Karin set her hand over mine, stopping me. “They have been trees for some hours now. That would not be long in a different season, but they have been listening to winter’s voice all that time, and I have spoken with enough trees these past months to know how powerful a voice it is. As trees they endure, because trees die slow. As humans they might return to life—or they might die faster, remembering winter still. If we can wait for spring, it would be safer to call them out then.”
Cold shivered through me. I felt a faint spark of life in Kate’s shadow reaching toward me.
“Sorry,” I whispered as I stepped away, not sure Kate could hear. Was Mom trapped among these trees, too? Was Matthew? No, I saw wolf prints continuing through the mud.
Kyle knelt on the ground, digging his hands into the brown leaves around a dead log, while Johnny stood watchfully behind him. I pulled Kyle to his feet. He gave me a sullen look and shoved one muddy hand into his pocket. With the other he reached for Johnny’s shadow once more.
We followed Matthew’s and the Lady’s prints beyond the grove and into town as the sky turned to gray. The houses were silent, no windows being tacked shut, no lanterns being lit. We found more trees behind Kate’s house. “Hope,” Karin said. “Seth. Charlotte.” Other names, of other Afters. There were scuff marks and splashes of mud around them—they’d fought the Lady before she’d overcome them. That hadn’t been enough to save them. Within the trees their shadow hands pressed against the bark, as if trying to push free.
“The Afters won’t be able to help us,” I whispered. The Lady changed them all. She’d condemned them all to winter. A thick brown chestnut tree had even pushed through the roof of the shed where Ethan had been, though if any shadow remained alive within it, it was hidden by the shed’s metal walls.
I lifted Charlotte’s cane from the ground. The end had reshaped itself into a sharp point. I almost handed the weapon to Kyle, but he wouldn’t know how to fight with it. “If anyone tries to hurt you,” I told him instead, “I want you to run. You can yell animals away, but run from everyone else.”
Kyle nodded seriously, tightening his grip on Johnny’s shadow hand. “I’m good at running.”
The light was swiftly fading. Karin took Charlotte’s cane from me and set it down against an ironwood tree. “There is no time for turning back now, as my mother is no doubt aware, but all is not yet lost. Allow me to do the speaking when we meet her, but be alert for any danger, in words and actions both. If this goes badly, there is another plant speaker in my town. She is new, young and untrained, but she may be able to help you call spring.”
“Goes badly how?” I demanded.
Karin didn’t answer, just shifted the hawk from one fist to the other and walked on. Kyle, Johnny, and I hurried after them. “Whatever you do, Liza, do not let the Lady touch you. You too, Kyle. She can only change those she touches.”
“I’ll run,” Kyle agreed. His face was streaked with mud.
A third set of prints joined Matthew’s and the Lady’s as we left Kate’s house behind. Kyle began humming his ant song again, but Johnny squeezed his hand, and he fell silent. We followed the path out of town. The first stars came out, and the waning moon rose, yellow giving way to silver. We came to a familiar hillside, thick with blackberry and sumac, their thorns blurred in the dim light. In a clearing among them, a smooth-barked quia tree stretched bare branches toward the night sky.
This tree wasn’t the Lady’s work. It was mine. I’d called it to life and called autumn into this world with it. I didn’t need to soften my gaze to see the shadow that clung to the quia’s trunk and branches, sharper and clearer than any shadow I’d seen. How had I not noticed before? I’d visited this tree often enough this winter, seeking signs of life within.
Something in the quia’s shadow reached for me, and the cold shimmering thread of magic between us felt familiar, as if the quia and I were old friends.
Melting ice dripped from the quia’s branches. How long could we keep walking into this trap? The Lady surely knew we approached. Was she near enough to see us?
Was she near enough to hear us? I stopped abruptly. Maybe we didn’t have to do the walking. Maybe there’d be something to gain by meeting the Lady at our call and by our choosing, rather than the other way around.
There was only one thing we needed first. I turned to Karin and asked, “What is your mother’s name?”
Elin screeched her anger and flew at me. I raised my arms to my face, but before I could send her away, Kyle shouted, “Stop it, stupid bird!” Elin squawked and wheeled off. Her injured wing strained, but this time the wing held her, and she fluttered to a low quia branch.
Karin’s shoulders stiffened. She climbed the hillside to the quia tree, blackberry and sumac branches moaning as they parted before her. She looked into her daughter’s eyes, but the bird turned her head away.
“I know, Elianna. I do not consider such things lightly. I never have.”
“She says you can’t choose humans instead of your own true people.” Kyle pulled Johnny up the hillside after Karin as he spoke. I ran after them.
“She says it’s bad enough you abandoned her,” Kyle said as he reached the tree. “She says you can’t—” He looked up at the bird. “She can do whatever she wants.” He stuck out his tongue.
“My people,” Karin said as if testing the word on her tongue. “Your people.” She looked at me. “It was Kaylen and Tara who first said separating our peoples made little sense. It was Kaylen who first wore his name openly among humans, though they did not understand the gift he offered them, and so insisted on shortening it. I did not understand, not until after the War, not until humans were born with magic.” She took off my gloves to stroke the vine wrapped around her wrist. A leaf curled around her finger. “It ought not have taken magic to make me understand. Even so, my mother’s name is tied up in vows that I may not lightly set aside.”
She promised not to tell, I thought. “You can’t speak her name, even if you want to.” My voice was flat. We were going to have to walk into this trap after all.
“Oh, I can speak it. The vows I took are not so simple as that. I can speak, but if I do, I sever the bonds between myself and my people.” Karin sighed; and the leaf uncurled. “In truth I severed those bonds when I entered a human town and allowed my life to become tangled with those of its people. I know why you ask this of me, Liza, and it is not badly considered. Still, I’ll not try this thing until no other choices remain. There are other ways of calling.” Karin set her pack down and lifted her head. “Mother! If you can hear me, come to me. Let us talk.”
A breeze rippled through the forest. The Lady stepped out from among the winter trees beneath us, silent, beautiful in the growing moonlight. Even without glamour, some part of me wanted to bow at her feet. I grabbed Kyle’s free hand, but he pulled away. Johnny hissed softly, the first sound I’d heard from the shadow, and moved closer to his brother’s side.
The Lady ascended the hillside, two slender glasses filled with dark liquid in her hands. Her hair was once again bound in its firefly net, and her gaze fell entirely on Karin, as if the rest of us were unworthy of her notice. Where’s Matthew?
The Lady turned her back to Kyle and me as she offered a glass to Karin. “So, Daughter. You have returned for the wine I promised. And I have returned to hear how my daughter comes to teach humans. Much has changed, in the short years since the War.”
If I could drive my knife between the Lady’s shoulders before she turned … I reached for the blade.
“I would not try that, Liza.” The Lady didn’t look at me. “Let your hand fall now, else the animal speaker will be under my control and gouging out his own eyes before you can draw iron.”
I released the knife’s hilt. Kyle edged behind the quia tree, Johnny beside him.
Karin raised her glass but did not drink. “Much has changed indeed. Truly, Mother, I did not expect to find you whiling away your time playing with humans.”
&nbs
p; The Lady shrugged, an eloquent gesture. “We all must have our entertainments.” Her gaze flicked to Elin on the quia branch. “And what of you, Granddaughter? Have you brought me what I asked for? Or do you disappoint me yet again?”
The hawk made a mournful sound. The Lady extended her arm, and Elin hopped obediently down from the branch onto it. She was trembling, though, both wings drawn close to her body.
The Lady’s fingers brushed her feathers. “We shall talk about your failures later.” She set the hawk back on the branch and turned to me. I backed into a defensive crouch. “I believe, Daughter, that your student holds something which is mine.”
Karin stepped around to put herself between us. The Lady smiled and sipped her wine. “And so you play your own games with humans, do you not?”
Karin’s eyes didn’t leave her mother. “I have never played at anything.”
The Lady laughed. “Ah, yes. As I recall, that caused us both a fair amount of trouble at court. But I do not ask you to play today. I ask only that you return the leaf to me, as is my right.”
Behind the quia tree, Kyle sang softly. Dying grasses rustled at Karin’s feet. “I do not believe it is,” she said. “Or have you not heard that Kaylen, too, yet lives?”
The Lady’s smile was cold as starlight. “That he has not returned to the dust from which we all rose is clear enough, lest the leaf would have crumbled into that same dust. That he has long since broken every bond that ties him to the Realm is also clear, and whatever existence remains beyond that hardly matters. He chose a human over his people and his land, and the price paid for the Uprising that resulted was great. That is what happens when one ceases to play games.”
Caleb had saved Mom’s life. He saved lives in his town yet. But they were human lives, and no doubt beneath the Lady’s notice.
She traced a finger along the rim of her half-empty glass. “I would hope, Daughter, that bonds of love and loyalty would be enough for you to do this thing. Even so, I offer you this: command your student to give me the leaf, and I will go on my way and leave you this human town to play with as you will.”
My hand went to my chest. “No.” Caleb’s town needed him, too, and if Caleb’s life was truly bound up in the leaf—I couldn’t buy the lives in my town at such a price, even if spring came and I was able to call them from their trees. I couldn’t save this town only to leave the Lady free to destroy other towns instead.
The Lady’s fingers tightened around her glass. “Your student speaks out of turn.”
Karin smiled grimly. “My student merely speaks my mind. We will not barter one life for another.”
“Kaylen bartered away the lives of all our people. And so summer ends and unending winter takes hold in both the Realm and the human world. There is no plant speaker strong enough to stop this dying, just as no fire speaker could control the fires the humans sent, nor any healer stop the poison that tainted air and soil when the fires burned out. The worlds wind down, Daughter, yet justice will be done before the game is through. Give me the leaf, and let Kaylen and his human toy pay for their foolishness at last.”
“No amount of justice will bring back the dead,” Karin said. A breeze rattled the quia’s branches. “I offer you this instead: leave the few surviving human towns alone, and take me in their stead.” She dropped to both knees and emptied her glass at her mother’s feet. “Punish me for Kaylen’s mistakes if you wish, or demand that I return to Faerie by your side—whatever you command of me, it shall be done.” Dark liquid sank into the ground as she held out her hands. Do not let the Lady touch you.
“No.” I moved to Karin’s side, meaning to say I wouldn’t let her barter her life for another, either—but I couldn’t say it. Karin wasn’t offering herself to the Lady to save a single life or a single town, but to save my entire world. I would do the same in her place, and do it willingly.
“You disappoint me, Daughter.” The Lady drained her glass, set it down in the mud, and walked past Karin, as if her offer were a trivial thing. “No matter. Justice can take many forms.” She gestured toward the forest.
Mom stepped out from among the trees. I froze. Her down coat was open, and the leg of her pants was torn, as by a wolf’s teeth, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. She held something in one hand—my father’s knife. Matthew paced into view a step behind her, his gray wolf’s eyes as dull as the skeletons of the winter trees around us.
I longed to run to them, but I didn’t. There was more than one kind of trap. They were both still alive. I held to that as I tensed, waiting for a chance to act. Karin rose to her feet beside me.
“Tara, pet, come here.” Mom obediently climbed the hill to the Lady’s side, and Matthew paced after her. The Lady reached out a hand. Mom took it, trusting as a child. “Your mother and I have had a very interesting talk, Liza.”
Ice trickled down my spine. Mom was under the Lady’s glamour as surely as Matthew—the glamour she had never stopped fearing. The Lady whispered in her ear, and Mom tested the knife against her hand, not drawing blood. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been weeping, but she wasn’t crying now. She waved the knife through the air as she walked toward me.
Karin’s hand reached out to squeeze mine—a warning.
I pulled away to step forward. “Mom.”
“Liza?” Mom’s voice was fuzzy, as if she spoke through layers of wool.
“Tara, dear, remember what we discussed.”
Mom’s eyes focused, as if she were seeing me for the first time. She drew me, one-armed, into a hug—a child’s hug, seeking comfort, not giving it. “I’ve missed you, Lizzy.”
I drew away to reach for her knife. Mom smiled, a secretive smile that reminded me of Kyle. She stepped back, as if to give the knife to me.
Then she darted behind me, pulled me close, and pressed the steel blade to my throat.
I didn’t move. I barely dared breathe. “Mom?” I reached for her knife hand, and she pressed her blade against my throat, biting skin.
“Tara,” I whispered. “Go away.”
Mom drew the knife back. I heard her take one step away, then a second, and a third. My neck stung where the blade had been.
There was a blur of motion—I whirled to see Karin knock the knife from Mom’s hand and sweep her feet out from under her. How had she moved so fast? Mom fell into the mud. I drew my own knife and lunged at the Lady.
She stepped lightly away from my blade, toward Karin. I stumbled and spun around.
“I do believe that was a direct challenge to my magic and my power.” The Lady’s voice was soft as silk, sharp as steel. She smiled as her fingers closed around Karin’s wrist. “And so you forfeit the protections of kinship and rank.”
Karin slipped from her hold—too late. She began to change, arms stretching into branches, feet rooting down into the earth.
“Karin!” I couldn’t let winter take her, too. “Karinna, come here!” My magic rolled harmlessly away, and I felt the Lady’s stronger magic rushing over her daughter, consuming her as fire consumed wood.
“I deny you, Arianna.” Bark flowed over Karin’s chest and neck, through her hair. “I deny you, and your games, and every last claim you have on me.” The last words came out with a gasp as her eyes and mouth disappeared within the thick bark of a winter oak. A spark of life reached for me from within that tree, then pulled abruptly back.
“Indeed.” The Lady looked to the silver moon. “It is poorly played, Karinna.”
I lunged at the Lady again. Again she stepped away, so quickly I wasn’t sure how I’d missed her. Matthew snarled and moved to her side. Mom grabbed her knife with her left hand, stood, and stumbled toward me. Her right hand hung limp at the wrist—Karin had done something to it when she’d knocked the knife away.
Elin fluttered from the quia tree to one of the oak’s branches. Mom and I circled each other, both trying for the higher ground, while Kyle sang on behind the quia tree, as if unaware of any of us. I couldn’t let Mom strike out with that blad
e, but I also couldn’t hurt her.
I could do whatever I had to, to see the Lady—Arianna—stopped. The knowledge settled, cold and hard, inside me. Karin couldn’t help now, but she had left me a weapon. It was up to me to use it. I couldn’t let the Lady destroy any more human towns.
I sheathed my knife with my right hand. As Mom’s eyes followed the movement, I grabbed her wrist with my left, bending it down and away. If I could get the knife from Mom, I still had a chance of protecting her.
She fought me. “I need the knife.”
“Why do you need it, Mom?”
“To cut out your heart.” She spoke as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. A smile twitched the Lady’s lips as she petted Matthew’s fur.
I unbent Mom’s fingers from around the hilt. The knife clattered off a rock, and I grabbed it before Mom could. “Arianna! Go away!”
The Lady took a single step away before Matthew growled and jumped at me, pushing me backward into the mud. Mom’s knife flew from my hand. I felt the wolf’s hot breath on my face as his teeth went for my throat.
I rolled us over, pinning him beneath me. “Matthew!” I looked right at him as I tried to call the boy out from the wolf. “Matthew!”
He twisted and sank his teeth through my coat. Pain shot through my left shoulder. My hold loosened, and the wolf wriggled out from under me. I leaped to my feet, backing away as I drew my own knife from its sheath. “Go away, Matthew. Go away!”
He snarled and stalked toward me. I looked into his gray eyes and saw no one I knew there.
“Matthew.” My throat was dry. He’d known his name in Clayburn.
He didn’t know it now. I backed uphill, clutching my knife, bracing myself to use it if he leaped again. My shoulder throbbed, but I couldn’t let that distract me.
“Go ’way, stupid wolf!” Kyle barreled out from behind the quia tree, fists raised.
Matthew whined as he stopped stalking. “Go away go away go away!” Kyle didn’t use his name. He didn’t have to. Matthew whirled from him and fled into the forest. Mom retrieved Father’s knife with her good hand. I gripped my own knife tightly. The Lady watched us all, silent and frowning, fireflies glimmering in her hair.