by Cynthia Hand
“Brick by brick,” he says again, raising his half of the broom, which is the end with the bristles on it. He brushes it behind my calves, and I jump. “First let’s work on your stance.”
He teaches me about balance, and angles, and anticipating the moves of my opponent. He teaches me to use the strength of my core rather than the muscles of my arm, to feel the blade—er, broom—as an extension of my body. It’s like dancing, I realize very quickly. He moves, and I move in response, keeping time with him, staying light, quick, up on the balls of my feet, avoiding his blows rather than blocking them.
“Good,” he says at last. I think he might even be sweating.
I’m relieved because this fighting thing isn’t too difficult. I thought it might be one of those things like flying, where I totally sucked for a while, but I pick it up pretty quickly, all things considered.
I guess I’m my father’s daughter.
“You are,” Dad says with pride in his voice.
On the other hand, while part of me is all glowy and sweaty and proud that this is going so well, another part finds it crazy. I mean, who uses swords anymore? It feels like theater to me, like play, trouncing around the backyard whacking at my dad with a stick. I can’t imagine it as something dangerous. I’m holding this broom like a sword, and half the time I want to bust out laughing it’s so ridiculous.
But underneath it all, the idea of really wielding a weapon, trying to cut someone with it, totally freaks me out. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to fight. Please don’t let it be that I have to fight.
The thought makes me miss a step, and Dad’s section of the broomstick is at my chin. I look up into his eyes, swallow.
“That’s enough for today,” he says.
I nod and drop my piece of broom into the grass. The sun is going down. It’s getting dark now, and cold. I hug my arms to my chest.
“You did well,” Dad says.
“Yeah, you said that already.” I turn away, kick at a fallen pinecone.
I hear him come up behind me. “Sometimes it’s difficult to be the bearer of a sword,” he says gently.
Dad’s known for being tough, the guy who’s called in whenever some big baddie needs a slap-down. Phen talked about him like he was the bad cop in the “good cop/bad cop” scenario, the one who smacks the criminals around. In the old artwork Michael’s always the stern-faced angel hacking up the devil with a sword. His nickname is the Smiter, Phen said. That job would definitely suck. But when I try to peek inside Dad’s mind, all I get is joy. Certainty. An inner stillness like the reflection on the surface of Jackson Lake at sunrise.
I glance over my shoulder at Dad. “You don’t seem too conflicted about bearing a sword.”
He reaches down and picks up my half of the broom, holds the pieces together for a few seconds, then hands the broom back to me in one piece. My mouth drops open like a kid at a magic show. I run my fingers over the place where it was jagged, but I find it perfectly smooth. Not even the paint is marred. It’s like it was never broken.
“I’m at peace with it,” he says.
Together we turn and walk back toward the house. Somewhere off in the trees I hear a bird singing, a bright, simple call.
“Hey, I was wondering….” I stop and work up the guts to bring up something that’s been in the back of my mind ever since he mentioned the word sword. “Would it be okay if Christian trained with us?” His gaze on me is steady and curious, so I go on. “He’s having a vision of using a flaming—I mean glory—sword, and his uncle’s been training him some, but his uncle’s not going to be around much longer, and I think it would be nice—I mean, I think it would be useful for both of us—if you trained us together. Could that be part of the plan?”
He’s quiet for such a long time I’m sure he’s going to say no, but then he blinks a few times and looks at me. “Yes. Perhaps when you’re home for Christmas break, I’ll train you together.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says simply.
“Do you want to come in?” I say at the edge of the porch. “I think I can scrounge up some cocoa.”
He shakes his head. “Right now it’s time for the next part of your lesson.”
“The next part?”
“You remember how to cross?”
I nod. “Call the glory, think of the place, click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home.’”
“I’ve seen that movie,” he says. “One of your mother’s favorites. We watched it every year.”
Us too. Thinking about it makes a sudden tightness in my throat. WOO, she called it. She read the book to me out loud every night before bed when I was seven, and when we were finished, we watched it on DVD, and we sang the songs together, and we tried to do that walk they do when they’re on the yellow brick road, stepping over each other’s legs.
No more WOO with Mom, ever.
“So now what?” I ask Dad, refusing to let myself get choked up again.
He grins, a wicked grin, even though he’s an angel. “Now you get yourself home.”
And just like that, he vanishes. No glory or anything. Just fft. Gone.
He expects me to cross back to California on my own.
“Dad? Not funny,” I call.
In answer, the wind picks up and sends a bunch of red aspen leaves into my hair.
“Great. Just great,” I mutter.
I put the broom in the hallway, near the door, in case we need it again. Then I wander back into the yard and summon a circle of glory. I check my watch and determine that Wan Chen’s going to be in class for another hour, so I close my eyes and concentrate on my room, the lavender bedspread, the small desk in the corner that is always messy with papers and books, the air conditioner in the window.
I can picture it all perfectly, but when I open my eyes, I’m still in Jackson.
Dad told me to focus on something living, but we don’t even own a houseplant. Maybe this isn’t going to be so easy after all.
I close my eyes again. There’s the smell of mountain snow on the air. I shiver. I would have brought a coat if I’d known I was going to be in Wyoming today. I’m a wuss about cold.
You’re my California flower, I remember Tucker saying to me once. We were sitting on the pasture fence at the Lazy Dog, watching his dad break in a colt, the leaves in the trees red just like they are today. I started shivering so hard my teeth actually began to chatter, and Tucker laughed at me and called me that—his delicate California flower—and wrapped me in his coat.
All at once I become aware of the smell of horse manure. Hay. Diesel fuel. A hint of Oreos.
Oh no.
My eyes fly open. I’m in the barn at the Lazy Dog. I haven’t gone to my home.
I’ve gone to Tucker’s.
I’m so startled I lose the glory. And right that minute Tucker comes whistling into the barn carrying a bucket of horseshoes. He sees me, and the tune fades from his lips. He promptly drops the bucket, which lands on his foot, which makes him jerk his foot up and start hopping on the other one.
For a long minute we just stare at each other. He stops hopping and stands with his hands shoved in his pockets, wearing a flannel shirt that’s one of my favorites, blue plaid, which makes his eyes so beautiful. I flash back to the last time I saw him, almost six months ago, Yellowstone and the brink of a waterfall and a kiss that meant good-bye. It feels like it happened a lifetime ago, and at the same time like it happened yesterday. I can still taste him on my lips.
He frowns. “What are you doing here, Clara?”
Clara. Not Carrots.
I don’t know how to answer him, so I shrug. “I was in the neighborhood?”
He snorts. “Isn’t your neighborhood about a thousand miles southwest of here?”
He sounds mad. Something in my gut twists. Of course he has all sorts of reasons to be mad at me. I’d probably be furious if the situation were reversed. I hid things from him.
I pushed him away when all he wanted was to be there for me. Oh yeah, and I almost got him killed, let’s not forget. And I kissed Christian. That was the kicker. Then I had to go and break his heart.
He rubs the back of his neck, still frowning deeply. “No, seriously, what are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I say lamely. “I … came here by accident. My dad’s teaching me how to move through time and space, something he calls crossing, which is like teleporting yourself to where you want to go. He thought it would be hilarious to leave me to get home all by myself, and when I tried, I ended up here.”
I can tell by his face that he doesn’t believe me. “Oh,” he says wryly. “Is that all? You teleported.”
“Yeah. I did.” I’m starting to get irritated, now that I’m finally over the shock of seeing him again. There’s something about his expression, a wariness that instantly rubs me the wrong way. The last time he looked at me like that was after we first kissed, right here in almost exactly this spot, when I lit up with all my happy glory and he knew I was something otherworldly. He’s looking at me like I’m some strange unearthly creature, something not human.
I don’t like it.
“You can mess with time, huh?” he says, rubbing his neck. “Think you could go back about five minutes and warn me about dropping the bucket of horseshoes? I think I might have busted one of my toes.”
“I can fix it,” I say automatically, stepping forward.
He takes a quick step back, puts a hand up to stop me. “With your glory thing? No, thanks. That always makes me want to puke.”
It hurts, him saying that. It makes me feel like a freak.
So he’s decided to go with the old reliable Tucker-the-jerk routine. And what I extra-triple-hate about this is that I know he’s not a jerk, not even a little bit of a jerk, but he’s putting on his jerk hat special for me because I’ve hurt him, and because he wants to keep me at a distance, and because it makes him angry to see me here.
“So you were trying to get back home to California,” he says, putting a heavy emphasis on the words home and California. “And you ended up here. How’d that happen?”
I meet his eyes, and there’s a question in them that’s different from the one he asked.
“Bad luck, I guess,” I answer.
He nods, bends to pick up the scattered horseshoes at his feet, then straightens. “Are you going to stay out here all night?” he asks, the very definition of surly. “Because I have chores to do.”
“Oh, by all means, don’t let me keep you from your chores,” I retort.
“Horse stalls won’t muck themselves.” He grabs a shovel and offers it to me. “Unless it’d make your little heart go pitter-pat to get to work on a real-live working ranch.”
“No, thanks,” I say, stung that he’d treat me like a city slicker after everything. I feel a flash of despair. Then anger. This is not how I imagined it would be, seeing him again. He’s making it difficult on purpose.
Fine, I think. If that’s how he wants it.
“I can go right now,” I say, “but to do that I’ll have to use glory, so you might want to step outside for a minute. I’d hate to make you puke all over your nice boots.”
“Okay,” he says. “Don’t trip on your way out.”
“Oh, I won’t,” I say, because I can’t think of a witty comeback, and I wait until he slips out of the barn before I summon glory and will myself anywhere but here.
6
HOOKING UP
One thing’s for certain: my brother can eat. It’s like he has a hollow leg, and all that food gets crammed in there: four pancakes now, three scrambled eggs, hash browns, a side of wheat toast, three strips of bacon, three links of sausage, and a pitcher of orange juice. I’m feeling kind of sick to my stomach just watching him.
“What?” he says when he catches me staring. “I’m hungry.”
“Clearly.”
“This is good. All I ever get to eat these days is pizza.”
Ah, a Jeffrey tidbit. That’s what this breakfast is all about. Crumbs that he occasionally throws me. Clues. From which I am piecing together a picture of his life.
“Pizza?” I say all nonchalant. “What’s up with pizza?”
“I work at a pizza joint.” He pours more syrup on his final pancake. “That smell gets into everything.” He leans forward like he wants me to sniff him. I do, and sure enough, I get a definite whiff of mozzarella and tomato sauce.
“What do you do there?”
He shrugs. “Run the cash register. Bus tables. Take phone orders. Make pizza, sometimes, if we’re short a cook. Whatever needs to be done. It’s a temporary gig. Until I figure out what I really want to do.”
“I see. Is this pizza joint around here?” I ask slyly. “Maybe I’ll stop in and order something. Give you a big tip.”
“Nuh-uh,” he says. “No way. So. What’s been going on with you?”
I put my chin in my hand and sigh. A lot’s been going on with me. I’m still in a kind of disbelieving shock over seeing Tucker. I’m also still obsessing over the idea that somewhere in the near future I’m going to have to use a sword—me, who’s never particularly thought of myself as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer type. Me, fighting. Possibly for my life, if my vision is any solid indication.
“That good, huh?” Jeffrey says, studying my face.
“It’s complicated.” I consider telling him about my training session yesterday, but I think better of it. Jeffrey has a sore spot when it comes to Dad. Instead I ask, “Do you still have visions?”
His smile vanishes. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
We stare each other down for a minute, me unwilling to let the subject drop so easily, him not wanting to go into it because he’s decided to ignore his visions. He’s not on God’s payroll anymore, is how he feels. Screw the visions. He still feels a pang of bone-deep guilt every time he thinks about his last vision, which didn’t turn out so well.
But deep down he also does want to talk about it.
He finally looks away. “Sometimes,” he admits. “They’re useless, though. They never make sense. They just tell you things you don’t understand.”
“Like what?” I ask. “What do you see?”
He readjusts his baseball cap. His eyes get distant, like he’s seeing his vision happening in front of him. “I see water, lots of it, like a lake or something. I see somebody falling, out of the sky. And I see …” His mouth twists. “Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it. Visions only get you in trouble. Last time I saw myself starting a forest fire. You tell me how that’s any kind of divine message.”
“But you were brave, Jeffrey,” I say. “You proved yourself. You had to decide whether to trust your visions, whether to trust the plan, and you did. You were faithful.”
He shakes his head. “And what did it get me? What did I become?”
A fugitive, he thinks. A high school dropout. A loser.
I reach across the table and put my hand on his. “I’m sorry, Jeffrey. I’m really, really, ridiculously sorry, for everything.”
He pulls his hand away, coughs. “It’s fine, Clara. I don’t blame you.”
This is news, since the last time I checked, he was all about blaming me.
“I blame God,” he says. “If there even is such a thing. Sometimes I feel like we’re all chumps, doing stuff from these visions just because somebody told us to, in the name of a deity we’ve never even met. Maybe the visions have nothing to do with God, and we’re just seeing the future. Maybe we’re all just perpetuating the myth.”
Those are some big words coming from my brother, and for a minute I feel like I’m sitting at the table with a stranger making somebody else’s argument. “Jeffrey, come on. How can you—”
He holds up his hand. “Don’t give me the religious talk, okay? I’m fine with the way things are. I am currently avoiding all large bodies of water, so my vision won’t be a problem. We’re supposed to be tal
king about you now, remember?”
I bite my lip. “Okay. What do you want to know?”
“Are you dating Christian, now that you’re—” He stops himself again.
“Now that I’m broken up with Tucker?” I finish for him. “No. We hang out. We’re friends. And beyond that, we’re figuring stuff out.”
We’re more than friends, of course, but I don’t know what more really means.
“You should date him,” Jeffrey says. “He’s your soul mate. What is there to figure out?”
I almost choke on my orange juice. “My soul mate?”
“Yeah. Your other half, your destiny, the person who completes you.”
“Look, I’m a complete person,” I say with a laugh. “I don’t need Christian to complete me.”
“But there’s something about you two, when you’re together. It’s like you fit.” He grins. Shrugs. “He’s your soul mate.”
“Whoa, you have got to stop saying that.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my sixteen-year-old brother. “Where’d you even hear that term, anyway—soul mate?”
“Oh, come on….You know, people say that sort of thing.”
My eyes widen as I feel the flutter of embarrassment from him, the image of a girl with long, dark hair, ruby red lips, smiling. “Oh my God. You have a girlfriend.”
His face goes a charming shade of fuchsia. “She’s not my girlfriend….”
“Right, she’s your soul mate,” I croon. “How’d you meet her?”
“I knew her before we moved to Wyoming, actually. She went to school with us.”
My mouth drops open. “Get out! So I probably know her, then. What’s her name?”
He glares at me. “It’s no big deal. We’re not dating. You don’t know her.”
“What’s her name?” I insist. “What’s her name, what’s her name? I could go on like this all day.”
He looks mad, but he wants to tell me. “Lucy. Lucy Wick.”
He’s right; I don’t know her. I sit back in the booth. “Lucy. Your soul mate.”
He points a warning finger at me. “Clara, I swear….”
“That’s great,” I say. Maybe this will turn him around, give him something positive to think about. “I’m glad you like someone. I felt bad when—”