisting of my thoughts I’d felt with the Lady, but the steadier feeling of having found level ground on an uneven slope. I would do all I could. I’d always done all I could and thought it was never enough.

  It was enough. That was what the oath meant. I would mend where I could, fight what I could, and put everything I had into both the mending and the fighting. If I failed, it would not be for lack of courage or action.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “You are welcome, Tara’s daughter.” Karin squeezed my hand. “I will do all I can to be worthy of your trust.”

  Through the hole in the ceiling, the night wasn’t quite as dark as before. It was time to go. I stood, stretching stiff legs, and walked to Kyle’s side. Outside, the wind had stopped. A hawk cried out, and Kyle bolted upright on the couch, throwing his blanket aside.

  “She’s looking for me,” he said.

  “Who’s looking for you?” I asked, though I feared I knew.

  “The hawk.” Moss and bark fell out of Kyle’s sweater. I didn’t have to ask which hawk he meant.

  Ice tinkled to the ground as Karin slid the trailer door open. “Wait here.” She slipped outside and pulled the door shut again.

  I would have followed, but that would have meant leaving Kyle alone. I took off his sweater and sat beside him, picking the remaining moss from beneath his bandages and rewrapping the bandages over his wounds, which were a less angry shade of red, the puffiness around them gone. He’d lost the bandage around his hand in the night, but the scabs there were thicker now and seemed to be holding this time.

  I put his sweater on again, still backward, to protect his back, and he crawled into my lap. There was no sign of fever in his eyes, and his skin remained cool. He was as ready to travel as could be hoped for. He was shaking, though, and not with cold. “Mean bird,” he muttered. “Mean, mean bird.”

  “I won’t let Elin hurt you.” I was surprised I could speak the words aloud. None of our promises were a surety of safety, but magic wasn’t concerned with that, only with whether we meant what we said.

  I couldn’t tell if Kyle had heard me. “Go ’way,” he whispered under his breath. “Go ’way, stupid bird.”

  The oath is protection. Scant protection, perhaps, but hadn’t I just vowed to do all I could? I drew Kyle close. If the oath could protect me, it could protect him, too. “Before we go, I have some words I need for you to repeat. Can you do that?”

  Kyle looked up at me. “I’m hungry.”

  How long had it been since he’d last eaten? I pulled the dried blueberries from my pocket and handed them to him. Kyle sniffed them skeptically, then tasted one.

  A startled grin crossed his face. He grabbed the rest of the berries and shoved them all into his mouth at once. Blue stained his lips and tongue. He held out his hand. “More.”

  I didn’t have any more. I handed him a strip of jerky instead. Kyle gave me a suspicious look but took the meat and ate it, too. Karin’s water skin was in the trailer, beside her pack. Kyle drank deeply when I handed it to him. Then he looked up at me.

  “I want you to repeat what I say, Kyle, okay?” I waited until Kyle nodded, and then I spoke the oath, one line at a time.

  Kyle bit his lip and repeated the words, his expression growing serious as he did. He added a couple of things at the end: a promise to try not to be mean, another promise not to send ants into his brother’s pants ever again. Only then did he nod at me, as if satisfied.

  I tore the last of my jerky in half and handed Kyle the larger piece. He chewed it solemnly. The door creaked open, and Karin stepped inside, her jacket wrapped around a bundle in her arms.

  I nudged Kyle from my lap to put myself between him and what Karin held. She crouched down, set the bundle on the floor, and unwrapped the shivering creature she held, a red-tailed hawk who stared at us through baleful yellow eyes. Elin—I watched warily as Karin looked her over. Feathers had been torn from her left wing, and blood streaked both it and her chest. Hawks were day creatures. Elin would have been at a disadvantage if she’d met other wild animals at night.

  The hawk lifted her head and screeched. The sound echoed through the trailer as she swiveled her head to fix her gaze on Kyle.

  “I don’t have it, stupid bird!” Kyle scrambled to his feet on the couch behind me even as Karin grabbed Elin in the jacket once more.

  Pursue the animal speaker. Destroy him, and bring the leaf he bears back to me. Do not return until you have it. The Lady had changed Elin and sent her out again. She must have. “I have the leaf,” I told her. If she wanted to fight someone for it, she could fight me.

  The hawk shivered in Karin’s arms. “Liza, can you hand me the stones?”

  I didn’t move. “Elin made Ethan burn his own people. She thought it was some sort of test.”

  “My mother’s tests are harsh indeed.” Karin looked troubled, and I remembered that she’d talked of passing the Lady’s tests in my visions, too.

  Being troubled wouldn’t protect Kyle or me if Elin decided to attack. “She can’t stay with us.”

  Holding the bird awkwardly with one arm, Karin knelt to pick up the nearer orange stone herself. She looked up at me, asking me to understand—understand what?

  “Y
ou can’t ask this of me.” I remembered how Kyle smiled as his hand grew slick with the blood that Elin had demanded to see. “Of us.”

  “I ask only that you not interfere.” Karin tucked the stone into the jacket. Elin made a soft meeping sound as her shivering eased. Had she been out in the storm looking for Kyle all night? Surely no one, hawk or human, could survive so long in the ice and the cold.

  Elin wasn’t human. Fey folk were harder to hurt—and harder to heal—than humans were. “She can’t be trusted.” Behind me I felt Kyle clutching my coat.

  “No,” Karin agreed. She gave me a searching look. “I ask much of you by even bringing her here. I know that, and I take full responsibility for it. Yet I cannot leave her.” Her voice dropped. “I have left her too often before.”

  The trailer door remained open. Beyond it, the black sky was giving way to gray. Soon the sun would rise. We needed to leave this place. “If she turns her glamour and her magic on us, or forces us to turn our magic on ourselves? What then?”

  “She hardly has the strength to—” Karin stopped mid-sentence. When she spoke again, her voice was cold. “If she harms either of you in any way, I will see to stopping her myself, though it mean her life. You have my word.”

  Elin gave a strangled squawk. She struggled in Karin’s arms, pushing free of the jacket, and tried to launch into the air. Her injured wing failed her, and instead she landed on the trailer floor. She lifted her head to glare at Kyle and me.

  “She says she doesn’t understand why you put humans ahead of your own people,” Kyle whispered. “She says you should kill us all. She says—no!” Kyle pushed past me and ran at Elin. “Go away!” he screamed. “Away ’way ’way!”

  I grabbed Kyle. He fought me, but I didn’t let go. I wouldn’t let Elin hurt him.

  Elin wasn’t trying to hurt him, though. She was backing away, talons scraping metal, left wing dragging.

  Kyle wriggled out of my arms. “Go away, stupid bird!” He clenched his small fists and advanced on Elin. She backed into the corner and hunkered down there, trembling.

  I yelled the bird away. I drew a soft breath. Karin’s eyes widened, and I knew she’d figured it out as well.

  A slow smile crossed my face. Kyle wasn’t helpless after all.

  Elin looked up at him, her yellow eyes fierce. Kyle’s hands went slack. His steps grew slow and dreamlike. “Pretty bird?” He sounded uncertain.

  I grabbed him. Karin grabbed Elin. “They’re both under my protection,” she hissed at the bird.

  Elin squawked her protest. Kyle went rigid in my arms, the glamour’s brief hold on him lost. “Go away!”

  Elin fought her mother again, though there was nowhere left to go. A talon tore Karin’s sweater, drawing blood, but she scarcely seemed to notice.

  “That’s enough, Kyle,” I said. I didn’t want Elin hurting Karin, and it was clear enough Karin wasn’t going to let her daughter go.

  Kyle stuck out his tongue at the hawk. “Told you I could yell her away.”

  I thought of how he’d asked—no, told—the ants to leave the Store. I squeezed him tightly before I set him down. “Good job, Kyle.”

  Elin stopped fighting and trembled in Karin’s arms. Karin stroked the hawk’s feathers. “It is not unknown for animal speaking to move beyond ordinary speech into commands—it is much like plant speaking that way—though usually command comes when the speaker is older.”

  Kyle glared at Elin as he leaned against me. “He didn’t even need her name,” I said.

  “It is only people who require names. Animals and plants do not use them. Still, to be able to speak to the animal even in one who has been changed or shifted—one who has a name when in another form—takes considerable power. Kyle is in a fair amount of danger.”

  I drew him close. “He’s in less danger, if he has that much power.”

  “He’s also of more interest to those who would use that power for their own purposes.”

  Like the Lady. Had she wanted Kyle killed because he was useless—or because she feared anyone who might be able to control those she transformed? It was hard to believe that the Lady feared anything.

  Karin set Elin down again, found her water skin, and stashed it in her pack. “I should have Kyle’s oath before we go,” she said.

  Kyle helped me fold the blanket, but his gaze kept straying to Elin. I was glad. The warier he was, the better. “I already took his oath.”

  Karin blinked. “You intend to teach him, then?”

  “The oath isn’t about teaching.” Is it?

  “The oath is about many things.” Karin took the blanket, put it in the pack, and tied the pack closed. Kyle hung behind me, clutching the edge of my coat with one hand and his frog with the other. I was responsible for him. That was what the oath meant.

  I got Kyle’s hands into the sleeves of his coat and buttoned it up. I traced the bloodied slashes along the coat’s back and glanced at Elin. At least with his sweater on backward, no part of him was fully exposed to the cold.

  I hesitated, then took my leather gloves and set them beside Karin’s pack. She’d need protection if she intended to carry the hawk. I turned away before she could thank me, still wishing she’d leave Elin behind.

  I tied my knife belt around my waist, though the sheath was empty. “Ready?” I asked Kyle. I couldn’t do anything about his gloveless hands, but I wrapped my scarf around his neck. The woven-together ends would help keep it in place, and I wouldn’t let Elin anywhere near the wool.

  Kyle held his head up high. “Now we find Johnny, right?”

  “Right.” I climbed outside. The ground was slick with ice, and I grabbed the trailer for balance. Cold metal stung my palms. I cursed and jerked away. The clouds were gone, and through the trees I saw an orange glow at the horizon. I reached for Kyle and helped him out. He slipped, and I caught his hand, steadying him. Karin climbed out after him, green ivy hidden beneath gloves that met her jacket sleeves and hawk balanced on one leather-clad fist. She didn’t stumble as she landed silently on the ice.

  The sun poked above the horizon, breaking through the trees. Light hit the branches around us, turning them bright as broken glass. The light hurt my eyes. I blinked hard against it, and as I did I saw—

  Kyle, crying. Johnny holding him and whispering, “Hey, kid, don’t worry what she says. I’ll take care of you.” “Promise?” Kyle sniffled. “Promise,” Johnny said—

  The Lady, glowering down at Elin while ice fell around them both. “I told you not to return without the leaf. Why do you continue to disobey me?” Elin held up her hands, as if to explain, but the Lady grasped her wrist. In moments she was a red-tailed hawk once more, launching into the dark. Behind her the Lady whispered, “And so Kaylen will pay for his foolishness with the human girl at last—”

  The Lady, marching through an ice-sheathed forest that glittered in the early-morning sun. Johnny marched by her side, a gray wolf at his heels—

  “Liza.” Karin’s quiet voice drew me out of my visions as gently as Mom’s voice drew me out of nightmares. I opened my eyes to the shining trees around me. Kyle still held my hand.

  “She found Matthew.” Had the Lady gone looking for him, or had he returned on his own, looking for Johnny and me? It didn’t matter. “We have to find them.” Matthew and I were supposed to keep each other safe. What was the point of whatever was between us if we couldn’t do that much?

  “You are certain it was not the future you saw?” Karin asked. Elin hunkered down on her fist, talons digging into leather, as if she would deny us all.

  “I don’t think so.” Though there was no wind, the dawn was cold. “It was morning, and there was ice on the trees.”

  “Best not to let any more time pass, then.” Karin looked at me. “Ice and sun will present challenges for you as a seer. Do your best not to focus on any one spot for too long—but do not try so hard that you are not careful of your footing. Kyle, if Liza stops walking, can you squeeze her hand? That will
help wake her out of visions.”

  Kyle nodded soberly. “Can I pinch her, too?”

  A smile pulled at Karin’s lips. “If you wish.”

  I kept a wary eye on Elin as we set out. Ice coated the limestone bluffs, the white snow, the path we walked. My steps were maddeningly slow over the slick ice. I wished I were a hawk, not bound to the slippery earth. My thoughts kept turning to Matthew, imagining the Lady’s fingers running through his fur, imagining Matthew trotting behind her, obeying her every command.

  The glimmering ice tugged at my gaze, like a child eager to show all her toys. Fragments of vision flickered at the edges of my sight.

  Elin, running through underground tunnels, younger, alone—

  The Lady, her hands on Elin’s shoulders. “How dare you let your control of the firestarter slip? You will find him. You will destroy him and all the escaped children who have caused our people grief with their magic this day—”

  Matthew, running along a snow-covered path, running so hard his paws bled—

  We crossed the river, Kyle and I making our way slowly over slick rocks, and even Karin choosing her steps with care. I’d hoped to cut through the forest and so gain some time, but the ground was too slippery. We followed the path toward Clayburn.

  Elin watching Clayburn’s houses burn, her hand on Ethan’s arm—

  Elin turning away from the sound of screaming, the sight of bright flames licking wood. Elin kneeling to throw up in the snow—

  Ethan shuddering as if just coming awake, then creeping away from Elin’s side—

  The sun rose higher, turning the sky a deep blue. “Stop,” Kyle whispered.

  I stopped. “Why?”

  Kyle pinched my arm. “That’s why!”

  “Hey!”

  Kyle giggled. Karin laughed, too. Elin twisted her head to glower at us. Karin shifted the hawk from one fist to the other as we walked on.

  Darkness flickered within the ice-sheathed trees. Shadows—the trees hadn’t lost their shadows with the coming of winter after all, any more than the seeds had. They’d merely drawn that last bit of darkness close, as if to hold it safe. I softened my gaze, focusing on the shadows instead of the ice, and the visions came less often.