Janni Simner - Faerie Winter

I inhaled the mint-scented steam. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Mom gave me a searching look. “What happened?”

I looked at the mug as I repeated all I’d told Jayce. SeaWorld San Diego, it read. I wondered, not for the first time, where San Diego was, and whether it had survived the War, and how you made a world of the sea.

Mom ran a hand through her lank hair. “I wish you didn’t have to go out there.”

“I do what needs doing.” No one else’s magic could lay ghosts to rest.

“We both do.” Matthew’s human footsteps crossed the room.

I turned and saw that his frown reached to his serious gray eyes—he didn’t like Mom’s complaining about our patrols, either. I longed to run a finger along his down-turned lips, but I didn’t.

Mom sighed. “I just wish I could keep you safe.” She filled a mug for Matthew, too, one with a picture of a thorny green plant that looked as if it shouldn’t have existed before the War. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the mug read.

The tea burned my throat as I finished it. You never kept me safe .

Matthew drank his tea in a few quick gulps. “Thanks, Tara,” he told Mom. His fingers brushed mine, and the light touch tingled over my skin. Matthew and I kept each other safe. He was the one person in this town I trusted beyond all doubting.

“See you later, Liza?” A few strands had escaped his blond ponytail. I resisted the urge to brush the hair back from his face, even as I imagined drawing him near enough for our lips to touch as gently as our fingers had. As always, the thought made me feel strangely shy. What if Matthew could read it in my face, as clearly as I could read the angle of his wolf’s ears, the tenor of his bark? What if I acted on it, only to find he didn’t feel the same way?

“Later,” I agreed. I stared at the way his shoulders stretched the fabric of his sweater and at the downy fuzz on his chin and cheeks, which had nothing to do with his shifting and which hadn’t been there when winter began. I’d buried my face against his fur often enough. Why did I hesitate so much more when he was human than when he was a wolf? I watched as he grabbed his coat from the couch and headed out to help his grandmother with their morning chores.

Mom put her hand on my shoulder as the door shut behind him. “I thought we could practice control this morning, too. You’ve gotten so good with your calling this winter. Now we just have to work on applying that to your visions.”

I wasn’t sure my visions could be controlled. The harder I tried, the more they caught me unaware. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure whether it was the past or the future I saw.

And where were you, Mom, when I started having visions? For more than two years, all the children in my town had known they could go to Mom and Matthew’s grandmother with their magic—except for me.

Mom had no magic of her own. No human born before the War had magic; all those born After did. But Mom had spent time in Faerie Before—time with Caleb—and knew more about magic than most. She’d taught the others as well as she could, in secret so that Father wouldn’t find out. Matthew’s grandmother had helped her. Matthew and Hope and the others had been Mom’s students, and they’d all known about each other’s magic, though they’d never spoken of it aloud where those without magic could hear. Mom said she’d feared that Father would kill me if he learned I knew about the magic in our town, so she’d hidden that magic from me. She said she’d been protecting me and the others both. But after Father had abandoned my sister to die, Mom had run away to what remained of Faerie, leaving me alone with him. Sending Father away had fallen to me and my magic after all—the magic Mom hadn’t known I had until after she’d left.

My throat felt dry. I picked up my mug and remembered that it was empty. “There’s work to do.” There was more work now that Father was gone.

“I already brought in the water,” Mom said.

“Mom!” My fingers tightened around the mug’s handle.

“I’m not an invalid, Liza. You don’t have to do everything. I brought in the eggs, too. It’s not our turn with the sheep or goats, so we’re okay there.”

I looked at Mom’s thin shoulders. “Caleb told you not to push too hard.”

“Kaylen doesn’t know everything.” Mom used his faerie name from Before, as she often did. She took the mug from me. “I left you the firewood, if you really feel you haven’t worked hard enough today.” Mom set my mug on the shelf above the fireplace, beside other chipped mugs from Before. She reached for Matthew’s mug as well, then stopped short and clutched her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I grabbed her as she stumbled, and helped her over to the couch.

“It’s nothing.” Mom sighed as she sat down. A hank of wool lay on a drop cloth beside the couch, and she took up a handful of it. “Go get that wood, if you’re so eager to escape your lessons.” She grabbed the metal-toothed hand carders from the table and began pulling wool through them.

I watched her fingers grow shiny with sheep oil, fighting the fear that had stalked me ever since I’d found Mom and brought her out of Faerie, fear that Caleb hadn’t fully healed her after all.

“I’m fine , Liza.” Mom didn’t look up as she continued carding the wool.

I wanted to believe that, but Mom had lied to me before. How was I to know when to trust her? I stalked past her and out the door before I could ask the question aloud.

The clouds were thicker now. I buttoned my coat and pulled on hat and gloves as I walked through the town and down a side path to the Store where we kept our firewood. I could barely make out the words General Mercantile above the door. The rest of the sign, proclaiming that the Store sold ice, fudge, and cigarettes, had long since faded away.

The door creaked as I opened it, stepping into a dim room piled high with stacked firewood. Gathering wood had been easier with the trees asleep. Behind the Store’s metal counter, I heard whispers.

I found Kyle there, lying on his stomach, talking to a row of black ants with a metallic blue-green sheen. Carpenter ants. Though they made no sound, I knew that the ants spoke to Kyle, too. Kyle was an animal speaker and, at five years old, the youngest surviving child in our town to have come into his magic.

Anyone who could talk to carpenter ants knew they didn’t belong in a woodshed. Kyle looked up at me, as furtive as if he’d been caught dipping a finger into the honey. He had a streak of dirt across his nose, and a slick of black hair stuck straight up from his head. “They say the wood is warm. They say they want to stay.”

“They can’t stay,” I told Kyle. His coat and rumpled pants looked like they’d been slept in. Perhaps they had—at the meeting during which we’d told the townsfolk about our magic, Kyle’s mother, Brianna, had wanted to force Kyle and his older brother out of the house, only their father wouldn’t allow it. It was their father who’d shivered to death holding his first wife’s shadow too close less than a month later. As far as I could tell, Kyle’s mother could barely stand to look at her children now.

A half dozen ants climbed onto Kyle’s fingers, which were losing their baby thickness. If the ants feasted on our firewood—or the Stores’ timbers—we’d have a problem. “If they stay, we’ll have to lay down poison.”

“It’s not their fault!” Kyle hunched protectively over the small creatures. “It’s cold outside.”

It wasn’t a hawk’s fault it had to eat, either, but that didn’t mean I was obligated to let one gut me for its dinner. “There are other warm places. Tell them to find one.” Ants, like termites, had the entire sleeping forest to feast on this winter.