Moonkind (Winterling) by Sarah Prineas

and heavy, and were covered with seaweed that looked like moss. She set them down on a patch of warm rock.
    The seagull hopped up beside her.
    Fer licked her lips. She was so thirsty, and so hungry. If she smashed the shells open, the mussels might be juicy and delicious. But . . .
    Mussels didn’t have eyes or brains, and they weren’t like cows or pigs or chickens, but they were meat. She knew what Grand-Jane would have to say about that—and at the thought of her grandmother she felt a sudden, fierce pang of lonesomeness that made a sob catch at her throat. No tears, though; her eyes were too dry.
    The seagull reached down with its long, yellow beak and tapped at one of the mussels.
    Fer sighed. “You’re right,” she croaked. “I’m not going to eat these.” Anyway, it was water she needed most, not food. She gathered them up in her hands and tossed them back onto the rocks at the edge of the island.
    By afternoon, her stomach had stopped growling. Her mouth felt like it was full of sand. “I’d better stay out of the sun,” she whispered. And out of the wind, which blew and blew without stopping. The seagull hunched and turned its beak into that wind, looking like an old man wearing a gray raincoat.
    Fer huddled in the shadow of the tower. As the sun marched across the sky, the shadow moved, and she moved with it.
    Nobody was coming. The bubbles of laughter were all gone. Her eyes felt gritty and her mouth felt as dry as paper. Her words were drying up too.

Fifteen
    The Summerlands had moved well into autumn since Rook had left with Fer. The rain had thinned to a chilly drizzle, and fog crept in among the roots and dying ferns. In the gray air, the red and yellow and orange leaves of the trees glowed like a banked fire in a bed of ashes. The leaves of the Lady Tree, a huge, silver-barked beech tree, were a deep purple brown; raindrops dripped from every twig.
    Rook crouched just inside the door of Fer’s house in the Lady Tree’s branches. A cold breeze blew in from outside, but he didn’t want to go farther into the room, where it was warmer. His brother Phouka was on the ground below the Tree, waiting. Across the room were Fer’s most trusted people, all frowning and ranked against him and disbelieving every word that he said, curse them. Up where the roof peaked overhead, the rest of Fer’s bees hovered in a grumbling swarm.
    He shivered and his stomach growled, the sound loud in the silence. A few last drops of rain spattered on the roof.
    He had told them about what had happened at the nathe, how he and Fer had made the mistake with the Birch-Lady’s glamorie. He held up his hand and they’d edged closer to look suspiciously at the bit of shadow-web that was etched across his palm. He didn’t tell them about how Fer had broken the thread that had connected them, but he did tell how Fer had left, and then how her bee had found him.
    “It’s a good story,” the wolf-guard Fray said, frowning. “I’m not sure I believe it.”
    The bee had settled on his collar again. Zmmmzimzimrm, it buzzed.
    “See?” Rook said, pointing at it. “The bee says I’m telling the truth.”
    Fray shook her head. “Only the Lady can understand the bees, you lying puck.”
    Really? “Why are you talking to me, then, bee?” he asked it.
    The bee gave a smug buzz.
    Curse it. “Look,” he said to Fer’s people. “Night is coming. When the Way opens, I’m going through it whether you are with me or not, and I’m going back to another Way that is guarded by the Forsworn, because Fer is on the other side of it. Maybe I’ll get through, or maybe they’ll kill me, but I’m going.”
    Their grim faces watched him.
    “I need your help,” he finished, “if you’ll give it to me.” As he spoke, he realized how unlikely that would be. A Lady’s people, helping a puck. It’d never happen. He’d have to go stupidly die trying to get Fer out of whatever trouble she was in, and maybe she would die