Snow ✓

The Faces of Faeries

Time coaxed the sprouts out of the dirt and silenced Gran's reservations about letting the girl linger outside. Her cavalier days of freedom grew in number and got longer, the only caveat being that she wear an oversized sun hat (the better to cover her "moonface"), even for trips to the washroom. By the time the girl had inched around to helping out in the front yard, not a protest was heard.

The tomatoes little more than a memory, the girl soon took pride in her thriving root vegetables.

Gran had even let her pick a few carrots this morning. She quickly washed one in a bucket then took a big chomp. Her taste buds sang--a carrot had never tasted so good. She went to hand the rest of the root to Mat who was busy shooing away an unusually unperturbed rabbit stalking the onion patch. He kicked the air above its ears and the rabbit finally hopped around to the back of the cottage, likely in search of an unguarded snack.

Mat took a bite of the carrot. "Mm. Good color. Nice size. I daresay you've done it!"

The girl thought he was being sarcastic but was too giddy to care.

"I think you might have a green thumb," he added with a knowing look.

A laugh punching up through her throat, she sputtered. They fell into giggles at the terrible joke.

The girl went in search of the rabbit when Gran uttered, "Matthew," something peculiar in her husky voice, and nodded for him to come her way. She rarely used his full name.

Sure enough, she found the rabbit in the back, nibbling on chards. At the sight of her, no doubt the horror of Mat's boot fresh in its mind, it bounded toward the edge of the garden. The girl squatted and, holding out another carrot, coaxed it toward her. It walked closer with caution, its little nose wiggling, but Mat quickly strode into view, and it bolted.

She glared up at him.

"Don't waste food," he said, snatching the carrots from her and dropping them in the dirt, that same peculiar something now in his voice.

Fear, she realized.

"Come." He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the Burnt Forest, then past the tree line. Once under the charred canopy, he looked back. The girl followed suit but saw and heard nothing, their own footsteps muffled by the soot that would forever blanket the Burnt Forest's floor.

"Where are we going?" she asked, stumbling as he tried to hurry her along.

"It's not far."

She dug her heels into the soot until he came to a stop.

"What about the wolves?"

"No wolves today," he said, even then looking around, as if she might have spoken them into existence. "Someone from town's at the cottage wanting to talk to Gran—"

It was then that he looked down at the sooty dirt pushing up through her toes.

"I told you to wear boots," he said in a burst of anger.

Her wearing all Mat's mother's hand-me-downs meant things rarely fit. Gran had finally started altering some of the clothes, but shoes weren't that simple. "They don't fit."

"Get on my back or your feet will turn bloody from the roots."

He kneeled and she climbed on, feeling silly but knowing the situation demanded compliance. Maybe she should have been more scared but she wore fear like a veil; it did not sink into her heart. Something about the Burnt Forest still felt like home.

As Mat waded deeper into the woods, the light dimmed and the trees began losing their misshapen edges.

Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark when Mat kneeled before a massive tree that was--well, ugly, a monster among the monstrous. The girl slipped down. Mat brushed soot and dirt aside to reveal a latchstring. In awe that he'd known exactly where to find it, the girl watched as he pulled and up came a door in the forest floor, revealing earthen stairs and a tunnel that burrowed under the tree.