I walked quietly until I came to the quirk in the path that let me see the cabin from the cover of the forest. I ducked down and looked past underbrush. The two boys stood on the porch facing the lake, holding out their arms and saying words. I watched carefully, but I didn’t see any extra light or anything else.
They stopped chanting and knelt and dipped their fingers in the water. It spooked me completely, despite what Willow had said last night about kinship. They rose again, holding wet hands toward the sun, and chanted something else.
I backed away and continued past cabin five to the rest of the Lacey’s; but it was so early only Ms. Tommassetti was up, wearing nothing but a white robe, and doing tai chi on her porch. She was a retired librarian who had inherited money late in life. We’d had some fun talks about books when she came in the store. Sometimes she brought me good ones she’d found at yard sales and library book sales. I only watched her for a minute. Her movements were smooth and graceful as a wind blowing across a field of grass.
I gave Lacey number five a moment’s study as I headed back toward the store, The boys were still chanting to the sun, and nothing that I could see had changed. I felt frustrated. So these people stood out on the porch and addressed something I couldn’t see in a language I couldn’t understand, and achieved ends I couldn’t fathom. Was watching them getting me anywhere? I had my wolf and my girlfriend now. I probably didn’t need anything else from these people.
What was I thinking? I always needed information. My credo.
When I turned back to the trail, I came face-to-face with Aunt Elissa. “Boy,” she said.
“Ma’am,” I said, backpedaling. She was wearing a black bodysuit, and she had nightshade flowers and berries twined in her red hair. Poisonous, I thought.
“Boy, I respect your right to lead your life as you wish, and normally I leave Domishti strictly alone, but the fact is, you are interfering with our work.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“The skilliau are shy, and your watching us makes them hesitate to respond. We have given ourselves a certain amount of time to do what we need here, and it is taking too long. You must stop watching us.”
“I—”
“Will you do that?”
“I—” Could I stop watching them, now that I felt like I was part of the family in some weird way. You had to watch your family. You had to know when to jump, and how high. More important still, you had to have some idea of when they were going to jump and where. On the other hand, I felt like I was part of Willow and Evan’s family, a subset of the larger group; I could stop watching the rest of them, I supposed, and I could stop watching Willow and Evan because they were letting me see them anyway. “I—”
Her mouth firmed. She held up her hand in front of my face, muttered some words in the other language, and gestured with her fingers.
The world went dark.
I rubbed my eyes, opened them again, and saw…nothing, just blackness. I could still hear the wind and the birds and, distantly, the boys chanting.
“When we have done our work and are ready to leave, I will lift the blindness,” said the woman.
“Ma’am—” I said, my voice too high. “Ma’am, no!” How could I work like this? “No, please!” How could I live without being able to see? My whole life depended on observing. “I won’t watch! I won’t even come over here at all! Please, ma’am, I promise. Please…”
I heard her steps moving away. I stumbled after her and tried to catch her. “Just a moment,” she said. The crackle of a branch breaking. I reached toward her and tripped over a root. I hit the ground on knees and one elbow, tried to remember what I knew about falling, tucked and rolled, fetching up against bushes, crushing pungent leaves. A little bramble branch scratched my cheek. Panic grabbed my breath away. I had to catch her. I had to make her take this back…I had to stay where I was, because I couldn’t see where I was going. I groaned and sat up, then got to my feet, thinking about which way was up. I was all turned around. Usually my directional sense was so strong I knew where things were in relation to myself, but right now I didn’t know which way the store was and which way led to Lacey’s.
Despair tasted like warm syrup, thickening my throat. I listened and listened, finally heard the distant roar of a motorboat to my left, and the shush of little pebbles being moved by tiny wind waves in the lake fifteen feet from the path. If the lake was to my left, then home was behind me. Knowing which way home was made me feel marginally better.
Words muttered a little way off. I wanted to run and catch her, but I knew I would only fall again. I closed my eyes and hoped, wished, prayed that when I opened them the world would be there, blue and brown and green, light and shadow. I opened my eyes and saw soft black and nothing else. Muffled footsteps approached. She touched my hand, pressed the rough bark of a stick into it, closed my fingers around it. “This will lead you,” she said. “I have put an eye at the tip of it to watch ahead of you and help you.”
I dropped the stick, grabbed for her, and managed to close my hand around her forearm. “Ma’am. Please.”
“Release me,” she said. Her voice wasn’t soft and promising like Willow’s; it tasted of vinegar, and command gave it harshness and weight. Before I knew it I had let her go. She put the stick back into my hand. “Stay away from us,” she said, command still girdering her voice. Then nothing but the sound of her light footsteps, traveling away.
I closed my eyes and opened them about six times, hoping that the result would be different, but every time it was the same. I tightened my hand around the stick, wondering how it could help me, or if it would. Maybe I’d just be here, lost within sight of civilization, thrashing around until I drowned myself in the lake or fell over one of the little dropaways in the woods.
The stick thrummed in my hand. I stood with my eyes closed, touch-listening to the stick, wondering if there was really an eye at the end of it, and how that would help me. I remembered seeing blind people feeling their way forward with white canes, sweeping them back and forth. I faced toward the store and swept the stick in front of me. I felt a strange humming pitch in my hand, I lowered the stick to the ground and the thrum intensified. I raised the stick and the vibrations eased away. I swept it to the side, and felt a strong hum right before I whacked a bush.
Tapping the ground with the stick, I took a step, and then another. I swished the stick slowly right and left. It vibrated harder just before I touched something with it. Trusting the stick, I walked slowly in the direction I thought led home, turning my head, listening for birds and wind and waves in the lake, hearing squirrel chatter, crows cawing, the hum of bees in the thimbleberry blossoms. I kept my eyes closed. It would be awful if something flew into them before I could blink. How would I ever get it out again? I felt my watch. No way to tell what time it was now. Probably way too late.
Pop was going to regret giving me my freedom.
Couldn’t run the register, couldn’t stock the shelves, hell, couldn’t even make meals. Well, maybe I could learn. The stick was already feeling like a natural extension of myself; I was walking faster now, and the ground was solid under my feet.
“Nick?”
I stumbled. The stick supported me so I didn’t fall.
“Evan,” I said. I had forgotten about him. I realized how tense my shoulders had been because they started to relax. “Evan?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m blind.”
He yipped. Then he said, “I’m coming up to your left side. Stink! This stick smells like—”
I stood quiet, wanting to hug him, not knowing how to find him, not sure he really wanted to be hugged.
“Like my aunt,” he said, his voice hollow. Then he said, “What happened?” This time he was mad.
I felt my way down and sat on the path, laid the stick beside me, reached out and found his fur. “Is it okay for me to pet you?” My voice had a wobble in it.
He pushed up against me and I put my arms ar
ound him. He was big and warm and furry, and he smelled like dirt and dog and herbs and blood. After a long moment he shook his shoulders and I let go.
“What happened?” he repeated.
“She told me she didn’t want me watching them anymore because it was disturbing the skilly—skilly—you know what I mean.”
He growled. It lasted for a while, and it expressed part of what I was feeling too, a spinning anger.
Then he said, “Let me smell your face.”
I sat still and felt the little puffs of sniffs, heard the quick breaths, occasionally felt the wet touch of his nose.
“Faskish!” he said at last “She can’t do this to you! You’re mine. Kolesta y kiya, Sirella.” He licked my eyelids. “Casting, begone from my fetchling,” he muttered. He licked my eyelids again. “Open your eyes, Nick.”
I opened my eyes and saw light, and colors, and fuzzy blobs. “Oh, God,” I said, blinking. Slowly things came into focus. Evan stood just in front of me, his eyes wide and amber yellow, his head cocked to one side. “Oh, God. Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” I touched his cheek and he leaned his head against my hand.
“You’re welcome.”
“It was awful. I was really scared,” I would never have said that to Paul or Jeremy, maybe not even to Junie, but somehow I could say it to Evan. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
“That’s one of the reasons I don’t like them. She’s mean.”
I rubbed my eyes.
He said, “And not even thinking mean. We may have been snots at home, but we thought through some of the consequences. And we knew we shouldn’t be mean, even when we were. Mama and Papa saw to that. Aunt Elissa’s mean, and she thinks she’s not. She thinks she’s righteous and everything she decides is correct, no arguments.”
He gazed toward the forest and away from the lake for a long moment. Presently he said, “Listen to me carefully, Nick.”
I straightened without thinking about it and stared at him.
“Take this deep inside you.”
I felt as if a well opened up inside, waiting for what he would fill it with.
He said, “It comes from me, and I mean it. Anything she tries to do to you won’t work on you, because you belong to me. It will slide off you without hurting you. Kolesta y kiya, according to our covenant.” He licked my face.
“Salt between us,” I murmured.
“What?” His ears stood straight up, openings toward me.
“Something Lauren told me.”
“You know Lauren?”
“Mmm. She introduced herself to me.”
“And said ‘salt between us’?”
“Mmm. I gave her French fries.”
He laughed. “So Aunt is three ways wrong.” Then he said, “Did you hear me, Nick?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Let these words take root in you. Aunt Elissa cannot hurt you. Uncle Bennet cannot hurt you. Uncle Rory cannot hurt you. You belong to me.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Take my breath.”
My thinking mind didn’t understand, but some part of me did, because he leaned close and I leaned close; he breathed out and I sucked it in, tasting things that weren’t very appetizing (his hunt must have been successful), but breathing in deep and long anyway.
“Now I’m in you,” he said, “and I will protect you.” He licked my cheek. “Now you’re in me, and I will protect you, kolesta y kiya.”
“Kolesta y kiya,” I said, tasting words like old iron.
“Okay,” he said. “I think that should do it.”
I took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Why did I trust this wolf when I didn’t even know him? Maybe I didn’t have a choice. On the other hand, he had already been the best friend I had ever had. I made a few distant friends every summer, working in the store, but I had never felt this way about one of them before.
Working in the store.
I checked my watch. It was nine-thirty, and I hadn’t seen to Granddad, hadn’t stocked the till and opened the store…
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Pop’s going to kill me!” I scrambled to my feet I hadn’t come very far along the path with the aid of the stick—the stick; I stooped and grabbed it—but running all out, I could be back at the Venture Inn in about six minutes. “Come on,” I said.
Evan laughed and we ran.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said as we burst through the door. “I had an accident.”
Pop was sitting in the chair behind the counter, his arms crossed over his chest, his face blank. “Better have been a good one,” he said.
“I ran into a tree branch and knocked myself out.”
“Evidence without pain,” muttered Evan. I felt something trickle down my cheek, put up a finger to touch it, and found blood. My stomach went cold. I looked at him sideways. He cocked his head and looked back.
“Gaw dang, I see it,” said Pop, rising and coming around the counter. “You need Doc McBride?”
“I don’t know.” I pressed my hand to my left temple, where I discovered my hair matted with wet. “It doesn’t hurt. I think I just need to clean it up. I lost half an hour, though. I’m sorry, Pop.”
“Okay,” he said. “Get back here fast as you can. Give a yell if you need medical attention.”
Evan and I raced upstairs, where I washed blood off my head and watched the reddened water swirling down the drain. “Where did that come from?” I asked him.
“Your head.”
“How?”
He yawned.
I parted my wet hair, looking in the mirror for a wound, but there was nothing. No more bleeding, either. I ran a comb through my hair. “Evan…”
“You can spare a little blood for a good lie, Nick.”
“You say bleed and I bleed?”
“Yep.”
“You say sleep and I sleep. You say wake and I wake. You say see and my eyes are opened.”
“Mmm.”
I washed my hands and dried them on a towel, watching him. His eyes were half open.
“What if you say something I don’t want to do?” I asked after a moment.
He glanced toward the door, panting, tongue hanging out a little, then looked at me, ears up.
“I mean, something I really don’t want to do,” I said. “Anything I can do?”
He lay down, nose on front paws, forehead wrinkled. “Tell you what,” he said. “Unless it’s urgent, you can question my orders. Permission, Nick. Put that where you know it.”
“Thanks.”
“Doesn’t mean I’ll change ’em.” He jumped up. “I know I’ll regret it. You’re fun to tease.”
“Another goal I’ve always had,” I muttered, heading for the stairs. “Fun to tease. Feh.”
My next bad moment of the day came when Aunt. Elissa walked into the store.
It was approaching eleven-thirty. Evan was sleeping behind the counter. I was checking to make sure the right video was rewound and in the right box, and listening to two preteen girls chattering among the teen magazines, but I knew somehow the instant Elissa put her hand on the door, and I had already gone cold inside when she came in. She was wearing something almost normal this time—an orange sun dress with a red sash—and she didn’t look my way; she focused on the food aisles. I nudged Evan with my foot. He made an irritated dog groan and tucked his nose further under his paw.
One of the girls came up and offered me a Sassy. I sold it to her without even looking at it I was watching Elissa in the antitheft mirror. The girl moved over to get into my line of sight, smiling and showing me her mouthful of braces and colored rubber bands, and I blinked out of my terrified trance enough to smile back and murmur thank you to her, at which point she blushed and darted out of the store, magazine rolled up in her hand, friend rushing after her with a ring of bells.
When I looked up, Elissa was standing before me, holding out a jar of bay leaves. Her eyes were wide and her face was pale.
I could feel the blood seeping out of my face, prickling as it went. In my mind I knew that Evan had told me she couldn’t do anything to me, but I still remembered the primal terror of losing the world because she said a few words and waved her fingers at me. Nobody should be able to do that to someone else.
I reached out for the jar, and she dropped it almost before I got my hand there. I caught it, though. “Dollar seventy-nine,” I said, setting the jar on the counter and punching cash register keys.
“What did you do?” she demanded, the vinegar strong in her voice.
Evan stirred beside my feet, stood up. I glanced down at him. His eyes were wide, his face solemn.
“Tell me,” she said. I could feel her words trying to slide inside and order me around, but they slipped off, just as Evan had said they would.
“Dollar seventy-nine,” I said again.
“What did you do? How? Tell me!”
“Lady, leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone, okay?”
“What…did…you…do?” Her words sounded like rocks grinding against each other. My stomach did some gyrations. I could feel her words trying to sand down my will.
The bells rang behind her. Lauren walked into the store. She was wearing a blue shirt and shorts, and her feet were bare and very dirty. “Hi, Nick,” she said. “Mama, Daddy says hurry.”
I said, “Hi, Lauren.”
Elissa reached across the counter and gripped my shoulder, her fingers digging in. “How do you know my daughter?”
“Salt between us,” I said.
Her face leached even paler. She let go of me and looked behind her at Lauren.
“Daughter, is this true?”
Lauren kicked the floor, scraping her sole against the hardwood, staring down, then flicked a glance at her mother and nodded.
“You shared salt with this stranger? This particular one? How could you?”
The Silent Strength of Stones Page 9