Thorns (21 page)

She bent over her work, attacking the yarn with all the ferocity of her personality.

For what felt like an infinite stretch of time, no one spoke. Then, finally, Jonn nudged her with his foot. When she glanced up, he asked, “What wakes in darkness and sleeps in light, can’t be touched or seen with the eyes, but still inflicts intense fright?”

She scowled, clearly upset and not yet ready to put her hurt aside, but still she played along and answered. “A Watcher.”

“
Can’t
be touched or seen with the eyes,” he repeated.

Ivy bit her lip. Her face wrinkled as if she was about to declare she didn’t know, but then she blinked and gave him the faintest, most grudging of smiles. “A nightmare?”

He grinned at her. “You’re getting good at this.”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, but she seemed a little bit pleased. The tension in the room eased slightly, and I felt infinitesimally lighter. We could do this. Jonn and Ivy and I…we could find some sort of path between the external dangers and the internal strife.

Jonn grabbed another bunch of yarn and started winding it. “And who, in his most fearful moment, is also most brave?”

“A bluewing?”

“I always thought it was a Frost dweller,” I remarked. “Isn’t that what Da said?”

“A lot of Da’s riddles had more than one answer,” he said with a shrug.

More than one answer
…

My hands paused, and I raised my head. “Jonn.”

He turned his head, his gaze questioning. “What’s wrong?”

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. My mind spun, and chills ran over my skin. “What woven secret will keep you warm?” I finally blurted.

Woven secret
…

We locked eyes.

His mouth formed an O as he made the connection. “Do you think…?”

I scrambled for the bedroom without answering, and there it was, folded at the foot of the bed. My ma’s Frost quilt. The one she’d wrapped me in as a little girl, the one she’d always used to point out our farm, the village, everything.

A woven secret?

My fingers trembled as I shook it out. The colorful stitched patterns unfolded to the floor, spilling the map of fabric everywhere. I ran my hands over the village, our farm, the paths…

“It must be here somewhere,” I muttered aloud.

A shadow filled the doorway. Jonn, hobbling. “Lia?” His voice was high-pitched with excitement.

I gathered the quilt in my arms. “Come on. I need to leave out the lantern.”

Ivy watched us, wide-eyed, as we dragged the quilt to the fireside.

“Ivy,” I said. “I need you to hang a lantern on the tree at the edge of the forest. The one with the huge branch that hangs over the yard.”

She rose mutely and went to take it from the nail by the door while I shook the quilt out again and bent over the folds. Jonn joined me.

“See anything?”

“Lia,” Jonn said, in cheerful exasperation. “We’ve been looking at this quilt our entire lives. It’s not going to be glaringly obvious at first glance.”

“Right.” I ran my fingers over the stitches slowly, scanning every inch. Here was the village. Here was the path, edged in blue ribbon for the snow blossom bushes lining it. Here was the black swath of cloth that represented the river between the Farthers and us. Here was the icy lake, represented by a cloudy gray swatch, and here was our little farm, with a pale square for the house and a darker one for the barn. Tiny gray stitches made a path of footprints to the barn. I traced them with the tip of my finger as memories filled my mind. I’d pretended to walk that path with my fingers over and over as a little girl.

The footprints
…

I turned my head, tracing the glimmer of gray thread with my eyes. The forest of the Frost was a patchwork of fabric pieces and embroidery, a colorful cacophony of browns, whites, and gray. The thread glimmered through it all, a special, almost silver thread that caught the light and painted a shimmering trail. It wove around the barn and to the tree line of the forest, around the branches and up the side of the quilt toward…

“What is this?”

A tiny, thin brown square of fabric sewn into the midst of the forest.

He squinted at it. “I don’t know. I’ve never even noticed that before.”

“Look!” Along the edge of the square, in tiny stitches, were the letters:

P

L

D.

I would never have seen them if I hadn’t been holding the fabric an inch from my face. In fact, I might not have even noticed them then, that was how cunningly they were worked into the pattern of the quilt.

“Unbelievable,” Jonn muttered. Wonder filled his voice. “It’s been here this whole time. And what is that? Some kind of barn, a shed?”

I laughed shakily. “When Adam gets here, we’ll follow this thread trail and find out, I suppose.” I rubbed my hands over my tired eyes and leaned back. “A woven secret… They were telling us all along. I can’t believe it. They planted the clues for us before we even knew we needed them.”

I hugged the quilt to my chest, and just like the riddle promised, I felt warm.

A KNOCK WOKE me while the light was still pale and bluish through the curtains. Ivy was still asleep, wrapped up in so many blankets that I could barely see her. Everything below was still. Jonn was sleeping, too.

I wrapped myself in my mother’s cloak and went down to open the door.

It was Adam. He stood in the shadow of the stoop, his dark hair messed by the wind and his eyes tired but alert, scanning my face for any sign of anxiety or fear. “I saw the lantern. What—”

“We found it,” I whispered.

His mouth snapped shut, and for a moment, he didn’t move. He stared at me, immobile, and then he stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders. “What did you say?”

“We found the map to where my father hid the PLD. It was on a quilt my mother made, and the clue to it was in an old riddle he used to tell us as children.”

Adam was very, very still, as if he was afraid to move and wake from a dream. Finally, he exhaled deeply. “Unbelievable.”

“That’s what Jonn said, too.” I couldn’t stop grinning. We’d done it. Jonn and I had helped the Thorns just like our parents.

“Can I see the quilt?”

I stepped aside to let him in. He removed his cloak and shook the snow off his boots, and I led him to the fireside where the blanket lay across Jonn’s empty chair. Adam studied it carefully while I watched him. He examined every inch with the care of a craftsman examining a masterpiece.

“Clever,” he murmured appreciatively under his breath, speaking half to me and half to himself. “Hide the answer right out in the open where no one is looking for it. Incredibly clever. And who would look for the map on a blanket? Certainly not someone like me. Any person wanting to find this besides you or your brother would fail, because they’d be searching through old papers and maps instead of listening to family riddles.”

We studied the blanket together for a moment, wrapped in reverent silence until my stomach rumbled with hunger and I grabbed the kettle to warm over the fire. But in my excitement, I filled it too full. I sloshed water on the floor.

“Here,” he said, taking it from me. “Let me help.”

“Have you eaten?”

He shook his head.

I let him situate the kettle while I got out the bread and butter and the last of yesterday’s eggs from the hole in the wall by the window where they kept cold. Adam hung the kettle and stirred up the coals until they spat flames again, and when I stepped back into the main room, I smothered a smile at the sight of him tending a hearth so cozily.

“What?” he asked without looking up.

“Nothing…” I said. “You just make a pretty housewife, that’s all.”

He lifted his head and returned my grin with one of his own, the first I’d seen in a long time. “I’ve done my share of household chores, Lia Weaver.”

“You always call me that.”

“Call you what?”

“My full name—Lia Weaver.”

He turned his head away casually as he reached for the fire tongs to poke the coals again. “Lia.” The word was quiet, almost a caress, and for some reason hearing it made my stomach knot. I busied myself with the bread to hide how he’d flustered me.

“There’s something else you should know,” he said after a moment of silence.

I lifted my head and waited for him to continue.

“Some Blackcoat fools were arrested yesterday,” Adam said. “Korr is saying he’ll release them if anyone brings him information on Echlos, or a mysterious device connected with it.”

All the breath left my lungs. “The PLD?”

Adam nodded.

I twisted my hands together. “What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” he said firmly.

I bit my lip hard. The voice of the man from yesterday echoed in my mind. “They’ll be sent to detention camps—”

“We cannot give it up,” he said. “Lives are depending on this device, Lia. The Blackcoats made their own decision.”

“But—”

“We can’t.” He said it gently, firmly.

We stared at each other, and I saw he was as stricken as I was.

The door to my parents’ bedroom opened, and Jonn limped out. “Brewer,” he said, not sounding surprised to see him.

“Weaver,” Adam replied evenly, tucking away his sadness with one blink.

I left them sizing each other up and retrieved the bread. I sliced it, buttered it, and brought it to the fire.

When I returned, Jonn and Adam were deep in a discussion about the best way to access the location indicated on the quilt-map. “I know this trail,” Jonn said, tapping the line of silver thread. “My father used to use it to set his traps. It’s an old deer run, and it’s hard to follow because it constantly breaks and diverts and doubles back. Only our family knows the way.”

“When do we leave?” I asked, my stomach suddenly a riot of nervousness and excitement.

Adam smiled with half his mouth. “How soon can you be ready?”

~

We left immediately. Ivy was still asleep, and Jonn was working on quota when we exited. Adam started toward the barn, but I called him back.

“The horses won’t fit on the path. It’s too narrow, too twisting.” I hesitated. “Can we carry the PLD ourselves?”

Adam nodded. “Yes. All right then. On foot.”

We entered the woods at the break in the trees just beyond the barn. The hush enveloped us, and the weird blue light filtering through the branches cast a chill across my skin. But I felt strong and warm in my mother’s cloak. The snow blossoms bounced around my neck, reassuring me, and Adam strode beside me with his own cloak fluttering next to mine in the wind.

The only sound was the crunch of our footsteps and the hiss of our breath. The air was so cold it made my teeth ache. My fingers felt brittle even inside my thick wool gloves, and I tucked my hands under my arms to warm them. Around us, the Frost crackled with ice and shadowy silence.

“Did your father used to take you on this path?” Adam asked in a low voice, when we’d walked for some time. The warmth of his voice thawed me a little.

“Sometimes. He set traps along this path. He said it was a Weaver secret, a secret to be kept only in the family. He didn’t want the villagers knowing he walked the deep Frosts.” I paused, remembering. “He was never afraid to go into the Frost, you see.”

“I remember,” he said. “Your father was a brave man.”

A hot itch that felt like tears started behind my eyes. “He was the bravest man I knew. My mother didn’t walk the forests much, and never without him, but she was brave too. They were both so strong in the face of such hardship.”

“As are you.”

We glanced at each other, and words rustled in my throat, unspoken words I didn’t even know how to say. A bluewing fluttered in the air above us, shattering the moment, and we pressed on while my heart beat fast and my blood tingled.

Our feet beat a desperate rhythm over the hard-packed earth. The trail made a damp ribbon of dark brown through the snow, weaving beneath trees and around rocks as deftly as my mother’s stitches. We moved faster as the gloom deepened. Above our heads, clouds rolled in.

“Storm’s coming,” I said.

“We have a few hours still,” he guessed, staring hard at a visible patch of sky when we paused to rest. “How much farther?”

“Not much longer.” The Frost was turning into a misty gray as the shadows deepened and the sunlight darkened, screened out by the clouds. “Maybe ten minutes.”

We continued on, pressing deeper and deeper. The path wove under and squeezed between massive, icicle-encrusted stones. The memories flowed around me as we ran, mingling with the present. I saw flashes of my father through the trees, but it was only my imagination. Lurking at the edge of my awareness was the sensation of being watched.

Was it dark enough for Watchers to be roaming the Frost already?

Icy fear brushed my spine and twisted around my throat. I pushed the thoughts away and kept moving. At my side, Adam matched me stride for stride.

Suddenly, abruptly, a shape rose from the gloom.

The shed.

We paused together, panting, our breaths coming out in clouds of mist. The shed was just as I remembered it—small, weathered, with a sagging door and a single window of clouded glass. The trees bent over it, and their branches brushed the ice-covered roof. The path stopped at the door.

“He used to keep his traps here,” I said, stepping forward. My hands shook as I reached for the knob, and my scalp prickled as the hinges whined. The elements had warped the wood, and the door groaned like a dying man as we forced it open together.

Inside, the floor of unpainted planks rattled under our feet. Light trickled through the dirty windowpane and lit the room faintly. My heart thumped hard as I brushed my fingers over the walls. Old chains and traps with their rusted teeth gaping like jaws hung from the ceiling and cast a kaleidoscope of shadows across my hands.

We stopped in the middle of the room, and the silence rushed in and wrapped us in its cold arms.

“The floor?” I said, because it was the first place that sprang to mind.

We knelt, our fingers scraping at the boards. My mittens came away grimy. Adam yanked one up. It came away in his hand without any effort revealing dirt beneath.