Janni Simner - Faerie Winter

I wasn’t brave, and I hadn’t been alone. Someone had been with me on that journey, but I’d forgotten his name as well. My chest hurt. I didn’t want to hurt. What was the point of pain when worlds were winding down?

“I know,” Johnny said, though I hadn’t spoken aloud. “Been a rough week for both of us. Come on.” He held out a hand.

He made everything sound so easy—I reached out and took his hand. His fingers were ice; I gasped at the cold that knifed through me. It turned to a painful tingling as dead branches fell away. I tried to burrow back down among them, but Johnny wouldn’t let go.

“Sorry, Liza. You don’t get to take the easy way out.” He smiled sadly. “Only I get to do that. Promise me you’ll take care of Kyle?”

Kyle—there was pain behind that name, too. “I promise.” The words came easily. I already had promised that, hadn’t I?

Something stabbed at my eyes—light? Johnny shrank from it. “Also, tell Matthew it wasn’t his fault, okay? He’s like you and Tara—he always blames himself. Tell him.”

“All right.” I was standing. When had I gotten to my feet?

Johnny laughed softly. “So now you have no choice. You have promises to keep out there. And so I get to go. Thanks, Liza.”

The light was growing brighter. Suddenly I wanted light, wanted color, more than anything. “Come here,” I whispered, and I felt that light pulling on me, as strongly as the gray had. I wanted spring. I needed spring. “Seek air, seek light, seek life!”

Light and color flooded me—too much. I staggered and fell to my knees, but I kept my hand pressed against the quia tree. I was surrounded by color: pink sky, orange dawn, a snaking green thread that yearned toward me. I stood and pulled that thread, pulled it with all the magic I had. For a moment I saw Johnny, a shadow once more, watching me. “Seek rest,” I told him.

“Already planning on it,” Johnny whispered. Then he was gone, and bright leaves were uncurling all around me—on the quia’s branches, on sumac and blackberry, on the brown oak nearby. I needed to do something once I woke the oak tree. What was I supposed to do?

“Karin!” I called. “Karinna, come here!”

Sunlight spilled like liquid fire over the horizon. It had been night when I’d started this. How long had I been here? I kept pulling on the green, pulling it out of a land beyond both my world and Faerie, a place where nothing grew—the place where all growing began. The thread thickened into a green rope. The rope grew slippery, seeking to escape my magic’s hold. For an instant it did escape, and I slid after it, back down into the gray—

Then Karin was pulling the rope alongside me, and her magic wrapped around mine, adding its strength. Leaves exploded to life all around us. Brambles tangled my ankles. I ignored them. Nothing mattered more than holding on to that rope. We pulled harder, Karin and I, pulled the green out of quia and blackberry and sumac, out of trees farther and farther away. I pulled something more out of some of those farther trees, too, something human only I could call.

Each pull drained something from me in turn. Leafy branches circled my waist, my chest, but I didn’t stop. We needed the green. We needed light and life and growth. Thorns pierced my skin, drawing blood. Through the branches, a hand grasped mine. “Spring,” Karin whispered. There was so much joy—so much light—in that word. “This world will hold a time longer yet.”

I looked for Karin, caught a glimpse of green vines flowing up her neck, of thorns reaching for her eyes. “I’m … glad,” I managed to say. Green leaves sprouted between our fingers, pushing our hands apart. Tendrils wrapped around my ears, flowed over my face. I couldn’t see Karin anymore. I could only see green growth all around. I ached with the brightness of it.

“Enough.” Karin’s voice was fainter. “Leave be.” She spoke to the plants now, not me. “Let blood and bone go. Seek soil, seek water, seek—”

My ears rang. Very far away, someone called my name. I struggled toward the sound, but the plants were too strong. They dragged me down, and I fell into the green.

Green light burned against the insides of my eyes, spreading through my arms, my legs, my thoughts. Green things whispered to me, speaking of hunger and soil, of pounding rain and searing sun. Pinpricks of pain raced along my body, thorns being torn away.

“Hang in there, Lizzy. I’ve got you.”

I tried to put a name to the voice, but I couldn’t think through the whispers and the light.

“Wake up, Liza!” A child’s call—it had no power over me. “No sleeping! Wake up!” The child began to cry.

Darkness threatened at the edges of the green. I fought it. I wanted light. I wanted spring. A wolf howled. I tried to answer it, but darkness closed in around me, darkness and ice.

“Come here, Liza.” A cold voice—the Lady’s voice. “The worlds wind down, and no mere human shall escape their fate.” I had no choice. I followed her down into the endless dark, knowing that winter took everything in the end.

“Oh, no, you don’t, Liza.” A girl’s voice. Silver light flooded my sight, chasing the dark away. “I tell you and tell you that you can’t leave us but you just—don’t—listen.” The light grew colder with every word, a cleaner cold with nothing of darkness in it. My arms and legs tingled, as if thawing after a walk in the snow. The tingling hurt— I bolted upright, fighting it, sending new pain through my shoulder, over my torn and bleeding skin.

“Stay still, Liza! Caleb’s with Karin, so I’m on my own, and I don’t want to push too hard—” The girl drew a gulping breath.

I knew her then. “Allie?” That made no sense. Why was Caleb’s student here?

“Please, Liza,” Allie said. She eased me down again. “I know this is hard. Don’t make it harder.”

“Allie, how—”

“Later,” Mom said. I knew her now, too. “There’ll be time later.” Mom’s hand grasped mine—my right hand, because something was wrong with my left—as Allie’s light washed over me again. Too cold—I screamed, and for a time I did nothing but scream. After that, I heard someone crying, and I didn’t know whether it was Allie or me.

“You’re going to be all right, Liza. You know that, don’t you?” Allie sounded so tired. “Only you need to rest now. I’m sorry, but you do.” The darkness that wrapped around me was warmer now. Gentler. I fought it, but it pulled me under just the same.

I woke to a feather mattress beneath my back and a dull aching pain that filled my whole body. From someplace out of sight, I heard talking.

“You said you could heal her.” Elin’s voice was bleak.

“And so I have.” Caleb’s voice, hard and grim. His being here made no more sense than Allie’s being here.

“Why should this world be saved,” Elin demanded, “while ours falls to dust?” Caleb had no answer for that.

I opened my eyes. Light stung them. Bright afternoon sunlight, shining around the shutters of Kate’s bedroom window. From a chair at my side, Mom reached for my hand. Her face was covered in scratches, her arm bandaged, her wrist in a splint. “You’re hurt,” I said. Why was she hurt? The plants hadn’t attacked her.

They had attacked me. Memory returned slowly, in tattered bits and pieces. Karin and I had called the plants back into the world, but then they’d attacked, because that was what plants did when they were awake.

In a chair at the foot of the bed, Allie jerked awake, and she hurried to my other side. Mom released my hand.