Moonkind (Winterling) Read Free

neighed like laughing, and stretched into his fastest run.
    Fer crouched over his neck and clung to his mane with all her strength. Their speed blew tears from her eyes and she blinked them away. She couldn’t see what was ahead; the path was all moon-silvered shadows. A twig snagged her head and she felt the tie come off the end of her braid, and her hair unraveled into a tangled banner that waved behind her as they flew. Down the path they went, faster and faster, and for just a second Fer was the wind rushing through the dark night.
    Then Phouka crashed out of the forest and into the wide clearing that surrounded the Lady Tree, with Fer’s house and lots of other little houses perched in its branches along with bridges and ladders down to the ground. Phouka raced around the clearing once more and then slowed into a jolting trot: bump , bump , bump .
    “Pho-uka, let-me-off,” Fer said, trying not to bite her tongue as she spoke.
    Phouka tossed his head and bumped her around the clearing a second time.
    Fer laughed. He was a puck, after all. Lucky for her, he didn’t find a nice big thornbush and toss her into it. Finally he stopped, snorting, and Fer slid off his back. “Oh, very funny,” she whispered into his ear, still smiling. Then Phouka’s ear twitched and he pushed with his nose on her shoulder, and she turned to see what he was looking at.
    In the darkness, a campfire glowed at the base of the Lady Tree with some people standing around it, watching her.
    “G’night, Phouka,” Fer said with a final pat, and went to see who it was.
    As she got closer, she saw the young wolf-guard, Fray, standing with her burly arms folded, looking fierce in the firelight. Fer nodded, and Fray nodded back. Next to her, Fer saw one tall, pale shape and a second, shorter, darker shape with . . . was it embers burning at the ends of its hair?
    It was. What were they doing here? “Hello, Lich,” Fer said slowly. “Hello, Gnar.”
    The fire-girl gave Fer a brisk nod. “Hello, Lady Strange,” she said. Like when Fer had first met her, Gnar was dressed all in black silk; her skin was the color of burned paper, and so was her hair—except for the coals burning at the end of each long braid.
    Beside her, the swamp-boy, Lich, gave a solemn bow. “Lady Gwynnefar.” Lich was tall and thin and wore mushroom-colored clothes studded here and there with shiny bits that glimmered like dew.
    Gnar and Lich had been her rivals during the competition to win the Summerlands crown. Fer had once felt a flicker of friendship from them, but they’d allied with Arenthiel during his invasion of the Summerlands, so they hadn’t been friends after all.
    Fer shook her head, confused. “Um, what are you doing here?”
    “We were sent,” Gnar said with a dry grin. She cast a slanting glance at Lich beside her. “She looks like a wildling thing, doesn’t she, Dewdrop?”
    Lich nodded. “She does indeed, Spark,” he answered.
    Fer looked down at herself. Her long hair was tangled and had twigs and bits of leaves snared in it. Her clothes, the shorts and T-shirt she’d been wearing all summer, were pretty much rags, and she had what her grandma would call dirt socks on her bare feet.
    Well, all right. Maybe she had turned a little wild during the long, green days, her first summer of being truly and completely the Lady of this land.
    “Speaking of wild, the pucks aren’t here, are they, Lady Gwynnefar?” Lich asked. He looked uneasily out at the darkness past the campfire, as if a crowd of pucks was out there waiting to leap on him.
    “No, they’re not,” Fer answered. The pucks came and went as they pleased, but mostly they were off somewhere else. Usually getting into trouble.
    “Well, that makes things easier,” Gnar said. “We’ve come from the nathe. Sent by the High Ones.”
    Fer felt a shiver of worry. The High Ones ruled over all the lands, and the nathe was their palace. She hadn’t felt anything amiss in her own land,