Winter Falls Read online

  The urban landscape dissolved into suburbs as we sped along.

  I turned to Jenny. “Are you sure that yellow sweater looks good on me?”

  “For the millionth time, yes,” Jenny said. “You have the perfect coloring for it. And it’s mustard, not yellow.”

  “I love that bracelet you got,” I said. “You have to let me borrow it.”

  “I will, if I can borrow that red jacket.”

  “Deal.” I stuffed all the day’s finds into my backpack, so Lidia wouldn’t see the bags and start asking questions.

  Outside, the headlights of the other cars flickered and shone against the glass. The bus slowed and curved down the exit ramp to the back roads. Soon we were driving past farms with barns and long fences. I turned to Jenny; she was dozing, her head tilted back against the seat. I smiled and looked out the window again. The outlines of trees loomed tall in the darkness, and above their tops the stars began to appear.

  Jenny slept through all the stops the bus made while I read the novel I had picked up at the bookstore that afternoon.

  “Twin Willows next,” the driver called.

  I glanced out the window. We were just heading onto the bridge over an inlet several miles from town; I could let Jenny sleep a few minutes longer.

  Traffic whizzed by in the opposite direction on the bridge. I stared down at the steel pillars that seemed to grow out of the water. A flash of movement at the base of one of them caught my eye. I pressed my nose to the window and focused my vision. Everything around me darkened, and all I could see was an enormous wildcat, its edges shimmering against the black night around it.

  My whole body trembled, and the world blackened, just like it had in the office. No, no, this can’t be happening again . . .

  An instant later, an inhuman shriek of straining metal and broken glass pierced the air, so loud and horrible that I had to cover my ears. The sound echoed inside me, filling my chest and throat and throbbing against my eardrums. I turned my head toward the window, but it was not where it was supposed to be. With a sickening smack my head hit the side of the bus, and the upside-down world went dark.

  Chapter Five

  The Bridge

  Pain crisscrossed my body, slicing me in two. Red spots exploded on the backs of my closed eyelids. I fought for air, grappling for one tiny, lifesaving breath . . .

  Then the pain was gone, and I was floating. I opened my eyes, and the world was far below me. But in place of my arms were those great wide wings, the same as in the office. What was going on? Why was this happening again? A screeching cry escaped from inside me and was carried away by the wind.

  I flew in a small circle. Despite my confusion, a small thrill of exhilaration shot through me. I was flying. And it was so real . . . like I had been born to it . . . I nose-dived and halted in midair a few feet above the water. Reflected in the moonlit water was the same falcon I had seen mirrored in the window of the office. A sharp, pointed beak curved out from what should be my mouth. Black feathers framed my own deep hazel eyes, and a ghostly blue glow haloed my entire body. I blinked and fluttered my wings up and down, mesmerized by the image.

  Wind rippled the water, disturbing my reflection. I glided away, toward the bridge, and stopped. What I saw in front of me didn’t make any sense.

  The bridge was broken in half.

  One of the pillars that supported the bridge had snapped, the steel cables dangling over the expanse between the two sides of the bridge. Cars piled up on both sides and in the water below the bridge. I scanned the length of the catastrophe until I found the bus. It lay on its side, the back end hanging over the hole in the bridge. My heart jolted. Jenny!

  I plunged toward the bus. But something was off; there was no movement, no sound, on the bridge. I pulled up level with one of the stopped cars and peeked in the window. A driver and a passenger sat motionless, their heads turned to each other, their mouths open as though they were about to speak. It was just like it had been in the office, with the secretaries frozen in place. Someone had paused the entire scene. I flew from car to car, but they were all the same. I was the only thing moving in this entire disaster.

  When I reached the bus, I peered through the windshield, the only glass that wasn’t tinted. Halfway down the aisle I saw Jenny, clinging to one of the seat backs. She too was frozen in place but looked unhurt. Then my eyes were drawn to the figure lying next to her.

  It was me.

  I nearly collided with the windshield. How could I be out here and inside the bus at the same time? I flew to the door, but the aluminum frame barely rattled when I knocked into it. I tried again and again, using my side, my wings, my talons, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Alessia. It was not my own voice that rang through my head but someone else’s.

  I whirled in the air. Who are you?

  We’re coming. We’ll be there soon—

  What’s going—?

  Be careful!

  Something growled behind me.

  I spun around. An enormous bobcat crouched on the pavement below me, its entire body haloed in a silvery aura. I stared, frozen. The bobcat sprang at me. I didn’t react fast enough. Claws snagged my leg and ripped a deep cut in my feathers. I screeched and buffeted up, just out of reach. Eyes fixed on me, the bobcat let out a roar that shook me.

  I flew higher and turned toward the water. The bobcat couldn’t follow me that way. I glanced down at the bus. What would happen to my body if I went too far away?

  A huge shape loomed over me. Long, sharp talons bore down on me. I wheeled away, but the other bird was faster; it caught my legs and plummeted, dragging me with it. I shrieked and thrashed, trying to break free of the ironclad grip, but I was held fast.

  The bird—a raven, also glowing with that same silver aura—halted several feet above the ground and dangled me just out of reach of the bobcat. In the depths of its amber eyes I saw its hunger for me. I twisted against the raven’s grasp, snapped my beak at its wings, and flexed my talons, but it would not let me go. It dipped lower, inch by inch, until it was at a height that if it dropped me, the bobcat could seize me before I could fly away.

  Help! I screamed at the voice that had gone silent, and the sound tore across the still night like a knife.

  The raven—I could swear it was laughing—let go.

  But if this was a dream or a hallucination, I couldn’t die, could I? My gaze fixed on the face of the bobcat as I fell. The spit dripping from its teeth was so real, so real . . .

  A desperate howl pierced the air. A ferocious white wolf rammed into the bobcat’s side, knocking it off-balance. My path clear, I shot upward and circled away. On the bridge below me, a group of animals gathered, including the white wolf. I dropped lower to get a better look. These new animals were huge too, but their auras were shimmering blue, just like the aura I had seen around myself in the water.

  The raven burst through the air to get to me, but a massive eagle descended and sliced the raven’s wing with a long golden talon. The raven fell away, its silver aura crackling. The eagle soared upward until it was level with me. Its eyes shone with a kind of fierce protectiveness. Stay with me.

  It was a new voice in my head and distinctly female. I blinked at the eagle. Was that—you?

  Yes. I’m on your side. Come on. She veered down toward the bridge, and I followed her. The bobcat faced off against three blue-haloed animals—the wolf, a lynx, and a stag. Outnumbered, the bobcat tried to dodge in between the lynx and the stag, but it wasn’t fast enough. The three animals pounced, and the bobcat disappeared beneath their looming figures.

  What are they doing? I cried to the eagle.

  She turned her head, her eyes serene. What is necessary. The Bobcat and the Raven came here to kill you.

  What? Why?

  Before she could answer, the raven appeared below us, cawing loudly. The eagle dropped. I copied her motions, letting her guide me in this unreal reality. The raven reached the bridge before us and struck the lynx ac
ross the back. The lynx lurched to the side, enough to create a space for the bobcat to escape. It raced off the bridge, howling, with the raven barreling overhead.

  The eagle hovered above the small group of animals, and I hung in the air next to her. What is going on? Am I dreaming?

  Are you all right? The stag pranced over to the lynx.

  I’m fine. It’s not deep. The lynx’s voice was deep and melodious, definitely male. He sat on his haunches and licked the wound on his back. Damned Raven.

  The stag swept his gaze over the length of the bridge, his dark eyes shocked and sad. Look what they did. To kill one of us, they’ve killed dozens. He swung his head toward me. At least they failed in their mission.

  And we succeeded in ours, the wolf said. It was the first voice I had heard, calm and masculine. He trotted toward me and lifted his head. And now the Falcon has been Called, and our Clan is complete.

  Hello? I cried out as loud as I could in my head. Will someone please tell me what—?

  A noise echoed nearby, pulling our attention. In one of the crashed cars, the driver was waking up, pulling at her seat belt.

  Their magic is lifting, the wolf said. We have to go. I was low enough in the air to see his bright blue eyes, somehow familiar to me. Welcome home, he said, and everything turned black again.

  Red spots danced on the backs of my eyelids. My lungs expanded and I gasped in air.

  “Lessi? Lessi!” It was Jenny’s voice.

  I opened my eyes. I lay curled up against the side of the bus, my head on the window. “What—what happened?”

  “The bus flipped. Oh, my God, you weren’t breathing, and I thought—I thought—”

  I sat up. My ribs ached and my head pounded, but nothing seemed to be broken. I held my hand up in front of my face, expecting to see a feathered wing, but it was just my hand. “I’m okay.” I looked around, trying to get my bearings. At last I located the glowing red sign of the emergency exit. It was now on the side of the bus.

  Jenny and I climbed over the seats and headed toward the open door. Every muscle in my body ached as I moved, and I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath. The bus creaked and wobbled. I grabbed a seat back to steady myself.

  “We have to get out of here,” one of the other passengers, a man in a flannel shirt, said. “This whole thing could fall at any second.”

  “Come on.” Jenny grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the emergency door.

  The man in the flannel shirt pushed Jenny and me through the door, then climbed out himself. We scrambled over the side of the bus and slid down to the ground.

  I gulped in deep lungfuls of cold night air. “Is everyone else off the bus?” I asked Flannel Shirt.

  “Yeah.” He pressed his hand to a small gash on his cheek. “Christ.”

  I followed his gaze to the center of the bridge where a ragged hole gaped, separating the two sides of the bridge. My stomach churned, but I was looking for something else: a bobcat, a white wolf, a stag, an eagle. They were nowhere to be seen.

  The earth trembled, knocking me sideways. Directly in front of me, at the edge of the empty space where the bridge had dropped away, one of the other pillars wavered, threatening to tip over at any second and take the rest of the bridge with it.

  “Move!” Flannel Shirt yelled.

  I grabbed Jenny’s hand, and we fled toward solid ground. My eardrum ached with the sound of breaking metal. I risked a glimpse behind me. The steel cables that held the pillar in place snapped. The pillar split from the bridge. With a sickening crash, it smashed into the water below, and the overstressed bridge tumbled into the sea. The ground shook, shifting beneath our feet as we raced away from the bridge. I ran faster, holding Jenny’s hand tight in mine.

  Only when we reached the safety of the ground beyond the bridge did I turn back to look at the wreckage.

  Screams and cries rose from the water below.

  I jerked away from Jenny, but she stopped me. “What are you doing?”

  “Those people—someone has to help them—”

  “Lessi, don’t leave me!” She hugged me, burying her face in my shoulder.

  I put my hands over my ears to block out the screaming. Within seconds it was replaced by the sound of sirens. An ambulance pulled to a stop next to us, and a group of paramedics jumped out. One of them handed us a blanket and told us to keep warm before rushing into the wreckage.

  Jenny and I huddled under the scratchy wool blanket, trying not to watch the rescue teams as they hauled up one black body bag after another from the water. I rested my head on Jenny’s shoulder, which shook beneath my cheek, and thought about my dream. Jenny had said I wasn’t breathing. If I had blacked out, then the dream was simply that—a dream. It couldn’t have been real. But why was I having different versions of the same dream over and over?

  Jenny sniffled. “I need to call my mom.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “My cell phone—it was on the bus.”

  I looked out to where the bus still lay on its side, tottering at the edge of the broken bridge. I shivered. We could have lost so much more than a cell phone on that bus.

  “I have mine,” I said and dug my phone out of my pocket. The fact that I had cut school seemed insignificant now. I dialed home, suddenly wanting nothing more than to hear my mother’s voice.

  Chapter Six

  The Gift

  Lidia and Barb, Jenny’s mom, arrived together. My heart skipped as Jenny and I walked toward the car. The passenger side door swung open, and Lidia tumbled out. “Mi Dio! Grazie, Santa Maria, grazie, grazie, mi figlia bella, grazie, mi Dio,” she cried as she ran toward me.

  I dropped my arm from Jenny’s shoulders just in time to be scooped into my mother’s warm and bone-crunching embrace. She kept up a steady stream of Italian prayers while she stroked my hair and patted me down to make sure I was all right.

  Finally, I caught her hands in mine and held her still. “Mom, I’m okay.”

  Her eyes welled up again, and fresh tears spilled out to cover her already-stained cheeks.

  I lifted a hand to her face. “I’m so sorry,” I said and crumpled into her arms. “I’m so sorry I cut school and made you worry. I’m so sorry—”

  “Shh, cara, shhh. All that matters is that you’re all right.” She was speaking English again, a sign she had calmed down. She held me as I sobbed, cradling me against her in a way she hadn’t done since my father died.

  When I stopped crying, we joined Barb and Jenny, who were having a tearful reunion of their own.

  After another round of hugs, we all piled into the car and headed home. I let Jenny tell the story of what had happened and leaned my head on the back of the seat. Images flashed through my brain: the reflection of that otherworldly falcon in the water, the bobcat lunging at me, the eagle battling the raven. My hands shook, and I clasped them tight in my lap to keep Jenny from seeing.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when we pulled into our driveway.

  Lidia ushered me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table. “What do you want for dinner? I’ll make you anything you want.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I pressed my fingers into my temples. My brain hurt as memories of the bridge tumbled one on top of the other. “I-I think I’ll just go to bed.”

  “Okay, cara.” She kissed my forehead and cupped my chin in her hand. “When I think what could have happened . . .”

  My eyes grew hot. I hugged her quickly and hurried upstairs before I started crying again. In the sanctuary of my room, I curled up under the covers and pulled apart what had happened on the bridge, separating images out like puzzle pieces. But when I tried to put them back together, nothing made sense. Moonlight crept in through my window, and a heated and fitful sleep, full of feverish dreams, stole over me.

  When at last I woke up, sunlight dappled my comforter. I glanced at the clock. Almost noon. Rubbing a hand over my face, I slid out of bed and jogged downstairs.

  Lidia sat at the kitchen tab
le, looking over some papers. “How do you feel?”

  “Why didn’t you wake me to go to school?” I padded over to the coffeemaker to pour myself what was left in the pot.

  “They cancelled school today.” She flexed and unflexed her fingers on the surface of the table.

  “What? Why?”

  Lidia swallowed. “Because of what happened last night.”

  The coffeepot trembled in my hand. I set it down on the counter with a clatter. “Was there—anyone we knew?”

  Lidia pushed back from the table. “How about I make you something to eat? Eggs and toast?”

  I nodded, my neck stiff, hyperaware that she hadn’t answered my question. I leaned forward and switched on the little television on the island counter.

  But before an image had time to appear, Lidia clicked it off.

  “Hey!”

  Lidia looked at her hands. “You don’t want to put that on.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed. “Because it’s all over the news, and I don’t think you need to see that right now.”

  It was so like her, trying to shield me from something that I couldn’t be shielded from. As if I couldn’t find out every last detail behind her back. I cleared my throat. “How many?”

  Lidia turned back to the frying pan where the eggs had started to crackle. “Twenty-two.”

  I dropped into a chair at the table and laid my head down. I heard Lidia take a plate from the cupboard, but I didn’t raise my head. Twenty-two people dead. I remembered what the stag had said, To kill one of us, they’ve killed dozens. But that wasn’t real. Was it?

  Lidia set my plate in front of me. “Come, cara. Eat. You’ll feel better.”

  The Italian antidote for everything was food. It usually worked, but my stomach felt like lead. I knew that Lidia wouldn’t leave me alone unless I ate something, though, so I raised my head and picked up my fork.