Moonkind (Winterling) by Sarah Prineas

Author:Sarah Prineas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Rook felt like he’d been running for days, but he didn’t have time to rest. After leaving Fer at the Summerlands, he’d fetched his brother Tatter to look after her, which had taken some arguing, first with his brothers and then with Fer’s people, who didn’t want a nasty puck looking after their Lady, even if he was a healer.

Then he’d left the Summerlands again, and he was in a hurry.

When leading him to Fer, the bee had taken him to Ways that should have been open, but were closed. The pucks knew all the Ways: the ones that were open, and others that were only open at certain times. He’d never known so many Ways to be closed, though. Something was wrong about that. It must have something to do with the Forsworn.

In his dog shape, he retraced the route the bee had used when taking him to the prairie land. It led through a land of stony, dry desert, through a Way that should have led to a land of rolling, grassy hills dotted with knobs of rock; after that land came the prairie land. He loped along a rutted, rocky path and came up to that Way—he’d just passed through it the day before with Fray and Twig, and he’d come back through it in his horse form, carrying Fer to the Summerlands.

He shifted to his person shape and stepped into the Way.

It flung him back, like running into a stone wall. He landed in a heap on the rocky path. Climbing painfully to his feet, he stepped closer to the Way and raised his hand to open it, but it stayed closed.

“Locked,” said a timid voice from behind him.

He jerked around. Two mouse-boys with twitchy noses and smooth, brown hair peered from behind a cairn of piled stones.

Rook narrowed his eyes, looking at them with his puck-vision. Their noses were too sharp; their hair was too much like a mouse’s pelt. They were in the early stages of wildling, both of them.

“It’s a puck,” he heard one of them whisper.

They cowered away.

“No, wait,” Rook said. “Why is this Way closed? Do you know?”

“We want to go home,” one mouse-boy said. “But it’s locked.”

“Our Lord closed it,” the other said. “Then he went away.”

“He is afraid,” the first mouse-boy said. “So he left us, and he left the land.”

A Lord, afraid? A Lord leaving his land and his people to fend for themselves? “What’s he afraid of?” Rook asked, stepping closer to the mouse-boys.

They ducked behind the cairn. “Leave us alone, Puck!” one of them squeaked.

“I’m not doing anything,” Rook protested. He crouched and tried softening his voice. Mouse-people were well known for their timidity. “Why has your Lord closed the Way leading into his land? Why has he abandoned you?”

“He’s afraid,” one mouse-boy said.

Yes, they’d said that already. “Why, exactly?” he asked.

“The stillness,” the other added. “The stilth. It creeps from land to land. It’s coming.”

Rook stood; the suddenness of his movement made the mouse-boys skitter away, squeaking.

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