The Silent Strength of Stones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Don’t,” I said. Now that we were standing still, the fire in me was settling to embers. “Don’t…let go. Let go.”

  She stared up into my face, unblinking, the fear in her flashing to panic.

  “Willow.” Our hearts were beating fast, matching rhythms, mine speeding as hers raced. “Stop it,” I said, putting an edge into my voice. Her head jerked, and then the connection broke and I could breathe again. I drew in heavy drafts of air as I felt my muscles relaxing. Willow closed her eyes tight and turned her head away as if waiting for a slap.

  I tightened my arm around her, dropped our hands, and led her out of the hall, across the road, beyond the lamplight into the darkness of the trees; closer to the lake. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” I said, sitting us down on a low maple branch. Her face and arms were paler than the leaf-shadowed darkness. She was warm beside me.

  “Doing what,” she said in a toneless voice.

  “Making me do stuff without asking.” I had said it out loud. I couldn’t think of any other explanation for what had happened. I’d go with this one until something knocked it out of the running. It might not make logical sense, but it made internal sense.

  Besides, I could sort of almost remember a few times Mom had stared into my eyes and then shared her heartbeat with me. I couldn’t remember why.

  “What are you talking about.” Willow sounded like a robot.

  “Willow!” I gave her a little shake. “I’ll teach you to dance. I’ll write down a list. Just ask.”

  “What,” she said. She stared straight ahead, though I was beside her.

  I pressed fingers against the pulse at her wrist, trying to feel her heartbeat again, trying to feel mine, relieved that the heat had died, wanting the connection. Had it hurt her to break it? “Look, I liked being hooked to you, but it was making me breathe funny,” I said.

  “What?” She sounded a little more awake.

  “And I don’t really understand it,” I said. “Maybe if I knew more about it, it wouldn’t scare me.”

  “Nick?” she said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “I’m not supposed to do things like that. That’s why my parents sent me away. I’m not supposed to kilianish, to fetchkva—to hook to—I’m not—especially not with—they’re going to lock me up. I’m sorry, Nick. I’m really sorry.”

  She was going to get grounded? For reasons that didn’t make much sense to me—what had happened was between us, wasn’t it? “Look, it’s not like I’m going to tell anybody. What would I say?” I focused on the pulse at her wrist. Her heart was still beating too fast.

  “I’m not supposed to do it. I’m not supposed to own boys, even though I have a special, secret reason for it. Mom and Dad explained to me that it’s wrong, even though my cousins at home kept doing it, even though our teacher told us to do it. Uncle Bennet and Aunt Elissa explained it to me. That’s why Mom and Dad sent me to them. Uncle Bennet and Aunt Elissa think it’s awful to own other people. I even understand that it is. I’m not supposed to do it, and I don’t want to do it anymore, and I start to do it anyway.”

  I swallowed. “Own boys?”

  “Own people. It’s the best—it’s the most—it—” She shook her head. “That’s wrong. That’s wrong. Oh, Nick.”

  “Own people…” I said, thinking about my mother and my father. My mother had made me feel like I was a part of her. My father seemed to think I belonged to him. I wasn’t sure either of them was wrong.

  “I…” she said, “I need to learn not to want to.” Her pulse was slowing under my fingers. “Or unlearn how to do it. Some lessons I was just too good at.” She took my hand and stroked the rough callus on her thumb’s outer edge along my palm and down my fingers, one at a time. “Some urges are hard to fight. I am so totally tempted to own you, Nick.”

  A sliver of ice zipped down my spine. Some part of me wondered: what would that be like? If I did what she wanted—danced when she wished, wrote when and what she wished, followed her and served her in ways pleasant and uncomfortable? “No,” I said, my shoulders twitching. Though really wouldn’t it be more interesting to do what Willow wanted than what my father wanted? The demands were sure to be different.

  “Well, I won’t,” she said. She raised my hand to her mouth and pressed a kiss into my palm. “I won’t own you. If I even started the procedure that makes you mine, my aunt and uncle would release you and punish me. I’m trying not to do anything to you. But then I get scared, and I’m not sure how to not start the kilianishkya. I’ve never just tried to…to know somebody without putting the pulling-threads into the veshka…You seem so calm about all this. As if you understand it.”

  “No,” I whispered. If I waited until I understood everything, I might go crazy before I got there. Too many weird things had happened already today. What else could possibly happen?

  I thought of the longing I had for the wolf dog, my wish that we could be traveling companions. But that wasn’t the same. I didn’t want to own him. I just wanted us to be very good friends. He would care about me and I would care about him and we would take care of each other.

  “I want you,” Willow murmured. “I want you.”

  I couldn’t remember anybody ever saying that to me—not Pop, not Junie, certainly not Mom. The heat rose in me again: not the heat of our dancing connection, as if I were struggling to either get away from or live with something new and foreign, but the heat of blood. It felt exciting and sexy and scary. I put my arm around her and kissed her. She tasted like warm golden flowers and the juicy ends of grass stems. She gripped my head again. Her kisses were still tentative, but her hands were certain.

  Heat was building in me again, but it wasn’t a minor of her heat, or if it was, I didn’t know. Her hair felt soft as cat fur when I worked my fingers through it and dislodged the flowers there. Her skin was almost as soft as the surface of warm water, and she smelled faintly of cinnamon. My fear seeped away. I knew there was something I wanted, but I was thinking with something other than my brain, just feeling and waiting and wanting and knowing, gathering her to me, wanting her against me, sensing her heat and her longing, wanting to be inside of her.

  “Ruf!” A weight hit me, knocking me and Willow right off the branch to the ground beyond. I cracked my elbow against a buried root, and it hurt; Willow spilled loose of my embrace, and the cold where her warmth had been hurt, too. Then the wolf was standing on me, his forepaws pinning my shoulders, his hind-paws planted on my thighs, a growl simmering from him—and his nose pointed at Willow.

  “I wasn’t,” she said, elbowing herself up and straightening her hem.

  “Wuf. Raroor,” he muttered.

  She sighed. “All right. I started to, but I stopped myself. I wasn’t doing it right then.”

  The wolf lay down on me, heavy and warm, and snuffed at my face. His bristly whiskers tickled I still felt shocky from the suddenness of his attack, but I also felt strangely relaxed, as if huge wild animals lay on me all the time. He raised his head and stared down into my eyes. I felt his regard more than saw it in the darkness. Then he muttered little barks and growls.

  “Evan…” Willow said, her voice rising but soft.

  I felt sleepy and strange. The wolfs noises seemed more and more like words. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t even blink. My breathing shifted. I was panting. The inrush of air woke me up.

  “—nishti fetchayim shtoi veshkuti minish minish minish,” said the wolf, and I felt cold all over. Every voluntary muscle in my body tensed and froze, as if I were straining to lift a rock that was really part of the Earth and wouldn’t come loose. The wolf licked my nose.

  “Evan,” Willow said. Her voice was bereft of hope.

  “Can’t have him now,” said the wolf, his voice low and gruff. “I got him.” I could feel his heart bearing and knew mine matched its rhythm. My own pulses ran loud in my ears, the sound of a fingertip rubbing back and forth on fabric.

  “No,” she whispe
red. “They’ll punish you.”

  “They won’t know,” he said. “I’m never going back to the cabin. I’ll stay here. With Nick.” He licked my cheek. His breath smelled doggy. His tongue was warm, but the wet it left behind cooled instantly. I couldn’t summon the energy to be scared, even though I was still totally tense and I had the feeling something monumental had just happened. It occurred to me that it was odd I could understand a wolf.

  “Evan, you can’t—you can’t—what are you going to—” She was crying.

  “Point is,” he said, “now you can’t.” He snuffed, then said, “Relax, Nick. Relax.”

  My muscles melted like wax, and my eyelids fell shut.

  “Not that much,” said the wolf. “Be comfortable.”

  I felt totally disabled, but comfortable. Evan slipped off me, stood over me, sniffing. “Are you all right?” he asked after a moment.

  “I don’t know.” My voice came out high and drifty.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Be well,” he said.

  I took some deep breaths and felt health running through me like alcohol. I sat up. “What—” I said.

  “You wanted a dog,” said the wolf. “Now you’re my boy.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll give you a long leash. Be well. Be independent. Do whatever you need to. Take good care of yourself.”

  “What?” I said. “What?”

  He huffed a laugh. “See you later,” he said, and trotted off into the darkness.

  I rubbed my elbow where I had hit it. It didn’t hurt anymore. “What—” I said.

  Willow rubbed her eyes, climbed to her feet, and brushed off her skirt. “Come on, Nick.” Her voice sounded shaky. She held a hand out to me.

  “What just happened?”

  She gripped my hand and didn’t say anything. Her hand was cold again. She pulled me to my feet even though I wasn’t sure I was ready to stand up.

  “Willow…”

  “He fetched you,” she said, her voice low and flat. “He owns you. You belong to him now.”

  I shivered. “But that’s not—”

  “He did it so I wouldn’t. You’re fetched, Nick. Let’s go back to the dance.”

  “But—wait a second—how can a—how can I—?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  I took a few more deep breaths, feeling better with each one, even though I was scared. “That’s not fair,” I said. “He’s gone. How can a wolf own a human being, anyway?” What would a wolf want with a human being? What did Evan want with me? “Don’t I get to say anything about this?”

  She threaded her fingers through mine. “Teach me to dance,” she said, tugging me back toward Parsley’s Hall and light and music. My fear stayed with me, but I knew I wasn’t going to get any more answers from Willow, so I dropped the subject.

  We danced in the road to music coming out the door until her black slippers turned dust-gray and her steps came without effort. There was never another moment when I felt our hearts beating like two halves of one heart, but presently our steps matched and meshed and it was like she could read my mind, anticipating our next move. Holding her felt comfortable and right.

  “You’re ready to go inside,” I said, when she knew the basics of the waltz; the two-step, and the schottische.

  “Mm.” She stepped back and looked down at herself. “Not quite.” She held up her hands and caught orange light from the streetlights, then poured it down on her dress and legs and shoes. The light washed the dust away. “You want?” she asked.

  My throat felt tight. Every time she touched something I thought I knew, she turned it into something unexpected. How was I supposed to think about this? Light liked Lauren. Light liked me. Maybe it liked Willow too. I managed to say yes. She walked around me, aiming a wash of light at me. It tickled like a soft breeze. When she was done, my clothes were cleaner than they had been when I left the store. I sniffed my shoulder. No sweat smell at all, just something like the edge of lightning, ozone and electric. Well, after everything else that had happened, why not?

  “Thanks,” I said. “You lost your flowers.”

  “Those were for you, anyway,” she said, combing her fingers through her hair, then shaking her head till her hair settled in soft curls.

  “What?”

  “People usually dress for a date, don’t they?”

  “Unless they’re idiots,” I said, burying my hands in my jean pockets.

  “Come on, idiot.” She took my arm and we went back inside, where Jeremy immediately came over and asked Willow to dance.

  She glanced at me. “But I came with you.”

  “People switch,” I said.

  Her forehead furrowed. Then she gave Jeremy a small tight smile and her hand, and he led her to the floor. I wandered over and asked Megan for a dance.

  “Haven’t seen you at Lacey’s,” she said when we had gotten the first adjustments to each other’s styles out of the way. Her breath smelled of spearmint. Sanders was playing “Earl’s Waltz” really slowly, and for once I didn’t mind; it would make it easy for Willow in her first dance with somebody else, I figured.

  “I work at the Venture Inn store,” I said.

  “You do? You sell bathing suits there? Mine’s old. It tore when I put it on.”

  The inventory came into my mind. “Sure. We have one that would fit you. Black with a rainbow stripe from the shoulder to the opposite hip.”

  She stared at me, eyes wide. “What size?” she said after a moment.

  I knew I had written everything on the legal pad, but I couldn’t see the writing anymore. “Four, six, something like that,” I said.

  “How would you know my size?” she said.

  “I’ve got my arm around you,” I said. Still, it was a good question. I had never paid attention to women’s clothes, beyond knowing we had a few in stock. “Could be wrong,” I said.

  “Is this a line?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “It seems like a really weird way to pick up girls.”

  I tried to think of a way of answering that without being insulting. I wasn’t interested in her except as someone to dance with while Willow was off with someone else. “I don’t have much experience,” I said. “What works?” I would never have said anything like that before tonight, but tonight I already had a date. A really, really weird date.

  Megan laughed. “‘Has anyone ever told you you have very beautiful eyes?’” she said.

  “That works?”

  She fluttered her eyelashes at me, grinning.

  “Well, you do have beautiful eyes,” I said, noticing them. They were an intense turquoise blue.

  “Thanks. It’s the contacts.”

  “Wow, I always wanted those! Brown ones and green ones. Turquoise seemed like it would be too easy to tell.”

  “Fooled you for a minute though, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked at me. “I don’t know. I don’t think brown eyes would look natural on you. Green, I could see.”

  “What if I changed my hair color?” My eyes were gray-blue, and my hair was dark. I had thought a lot about disguises, which would come in handy whether I was being a detective or just running away from home.

  “Somehow I can’t picture you with some other color hair. You should get that spray-on, wash-out color and experiment.”

  “We don’t carry it at the store,” I said.

  The tune was coming to an end. “I’ve got some at cabin nine,” she said slowly. “Red and blond, silver even.”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend. I think,” I said. I was watching Willow. Jeremy was holding her a lot closer than I was holding Megan, and Willow didn’t look happy.

  “I know,” Megan said slowly. “Bring her if you want.”

  “Is that a line?” I said.

  She grinned.

  Sanders played a final flourish. I released Megan and clapped, and she clap
ped too. Willow pushed at Jeremy’s chest. He laughed. Finally he let her go, and she came straight to me and pressed herself against my chest, hiding her face. I put my arms around her. “Thanks for the dance,” I said to Megan, who was looking at Willow and frowning.

  “Any time,” she said. She gave me a little wave and wandered back toward their stretch of bench.

  “What’s the matter?” I murmured to Willow.

  After a pause, she looked up and said, “He was trying to kilianish me. Without waiting for a yes.”

  She had talked of kilianish and owning a person when I had talked about being hooked. Jeremy was trying to connect with her, own her? But I knew that, didn’t I, the way he had held her too close? Maybe he thought he was just goofing around. Maybe not. I said, “Bad. But you’re okay now?”

  She closed her eyes and, after a moment, nodded.

  I let a moment slip by. “You have to say yes?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said, “for it to work right.”

  I remembered saying no and yes to Willow. She had stopped pushing when I told her no. “Did I say yes to Evan?”

  She stirred. She looked up at me. “Yes,” she said, “and he didn’t even ask you. You put your arms around him. You said you had always wanted him. He wasn’t even trying to fetch you, but you came.”

  “Oh.” I had dreamed of him and longed for him. I wondered if I would be able to live my dreams, or if this would turn out like all those stories about people who get their wishes and find out just how sorry they can be. “If Jeremy is doing something you don’t like, you have to tell him so he believes you that you want him to stop. You can do that,” I said, thinking of how her voice had made me do things.

  She stared into my eyes for a moment, then smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.” She pulled my head down and gave me a little kiss.

  Alison and Murray began a twin-fiddle version of “Ozark Moon.” Willow and I waltzed. I remembered how afraid I had been in the store when we first touched, and thought it was weird how comfortable I felt with her now, as if we had exchanged some sort of vows, even though I knew more scary things about her than I had before. “Are you my girlfriend?” I asked her after the music stopped.