Moonkind (Winterling) Read Online Free PDF

again.

Five
    Leaving Rook to exchange growls and narrow-eyed glances with the wolf-guard Fray, Fer went up to her house in the Lady Tree. During the summer, her house had just been a roof with silken cloth for walls, more a tent than a house. Now that fall had come, it was time to put the real walls up, with rugs hung on the inside for warmth.
    She felt the urgency of the consequences pulling at her. She couldn’t spend the time she wanted making sure all was well in her own land; she’d have go to the nathe the next time the Way opened. She talked to a few deer-women about keeping an eye on the bark-borer beetles in the deep forest. Then she mixed up a healing tea for the badger-man’s cough and sent one of her wolf-guards to bring it to him. After that, she took a long nap because she’d been up all night—coming through the Way from Grand-Jane’s house, and then meeting with Gnar and Lich. When she woke up, she got ready. If Rook was going to look all fine and fancy for their trip to the nathe, then she had to dress up too.
    Fer rummaged in the wooden trunk where she kept her clothes, pulling on her patch-jacket over her ragged T-shirt. Grand-Jane had stitched the jacket with powerful protective spells, and Fer kept cloth bags full of magical herbs in its pockets too. For her, it was stronger than any armor.
    In the trunk she found her bag of herbs and medicines that she always carried with her now, along with a tiny stoppered jar of Grand-Jane’s honey; she put all of that into her jacket pocket. Then she changed into the pair of jeans with the smallest holes in the knees, and found some socks and her sneakers and put those on too. Twig came in then with her wooden comb.
    “Sit on the bed, Ladyfer,” the fox-girl said. Fer obeyed. Twig lifted the snarled mass of Fer’s hair and dropped it again. “It’s so tangled,” she said with a sigh, and raised the comb.
    “Twig!” Fer sat up straighter. “Can you cut it off?” Her long hair was so much trouble: combing the snarls out, relying on Twig to keep it neatly braided. “Will you, I mean?”
    “Yes,” Twig said, and went to fetch a knife.
    While she was gone, Fer called her bees to her. They were the Lady’s bees, whose buzzing hums only she could understand. They flowed in through her house’s doorway and buzzed around the room in a golden swarm. She’d only bring one of them with her to the nathe. The one bee settled on her patchwork sleeve. “The rest of you stay here, all right?” she asked. “I won’t be gone long.” As an answer, the bees swarmed out the door past Twig, who was coming back in.
    Twig grinned and held up a knife. “Nice and sharp,” she said, and started hacking away at the clumps of Fer’s hair.
    While Twig worked, Fer closed her eyes. She had a thread tying her to all the people in her land—a bond between them—and it told her if they were happy, or if they needed her, or if they were worried about something. Now that Rook was here, she could feel a thread tying her to him, too. It wasn’t the same, though, as the connection she had to her people. It was warmer, somehow. It made her want to trust him. She was glad the thread was there, whatever it was.
    “Ooh, that’s a bad knot,” she heard Twig murmur. She pulled at a snarl.
    “Ow,” Fer complained.
    “Keep still, Ladyfer,” Twig said. “It’s your own fault.”
    It’d be her own fault too, if Rook had tricked her. He was a puck, after all, and she knew what that meant, despite the thread that connected them. He played by puck rules, and his promises might not be trustworthy.
    Still, she needed his help with this. She would just have to be careful.
    “All done,” Twig said, and stepped back to survey her work.
    Fer ran a hand over her head. Her short hair felt light, like chick-fluff. The back of her neck felt bare.
    “We should come with you,” the wolf-guard, Fray, said from the doorway.
    “We should,” Twig agreed.
    Fer stood up, brushing the last