Lili Crow - Wayfarer

At least, while Dad was in town they did. When he wasn’t, the Strep had gone alone.

Mrs. Fletcher had her arms around the boy. The surprise for Ellie was seeing how he’d grown. When she’d moved to New Haven he’d been a weedy little jerk, and she’d known him peripherally for years.

Ruby would like him now. Cute enough. But arrogant. Ellie sighed. She still remembered the sandpit, Avery throwing handfuls of it at her, and her own despair as she tried to avoid them. He’d been, what, twelve? Thirteen?

A gnarl-skinned redcap, its cheeks flushed and its too-long arms corded with muscle, brought luggage along the platform on a wheeled cart. It hopped a little, as if the platform burned—of course, redcaps were changelings, and the fey on them would make them uncomfortable around cold true-iron. Still, they didn’t Twist, and this was a good job to have.

Fletcher’s luggage was part of what the redcap was hauling. The boy surfaced from the hug, his father ruffled his hair, and Avery glanced across the platform like he could feel her gaze. Heat rose up Ellie’s neck, staining her cheeks, and she looked away.

The Strep still had her arms around Marguerite, who had gone pale but nodded eagerly. The naked hope on her round face was almost too much, and Ellie hastily looked away again. Her gaze settled on the train, and she counted the charm-symbols crackling against the black pitted metal, trying to unravel what each one did.

“Hey! Sinder!” Yelling again, across the platform. “ Ellen! Hey! ”

Oh God. She pretended not to hear, staring at the blurring charm-symbols, keeping the Strep in her peripheral vision. Her stomach ached, and the Strep’s head came up. She beckoned, and Ellie trudged obediently across the platform, ignoring Avery’s last cry.

Talking to him would only cause trouble. How had he remembered her name?

“A friend of yours?” Laurissa inquired, sweetly. Her eyes had narrowed, and her mouth was tight. She studied the boy and his parents speculatively.

“Huh?” Ellie played dumb, hunching her shoulders. “Oh, Fletcher? I saw him at a couple charming events. Hi. I’m Ellie.”

The wan, moonfaced sister offered one moist paw. “Rita,” she whispered. “Marguerite.”

Ellie dredged up a smile. “How do you do, Rita.” Did she grow up with the Strep around? That would explain a lot. But she’s so young.

Whatever the girl would have said next was lost in the train’s blasting whistle, and Laurissa hurried them away with sharp heel-clipping steps, glancing back occasionally at the Fletchers with that same odd expression. For a moment Ellie lost herself in another fantasy—true-iron suddenly smoking and scorching the Strep as she screamed, her spite and rage exposed for all to see.

Ellie’s back ran with gooseflesh and she slowed, glancing sidelong. Avery Fletcher stood near his luggage, his father picking up two suitcases, the duffel bag slung over Avery’s shoulder. His mother tipped the redcap with a flutter of paper credits. Avery was smiling, his dark eyes merry and warm.

Looking directly at her, for some reason. Or maybe at Laurissa.

She put her head down against the cinder-laden breeze and hurried after the Strep.

FROZEN WATER’S COBALT WEIGHT, THE COLD BITING fingers and toes, its claws trickling up arms and legs, a trail of pain before numbness sets in. She floats, somehow a part of the ice, undulating along its deep glow. Not sunshine, the light comes from inside somehow, and the freeze is a harsh friend.

It traces up her veins, and soon it will reach her torso. When it has risen past her belly, up her arms and past her shoulders, it will spread inward through the arches of her ribs. When it touches her lungs she will not breathe, and afterward, it will close, almost gently, around her beating heart.

Everything . . . will stop.

These are the most dangerous dreams, because it is so tempting to just let go, let the ice creep, until it is too far along to be halted. Then it will be out of her hands.

No.

As always, there is a shimmer above her. The same smell, of rotting green and cold metal; the warmth in her nose was blood. Floor wax and the back-and-forth motions as she worked, the squares of pale sunlight on the orphanage floor. Someday she would be rescued. Maybe her mother would even come back, golden hair shining, and—

Well, even a slave had dreams.

Wake up. Not severe, but warning. There was a stinging all over her, vicious little nips of pain, and a trembling glimmer in the darkness as she sank. Fingers in her hair now, and a scalp-spike of pain as she was pulled.

She didn’t want to wake up. The ice was up to her shoulders now, and her legs were inanimate. So easy to just slip under. So tempting. The wax swirled in a circle, her knees aching and her hands chapped and stinging, loose as seaweed in the cold flow.

The ice was everywhere. She should be numb. Why did it hurt?

The sting became a howl of fury, and she finally began to struggle. Not for the surface and for air, but for the ice, chasing the numbness as it retreated, a false friend after all.

Ellie lunged upright, sweat tingling in her scrapes, her hair stuck to her forehead and the faint aqueous light from her mother’s ring picking out the grain of rough wood.

This tiny roundish room had a low ceiling; a beam was right over the place Ellie had chosen for her sleeping bag. She had to be careful or she’d bonk her head right on it and add another contusion to her collection. If she had a credit for each one she could escape tomorrow, and a thin rancid giggle at the thought caught in her throat.

Her breathing slowed. She clutched at the blanket she’d filched from the upstairs linen closet and let her racing pulse slowly wind down. Let the brain tune itself to a formless hum, let the body sort itself out. Disconnecting was easy, once you had the hang of it.

When Mom was alive, she’d rock Ellie to sleep after black drowning dreams; night terrors were common for charmer-children. Now Ellie found herself swaying slightly, and the quite natural thought that she could maybe disconnect long enough and deep enough to stop breathing was actually comforting.

Another sharp crackle, and the ring stung her. She inhaled. It was like a Sister’s popcharm against the knuckles—not hard enough to really hurt, but it got your attention for sure.

The girl—Rita—now had the bedroom that used to be Ellie’s. Oh no, she doesn’t mind , she’s happy to be taught how to share , the Strep had said, calmly gleeful. It didn’t matter—Ellie’d taken one look at the stifling, beribboned, pink-laced tomb across from the master bedroom, where Laurissa wanted her to sleep, and privately decided fuck that noise . It wasn’t any great trick to sneak up here to her refuge, the most forgotten space in the whole four-towered pile of stone that was one of the larger houses on Perrault Street. Especially since the few staff they had weren’t enough to keep the whole pile gleaming the way it used to.

Just after the news about Dad came, Ellie had thrashed out of a nightmare in the middle of the night to find a ghost of the Strep’s choking Noixame cologne hanging in the darkness with the smoky burning cedar breath of anger, smoldering instead of raging flame. Maybe Laurissa had been in her room, or maybe it was just a warning.

Either way, she’d locked her bedroom door and brought up things to this little space by dribs and drabs. A hideaway, a safe spot. Preparation was a girl’s best friend, and all that.

Now she blinked, taking stock, her arms around her knees.