The Silent Strength of Stones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Willow frowned. “You can see people when they’re warded, Nick?” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’ve been spying on us.”

  I stared at the ground for a moment, then looked up at her. “That’s what I do,” I said. “Or did.” I hunched my shoulders and looked toward the forest. “That’s what…that’s what you do if it’s no fun at home and you don’t have people to talk to. That’s what you do if you really, really need to know what makes people tick. That’s what you do if you don’t want things to happen without warning, like people acting like everything’s normal and then leaving without telling you.” I touched my lips, wondering where these words had come from and if they made sense. I couldn’t remember if I had always wanted to be a detective or just since Mom left.

  The trees I was watching weren’t moving much. I glanced at Willow.

  Willow stared at me, not frowning, not smiling. I remembered how beautiful she had looked, naked in the morning light with the water shining on her skin. “Where do you go when you disappear?” I asked.

  She blinked. “I disappear?”

  “Evan said it’s a woman’s mystery.”

  For a moment she stared at me, frowning. Then her eyes widened and her face flushed. “You were watching me yesterday morning?”

  “You are so beautiful.”

  “Rrrr!” She put her hands around my throat, but she didn’t squeeze. Having some idea of her strength, I was grateful. “Don’t do that again!”

  “I won’t.” I cleared my throat. Her hands were warm against my skin. “I didn’t even know you then.” So much had changed, so fast…

  “Rrrr!” Her fingers tightened a fraction. “You…were…watching me, and the Presences didn’t…” She let go of my neck and sat back on her heels, resting her hands on her thighs. She stared at the skilliau rock between us. “Presences didn’t warn me.”

  “See what I mean?” Evan said.

  She picked up the rock. It spoke comfort. She held it out to Evan, who sketched a sign with his thumb and accepted it. His face relaxed. I moved my thumb the way Evan had. It didn’t look quite right. Maybe later they’d show me. I wondered if I could get a thing like that to work.

  Willow said, “Nick, you have voice. And vision. And now—some kind of skilliau-speak. What else?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what any of these things are, except the salesman thing. Voice.”

  “Wish I knew how to krift beyond signature,” said Willow.

  Shadows had stretched until there was almost no sunlight left where we were sitting. I fished my watch out of my pocket and looked at it, then strapped it on. Almost five-thirty. I should be home by now, figuring out what we were going to have for dinner. “Evan?”

  “Mmm?”

  “The meeting—did they come to some sort of decision about how they plan to treat me?”

  “Rory gave Aunt Elissa permission to cast a silence on you,” he said. “So I want you to remember what I told you, Nick. Whatever she casts at you will slide off. She has no power over you. You’re mine.”

  But that hadn’t saved me, not when Rory told me to speak truth or be quiet. On the other hand, once I remembered about it, I had been able not to fall asleep. “How can I figure out what Elissa’s doing in time to remember that you told me it won’t work?”

  “You shouldn’t have to remember. It should just work.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  His pupils flashed wide. For a second I thought he was mad at me. It occurred to me that that could be scary, considering the hold he had on me. “It didn’t,” he said slowly.

  “Blue fire came out of my mouth.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Maybe the bond is different because Nick is Ilmonish,” Willow said after a moment.

  “So we don’t know what it does, really,” Evan said. “And we don’t have time to experiment. They will be casting an unbinding at us. It’s just the sort of moral decision they would make, without regard to the people involved. They know what’s right. And they’re strong in their disciplines. Maybe I should loose you now.” He pressed the rock against his forehead.

  “No,” I said. I had an awful vision of many things unraveling. If he freed me, would everything he had done to me while I was his come undone? Would my throat be glass, my hands scuffed? Would my head be confused about who he was and how I could relate to him? Would the energy he had gifted me with that morning evaporate? Would the strong thread between us break, leaving us strangers? I didn’t want to find out.

  Evan sighed. He lowered the rock. I reached out and touched it. It calmed me. Evan said, “This morning I thought there was nothing they could do to us. I didn’t realize Uncle Bennet had a piece of my snow crystal.”

  “What’s a snow crystal?”

  “It’s a…it’s hard to explain. It’s, well, it starts out as—I mean, it’s this, it’s something your parents make for you when you’re just born, or some parents do, anyway, and they, it’s, you have it with you and it collects some of your, well, your skilliau maybe, and then you can use it later.”

  “Or it’s a well of memories,” Willow said.

  “Kind of a…soul diary, maybe.” Evan sighed again. “Most of the folks at home don’t make them for their kids much anymore because they can be used to hurt you if you don’t keep them safe.”

  “But Mama and Papa…” Willow looked at Evan, and he looked back. “When we were little, things were different. People weren’t scared of each other the way they are now, I was almost glad we left when we did, except I didn’t get to”—she looked at me—“I didn’t get to do what I meant to. Chapel Hollow just got scarier and scarier. Say what you will, Evan, Southwater Clan is cleaner, the way it works between people. If somebody does something to you, at least you know why.”

  He said, “Have they been using your snow crystal against you, Willow?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been trying to do the right things. I don’t know if Papa gave them a piece of mine, anyway. You were the problem child.”

  “What?” he yelped.

  “I heard them talking. Mama and Papa were worried about you.”

  “You’re the one who was always fetching people, bringing boys home, letting them loose, making trouble!”

  “I had a reason for that…You’re too old to be animaling all the time. You never would learn how to talk to people, except babies, and that was forbidden. Babies have to know they’re alone so they’ll learn to talk like people. You can’t keep making them feel like it’s okay for them not to understand other grown-ups.”

  “Babies need to be protected,” he said. “You know that, Willow.”

  She stared at him. “Oh,” she whispered. Her face crumpled.

  Evan handed her the calming rock. She pressed it to her chest. After a moment her breathing evened out again. “I never knew that was why you—”

  “You had a reason for all those boys? You never seemed to know what to do with them once you got them home.”

  “Great-aunt Scylla was teaching me just before she died. She gave me a prophecy. She said a man would come—a woman would bring him, as a fetch—and then we would know who killed Kenrick.” She put the stone down. “Our baby brother, Nick,” she said. “The sweetest little child I ever knew. Somebody killed him.”

  “Killed him?” said Evan, his face going pale. “I thought he fell. I didn’t want any of the others to fall.”

  “On Farewell Night Scylla and I talked to Kenrick’s Presence, before he went back to the Source. Someone pushed him down the stairs.”

  “Oh, Willow! Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Scylla told me not to tell anybody. It only hurts. Nobody could have had a reason for doing that, not one we could understand. I thought if I could just find the right fetch…” She touched my hand.

  I wanted to be a detective. I wasn’t sure I could detect anything in their home environment, though. Too many new rules. “How lo
ng ago did this happen?”

  “Ten years ago,” said Evan. He looked at Willow. “Faskish. If you had told me at the time, I could have sniffed out the truth.”

  “Ten years ago, you were too young to change into a wolf. And the prophecy didn’t say anything about you finding the truth. I kept thinking I would do it. Anyway, everything switched around. I’m not sure when they’ll let us go home now, if ever. Maybe I’m not the woman in the prophecy. Somebody else will do it. We will find out. I probably shouldn’t be telling you now. Except…” She touched the skilliau stone. “It’s all right. It’s finally all right to talk about it. Evan, Kenrick was okay before he left us. He was with other Presences who were taking good care of him.” She swallowed.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. I could let him go after that. He was ready to go to the next place.”

  They sat quiet for a while. Willow stroked the comfort stone, then handed it to Evan. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to know somebody had killed your little brother, and decided it would be horrible. I tried to figure out whether there was anything I could do to help or to change things for either of them, and I couldn’t think of a thing.

  At last Willow sighed and said, “So I don’t know which of us was the problem child. It wasn’t just you with the babies. Mama and Papa were worried because you weren’t growing up yourself or taking responsibility for anything. You weren’t strengthening the thread that binds the bones, or even thinking about wife-seek.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Think about it,” Willow said.

  Evan shook his head. “I don’t see why everybody has to start a family right away. There ought to be time to play and explore.”

  “Anyway, you figured out how to do that, by going wolf before Uncle Bennet could stop you.”

  “And then I changed back. I can’t believe I was so stupid,” he said, looking down the length of his human body as if he’d like to stab it.

  Willow reached to make a sign above the rock. Waves of comfort rolled from it. Evan’s shoulders relaxed and so did mine. “You didn’t know,” she said. “You didn’t know Uncle Bennet had the snow crystal.”

  “I think I knew…something. I knew it wasn’t safe to be human. Not around these people.”

  “That’s not fair,” Willow said. “We hardly knew them. They’ve been good to me. How can you expect them to be good to you when you defy them at every turn? They want to help you, but you won’t let them.”

  “They smell wrong.” He growled. “Look what they did to Nick.”

  “It was awful, but it was an accident.” She touched my arm, touched a pulse point in my neck. “He’s okay.”

  “I don’t want them messing with me. I think they’re accident prone. You didn’t even see what Elissa did to Nick.”

  “No,” Willow said. “I didn’t even know, except what you said during the hearing.”

  “She took away his—”

  “Listen,” I said, climbing to my feet. “I have to go home now and fix dinner.” I didn’t want to talk about that morning. I was glad Evan had helped me. I would rather Willow didn’t know just how scared and helpless I could be.

  Evan said, “Anyway, I don’t think they’re very wise, and I don’t trust them.”

  “I’ll be more careful,” Willow said. She glanced at me. “I don’t trust them either, not anymore.”

  I studied Evan. Pop was going to wonder what had happened to my dog, I thought. A mourning ache lodged in my chest for another dead dream. “Why don’t you just call your parents and tell them you don’t want to live like this?”

  “We don’t have phones at home,” Evan said. He took Willow’s hand and placed the rock in it, then rose. “I don’t have the skill to contact Mom and Dad without going home and seeing them face to face.”

  “There isn’t some sort of crystal ball thingie you guys could do?”

  Willow smiled at me. She shook her head. She stood up.

  “Write a letter?” I asked.

  “Could,” said Evan. “Probably that wouldn’t get anything to happen fast enough. Maybe I should do it anyway. You never know if a letter’s going to make it, though. The postman doesn’t like going to our house.”

  “How far away is home?”

  “Two hundred miles. You got a car, Nick?” asked Evan.

  I shook my head. “I wish. So you’re stuck?”

  “I’m not going back,” Evan said. “Stuck I may be, but I’m not going back to that cabin.”

  I said, “I don’t know what Pop will say if you come home with me.”

  “I can sleep in the woods. This is a good place right here.”

  I looked at him. “You don’t have clothes. You don’t have food. This is stupid.”

  “I can hunt.”

  “How?”

  He grinned at me, his eyes alight. A few seconds slipped by while we all thought about it, and his grin faded. “Faskish!”

  “Come on. I’ve got some clothes you could wear, even if your ankles stick out the bottom. I can get you food. You could at least come to supper. I’m pretty sure I could sneak you into one of the rooms in the motel, too.”

  “Faskish,” he muttered. “I’ve got skills. I could…faskish. I could manage. I don’t like being inside.”

  “Come on,” I said, nudging his shoulder with mine. “Figure it out later. Willow? Is it safe for you to go back?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll give them this.” She held up the rock. “I’m going to see if I can get Evan’s crystal back from Uncle Bennet.”

  “Don’t make him mad at you,” Evan said.

  “I won’t.” She grabbed my shoulder, pulled me close, and kissed me. “Catch you later.”

  “So,” Evan said as we headed down to the trail. “We’re alone.”

  “Yep.”

  “God, it’s irritating not to know what’s going on.”

  “What?” I had thought that was my line. All these people speaking a foreign language. Even when they defined things for me I didn’t understand them. And they had foreign skills nobody could have guessed at, and foreign priorities. Usually I had a much better idea of what was going through people’s heads.

  Now I had some inkling of his family’s plans, but I guessed we wouldn’t know what they were really up to until we felt the effects, and that bothered me. If I were already a detective, I could have left a listening device in cabin five. Going back to spy on them seemed way too risky—okay, so I could see them when they were warded, but they somehow knew I was watching, too. At least, Aunt Elissa had known.

  I remembered telling Rory I would stay away and not watch them anymore, but he hadn’t accepted my promise. And I hadn’t known then that watching them might be necessary to survival. The need to know burned hotter in me than it ever had.

  Evan said, “The air is full of smells and sounds, but I hardly know they’re there. I would know who, where, and what right now if I were myself. What everyone is cooking for dinner, who’s out wandering around, and half the time, why, and who they’re with. I’d be hearing every little creature in the brush. They would smell like dinner. I’d smell where anything had peed and I could tell who they were and what they had eaten and drunk. I feel deaf and scent blind. Half the world has gone invisible.”

  “Wow,” I said. He felt just like I did, in a weird way.

  “Eh,” he said, shrugging. “So anyway—tell me how you feel about me.”

  “I love you and I worry about you,” I said before I thought. Then I thought. Then I felt the heat flush my cheeks, and I walked staring at the ground.

  “Ah!” He touched my neck. We kept walking. “Nick, do me a favor.”

  “What.” My voice came out low.

  “If I tell you to do something, and it’s going to mess me up or make me look stupid, don’t do it, okay?”

  “What if I can’t tell?”

  “You don’t have to be prescient. Wait a sec. I wonder if you are presc
ient. Do you have prophetic dreams? I wonder if I’m already totally screwed up because I fetched somebody who’s not even Domishti.”

  “I don’t think I have prophetic dreams.” I had had strange dreams while sleeping on Father Boulder, but they hadn’t predicted the future.

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re a student of human behavior. If you can tell, when I order you to do something, that it will make me look stupid, it’s okay for you not to do the thing. You were right about this one.”

  “You’re not as embarrassed as I am.”

  “I’m not embarrassed at all, but it might have confused Megan. Look, Nick. I chased you first.”

  “What?”

  “I spied on you before you spied on any of us. I went into the store to find you because you smelled so interesting. I don’t even want people, but I wanted you. I think the Presences had something to do with all this. I didn’t know I wanted another little brother until I found you.”

  The air was cooling as the sun seeped away. I looked at him in the fading light, and he smiled. He roughed my hair. “I wish I knew another kind of binding.”

  “There’s something I know.” I felt much calmer now that he had redefined everything so it was safe. The fierce wild love I felt for him had confused me. It was completely different from the way I felt about Willow, but it was just as strong, or stronger. I knew it was mostly about relating to him as a wolf, and I hadn’t been able to figure out how it would translate into relating to him as a human person, until now.

  Blood brotherhood. That would work.

  “Really?” he said.

  “I’ll explain it to you later.” We had reached the road. I looked at the store. The neon beer signs glowed bright as dusk settled around us. There was a CLOSED sign in the front window of the store.

  “Wait, Nick,” Evan said.

  “What? I have to start dinner.”

  “Sit down.”

  I dropped to the dirt, and he squatted beside me.

  “It’s time to remember now what I told you to forget before.”

  “What?” He had told me to forget something? And I had forgotten it! Maybe this wasn’t such a hot relationship after all.