Faerie Winter (24 page)

Kyle led me on, past the Store and into the forest. Around us, oaks and maples moaned as they stretched new leaves toward the rain. A length of bright ragweed crept toward our feet.
“Go away,”
I whispered, and it drew back, more quickly than it would have last spring. Perhaps the plants had grown a little tamer while they’d slept.

We found Matthew hunkered down in a clearing among the trees, his fur soaked and tangled, his belly
pressed into the mud. Kate knelt a few paces away, making soothing sounds, but Matthew didn’t seem to hear his grandmother.

I knew this place. It looked different without the snow and with the green, but it was the same place we’d found Ethan.

“Matthew wore his paws raw running to our town,” Allie whispered. “He made it clear he wanted Caleb and me, but he wouldn’t let us get close, and he wouldn’t shift back. He was so wild—I don’t think he wants to change, Liza.”

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 him. He was here. He was Matthew. I hadn’t lost him. The world was not winding down after all.

Caleb whispered something I couldn’t quite hear. “Well done,” Karin said softly.

“The things I did,” Matthew said. “I could have killed Tara. I could have killed
you.
”

“But you didn’t.” I’d nearly lost him instead—but that hadn’t happened, either.

“I brought Johnny back to her. He wouldn’t have died if not for me.”

“You didn’t kill him. She did.” In the end he’d been a weapon in the Lady’s hands, just like I had.

“He’s still dead.” So harsh, Matthew’s voice. “Nothing can make that right.”

I stroked Matthew’s hair, which was as wet and muddy as his fur had been. His hands and feet bled. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.”

“Nothing’s safe.” Matthew shook in my arms. Someone—Hope—handed me a blanket; I wrapped it around him. Half the town seemed to be watching us.

“You saved me,” I told Matthew, “and Karin and Ethan, too.” That had to count for something. “You brought Caleb and Allie back in time.”

Matthew nodded as if that knowledge, too, were difficult to bear. His shaking eased. “Liza.” He took my strange stone hand and cradled it in both his human ones, as if it were terribly precious. I was suddenly aware of how close we were, of his bare skin under the thin blanket. I looked at him. He looked at me. I realized we were both trembling again, and I had an urge to laugh that made no sense at all.

I didn’t know which of us moved first, but all at once our lips were pressed together, and my hand was back in his hair, and we were holding each other close as we knelt in the mud. He tasted of earth and wolf and boy and
Matthew
, and I didn’t want to ever let him go.

The rain fell harder. Under her breath Hope muttered, “About time.”

“Help?” Kyle whispered.

“No,” Allie said. “I don’t think you can help with this.”

I ignored them all. Matthew and I held each other so closely, so fiercely, as if all this world depended on it, and Faerie as well.

We didn’t stop until the soil beneath us stirred. We scrambled to our feet then, remembering that we were in a forest, with all the dangers forests held. A bright purple flower unfurled in the brown mud. Matthew and I stepped back as the crocus hissed with the acid it held.

“It’s spring,” Matthew said, but not as if he believed it.

I looked at the bright trees, at the small spitting flower at our feet, at Matthew’s muddy hands holding both of mine. For now I would have to believe for us both.

“I know it is,” I said.

Many thanks to: C. S. Adler, Dawn Dixon, Larry Hammer, Jill Knowles, Patricia McCord, and Jennifer J. Stewart for reading the manuscript, often on short notice. Everyone at Kindling Words West 2009 and 2010 for their positive energy and regular reminders that I knew how to tell this story. Petra Brun for loaning me her daughter Elín’s name. Rick Holderman for answering my hawk questions. My editor, Jim Thomas, without whom this would be a far weaker book. Chelsea Eberly, Ellice M. Lee, Meg O’Brien, and everyone at Random House who saw the story out into the world. My agent, Nancy Gallt, without whom Liza’s journey might never have begun, and her assistant, Marietta Zacker. And especially, my thanks to all the readers who asked to see more of Liza and her world and who encouraged me to return there.

Janni Lee Simner
lives in the Arizona desert, where she has traded winters with snowfalls and gray trees for winters with rainfalls and green trees.
Faerie Winter
is the sequel to her first young adult novel,
Bones of Faerie
. Janni is also the author of the young adult fantasy
Thief Eyes
, as well as four books for younger readers and more than thirty short stories, including one in the urban fantasy anthology
Welcome to Bordertown
.

To learn more about Janni, visit her website at
simner.com
.