Silver Moon Nanny novel · Chapter 2 of 3

Chapter 2: Silver Palms

Elspeth lays both hands on the silver-laced gate and it burns her raw while the whole pack watches, and the gate swings open on its own.

Cordelia's coat is halfway up the hill when I put my duffel down.

I set it in the gravel and straighten up.

Then I walk to the gate.

"Ma'am," the tall guard says.

I don't stop.

"Ma'am, don't."

I put both palms flat on the iron.

The silver in the crossbar bites.

It's not a burn like a stove. It's colder than that and then it's hotter than that, and my whole body knows the shape of it before my brain does.

Eighteen years since the fire and I still know exactly what silver feels like.

My skin goes white. Then it goes red. Then it starts to lift.

"Get off the gate," the short guard says.

I don't.

I push.

The iron is cold under my right hand where there's no silver, and the crossbar is eating my left, and I hold on anyway.

Somebody in the crowd shouts.

"She's burning herself!"

"Look at her hands!"

The tall guard grabs my wrist and tries to pull me off.

I'm small and I'm not strong and he should be able to move me with one arm.

He can't.

My feet stay planted in the gravel like the road itself is holding me up.

His face changes.

"Let go of her," somebody says.

It's a woman in the front row. Older. I don't know her name.

"That's enough," she says. "You don't hold a woman on a burning gate. Let her choose."

The guard lets go.

My left palm is bleeding now. The skin has split across the heel of my hand and there's a smell like a struck match.

I put my forehead against the bars.

The moonstone is in my pocket and it's so hot it's starting to hurt through the fabric.

I take it out and close my bleeding hand around it.

The silver line it throws goes up the gate and across the crossbar and along the whole iron wall to both posts.

The crowd goes quiet.

"Open the gate," I say.

"No," the short guard says.

"I'm not asking the gate."

I look past him, up the slope, at the hall.

The windows are lit. Somebody's in there.

The iron under my hands starts to warm.

Not hot. Warm. Like a hand on a cold window.

I feel it move.

One inch. Then two.

The gate swings inward, slow, dragging a groove through the gravel.

It opens on its own.

The tall guard steps back and crosses himself, which is not a thing wolves do.

The crowd backs up the slope in a wave.

I stand in the open gateway with my hands hanging at my sides, dripping onto the road.

Both palms are raw. The left one is worse, split and black at the edges, and there's a line of blisters across the right where the crossbar caught it.

I can't close either hand.

Cordelia has stopped on the hill.

She turns around and looks at the gate.

Then she looks at me.

Her face does something for half a second that I've never seen on it before.

Then it's smooth again.

"That's a trick," she says.

"It's the gate."

"Gates don't open for people."

"This one did."

"You did something to it."

"I put my hands on it," I say. "You can watch the replay. Somebody filmed it."

The phone in the back of the crowd is still up.

Cordelia's eyes go to it and stay there a beat too long.

Then she walks back down the slope.

She's fast, and when she gets to me she stops close, closer than before, and drops her voice so only I can hear.

"You think that bought you anything."

"I think it got the gate open."

"It got you a reputation as a woman who makes iron move. You know what that looks like to these people?"

I don't answer.

"It looks like something they should be afraid of," she says.

She turns and walks up the hill.

The crowd follows her. Not all of them. Half of them stay at the bottom of the slope and watch me.

The older woman who told the guard to let go comes over.

She looks at my hands and her mouth flattens.

"You need a healer."

"I've had worse."

"Not much worse."

The hall doors open at the top of the steps.

I know the sound of that door.

I know the sound of every door in that house because I lived in it for five years and knew which hinges to oil and which to leave.

Aldric comes out.

He's in the black coat. His hair is shaved close and his beard is short and the shoulders of the coat fill the whole doorway.

He stops at the top of the steps.

He's looking at the open gate.

Then he's looking at me.

He comes down.

He comes down fast, three steps at a time, and the crowd on the slope moves out of his way without being asked.

He gets to the bottom and stops four feet from me.

He looks at the gate.

Then at my hands.

I hold them out where he can see.

Both palms raw and split and weeping, blistered across the fingers, the left one black at the edges where the silver went deepest.

Aldric's face doesn't move.

His eyes go gold.

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