Winterling Read online

  The camp’s lanterns had been put out. Overhead the sky arched dark and full of stars, except for a wedge of moon. Days had passed, Fer realized, since the moon had been full and fat; it was waning toward crescent, and then it would turn toward dark again.

  She rubbed her temples as the Lady’s glamorie faded, along with her headache. Her stomach twisted with worry.

  A Lady so beautiful, who had been her mother’s friend, couldn’t be lying, but something was wrong here. Really wrong. Fer wanted to be alone in her tent so she could go over the conversation with the Lady again. The Lady was bright and beautiful, but she’d been twisty, too. Thinking straight around her was hard. Fer had even eaten meat, even though she’d never done that before. Suddenly Fer missed Grand-Jane very much.

  She put the Lady’s feather in her patch-jacket pocket, next to the sprig of lavender and the spell-bag of protective herbs. Then she looked down at the whip. She fitted her hand over its grip. There was no way she was ever going to hit the horse with this. But the Lady had given it to her, and she’d notice if Fer didn’t have it anymore, so she couldn’t throw it away.

  Beside her, Rook took a breath, as if he was about to say something.

  Fer glanced aside at him. “What?” She dared to ask him a third time. “Rook, you have to tell me. What’s the matter?”

  He flinched, as if she’d slapped him. “I can’t tell you anything,” he said.

  “Isn’t that the rule?” she asked. “I asked three times, so you have to answer?”

  “Stop asking, Fer,” he snarled. In the dim light, his yellow eyes gleamed, as if they had flickers of flame burning in them. “I’m thrice-sworn to her,” he said. “I’m under her orders to watch you and report to her and to tell you nothing. No matter what, I can’t answer any of your questions.”

  Chapter Ten

  Thrice-sworn? What did that mean, exactly? From what Grand-Jane had told Fer about the rules of the land, and from what she’d seen here so far, any oath had power. An oath given three times? It had to bind the one who’d given it tighter than knotted ropes. Fer turned to face Rook. “All right,” she said. “What about this, Rook. You are sworn to the Lady, but I saved your life, remember? Not just once, but two times.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” Fer went on. “You owe me for that. What if I said you had to pay me back by answering a question?”

  He went a little more pale.

  “You’d have to answer, wouldn’t you?” she pushed.

  He stared at her, looking angry and a little sick.

  She assumed this meant the rules of this place might make his head explode. “Rook, I keep trying to ask questions,” she said, “but instead of answers all I get is more questions. I want to know if my mother really did accidentally kill my father. I want to know why the Lady killed the stag in the clearing. That killing didn’t feel right, Rook, it felt like she was killing a person, not an animal. I want to know who that Leaf Woman was that I met in the forest. I want to know why the Lady wanted me to come through the Way, if she’s just going to set people spying on me. I want to know who I am and why I’m here.”

  “I can’t—” Rook started.

  “I know,” Fer interrupted. “You can’t answer. I wasn’t asking, Rook. I’m just telling you. I know something’s wrong here, I can feel it, and I’m going to find out what it is.” She set off down the snowy path, and after a moment, Rook followed.

  At her tent, somebody was waiting. One of the Lady’s maid-girls wrapped in a woolen blanket. She stood shivering, holding a lantern that made a circle of light in the darkness.

  “Hi, Twig,” Fer said.

  The maid-girl shivered; she glanced at Rook and then ducked her head. “I’m not Twig. She’s my sister. I’m Burr.” She leaned in to whisper to Fer. “Tell him to go away.” She flicked her fingers toward Rook.

  Fer shot him a quick look. “Why?”

  The maid-girl shivered. “You should be careful. The puck is hers.”

  “I know he is,” Fer said. “What do you want?”

  “I saw something,” Burr said. “In your bag. You have herbs. Things in a box. You are a healer.”

  “I’m not—” Fer started to say. “Well, only a little. I’m not very good yet.”

  “Oh,” Burr said, and her voice was the merest breath. “I need a healer. Twig is sick. I need a healer to help her.”

  Fer blinked. She wasn’t really a healer, not like Grand-Jane, but she might be able to help. “All right,” she said. “Just wait a second.” Ducking into her tent, she went to her backpack and dug out the OWEN box. Grand-Jane had put herbs in it, and if Twig was sick she’d need them. She stepped back outside. “Take me to her,” she told Burr.

  They were just setting off through the snow when one of the Lady’s black crows spiraled down and perched on a nearby branch. It cocked its head, watching them with a sharp eye.

  “Wait,” Rook ordered. He bent and packed snow into a ball, then stood and flung it at the crow. The snowball splatted into the crow’s breast, and with a squawk and a swirl of feathers, it fell off its perch. “All right,” Rook said, wiping his wet hands on his coat. “Let’s go.”

  At first Fer and Rook and Burr followed the paths in the encampment, but then Burr led them past the tents onto a different path, not so well traveled. They walked under the dark pine branches, through a forest blanketed with silence and snow. The icy-cold air went into Fer’s lungs and puffed out as clouds of steam. Against such cold her patchwork jacket shouldn’t have been much protection, but even so, she felt comfortably warm. Maybe the spells Grand-Jane had stitched into the patches had more power here, on the other side of the Way.

  The path led deeper into the forest. The legs of Fer’s jeans were caked with snow up to the knees, and snow had gotten inside her sneakers. High up in the fir trees the wind blew, sending icy crystals sifting down.

  Ahead of her, Burr stopped. “Here,” she whispered, holding up the lantern. Its yellow light flickered over a huge pine tree covered with a thick layer of snow, its branches bent to the ground.

  “Where?” Fer asked, and her voice sounded loud in the silence.

  As an answer, Burr pulled one of the tree branches aside and ducked underneath, taking the light of the lantern with her. Fer followed. The tree’s heavy branches, weighted to the ground by snow, made a snug tent held up by the rough-barked trunk. The ground underneath was covered with soft pine needles.

  On a bed of pine branches lay Twig, covered with a brown woolen blanket. Burr crouched next to her and set the lantern by her head.

  Rook ducked into the tree-tent. Fer handed him the OWEN box to hold, and crawled over to take a look at Twig.

  Burr’s thin hands brushed Twig’s hair off her forehead; she watched Fer with wide, frightened eyes. “See? Can you help her?”

  In the warm glow of the lantern, Twig looked flushed, her face pinch-thin, her mouth open, panting.

  Grand-Jane had taught Fer how to check for fever. She leaned forward and touched her lips to Twig’s forehead. Better than checking with her cold hands. Twig’s skin felt hot and damp. Fer took the girl’s face in her hands and stared into her glittering eyes. Something looked back, something wild. Fer tried her magic seeing trick, turning her head to peer at Twig out of the corners of her eyes. For just a moment she saw a sharp, foxy face with black eyes and, poking up through the tangled hair, pointed ears with a tuft of fur at their tips.

  Fer blinked. “What is that?”

  “She’s wildling,” Burr whispered.

  Fer patted Twig’s face and picked up her hand. “What’s wildling?”

  Burr gazed at her with wide eyes. “Wildling is bad. Things are falling apart. Things should be held together.”

  Were things falling apart? Fer wanted to ask, gazing back at the other girl. Was this the wrongness she felt? She had a feeling Burr wouldn’t be able to answer that question. “Rook, look in the box and find the bags of herbs,” she said.

  Rook sh
ook his head. “You can’t help her if she’s wildling,” he said, his voice rough.

  “I can at least try,” Fer said. Twig’s hand was hot too, and when glimpsed sidelong looked more like a paw than a girl’s hand. “Burr, can you find me a rock or something to grind the herbs on?”

  Burr nodded and crawled out of the tree-tent.

  Whatever wrongness caused wildling, it looked like a fever, and she knew what to do about that. One of the things you had to do, if the fever was very high, was to call the sick person back to herself. Grand-Jane had told her that the people of this land had animal or plant selves. Wildling looked like the person part of the person was being lost. Turning wild again. The person part had to be called back, to heal the wildling.

  “Those wolf-guards are wildlings too, aren’t they?” Fer guessed, not expecting Rook to answer.

  He didn’t.

  Burr crawled back into the tree-tent and gave Fer a stone, round and gray, as if it’d been smoothed in a river, and cold from the icy night outside. Fer took the bags of herbs and roots and seeds that Rook handed her. The bags were made of cloth—Grand-Jane didn’t like to store magical herbs in plastic—and each one had a label stitched on it. Comfrey, willow bark, mugwort, cinquefoil, yarrow. Some of the bags clinked. They had tinctured herbs in them, stored in glass vials.

  “And the honey,” she told Rook. She held out her hand.

  Rook didn’t answer or hand her the honey. He was crouched on the pine-needle floor with the box open before him. From it he’d taken the round gray stone with the hole in it; he held it in his hand, staring down at it.

  “What?” Fer said.

  Burr stared too. “Where did you get that?” she whispered.

  Fer took the stone from Rook’s hand. “This?” She held it up. “I think it was my father’s. The stuff in the box was his.”

  “It’s magic,” Burr breathed.

  Rook shook his head. “It’s dangerous.”

  “What does it do?” Fer asked.

  As an answer, Burr made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and held it up to her eye.

  Back home, Fer had tried looking through the hole-stone, but she hadn’t seen anything different. With a shrug, she held the stone up to her eye and looked through it. Nothing. Then her gaze fell on Twig. Even without the turning-head trick, she could clearly see the wildling girl, the sharp, foxy muzzle, the bead-black eyes, the hands curling into paws where they rested on the blanket.

  She turned the magic look onto Burr. The other girl still looked like a girl, but with her features a little too sharp, and just the hint of brown-red fur along her hairline. “It shows things as they really are,” Fer realized. “You’re wildling too, Burr.”

  The girl’s eyes grew wide and filled with tears.

  Fer lowered the stone and turned to Rook. “Do you want me to look at you?”

  “I do.” He gave a curt nod. “Just get on with it.”

  She raised the seeing-stone again and examined him. Same shaggy black hair hanging down into narrowed yellow eyes. His eyebrows winged up—she hadn’t noticed that before. Same stubborn set to his frowning mouth. And still too pale, as if his wolf bites were hurting more than they should be. She blinked and saw, behind his face, what he would look like as a horse and as a shaggy black dog. But they weren’t wildling creatures, they were just him. She lowered the stone.

  “Well?” he asked, his voice tense. “What did you see?”

  “You’re not wildling,” she answered. “You’re just you.” She put the seeing-stone into her jacket pocket. “I do wonder how you change from a boy into a dog or a horse, though.”

  His sigh sounded like relief. “Keep wondering,” he muttered.

  Fer grinned, and he scowled back. “Can I have the honey now?” she asked.

  He dug in the box, pushing aside the crow feather and the photograph of her father, and found the screw-top jar of honey that Grand-Jane had put in. Fer opened it and dipped her finger in. The taste reminded her of summer days when the heat shimmered above the clover field. The bees wove their own kind of magic as they zoomed around the fields, working hard all day long, then settling quietly into their hives when the sun set and the cooler night came on.

  Grand-Jane’s magic, her honey and herbs and stitchery spells, were all about safety and protection, all about home, and home magic was the opposite of wildling. It might be just what Twig needed.

  The smooth stone would work for a mortar and the round seeing-stone for a pestle. Fer spilled a few drops of honey onto the mortar-stone and added a few pinches of mugwort and yarrow and, as a febrifuge, some of the dried willow bark. The herbs would be better macerated—that’s what Grand-Jane would say—but she didn’t have time for that, or the boiling water. Twig would just have to take the herbs as medicine, and Fer would hope for the best.

  When the herbs and honey were ground to a sticky paste, Fer turned to Rook and Burr. “She might not want to take it,” she said, “so you’d better hold her still.”

  Burr and Rook crouched at Twig’s sides and held her arms. Fer scooped up a fingerful of the herb paste and said a quick healing spell over it. As she brought the paste to Twig’s mouth, the girl turned her face away, then struggled against the holding hands, snarling, rolling her eyes, snapping at Fer’s hand.

  Fer leaned over Twig and gripped her hair, staring down into her wild eyes. “It’s medicine,” she shouted, trying to see past the wild animal to the girl behind it. There she was, scared, hiding from her wildling self. “It’s medicine, Twig,” Fer said again, more softly.

  Twig stilled and opened her mouth. Fer gave her the paste and Twig swallowed it. After a few moments her eyelids fluttered and closed, and she breathed out a deep sigh.

  Fer sat back. Then she scraped up the rest of the paste from the mortar stone and put her other hand on Burr’s shoulder. “Now you, to stop your wildling too.”

  Obediently Burr opened her mouth, and Fer gave her the herbs.

  “It’s sweet,” Burr said, licking her lips.

  “Grand-Jane’s honey,” Fer said. She put the bags of herbs and bottles of tincture back in the box.

  “Did it work?” Burr asked.

  “I don’t know,” Fer said. With the edge of her T-shirt she wiped the herb paste off the seeing-stone and held it up to her eye. Through it, she saw Twig sleeping peacefully. Already the girl’s face was less foxy; the ears didn’t poke up through the red-brown hair, and they weren’t pointed and tipped with fur. Fer turned the seeing-stone on Burr, and her wildling had stopped too. Fer blinked and lowered the stone. “It worked already,” she said. It really was magic. Strange. She put the stone into the OWEN box and stuffed the box into her backpack. She started to crawl toward the way out.

  Burr’s thin hand stopped her. “I owe you an oath for this,” she said softly. “And Twig will give you hers.”

  Fer gulped. “Oh, no. No thanks, Burr.” She didn’t want anyone swearing oaths to her.

  “But we owe it to you,” Burr said, her eyes wide. “You know we do.”

  “No,” Fer said again, more firmly. As she gazed at Burr and her sleeping sister, she felt her connection to them snap into place. Stronger than thread this time, and more certain. “You can choose, Burr,” Fer said firmly. “I did you a favor, and you can decide if you want to do one for me sometime, but you don’t have to. Okay?”

  Her hands clenched, Burr stared at Fer.

  “She doesn’t understand,” Rook said roughly. “Just let her swear an oath.”

  “This is my rule, Rook,” Fer said. She nodded to herself. Yes, she was right about this. “Burr can choose for herself.”

  Chapter Eleven

  After seeing Fer safely to her tent, as he’d been ordered to do, Rook stopped on the snowy path on the way to the Mór’s tent. From that direction came the sound of drumming; through the trees he saw the flickering light of a bonfire and wildly dancing shadows. The Huldre, the Lady of the land they’d just arrived at, and her people, had
come to meet the Mór, then, to barter with her for the bringing of spring.

  Rook didn’t know for sure, but he suspected that the Mór had hunted the true Lady and her human lover, and had spilled their blood on the land. That would explain why the Leaf Woman, who made the seasons turn, had fled into exile. If the Lady’s blood had been spilled in the Mór’s hunt, it was an abomination, a stain that seeped through the land and stopped the wheel of the seasons from turning. Spring would not come to any of the lands as it had before.

  So the Mór had discovered a new way to bring the spring. She had offered blood sacrifice. It was an old magic, blood for blood, and the Mór had been strong with power at first, but her power was ebbing away, the blood stained the land, and its people were wildling. The land and its people needed a true Lady to save them.

  And Fer was the true Lady’s daughter.

  Rook glanced back at the girl’s tent. He wasn’t sure what to think about her. Before, he had thought her too weak and ignorant to help, and after the stag hunt she had seemed as blinded by the glamorie as any of the Mór’s people. It was clear that she had no idea who she really was. But she had battled the wolves to save him. She’d stayed on Phouka during the wild ride, which was more than he had managed to do. Rook had thought the last thing he ever saw would be the fierce girl reaching down from Phouka’s back, but then she’d gripped his shirt and pulled him out of the darkness.

  And she was Fer, too. A skinny, honey-haired healer-girl who dared to ask questions even of the Mór, and whose herbs and spells and gray seeing-stone had greater power than she realized.

  Gwynnefar frightened him. But he trusted Fer. He didn’t know why he trusted her, but he did.

  He shook his head, which had started aching again. He was a puck, and he shouldn’t trust anyone except for his puck-brothers, and they were far away and couldn’t help him now. He headed down the path toward the Mór’s tent. A crow flapped over his head, the spy he’d thrown a snowball at before. It jeered at him, then went to perch on a tent pole. In the clearing before the tent, the snow had been trampled down and a bonfire lit. The wood had come from dead pine trees, and it snapped and crackled and sent sparks whirling into the night sky. Three drummers crouched at the edge of the dancing, hammering with short sticks on their drums. The sound came up through the ground and through Rook’s feet, pounding along with his headache.