Lily in the Snow & Other Elemental Tales

"Jewett ran. He and the earth carried her, the earth granting a gracious speed, as if it could feel through his arms, the rarity of the gem he held, the urgency of its protection." Mica Schist, a rock Elemental, has always felt secure in her caves high in the snowy mountains. Protected by her adoptive older brother, Pearson, and befriended by the bats of her cave, it is the only life she has ever known. Until an outsider, Jewett, an earth Elemental, arrives, illuminating Mica not only to the possibility of a whole new world outside hers, but of a life with the young man who opens that world to her. When Jewett unsuspectingly brings great danger to Mica, her only chance of being saved is to escape with him into the woods he loves so much; it is a dream any girl would have, to flee danger with her new found love. But upon entering his world, she realizes how fragile she truly is, why Pearson always seemed too obsessed with protecting her. Jewett's world, though beautiful, is harmful; no longer connected to her rocks, their security and oneness with her, she finds that the smallest things in his earthen world hurts her. The simple scraping of her skin against the bark of a tree, her falling on the forest floor--even Jewett's touch. All of these, so harmless to anyone else, make the soft mica crystals covering her from head to toe shed away too easily. And when an Elemental loses all of her crystals, it can only mean one thing: death. How can Mica choose between saving her life and saving her new life with Jewett? These and other stories weave magic, romance, and adventure into a brilliant new collection of coming-of-age tales in Schulze's debut young adult anthology from Old Line Publishing.