Jackson Pearce - Cold Spell

They thought Keelin was Mora.

“They’re chasing her,” I say under my breath. “She makes it snow to slow them down. They’re—”

“Quiet,” Flannery hisses at me, and I go red, dropping my eyes in shame. But there it is, the realization, unfurling inside me. I’m not the only one who wants to find Mora.

No wonder she’s running.

The Travellers are mostly quiet the following day. There’s no music echoing over the camp, no laughter, and every now and then someone paces along the edge of the forest with a shotgun, waiting for a target that never comes. A rainstorm sweeps through in the afternoon, cold and miserable; I fall asleep to the sound of it pelting the RV’s roof.

When I wake up a few hours later, Flannery is at the kitchen table. She’s fiddling with a music box she’s taken apart, broken into a million pieces; the little plastic ballerina lies on her face on the kitchen table across from where Flannery is sitting. Flannery moves the pieces around as if she means to put the box back together but doesn’t know where to begin. She looks up at me.

“ Shoru’ s tonight,” she says dully, then answers my question before I can ask it. “Funeral. Well. Sort of. There’s no body, so…” She shrugs and looks back at her music box.

“Should I… do you wear black?” I ask.

“If you’ve got a black dress hidden somewhere, feel free,” Flannery says, and I’m sad she doesn’t grin to punctuate the sarcasm.

A knock at the door; Flannery looks up, confused. She rises and goes to answer it.

“Flannery,” a male voice says.

“Callum,” Flannery says. “What’re you here for?”

“I, uh… came to apologize. No Fenris for your collection, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Flannery exhales, and looks at me. “S’for the best, I guess. Better you be alive and all. I’ll get one someday.”

“You will,” Callum says with enough certainty that even I believe him.

A long silence again, in which I can tell Flannery and Callum are making still, perfect eye contact. Finally, he exhales and moves a bit. “I brought these for you.” I see his arm extend; he’s holding Ella’s shoes. They’re even shinier than before, as if he buffed them.

Flannery’s face forms a strange expression; her eyebrows dip down, her lips part, and for perhaps the first time I see she’s not entirely unlike the girls I go to school with—save the knife. She reaches forward, hooking her fingers into the heels.

“Why’d you want to give these to me?” she asks.

“I dunno,” Callum says, sounding sheepish. “Knew you liked them. And it’s not like there’s someone else I want to give them to.”

“No one else?” Flannery asks immediately, pointedly, and there’s so much weight on the question that even I sink under it. It’s a long time before Callum answers.

“Nah. No one else.” He exhales. “I should go.”

“Yeah,” Flannery says. “There’s no point… I mean…”

“Yeah. Enjoy the shoes.”

The door shuts.

Flannery walks over to the table, eyes cast down, hair wild and tangled around her face. She puts the heels on the table and sits down, staring at them, then looks up at me.

“Do you know how to wear these?”

“I know the basic idea,” I say.

“They’re stupid. I mean, seriously—who the fuck designed these? You can’t run. You can’t even walk on anything but pavement. That heel’ll sink right into the dirt.”

She’s quiet again, crossing her arms, but her eyes keep flirting to the shoes.

“Do you want me to show you how to walk in them?” I ask quietly. Flannery scoffs and shrugs her shoulders, but then stands and takes her shoes off. She holds onto the table as she steps into the heels. They’re a little too big, but not horribly so. Once she’s in them and balanced, she looks up at me hopefully. I rise.

“Try to take a step,” I say; Flannery obeys, almost immediately toppling to the floor. “No—don’t slide your foot. Just step and—yeah. Only instead of hitting heel first, kinda hit toe first. Sort of.” Flannery wobbles across the RV’s tiny kitchen and back. I’m glad Ardan can’t see her.

“How do you keep from… damn it,” Flannery says when she wobbles to the side and has to grab onto the oven.

“Pull up from your stomach,” I say, though I’m not sure I have a clue what I’m talking about. Flannery lifts up, and I raise my eyebrows—she looks regal, like Brigit. Less like a girl, more like a queen. She takes a few more wobbly steps, then a handful of confident ones before she grins and sits down, sliding her feet out and rubbing the arches.

“They’re still ridiculous,” Flannery says, though it doesn’t wipe the smile off her face. She picks up the music box figurine and makes her spin between her fingers for a few moments.

That evening, at the shoru, the Travellers cook dinner over the campfire, potatoes and meat—I’m not entirely sure what type—wrapped up together and left on the rocks surrounding the fire until cooked through. Declan plays guitar, songs that start out somber and pick up as the night wears on. There’s liquor, but also milk with honey stirred in, and cakes with hard shells but soft centers.

“Not all our traditions are bad,” Flannery tells me under her breath as she stuffs a few cakes down her shirt for later.

By sunset, most of the crowd is drunk and dancing, save Keelin’s parents; they sit beside Brigit at the head of the fray, eyes glistening with tears in the firelight but faces firm. Yet by the time Brigit and Flannery disappear together a few hours in, Keelin’s parents sink even farther down in their chairs, as if they’re hoping to melt into the ground like the snow.

No more stalling. I’m going to have to run for it, and soon. I begin to consider when—are the wolves more likely to get me in the daylight, or at night?—when Callum walks over and sits down in the dirt beside me.

“Wager I can’t talk you into another round of Widow’s Lover, can I?” he asks.

“Not a chance,” I say. “You’ll forgive me for still being bitter that you won.”

“Ah,” Callum says, grinning. “You might’ve had me. The secret to that game—to all games, really, if you ask me, is to always have the upper hand.”

“In a game of chance, that’s easier said than done.”

Callum nods a little. “Always have the upper hand, and if you should find yourself in a situation where you don’t… create a new upper hand. You had me there, at the end, till I reminded you it was your first time playing. Made you bolt. Got me my upper hand back.”

I consider this. “Just as well,” I finally say. “Flannery likes the shoes more than I did anyhow.”

Callum instantly goes red, staring at the fire. It’s a few moments before he speaks again. “So she… she did like them? Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I taught her how to walk in them.”

“Good,” Callum says, looking relieved. I can’t decide who is more pathetic among us—me, kidnapped and desperately in need of a shower, or him, ridiculously in love with the Princess of Kentucky.

“I wanted to find one for her,” Callum says, changing the subject. “Wanted to bring it to her alive.”

“Has anyone ever caught one?”

“Killed one, yes. Not often, but yes. Caught one? No one’s done it yet,” he says, running his fingers through the dirt. “Truth is, Flannery’s probably the only who’s got the skill and strength to catch one, even though she doesn’t believe that herself. She’s never allowed to go after them anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” He stops and smiles at me. “Did she tell you she’s waiting for a bear to wander into camp, so she can catch it?”