The Silent Strength of Stones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Lauren’s voice came out very small. “He gave me some food. I didn’t know it had salt on it.” Her gaze was fixed on the floor.

  “He tricked you?”

  “He didn’t know about salt. I had to tell him.”

  Elissa’s eyes went so wide I could see white all around the irises. “When was this?” she asked.

  “Yesterday,” whispered Lauren.

  Elissa stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I have violated a covenant between us, but I did not know. I hope you will forgive me.”

  She scared me more at that moment than she had before. “Uh…sure,” I said.

  “Without your forgiveness I lose the good favor of the Presences. I regret what I have done.”

  “Okay,” I muttered, I glanced at Evan, whose eyes were narrowed. I wished I knew what to do. I didn’t like this woman focusing on me any more than I liked it when Pop paid real attention to me. The end result couldn’t be good.

  Then again, last night Pop had surprised me.

  “I won’t make that mistake again,” she said. She stared at me. I could feel her gaze like a hot breeze against my face.

  “Okay,” I said, since she seemed to be waiting for something.

  At last she looked away. She fumbled at her waist, pulling out a small woven purse tied to her sash with strings, and fished a couple of crumpled dollar bills out of it. I made change and handed her coins, bay leaves, and a receipt, and she turned and left.

  “Sorry,” Lauren said in a wobbly voice, and followed her mother out of the store.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, I looked at Evan and said, “What? What? What was I supposed to do? She’s mad at me now!”

  “Because she was wrong,” he said.

  “That’s not my fault!”

  “I know.”

  I stooped so I was looking him in the eye. “Why didn’t you help me?” My voice came out higher than I meant it to.

  He licked my face. He said, “Anything I did would just have made her more angry. You did fine, Nick. Remember: she can’t do anything to you.”

  “I…” I looked away, toward the place under the counter where we kept paper bags and cleaning things and a box of lost-and-found objects. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

  “She can’t do anything to you, and if she tries, I’ll fix it. She knows she was wrong, Nick. She knows she did something the Presences would object to. I don’t think she’ll compound that error.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said, as the bells rang.

  “Hey?” said someone.

  I stood up.

  “Wow, magic,” said Megan, the girl I had met at the dance last night. She was wearing a green halter top and black short shorts, and she was tan all over. Her dark curly hair was tied into a loose ponytail at the left side of her head. Strands had escaped the rubber band. She looked relaxed.

  “What?” I asked, startled. How had she known what was going on?

  “Well, it was like you were invisible, and then suddenly you appeared. What were you doing back there?”

  “Talking to my wolf,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Hey, Evan, this is Megan,” I said. He rose on his hind legs, his front paws on the counter, and looked at her. “I met her last night at the dance.”

  “Yikes!” she said.

  “Uuf,” he said.

  “Megan, this is Evan.”

  “I, uh,” she said. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth for a second, then took a couple steps closer. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, edging up and holding out her hand.

  “Ruf!” He grinned at her and extended a paw, and she grasped it, then released it, her eyes wide. He blinked at her and she blinked her turquoise eyes back, then looked at me.

  “I never met a wolf before,” she said, her voice low.

  “Bet she has,” said Evan. He dropped to the floor and walked out from behind the counter to sit neatly facing Megan, smiling at her.

  “You’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful,” she said, crouching and reaching to stroke his head.

  “Arou,” he said. “She’s cute.”

  “He thinks you’re cute,” I said.

  She glanced up at me sideways, her grin impish. “Why, Nick, I thought you told me last night you already have a girlfriend.”

  “But I—”

  Evan laughed at me.

  “That wasn’t a line, Megan. He thinks you’re cute. Well, you are.” I stopped, confused. I usually didn’t foul myself up in quite this fashion.

  “You can understand what he says?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ask him if it’s okay if I kiss him.”

  “What?” I said. Did she know somehow about Evan?

  Evan licked her nose. She kissed his nose right back, then said, “Eh! Do something about that breath, fella, or this relationship is going no further!”

  He laughed, then asked me, “What could I do about my breath?”

  “I don’t know. Mouthwash or brushing your teeth, I guess. Or suck down some flavored water? I don’t know if your mouth works the same as ours.”

  Megan laughed. She reached for a roll of breath mints from the candy display on the counter and showed them to Evan. “If you’re really motivated, you could chomp on a few of these,” she said.

  “Anything for you, babe. Hey, Nick, who is this woman? I’ve never met anybody who responded to me like this, at least not while I was this shape. It’s very odd being tame. I used to just scare people. Who is she?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said.

  “What did he say?” said Megan, standing up and reaching into her tiny purse for an even smaller wallet, handing me a one-dollar bill.

  I raised my eyebrows and she waved the breath mints at me, so I rang up the transaction and gave her change. I said, “He asked me who you were.”

  She pulled the strip to open the roll and handed Evan three mints off the top. He chewed them, then said, “Yuck!”

  “Probably not your favorite thing,” she said. “Thanks for suffering for me.”

  “What if they make him sick?” I said. I remembered a vet had once told me you could make a cat sick with aspirin; remedies that worked for people didn’t necessarily translate for other animals.

  Evan muttered, “I can stand them, but they sure taste awful. Next time I’ll just chew up some real mint.”

  Megan popped a mint herself, then said, “So you want to know who I am?” to Evan.

  “Ruf!”

  She glanced at me.

  I shrugged. “That was a yes.”

  She sat down so she was face-to-face with him. “Well,” she said, without looking at me, “I’m the leftover girl—you know, the one who’s best friends with the prettiest girl that everybody’s interested in. They dance with me when they can’t get to her. But their focus is always somewhere else.”

  He licked her face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She looked up. “No, I didn’t mean you.”

  “But that was—”

  “At least we had a real conversation,” she said. She was stroking Evan’s fur without paying attention. “Which reminds me. About that bathing suit…”

  “Oh, yeah.” I went to the rack with swimwear on it and pulled out the suit I’d told her about last night. It was sexier than I had remembered, French cut high on the hips and with a daring dip in back, with black crisscross straps. Not a very big scrap of material.

  “Wow,” she said, eyebrows up.

  “Yeah,” I said, turning it. The Lycra rainbow swoosh sparkled. “Maybe not what you had in mind?”

  “I think I’ll try it on,” she said. “You have a fitting room?”

  I showed her into the downstairs bathroom next to the kitchen, where there was a decent mirror. It wasn’t too much of a mess, just a few of Granddad’s things—his shaving equipment and some of his medicines on the counter.

  When I went back out front, Evan was standing at the door
and looking out. “You want out?”

  “Look.”

  I peered out in the direction he was staring and saw a dusty maroon Kharmann Ghia pulling into the motel driveway. “So?”

  “Strange energy,” he muttered. “Trouble.”

  The car drove back toward the office and out of sight. We heard the engine turning off.

  “Let me out, Nick.”

  I opened the door and he dashed out. After a glance toward the back where Megan was, I followed Evan around the edge of the store, watching the car.

  A woman was wrestling a suitcase from the backseat. She got it out onto the asphalt, then slammed the car door and straightened, smoothing a hand down the small of her back. I ducked around the corner and peeked from the safety of the storefront.

  Her dark hair was short now, and she was skinnier than I remembered, but I knew her. Mom.

  5

  Shocks to the System

  I edged away across the storefront from the corner and sagged down onto the varnished wooden bench between the newspaper vending machine and the door, my hands pressed against my stomach, my eyes not tracking.

  I had always figured that if I ever saw Mom again it would be by my choice. When I was ready, I would study all the letters she had sent me, triangulate the postmarks (there was never a return address on the outside of the envelope, never even a name, I suppose because she thought Pop would censor the mail, which he might have done if he knew she was sending letters; but the mail came when either I or Mariah was watching the store—a good thing, because Mom’s handwriting was as recognizable as ever), actually read the contents in case she put clues to her whereabouts inside (I assumed there wouldn’t be a return address inside, for the same reason—Pop might track her down), and detect where she was. I would go to her community, establish myself in some secret identity—dye my hair, grow a mustache, get colored contacts—and study her life from a distance, deciding for myself if I ever wanted to talk to her again. I would be in charge. I could be bitter and angry and removed if I wanted to, and sneer at her; or I could decide I’d let her know I was okay and that I’d finally gotten away from Pop, if she even cared.

  The depth of preparation in this scenario surprised me. I hadn’t realized I had made these plans, but they had the bittersweet taste of thoughts often cherished in anger.

  And now, of course, my choices were gone.

  I don’t know how long I sat there.

  “Snap out of it, Nick,” Evan said. I blinked and looked at him. My hand was cold. I glanced at it and realized it was wet, probably with his spit, so he’d been standing in front of me for a while and had tried other ways of waking me.

  My stomach still hurt. I let go of it and worked my fingers. They were stiff.

  Evan said, “She’s checked in.”

  “What?” Panic wavered my voice.

  “She went into the office, and a little while later she came out, grabbed that suitcase, and took it to room four, which she unlocked using a key with a metal dangle. She checked in, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Who is she, Nick?”

  “My mother.”

  “How very interesting,” he said. “She’s warded.”

  He had said something like that about Willow yesterday, and Lauren had used that word too. I remembered that Lauren had defined it, but I couldn’t remember exactly how. “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Means that the surface she’s presenting isn’t what she really looks like. I don’t think she’ll expect you to recognize her. Unless she knows that you can see more than most people…how long since you’ve seen her?”

  “Four years.” If she looked different to most people, that explained how she could check in and not alert Pop to her being here. My mother, in disguise. Just like I had planned to be when I caught up to her.

  My mother.

  Evan asked, “How old are you now?”

  “Seventeen.”

  He cocked his head, studying me. Then he looked away. “She may not know you can see through things like that. So don’t let her know you recognize her.”

  I felt a little snick in my head. You say bleed and I bleed. Somewhere in my brain I was preparing to act as if I didn’t know my own mother.

  Served her right.

  “Nick? Nick?” The voice came from inside the building.

  I jumped to my feet and went into the store with Evan on my heels.

  Megan was wearing her clothes and holding the swimsuit.

  “God, Megan, I’m sorry,” I said. I had forgotten she was there.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I had to study it for a while before I decided I could stand it. It’s a new look for me. Doesn’t feel quite right.”

  I stopped thinking about Mom and let store mode take over. “Did you want a second opinion? I didn’t mean to leave you all alone in here, but we had to check on someone who drove up to the motel.”

  “Stop by the pool this afternoon and give me an opinion then, you and Evan both. And you better wear a suit, too, and not one of those three-piece-with-vest types. What do I owe you?”

  I told her and she pulled more cash out of her tiny purse and paid me. She stooped and kissed the top of Evan’s head, then breezed out of the store.

  “You going to take her up on that?” Evan asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t—what about Mom? What is she doing here? How could she be…warded? Do you think—” Did she want to come home? Did she want to take care of me and Pop and Granddad again? Why would she be disguised if that was what she wanted? What else could she want? What was I going to say to her?

  The morning she had left, I woke myself up because I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t even know Mom was gone, but I could hardly breathe. Pop had to call Doc McBride. The doc had had to shoot me up with a tranquilizer before I could breathe normally again, and I had still felt like somebody cut my chest open and scooped something important out. By the time Pop told me Mom was gone, it didn’t surprise me.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I have to watch Mom. I can’t think of…” I was having trouble breathing again.

  “Calm down, Nick. You’re okay. Take a couple deep breaths. You’re fine.”

  I took a couple of deep breaths and felt calm, okay, and fine. “This afternoon is my day off, Evan, but—”

  “An afternoon is a day? What language is that?”

  “The language of Pop.”

  “You work all the other days of the week here?”

  “During the season.”

  He growled. “When do you play?” he said.

  “Most of the winter. At night. In the morning. Saturday afternoon.”

  Evan growled again.

  The bells rang and Mariah breezed in. “Sorry I’m late. Take off, kid—ai-yi-yi!” She clapped one hand to her sternum and stared at Evan.

  “Mariah, this is Evan,” I said quickly. “He’s somewhat tame.”

  “He’s growling,” she said in a swallowed voice.

  I stroked his head and he stopped growling. “Evan, this is Mariah.”

  “She smells like turpentine and oil paints,” he said.

  “She’s an artist. She spells me when I take my lunches and covers for me on my half day off.”

  Evan sat with his tail curled around his forepaws and grinned at Mariah.

  “You are a beauty,” she said, “and you know it, don’t you?”

  He yipped.

  “I’d love to paint you.”

  He laughed.

  “Nick, where’d he come from?”

  “He’s my dog,” I said, and noticed a waver in my own voice. Silly. I had practiced lying, and ought to be able to do it better by now.

  “Where does one get a dog like that?”

  “I found him in the woods,” I said, and that part came out smoothly, maybe because it was true.

  “Good God,” said Mariah, “what makes you think he’s the least bit tame?”

  “Wel
l, he is,” I said, continuing to stroke him. The hair on top of his head was the softest. I scratched behind his ears, and he turned his head against my hand, pushing for more.

  “What kind of name is Evan for a wild beast?”

  “It’s his name,” I said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Evan said.

  “We’ve got to go,” I told Mariah, suddenly worried that Mom would come in and I would have to figure out how to not recognize her. And how not to collapse.

  “Have a good time,” Mariah said, smiling. Evan yipped and we brushed past her and escaped into the out.

  I ran until the breath burned in my lungs and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears and we were almost to the Lacey’s. Then, remembering my last encounter along this path, I slowed and veered up into the woods, Evan at my heels. Father Boulder’s clearing was up this way, but I wasn’t ready to take Evan there, so I headed for another place I knew, where a forest giant had toppled, leaving roots reaching for the sky, some sheltering a big hole in the ground whose floor I had smoothed and covered with dead bracken several years ago. It was one of my first forts. Occasionally I went back and renewed the floor covering and cleaned out the cobwebs among the roots, but it had been a long while since I had been there.

  Evan and I flopped down on the dusty dried fern. For a time I just listened to the breath moving in and out of me, sliding past my roughened throat. Evan lay beside me, nose on paws. After a little while I could smell the dried, crushed bracken under me, and the earth and pines. The sweat on my back and face cooled. I rolled my head and looked at Evan.

  He lifted his head, cocked it.

  I opened my mouth and words fell out “She left. She didn’t even tell me good-bye. She never said why she was leaving. She sends me letters, but I don’t read them. We spent all our time together. I didn’t know how to live without her. Then she left. At first I didn’t even know how to see without her. It hurt. It took me a long time to get over it. What the hell is she doing here, Evan? I don’t want her here. I got used to her being gone. I want to kill her. I want to talk to her. I want to ask her why she left, but I’m afraid her answer won’t be good enough. How come she knows some of the same magic as your family does?” My breath was getting short again.