Page 90 of Winter Lost

They had eaten every wisp of the hay I’d given them last night. The bale I’d pulled from didn’t look like it had been touched since Adam and I had left.

“A third of a bale per horse per day,” I muttered, hearing my foster father’s voice in my ear.

But the bales I’d fed horses with when I was a teenager had been bigger, I thought. And the horses I’d been feeding had been a lot smaller.

I tossed the rest of the open bale over the panels for the horses to start on. Then I took the knife conveniently stuck in an unopen bale to cut the strings of another one. I stuck the knife into another unopened bale so it didn’t get lost in the hay chaff. Habits were coming back to me.

I fed the horses half of the new bale. It looked like a lot of hay. Too much?

“I don’t know that I’m going to make it back today,” I told them. I dumped the rest of the second bale into their pile of food. They were hardly going to get too fat if I overfed them for a couple of days.

I had the trough filled and was using a manure fork to toss manure into a wheelbarrow when I heard a mechanical growling sound outside. Liam had said the lodge had a backhoe, but the engine I heard was way too small for that.

Snowmobile, I thought, as the engine shut off. I considered my actions—and decided to keep doing my job. I moved the wheelbarrow to the next pile of manure.

The barn door opened and shut.

I waited until I got the last round nugget before I looked up.

The man who watched me from just inside the door was clean-shaven. A few strands of pale hair peeked out from his stretch hat, which was pulled down over his ears. The hat was black with a small label I could read from where I stood: Carhartt. His jacket was red-and-white plaid wool felt. He looked like a rancher bundled up to take care of livestock.

His features were familiar, like an artist had taken a rough-hewn statue and refined craggy features into something more finished. More human. I thought of shapeshifters and gryphons. I thought of my old friend Zee and the even older fae I saw in his eyes more often than I used to—and the perception I had that they were two separate people.

“Hello, Hrímnir,” I said. “I was hoping we could talk.”

I had thought that maybe someone who took care of horses that weren’t his responsibility might continue to take care of them. I’d expected the frost giant, though, the powerful, dangerous, but not-too-clever Hrímnir I’d met last night.

This man strolled over to the fence and put his arms on the rail second from the top, which was a convenient height for him. At least in his human guise. He even smelled like a human—though one who had been out in a winter storm.

“Have you found my lyre?” he asked, his accent pure American Pacific Northwest with a hint of drawl—a Montana rancher accent, to match his clothing.

“You said it was a harp,” I told him, turning my attention back to my task.

“Oh? I had not noticed.” There was a rustle of clothing; I thought he might have shrugged. Then tension sharpened the back of my neck as he drew in a sudden breath. “Harp. I said harp?”

“You did. When you told me my brother stole it from you.”

“What year is this?” he asked.

I told him.

“Tomorrow is the winter solstice,” he said.

It hadn’t been a question, but I answered him anyway. “Yes.”

“Tell me,” he said, and there might have been a hint of urgency in his voice. “Is there a wedding taking place at Looking Glass tomorrow?”

“Yes.” I moved to the next pile of manure and positioned the wheelbarrow so I could look at him. “Or maybe. If the groom can get there in time. There’s this blizzard that looks like it’s going to be messing everything up.”

He turned his back to me and, after a pause, started pacing restlessly. I decided to let him walk it out while I finished cleaning the pen.

I hauled the wheelbarrow behind me, because the twelve-year-old me had found that I could balance it better that way. He quit pacing when I headed toward the gate, and opened it to let me through. I found a pile of manure where I could dump my wheelbarrow load. The pile didn’t look like it was big enough to be more than a week’s worth. Someone had been coming in with a tractor to clean it out.

“What have you found?” he asked.

I put the wheelbarrow back where I’d found it and used the time to think about what to say.

“Do you want to put a stop to the wedding?” I asked.