The Silent Strength of Stones (26 page)

We ate in silence. Afterward, I said, “Do you think this is going to work?” Training him in the store had been difficult, not because he couldn’t understand or perform the tasks, but because he had trouble focusing on them or taking them seriously. Mariah was right: how could you take a thing from a fairy tale and stick it in a convenience store?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t mean to be giving you trouble, Nick. I don’t think my mind works like yours. All I really want to do is sleep and eat and hunt and run around in the woods, finding out everything that’s going on. I’ll try again. I’ll try harder. How do you make it important?”

“It’s food and drink, TV and electricity, home, heat, comfort, being able to shower, wash clothes, drive a car. Work is the fire that heats our stove, the furniture we sit and sleep on. It’s what keeps us together.”

“Huh.” He frowned. “There are other ways to get all those things, but the other ways take work, too. Huh.” He scratched his elbow. “I wish I cared about those things, but I really don’t. Well, I promised your pop. I can learn to focus. I’m pretty sure I can.”

“Hey!”

I looked toward the shore and saw Willow. She ran out along the rocks and sat down beside us. “Are you okay? They did an unbinding last night—”

“It hurt really bad. They did the wrong one,” Evan said.

“I tried to tell them not to. They closed the circle without me and sent me to sleep.”

“Still think they’re just good people?” Evan asked her. “I’m not joking. It nearly killed us. If Nick hadn’t known a counterbinding, I don’t know what would have happened.”

She reached across and touched my face, then looked at Evan, her expression troubled. “But fetch-bonding is wrong,” she said.

“
Sirella!
What a time to figure that out!”

She closed her eyes for a minute, then looked at him. “Uncle Rory explained it to me,” she said. “Nick explained some of it to me. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I know I always want to—” She touched my face again and frowned. “I crave it. I have to try not to do it anymore. It’s not respectful. You’ll kiss me without it, won’t you, Nick?”

“Anytime.”

“Will you show me how to find
skilliau
?”

“Will you show me how to do some of this other stuff, like make those lights over my hand?”

She smiled. “Yes. Oh, yes. As long as I’m here, I’ll teach you what I can ... when the Keyes go, I must go with them.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because family is more important than anything else,” she said, without thinking about it Then she blinked. After a brief silence, she said, “You aren’t seeing the good things about them, Nick. I’m sorry it’s so lopsided. There’s a warmth about belonging, about being with, about always having someone to talk with who understands. About knowing where you’re going and what comes next, about knowing what the right thing to do is, or having someone to ask if you’re confused about it. About knowing that when you do things well someone will notice and give you praise and thanks, about knowing that the learning is waiting for you there.”

I remembered a belonging warmth I had shared with my mother before she left. I remembered what she said about trees shading each other out, too. To breathe or not to breathe?

“Is their teaching as sloppy as their castings?” Evan said.

“What?” She glanced at him. “They don’t have the fine control of our teacher in the Hollow, it’s true, but I know fine control already. Rory and Elissa have been showing me new things, things Great-aunt never taught us about how to address the land and the water and life in general.”

“Does any of it work?”

“Yes. A connection kindles. I know there’s a sort of ... waiting going on right now, that’s why we don’t get farther in our tasks. I don’t know what the waiting is for. I’m trusting the Powers to let me know when it’s over. But I’m touching and being touched.” She dipped her fingers in the lake, lifted them, and sent droplets sparkling in the sun, arcing and hanging on air for too long, given gravity. She smiled at Evan.

His face wore a blank look I hadn’t seen there very often. “I’m glad you’re learning,” he said after a little while.

“They would teach you too if you gave them a chance.”

“No,” he said. “What they have to teach I don’t want to learn.”

“Evan, if you don’t come back—what if the thread is cut?” She gripped his forearm. She shook her head. “Don’t let that happen.”

“I don’t want that,” he said. He put his hand over hers on his arm. “I don’t want to lose Mama or Papa or you.”

“You better figure out what you do want,” she said.

“That’s harder than I thought, as long as Uncle Bennet has my snow crystal.”

I checked my watch. “We better head back,” I said.

Evan grinned. “Yes. I’m learning how to run a store, Willow. There’s a lot of fine detail work in that, too.”

“What?” She laughed. “Whyever?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s a job.”

“Are you serious?”

His eyebrows rose. He smiled again, showing teeth. “Maybe,” he said. He stood up and stretched. I got to my feet too. We followed Willow back to land.

“Nick? Do you know where other
skilliau
are?”

“I don’t know. Pop was talking about my rock collection last night. I used to pick up rocks all the time because they felt different from other rocks, but I stopped taking them home because Pop would get rid of them. Got out of the habit of picking them up at all, actually.” I glanced around at the underbrush and tree trunks, trying to tune to rocks the way I had when Mom played rock-hunting games with me so long ago, but I had lost the knack. “I’d have to practice,” I said.

“When do you get off work tonight?”

“Five.”

“Would you practice then?”

“Quit pushing, Willow,” Evan said.

“I want to know what Nick knows.”

“The sooner you find
skilliau
, the sooner the Keyes will want to go home, and then we’ll have to figure out a lot of things I don’t want to deal with, like whether you leave and I stay, or what,” he said.

“This isn’t about you, Evan.”

“Everything’s connected.”

I glanced at my watch again. We had five minutes to get back. We could make it if we ran. “I’ll meet you after work, Willow. Come to the store,” I said. I ran through bushes up to my path, rustling and crackling, and Evan came after me, making no noise at all.

Mariah was talking with one of those sandy-haired men she favored. She was smiling an awful lot. It wasn’t until the man turned to look at us that I realized it was Rory.

“Evan,” he said, and his voice was silky and warm. “We need to talk.”

“We do?” Evan’s face was blank again, and his voice sounded blank.

“Please,” said Rory. He glanced at me. “Alone.”

“Whatever you want to talk to me about concerns Nick,” Evan said.

I felt a chill. I didn’t have protection anymore, and these people had already done things to me without permission. I didn’t want them noticing me. I looked at Evan. His face was perfectly still. But there was a hum to him, a silent hum, and its tune was fear. Maybe I’d better stick by him.

“What? How can that be?”

“Nick has given me shelter and salt privilege, and has offered me a—a living.”

“A living? How can you live, away from us?”

“I don’t know, but I’m willing to try it.”

Rory studied me for a moment. He nodded. “What difference does it make? He has a silence on him. Come outside.”

“Excuse me. I have to go to work now,” I said, glancing at Mariah.

She waved her hand in a shooing motion at us. “I’ll stay a little longer.” She smiled at Rory.

We went outside and sat on the storefront bench by the newspaper vending machine, Evan in the middle between me and Rory.

Tug-of-war?

“Evan,” said Rory. He stared across the road toward Mabel’s. After a long moment’s silence edged by, he looked at Evan. “We love you. We need you. You are precious to us. It hurts us that you distance yourself from us. I recognize that we have made mistakes in how we treated you; we’re not used to dealing with one who starts out so far from us, who keeps such a distance, who doesn’t value the same things we value. Come back to us and let us start over. Maybe we can learn a different way to care for you.”

Evan leaned back and turned toward Rory, so I couldn’t see his face. The fear hum was still coming from him, growing stronger. “Thank you,” he said. “Thanks, but I’d rather stay here.”

“This is your last word, even though it may mean cutting the thread that binds the bones?”

“Can you do that? I thought only my parents could make that decision.”

“They gave your care over to us.”

Evan shook his head. “There was no real hearing about that. I know they were doing what they thought was right, but I am old enough to decide my next steps, and no one asked me.”

“You never demonstrated competence.”

“What?” He sounded shocked.

“Opportunities have been offered you, and always you took a choice that led you away from what was right,” Rory said. “Lately you have actively chosen toward the wrong. Using fetch bond weighs against you .... We can understand and forgive everything, though. Return to us. Let us work with you.”

Evan stared toward the forest, his face a mask. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he said after a moment.

Rory rose. He looked at us. “We love you. We need you.” He walked away.

Evan spent the rest of the afternoon focusing on work so hard that we ran out of things to do. I showed him all the inventory we had in various storage spaces, finding some stuff in the rafters I had forgotten we ever had. We did the Sunday afternoon cleaning when there weren’t any customers, a job I usually reserved for after the store was closed. Evan had a way of chasing dust that worked better than anything I had ever tried. Some of the dust we used to have was positively historic, but it was all gone now. Evan’s method had to do with the transformative powers of fire, he told me, but he didn’t explain it.

Pop dropped in in the middle of the afternoon and seemed to have trouble believing how clean and nice everything looked. He swallowed several times. “You should have no trouble finding other work if you want it,” Pop told Evan at last.

Evan thanked Pop without smiling. He had lost his easy air, and his intensity made me uncomfortable.

“What’s the matter?” I asked Evan when we sat down near the end of the shift. Pop had gone back to the motel, and Granddad was snoozing in his chair.

Evan shook his head. “It’s not over. Nothing’s settled. They know they’re right.” After a minute he looked me in the eye. “They might be right, for anybody else. I don’t know.”

I thought about Mom telling me her family wanted to chop off parts of her. “There must be a—this isn’t ...” I thumped the counter with my fist. I hadn’t even known I was planning to talk about the Keyes, but my tongue wouldn’t work anyway.

Evan smiled half a smile, then tightened his lips. “At least I know now that I can work.”

Willow never showed up after we closed the store. I wondered what that meant.

9. Dirt

At supper that night Pop asked Evan if he had learned all about the store, and Evan said he had learned a lot, but figured there was more I could show him that we hadn’t had to deal with today. Pop asked Evan if he wanted to come up to the motel in the morning and see how it should be run. Evan said yes, thank you.

After supper cleanup, we watched television and went to bed early. Evan was distant and distracted. I figured I better get used to this side of him, too; things were going to be more complicated than I had thought.

It was close to midnight when Evan whimpered. I hit the light switch in time to see him snap upright. My thumb throbbed where I had sliced it open the night before. I stared at Evan as he jerked to his feet, his arms bent at the elbows, his hands rigid. He whined. I saw a wolf head on his shoulders for a second. He blinked and it faded.

“What?” I said. My whole hand throbbed, pain moving outward from the cut in my thumb, streaking up my arm.

“Have to ... go,” he said. His legs moved like rusty mechanical things, walking him to the window, while his upper body stayed stiff and still. He fell out the window. I jumped up and ran to look. His fall was slower than gravity would account for. He thumped down softly, on his feet, and walked jerkily off toward my path to Lacey’s.

I dressed fast and ran downstairs and outside. I caught up with Evan not very far into the woods, tugged on his bent arm. It was as stiff as stove wood. He kept walking. “What?” I said. “What?”

“Go back,” he said.

“No!”

“Guess they love me too much to let me go. They laid pullers and compulsions on me. This is going to be bad. Go back before they start on you.”

“But isn’t this”—I coughed—“what they told you not to do to me?” Even saying “they” was an effort. “They say walk and you walk?” I coughed again.

“But this is for my own good,” he said. His legs scissored. His arms stayed stiff and bent, hands forward, like the arms of a mannequin pretending to catch a basketball. I had to push myself to keep up with him. “For the good of the family, too, whatever they think that is. They think they need to straighten out my priorities. Work, wife, babies. They won’t kill me. They won’t even really hurt me, except in the spirit. There’s nothing you can do except get hurt. Do me a big favor. Let me go. Go away, Nick. Go home.” He strode on past me without looking back.

I ran into the forest. It was different in the dark. Underbrush clung to me, bracken tripped me, and dewberry and blackberry canes scratched at me. The trees seemed too close together. Everything was damp with dew. The smell of pine resin was strong, and so was the odor of vanilla leaf and the rank green of the damp plants I broke through. I fought upslope for a while, then sat down on mossy, plant-heavy earth, surrounded on all sides by short spiky plants, shapes and scents telling me they were white everlasting, goatsbeard, fireweed, thistles, with elderberry branches pressing against my back. My throat felt thick and hot and sore, and my arm ached and throbbed as though on fire. I buried my hand in the damp moss and felt a little better.