Bones of Faerie03 - Faerie After Read Free Page B

as we reached the hillside, green that longed to grow even as the tree prepared for winter’s sleep.
    Karin’s face held that listening look again.
    “Do you feel it?” I asked her.
    “Oh yes.” Karin thrust her staff into the brambles, and they moved aside, opening a path for us. I followed her to the tree, Matthew and Allie trailing behind me.
    Karin leaned the staff against it and put her hands to the bark. The tree’s branches rustled, as if catching a breeze. “This tree speaks of the gray, and of the green beyond the gray, and of … Liza. Hold out your hand.”
    I did as Karin said. A branch reached down and cool leaves brushed my palm. Something dropped into my hand: six perfectly round brown seeds.
    It was the green life within them that I’d felt. I saw the small curled shadow in each seed from which that life came. “They want to be planted,” I said.
    Karin smiled at that. “As all seeds do.” She reached toward me. “May I?”
    I poured the seeds into her palm, but the green in them kept pulling on me. Karin held the seeds as gently as one might hold a newborn child. “These seeds know you, Liza, much as their tree does. And they are strong, for all that they are young.” A few ivy leaves poked out from beneath Karin’s sleeve, and she rubbed them thoughtfully. “The only seeds I’ve known before with such strength and will to life came from the Realm’s First Tree, and that tree has only seeded twice that we know of. The first time was early in our history. I must tell you that story, and soon.”
    “I already know it,” Allie said. In her town, children memorized stories, because they considered storytelling a skill as important as sowing a field or wielding a bow.
    “What’s the second time they seeded?” I asked, though I feared I already knew.
    A wind picked up as the sun touched the horizon. Karin tilted her head, as if it carried some message only she could hear.
    “Just before the War,” she said.

Chapter 2
     
    K arin kept the seeds so she could study them further. Her staff she left by the quia tree, because while as a plant speaker she could control the staff’s growth easily enough, my town wouldn’t want any greenery near where we lived and slept. We’d seen too many killed by the swift-growing plants the War had left behind, plants that too often sought human flesh and blood.
    Seeds were easier to hide, though, and Karin hadn’t wanted to leave them behind. I felt the green in them all the remaining way into Franklin Falls, a gentle tug that wasn’t unpleasant but that never quite went away. Should I plant them? But Karin said that if the seeds were here, they must be here for a reason, and we should first try to puzzle out what it was.
    Matthew lived right at the edge of town. We nearedhis house as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. I saw Mom on the porch talking with Matthew’s grandmother, Kate, and with animal speaker Kyle, who’d turned six while I was away. Their hands and faces were streaked with dirt, no doubt from a day spent bringing in the harvest.
    Mom turned at the sound of our steps. She looked well, dark hair tied back, the gauntness gone from her face, her belly large with the child she carried. Kyle retreated behind Kate as I shrugged off my pack and climbed the stairs to wrap my arms around her, clinging as if I were a child as well.
    “Lizzy.” Mom held me close as she stroked my hair. “I’ve missed you so much.”
    My body pressed up against her belly. “You’re all right?” Of course she was all right. Matthew had said as much, but it hadn’t always been true, and I hadn’t known until then how badly I’d needed to see it for myself.
    “I’m fine,” Mom said as she pulled away. A silver-plated leaf hung from a chain over her stretched-tight sweater. Caleb’s quia leaf, from Faerie’s First Tree, which held some piece of Caleb’s being deep inside it. “The baby’s fine, too.” Mom’s gaze flickered over my stone hand,