Winter (The Manhattan Exiles) (3 page)

“
Still nothing to do with us,”
Gabby said.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, and pursed my lips.
“Do you suppose he cut down our vic before or after he cast the circle?”

“
I thought you said it was blood magic.”
Richard closed his fingers over the salt and bone. “
Blood magic, blood comes first
.”

“
Smells like blood magic,” I agreed. “Looked like blood magic. But -”

“
Win,”
Lolo interrupted from down the tracks. “
You’d better come see this.”

1
. Girl In The Wall

Aine opened her eyes and remembered dying.

“
Loc na mhuice
! Where did she come from?”

There had been pain and confusion and then terror.

“Summoner’s circle, most likely.”

“
Impossible! She wasn’t here an hour ago. She wasn’t here five minutes ago!”

The world had tilted, slid sideways from under her feet. Pressure, cold, like bands of ice around her heart, and then a struggle to breathe -

“She’s naked.”

“
Lolo, for God’s sake! Stop staring. Gabby . . .”

-
and falling through darkness, and she’d known she was dying, and she had tried to scream -

“
Can you reach her?”

“
Dude, she’s totally naked.”

-
and then her mouth had filled with dirt, and panic had dissolved away to -

“
Christ, has she melted into the wall?”

-
nothing.

She couldn’t remember. Her eyes wouldn’t foc
us. Everything was too bright, blurry. Her back hurt, and her feet. She tried to turn her head, to move away from the pain, but she couldn’t. She cried out in fear.

“
Hush, child. Don’t move.”

The warning came from somewhere
past her shoulder. Aine blinked tears from her eyes.

“
Gabby!” Another voice, much louder and farther away.

“
Hush, Winter. Just hush.”

Tiny pricks ran along Aine’s shoulder and across her arm. She shivered, and the skin of her back pulled. She lifted a hand to muffle her cry, and was dully surprised when she managed to stuff her
knuckles in her mouth. Only a moment ago she’d barely had the strength to open her eyes.

“
The wall’s melted into her, not the other way around. It has quite a bit of her hair. And . . . stay still, lass . . . I’m afraid some of her flesh.”

The air went abruptly still, and Aine realized she had been hearing other sounds. Scrap
es and scuffles and breathing: people. But surely she was dead. Had they come to pull her from her grave?

“
Stop,” she pleaded. “You’re hurting me.”

Only, her mouth was still blocked by her
fingers, and she couldn’t quite make the words fit together.

“
I’m sorry, princess. Hold tight. Just give us a minute. We’re here to help.”

He was mistaken, she wasn’t a princess. She was dead.

But she couldn’t force words past her hand again, so she bit down on her knuckles instead.

“
Richard, give me a boost. Gabby, how much of -”

The person on Aine’s shoulder made a tsking noise.

“Right, then.” The scuffling sounds grew louder. “Let’s see what we’ve got. Richard, can’t you keep steady?”

Suddenly Aine’s ears popped. Her gaze cleared, and she was staring into a pair of somber grey eyes.

The grey eyes were framed by the longest lashes Aine had ever seen. Lashes too pretty for even the most beautiful girl, and yet they belonged to a boy with a wide mouth and dirt on his chin.

“
Hello,” said the boy. “You’re doing fine. Stay still a moment longer and we’ll have you out.”

The boy rocked
just the smallest bit as though the ground was unsteady beneath his feet. He smiled sweetly at Aine. There was a bronze blade in his hand. She looked at the knife and then back at his smile.

“
Steady, Richard,” he said again. He reached around Aine like an embrace.

The boy’s coat was soft, and he was warm. His breath tickled Aine’s ear as he spoke quietly.
“How bad is it?”

“
Mostly her hair. She has a lot of hair, and it’s all in the stone. You’ll have to hack it off, Winter.”

“
Hair will grow back. Won’t it, princess? What about the rest?”

“
Bits of the skin on her shoulder blades and her heels. Winter, I think-”

The boy moved again. He wasn’t smiling any longer, but something about his steady gaze made Aine almost forget she’d died.

“It’s not so bad as it sounds,” he said. “We’ll get through it.” He took her hand gently from her mouth. Her knuckles were bleeding where she’d bit through. “Cup your fingers.”

“
Aye?”

“
Curl your fingers.”

Baffled and numb, Aine curled her fingers.

“Winter, it’s five o’clock.”

“
Thank you, Lolo,” said the boy. “Please do let us know if you hear a train.”

He set something in Aine’s palms.

It was a large mouse, mostly white except for a pink nose and soft brown eyes. But that was wrong, Aine thought, the eyes were wrong.

“
This is Gabby,” the boy said. “Keep your eyes on Gabby, and we’ll have you out in a second. Ready, Richard?”

“
Yes.”

The mouse twitched its whiskers, and gripped Aine’s thumb with one tiny paw.

“Think of something pleasant,” it said gently. “I find that often helps.”

Aine was so startled by the talking mouse she almost didn’t notice when the boy embraced her again. Her scalp pulled. She understood that he was cutting her hair, parting the strands with the edge of his bronze knife.

She had a lot of hair. She remembered that it often tangled in the trees when she forgot to braid it back. She remembered that it took a long time to wash it clean.

But the boy was quick with his knife, and after only a few hear
tbeats the last strands parted, and her head was free. She gasped.

“
That was the easy bit,” the boy warned. “Look at Gabby’s nose, now, and think of lollipops.”

Aine didn’t know what ‘lollipops’ was but she did as he said, pinning her gaze to the pink tip of the mouse’s nose. She tried not to notice the boy was holding his breath. She could feel his heart thumping aga
inst her own, through the shirt he wore beneath his coat.

He must be concentrating very hard, she thought distantly, her eyes on the mouse.

Then he moved, and Aine’s back seemed to catch fire. She gasped and jerked forward; she couldn’t help it.

“
Steady.” He was back in front of her, brow pressed against her own. “Steady. All right?”

She nodded, although she wasn’t sure. The world was beginning to tilt again. She was afraid she’d dropped the mouse. Her back had gone from flame to ice. She couldn’t feel anything at all.

“I have to do the rest now,” said the boy. “Your feet. Ready, princess?”

“
Aye,” Aine tried to say, but the word seemed stuck in the back of her throat. Her head was spinning.

The boy’s mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear him. Then the darkness came back, and she died again.

“
She’s loosing a lot of blood.”

“
I can’t do anything about it till we get home. Just walk faster.”

“
Certainly. Shall I break into a jog and risk electrocuting us both?”

“
Faster, Richard. Or give her back to me.”

“
You’ve got her blood all over you, and you’re paler than a ghost. If you faint I can’t carry you both, and it’s not you I’d leave behind.”

“
Póg mo thóin
.”

“
And yours, I’m sure.”

Aine forced her eyes open. The world had stopped spinning but now it rocked past in bits and flashes of light. She was wrap
ped in something warm and heavy, and she thought she was sweating, but she still couldn’t feel anything other than the tips of her fingers. They were cold.

“
You’re very rude,” she said, and was surprised to hear her own voice, clear and steady past numb lips.

There was a new face floating above her, a long face wearing a tight expression. A
second boy, nearly as lovely as the first, and the white mouse rode on his head, nested between the waves of his dark hair.

He looked down at
her, surprised.

“
Yes, he is. Almost all the time, but right now in particular.” He turned, shifting. Aine realized with a start that she was cradled in his arms. “Winter, your mystery girl is awake. And it appears she understands your barbaric curses.”

“
Don’t stop, Richard. Keep walking!”

“
I haven’t stopped.”

“
Children!” scolded the mouse. “There’s no need for -”

“
Train!”

The boy carrying Aine swerved suddenly to one side.

“
Can you stand?”

Aine
didn't know. She nodded anyway.

The boy called Richard set her down as though she was made of glass and he feared she would break. The nerves on the bottoms of her feet immediately flared back to life. Her knees almost buckled.

“Press against the wall,” Richard said. “Tight as you can.” He put his arm around her shoulders, steadying. She winced at the pressure, but the urgency on his face had her doing as he asked.

The awakening pain cleared her head of shock and the haze from her vision.

They were underground, she realized. In a narrow tunnel of some sort, or a deep cave. The walls were made of stone. On the domed ceiling long boxes flickered, casting a dim light.

The ground beneath her feet
began to vibrate.

She thought she heard a growing rumble, as though the earth was quaking.

The sound intensified all at once, becoming a roar, and Aine stiffened in alarm.

She turned.
“What is a ‘train’?”

Richard answered but she couldn’t hear him. The passageway was filling with
new light, and she could see now that it was indeed a tunnel. Down the center of the floor ran three endless iron bars.

Aine couldn’t help herself. She flinched away from
Richard. The monster rushing down the tunnel had stopped roaring and begun screaming. A wind lifted what was left of her hair around her ears, and blowing dust stung her eyes.

She tottered, swaying over the iron road.

Richard grabbed her elbow just as a second body flung itself across the tunnel and pinned Aine against the wall.

Light blazed up. The monster passed in a flash, a giant snake as high as the ceiling and segmented into many long pieces. It hissed as it
flew by, and sparks burst along its belly as it streamed away.

It took no notice at all of Aine and her companions.

The monster disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving only a fading vibration as evidence of its passing.

“
That
,” said the boy with the grey eyes as he stepped carefully away from Aine and the wall, “is a train.”

He scooped her up and strode down the passage. Richard paced alongside, the mouse still riding in his hair. A third person walked along behind them, humming quietly.

“
It’s only Lolo,” the boy said when she tried to see. “He’s not harmless, but he only bites if you steal the remote. Stop squirming, you’re worse than a bag of cats.”

Aine stilled.
“What purpose would there be in the bagging of cats?”

His lips curled very slightly.
“You’d be surprised.”

Aine found she liked his smile.
“What is your name?”

He paused. Aine saw that they had reached a gate in the tunnel wall. Beyond the gate loomed a dark hole. Richard fumbled at the latch, then pushed the gate open.

“Winter.”

“
Geimhreadh
,” Aine translated. “It suits you.”

“
Winter,” he repeated as Richard retrieved a lantern from beyond the gate, and lighted it with a long match.  “In the English. We don’t speak ‘barbarian’ here.”

Aine frowned doubtfully. Until that moment she had been too frightened to notice.
“The dead speak only English? Where is the sense in that?”

Winter’s eyes widened, and he started to speak, but Aine interrupted him.

“Put me down!”

“
Beg pardon?”

“
I’ve died and I’ve been flayed.” Aine pointed at the steep stairway illuminated by Richard’s lantern. “I’ve no desire to have my skull broken as well. Put me down.”

She felt his chest swell as he sighed, but he did as she asked.

“Are you certain?”