Kathryn Magendie (12 page)

She stood, raised the knife high into the air. “Mountain Spirit, take our pain and blow it out in the wind!” With her bare left foot, she stamped onto the flames, grinding down into the dirt.

I rose up on my knees. “Sweetie! Stop it!”

Without changing her wise-face, without looking at me, she brought the hot knife down, and sliced into her left hand. Blood dripped onto her foot where she’d just stomped out the flames.

I jumped up, my eyes bugging as if they would fall on the ground at Sweetie’s feet, my hands held to my mouth to hold in any vomit or fat baby crying.

She stared at me, holding tight to the knife. Her eyes turned burning bright.

And even though I didn’t want to and tried not to, I did cry. All the times Sweetie did weird things welled up and gushed out as sobs. Her scars and puckers, cuts and bruises, her wild ways, all of it was too much to take anymore. I thought about what she said about T. J.’s father being mean because of his father, and I wondered what had happened to Sweetie to make her the way
she
was.

“Lissa, stop crying.” She said it so quiet and so low.

“Why do you do these things?
Why
?”

She blinked slowly. “I been trying to show you.”

I swiped at my snotty nose with my arm. “I don’t
understand
. Show me what?”

She picked up the handkerchief, and handed it to me. “Wipe your nose.”

I blew and wiped. “I can’t stand your hurts. Please
stop
it.”

“I do not hurt.”

I glared at her. “
Stop saying that
.”

She held out the knife with her right hand, her left hand bleeding. “Come here, Lissa.”

“No!” I backed away. “I don’t want you to cut me. I’m not like you. I don’t like being hurt.”

“I ever hurt you?”

“No, but everybody thinks you’re crazy. People in town talk about you and your mother all the time.”

She lowered the knife, a hurt in her eyes that shamed me. She kept them locked on mine and asked, “That how you think?”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. But Sweetie—”

“Then come here and hold out your hand.”

I took a breath, let it out, walked to her, and stuck out my hand. I needed to trust her. She was my only friend. The best friend I’d ever had.

She took the tip of the knife and laid it against my palm.

I waited for her to slash me as she had done to herself. She was brave and took it, so why couldn’t I? When she pressed the knife into my skin, there was only a sharp sting and then a line of blood beaded up.

“We got to put our hands together now to mix up our bloods. My blood will go in your body, and your blood will go in mine and that makes us be bound.”

“I’m ready, Sweetie.”

Sweetie pressed her hand to mine and squeezed. Her blood was hot against my hand. She squeezed harder and her hot blood heated my hand. She said, “We are bound forever. Nothing can stop our bond. Not no bad winds, not no wrongful hearts, not no time before or after, nothing in this world or beyond will change our bond. Forever.” She pressed harder still. “Now you say it.”

“We’re bound forever. Nothing will stop our bond. No bad winds, or bad hearts, or time before or after, nothing in this world or beyond will stop or change our bond. Forever.” I squeezed back hard as I could.

“Our bloods is mixed now and running up around inside us. I got your blood, and you got mine. Bound forever and ever.”

“The blood’s running all the way to our hearts, huh, Sweetie?”

“That’s right. Just like you said.” She released the pressure of her hand and at first, it was as if our hands were sewn together. As our hands parted, there was a tearing feeling. I wondered how we could be bound but still have that tearing away feeling. I wanted to take her hand again and not let go. I didn’t like the tearing feeling.

“We got to put our blood print in our diary.” She reached for the diary with the uncut hand, handed it to me. “Find a clean page.”

I opened it. Past my writing and Sweetie’s scrawls, and the maps Sweetie drew, I found the next blank page.

“Now, stick your clean finger in your blood and spot the page.”

I did what she told me and then held the book out to her. She put her print beside mine.

I stared at our bloody fingerprints, and then blew on them so they’d dry. Sweetie leaned over and helped by blowing, too. When the blood was dry enough to close the diary, she said, “Now. It is done.”

The diary had smudges of blood on the leather. There were dribbles of blood in the dirt. Blood on our hands and on Sweetie’s feet. Sweetie took two pieces of cloth from the leather bag, handed me one, and held the other to her cut hand. “Press to stop the bleeding.”

I pressed to my cut. “Sweetie? You didn’t tell me your secret.”

“But I am
showing
you.”

“I still don’t understand.”

She sat on the ground, pulled a canteen of water and leaves from the bag, poured water to clean her hands, and then pressed the leaves into her cut, tied the piece of cloth around it. She handed me the canteen and two leaves.

I sat and did as she’d done. Where the leaves were, my palm tingled, then felt a bit numb.

 
She opened the tin box and spoke to it. “I was borned magical under the moon with the mountain spirit’s breath. I will never hurt. I will never die until the day of my choosing if I so choose.” She looked up and over to the ridgetops. “Grandpaw said when he called for the old granny woman come birth me from my mama, the granny woman knew what I was when she saw the moon in my eyes. She whispered me a name that cannot ever be said and nobody knows it except the granny woman. Grandpaw called me Sweetie and that is my name.” She removed the cloth and leaves from her hand and squeezed drops of blood into the box, closed it, rubbed the top. “Keep our secrets safe.”

I stared at her, for once nothing rushing out of my mouth.

Sweetie looked at me with what I thought was hope. “Maybe some my blood will help your hurts and maybe some your blood will help . . .
 
help me be more like you. I get tiresome having to keep the secret. I get tiresome thinking on how long forever is if I can’t choose.” Sweetie looked as if she really
was
tired all of a sudden, as if she’d walked a thousand miles. She pressed the leaves into the cut again.

I found my voice. “But, everyone feels pain. Everyone dies. It’s biology; it’s science. Everything is made of stuff that dies and decays when it’s time to, not when we choose to.”

“No, not me.” She sighed.

“Our bodies aren’t made to last forever. I could show you stuff in Father’s books so you’d see.”

She shook her head back and forth, slowly.

“You can’t feel
any
pain when you hurt yourself?
Nothing
?”

She shook her head again, just as slowly.

“But you can get infections. Germs are like colonies that—”

“Grandpaw showed me what to do to make sure.” She put down the box, and straightened her feet out in front of her. “I brung me some stuff to fix me up. Mama would have a hissy if I didn’t. She worries I don’t do proper things. She thinks I got a curse from God because of something she did, but Grandpaw says I am not cursed by no god.” She firmed her mouth.

“What kinds of proper things?”

“My magic powers aren’t perfect.”

“Huh?”

“I got to remember to drink the bearberry tea to help my pee-pee-parts. I got to remember to check myself for things out a whackity on my body, and check my eyeballs to make sure nothing flung in them, and when it’s cold I got to remember to dress warm.”

“None of this makes any scientific sense at all. It doesn’t make
any
kind of sense.”

“Why’re you all’a time talking that way, about science and germs and all? Like it’s the onliest thing that makes the world turn round?”

“I’m just trying to figure things out. There’s always an answer to everything. My father says so.”

“Well, the mountain spirit and my grandpaw know the other answers.”

“If you’re magical, how come you have to check yourself? How come you bleed and could maybe get infections?”

Her shoulders dropped. “Maybe when I grow up things will be more perfect. Maybe I done something to make the mountain spirit mad. I do not know.”

I gave her a bug under a microscope stare, instead of a best friend bound sister look.

From the leather bag, she pulled out a jar with a cork in it, and clean white strips of cloth. She uncorked the jar and from it poured something green-tinged over the cut, wiped at it with a piece of the cloth, then wrapped strips around her hand. She wouldn’t look at me. She then worked on her foot, where she stomped the flames out.

I knew cuts and burns needed to be taken care of before they were dirtied. If a tiny, microscopic bit of dirt ever settled into a hurt, it would make a nice home in there. And it didn’t matter how tiny it was, that tiny bit of dirt would cause an infection to begin. Then, before the person knew it, the little dirt turned into a big nasty pus-filled sore that had to be lanced and drained. If it wasn’t lanced and drained, if it was allowed to stay filled with pus and nasty, the infection traveled all over the body. All that trouble from a tiny bit of dirt.

She finished wrapping her foot and as before, handed me the jar and clean cloth strips.

 
“We have to make sure we keep these clean so they don’t get pus and the pus goes all the way to our hearts and we go into a coma where we sleep our life away,” I paused, “or it kills us.”

“Sweetie; that is me,” she pointed to herself, “will not die.” She sang as she worked on her hurts, “My old hen's a good old hen; she lays eggs for the railroad men; sometimes one, sometimes two; sometimes enough for the whole damn crew—”

“Everybody dies.” I poured some of the liquid over my cut. The green stuff stung like the dickens. “All it takes is a tiny piece of dirt. Just one little bit of dirt turns into a nasty infection. Bam! Just like that, you could die or go into a coma.”

“Silly Brains. You and your comas.”

I wrapped my hand. My palm was throbbing just from that little prick of the knife and the sting of her medicine.

She watched me fix my hand.

“Sweetie?”

“Huh?”

“How do you stand it?”

“I am what I am.” She poured the rest of the water in the canteen over the fire to make sure it was out, and then put everything back into her bag.

I tried to figure how it could all be real. How a person couldn’t feel things in her body that everyone else felt. And how could a kid remember to do what she said she had to do? I wondered if there really was a mountain spirit. I’d always thought it was just a silly game she played, something to sound mysterious, and that she was only a really tough girl who could take things other kids couldn’t take. Or she liked to keep people away from her by acting strange.

But after everything she’d shown me, everything she’d said, and after the way our hands felt pressed together, and the weird air where I knew we weren’t alone, there had to be something magical or mysterious about it. Maybe Father was wrong. Maybe some things couldn’t ever be explained by science and scientists. I knew no normal person was like Sweetie.