Janni Simner - Bones of Faerie

I blinked in the brightness, and all at once I was looking down at Caleb, and he was looking up at me, while Mom watched us both, tears drying on her cheeks. Caleb opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. “I'm sorry,” I said. My voice was stiff, as if not used to speech. “I know I should have asked. Allie says you should always ask before calling someone back. Only I can see well enough Mom needs you here, and Allie, too, so I couldn't just let you go. And, well, you didn't seem to mind, not like Tallow.”

Caleb drew a long, uneven breath, then another, more steady. He sat up and solemnly lifted my chin. “Do not apologize, Liza. It was well done.”

I cried then. Not for Mom, not for Caleb, not even for myself. For the memory of a seed, shivering in my hand, not understanding it was in a place without life or color or hope.

I realized I held something. I looked down, unfolding my fingers as I did.

A small red-brown nut lay cupped in my palm, perfectly round, save for a small crack in its shell, thin as good nylon thread from Before.

I had a sister once. She was a beautiful baby, long-limbed and graceful, eyes dark as shadows through mulberry trees.

A month after her birth I crept out before dawn. I followed the road, carrying an oil lamp in one hand. My breath frosted in front of me. Maples and sycamores whispered among themselves, but I didn't fear them. I listened, as Father had taught me always to listen. I knew I had magic enough to keep the trees at bay.

The hillside where Rebecca had died was a patchwork of blackberry and sumac. “Go away,” I whispered, and the bushes gently parted, letting me through.

I searched for a long time, but no bones remained, no sign that anything but brown roots had ever troubled the earth. Finally light touched the horizon, and I blew the lantern out. The sky was gray as old embers.

I opened my other hand and stared at the nut that lay in my palm. The crack in its shell remained small, but I felt the green within yearning, like the shadows of the dead had yearned, to be called.

I dug a hole in the dirt with my fingers and buried the nut there. “Grow,” I whispered to it. “Seek sun, seek water, seek air. ”

I waited, but nothing happened. Sometimes what we want or don't want doesn't matter in the end. Sometimes magic doesn't listen after all. I patted the dirt down and returned to the road. I heard Allie's footsteps even before I turned. “You should know better by now than to leave us behind,” she said. Her hand rested on a wolf's back; he'd been sniffing the ground as they walked. Allie drew her hand away, and the wolf sat, regarding me. I regarded him back, knowing his gray eyes. I would always know him, whatever form he took.

“I wasn't leaving,” I said.

Allie tugged on her braid. Samuel had patiently worked all the tangles out. “That's what Matthew thought, too, but I wasn't so sure. So Matthew said he'd go with me, and Dad agreed. Boys aren't always silly, you know.”

“I know.” I reached out to scratch Matthew behind the ears, then drew away, embarrassed.

Matthew's nose nudged my hand back into place. Allie laughed. After a moment, I laughed, too. “You do have a wet nose,” I said, kneeling to put my arms around his neck. Matthew rested his head on my shoulder with a contented sigh. I thought of how he'd followed me against all reason. A few snowflakes fell, and I watched them land in his fur. Maybe everything wasn't dust and ashes after all.

“Look!” Allie cried.

Reluctantly I drew away, looking where she pointed.

Amid the brambles of blackberry and sumac a green sapling rose from the hillside, sprouting branches, sprouting leaves, grasping for the sky. Even as I watched, the central shoot darkened to cinnamon brown. The green leaves grew bright, and brighter still, and then all at once green gave way to a brilliant orange-red—as if the leaves had caught a bit of sun and didn't want to let it go. Those leaves were perfectly round. Quia leaves. Leaves from Faerie.

Allie grabbed my hand. Beside us Matthew stood, ears cocked forward, fur bristling along his back. The tree kept growing until it was tall as I was, and taller still. The sumac and blackberry bushes around it began changing, too, their leaves catching shades of rust and scarlet. Suddenly frightened I shouted, “Stop!”

The quia tree grew on, heedless as the River of my command. A branch released an orange leaf. It fluttered to the ground. Wind blew another leaf toward the road. It landed in Allie's hair, and I hastily pulled it away.

The leaf wasn't warm, in spite of its fiery hue. It was a leaf, nothing more, nothing less. Other leaves began falling, too, doing no harm. Matthew caught one beneath his paw and sniffed it uneasily. The flurries stopped, but the air still smelled of snow.

Once leaves had changed color in autumn, burning fierce as fire, falling soft as snow. I stared at the orange leaf in my hand, thinking of the seed I'd brought back from a place beyond either my world or Faerie, a place where the time for growing was past.

“I think it's all right,” I said slowly. “I think it's only—autumn. The way autumn used to be Before.”

For a time the tree kept growing and we kept watching it. At last the growing stopped. The quia stood tall as a young dogwood by then, and half its branches were bare. How long, I wondered, before new leaves started to grow? Not until the snows melted, perhaps.

A moment more I gazed at the hillside where my sister had died and where the quia tree now stood. “Rest well,” I said softly, and then I turned away.

We returned to town in silence, watching the maples and elms catch color ahead of us, reds and yellows and oranges leaping from tree to tree, advancing through the forest, a fire without heat. Magic, I thought. Maybe there had always been something like magic in this world.

At the edge of town I hesitated, glancing at Matthew. He walked on without stopping, though, head and tail held high, as if he were done with hiding. I wondered whether that was safe, even with Father gone. But if anyone tried to harm him, they'd have both of us to answer to, and perhaps the others as well. Maybe in time we would all be able to stop hiding.

Most folks were out in the fields—the flurries were reminder enough of the need to finish harvesting. Outside Kate's home she and Samuel watched the changing leaves beyond the houses in silence, the door open behind them.

Samuel reached for his daughter as we approached. He hadn't let her out of his sight yesterday, not even when we went to bury Tallow. Allie had cried as I set the old cat down in the earth, even as she told me I was right to let Tallow go.

Now Allie solemnly handed her father a yellow oak leaf she'd picked up from the road. Samuel clutched it in his hand. “I think maybe the trees will sleep this winter.” He grinned. “Almost like Before.”

Allie laughed. “That's silly. Trees don't sleep.”

Samuel tossed the leaf above him. It danced in the wind a moment before drifting down. Allie caught it again just before it touched the ground.

Behind them, Caleb stepped into the doorway. Mom followed, and Caleb helped her down the stairs. She was weak, she was pale, but she would heal now. Caleb had said so, and I was trying to believe it.

She wanted to heal now. I didn't need Caleb to tell me that.

At the bottom of the stairs Caleb drew away. He and Mom kept a careful distance, as if not quite sure of each other yet. I thought of how they'd walked together among the trees, unafraid. But that was Before, and autumn or not, I doubted the trees would ever be fully tame again.