I’d tried calling the winter crops as I’d called the seed. They hadn’t listened. I’d tried to call acorns and maple seeds, remembering how I’d once sensed the green at the heart of all seeds yearning to grow. I’d felt nothing but a shadowy gray silence. I’d had no better luck calling leaves from the bare branches of the quia tree itself. The days were as long as the nights now, and winter still hadn’t released its hold on the land. I could fight a willow’s strangling roots, or a hawk’s poisoned talons, but I didn’t know how to fight a world that didn’t want to grow.
We left the fields behind, walking past the ruins of splintered houses half-buried in tangles of dead ragweed and wild grape. At the edge of the ruins, a once-abandoned house awaited painting. Beyond it we came to the row of whitewashed homes that was our town. As Matthew and I followed the path alongside them, I saw Jayce—the town blacksmith—walking toward us, limping from his old hunting injury. As he waved, I pulled my fur hat more firmly down over my ears and made sure my hair was tucked into my collar. My magic was no longer a secret—nor was anyone else’s—but the clear streaks in my hair were more reminder of it than most folks were comfortable with.
“Liza.” Jayce’s hand gripped his cane, his skin scarred from years spent working in the forge. His gaze flicked to the wolf at my side. “Matthew.” Matthew’s walking through town as a wolf was more reminder of magic than many were comfortable with, too, but Matthew didn’t try to hide, not since the meeting at which we’d told the town that all its children either had magic or one day would. That meeting had gone better than I’d feared: only two adults had drawn their knives, and while one of the children had caused earth tremors with his magic, he’d stopped them before it became clear he was the cause. Until then, our town had cast out all magic for fear of the harm it could do—of the harm it had done, during the War. Once the townsfolk learned that every child born after the War was touched by magic, however, they had little choice. They couldn’t cast us all out, though there were those who wanted to try. Jayce wasn’t one of them. He’d had enough of dead children, too.
“Find anything out there?” The blacksmith’s gaze remained on me, not Matthew.
“A boy.” I rubbed Matthew’s ears. “Young, no more than three.”
“And you took care of him?”
I stared at the condensation frozen in Jayce’s bushy beard and brows. “Not just a shadow. We found a body as well.” I told him all that we’d seen. Sun lit the thin streaks of high clouds. If the cold didn’t break, in a day or two there’d be more snow.
The blacksmith ran a hand over his bald head, which bore more scars. “Council meets tonight. I’ll tell them. If there’s time, maybe we can send someone to bury him—only once the snow melts, we’ll all need to be out planting.” If he feared that the spring crops wouldn’t grow, he gave no sign. Adults believed, somewhere deep inside, that spring would come, for all that they were careful of our rations. Some part of them couldn’t imagine that green wouldn’t return to the world, as if green was something we were born to. I did not understand it. Deep inside I felt as if this gray had surely gone on forever and the forests I’d fought all my life had been merely illusions.
Jayce blew a puff of frost into the air. “It can’t be an easy thing, walking with ghosts. You’re a good girl, Liza. I always told your father so. I think he’d be proud of you, if only …” He shook his head. Surely he knew that Father wouldn’t be proud of me if he saw me using my magic so openly, no matter that I used it to protect my town. Father would have killed me for that magic if he could have, just as he’d killed my baby sister, even though I was too old simply to be left out on a hillside to die. He’d have drawn his knife across my throat, only I’d used my magic to send him away instead.
“Take care Liza, all right?” Jayce hesitated, then looked at the wolf. “You too, Matthew.” He continued down the path toward his forge, and Matthew and I continued to my house.
I heard voices out back. We walked around to find Mom and Hope crouched in the snow.
“Gently,” Mom said. “A breath of wind, nothing more.”
Hope closed her eyes and held out her bare hands. A breeze rippled over the snow, catching the thin blond braids that fringed her face. Tiny acorns clattered at the braids’ ends. A foolish risk, some said. I knew I wasn’t willing to trust an acorn enough to wear it so close to my face, winter or no winter. But ever since Hope and her new husband had moved into their own home, she seemed to have given up on caring what others thought.
The white snow in front of her drifted upward. Hope grinned, a mischievous look that made it hard to believe she was older than Matthew and me. At nearly eighteen she was the oldest person in our town with magic.
“Control,” Mom whispered. I tried not to focus on how loosely her down-filled coat hung about her shoulders, or the way the shadows around her eyes gave her face a sunken look that hadn’t been there last summer.
Hope’s breeze gusted, blowing cold white powder into all of our faces. I coughed; Matthew shook snow from his fur. Hope laughed, brushed the snow from her jacket, and got to her feet. “This is gonna be hell once the baby starts kicking.” Her hands moved to her belly, though there was little sign yet that she was pregnant.
Mom smiled. Did anyone else see the tiredness behind it? “That’s why you need to work on control now. Practice whenever you can.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hope said, but there was no seriousness in it. She ruffled Matthew’s fur. “You two getting into any trouble?”
Matthew barked. My face flushed.
“And why not?” Hope pulled on her gloves.
Before I could answer, Matthew shrugged his wolf’s shoulders. Hope laughed again. “See you all later. I’ll practice, Tara, I promise.” She gave Mom a quick hug and headed home with a final wave.
Mom hugged me, too, more tightly, as if determined to keep me close. I hugged her back, feeling her bony shoulder blades through her coat. She headed inside, and Matthew and I followed, through the back door and into the cold kitchen, where Matthew’s clothes lay scattered on the floor. He hung behind as Mom and I continued into the living room.
Mom had built up the fire. I pulled off my gloves and warmed my chilled hands over the coals. I loosened my scarf, unbuttoned my coat, and shoved my hat and gloves into my pockets. The coat had no lack of pockets; it was Father’s old army jacket from Before. Wearing his coat felt strange, but I’d outgrown mine, and I welcomed the warmth of the bear-fur lining he’d added.
Mom shrugged off her coat and pulled off her gloves, too. Without thinking, I searched for the silver leaf she’d worn all her life, a gift from Caleb—but she’d removed it the day Caleb had left our town, and I hadn’t seen it since. I’d not told either of them about the vision I’d had that day. I thought of Mom, trembling as she’d fled from Caleb—but she hadn’t seemed frightened when she’d taken off the leaf, only sad.
I watched as Mom took a pot holder and removed the teapot from the rack above the fire. She poured hot tea into a mug and pressed the warm mug into my hands with a little too much force, as if that, too, were a way of holding me close.
Heat spread through my chest as I drank. My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it. If I could wait until after my morning chores to eat, I’d be less hungry the rest of the day.
Mom put her hands over mine. Her fingers were too thin, bone pressing against skin. “You’re cold, Lizzy. More trouble? You didn’t have any nightmares last night, so I slept right through your leaving.”