Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (3 page)

His
dad grunted, “So, you have the talent. Have you ever tried to move anything with your mind?”

“Talent?”

His father grunted a laugh, “Do you realize that other people have
no
idea where the sun is at night?”

Baffled,
Tarc said, “They don’t?”

“No,” his father snorted. “They don’t even know where the fire is, unless it’s close enough that they can feel the heat on their skin. They don’t know where other people are either!” He said this last with some astonishment. “Can you feel the insides of things?”

“Huh?”

“
We’re
different
,” his father said, “than other people.
Very
few people are like us. My mother had talent and she passed it to me,” he shrugged, “but not to my brother. Your mother has talent too and I have often wondered whether she and I might pass it to
both
our children. Perhaps it might even be strong enough in one of you to be useful.”

Tarc
frowned, “Feel the insides?”

His father raised his
closed fist from below the bar and set it on the bar’s surface, “What’s in my hand?”

Tarc
’s eyebrows crawled up as he focused on the closed fist. “A silver!”

“You seem surprised. Was that your first time? Sensing the inside of something?”

“Uh, no. I could feel the insides of the big soldier’s head when he held the knife to me tonight.”

His father grunted, “
Yeah, new bits of my talent have often shown up when I’ve been frightened.”

“So… t
his talent… What’s it good for?”

Daum
barked a derisive laugh, “Oh, lots of things. No one can sneak up behind me. I can balance knives on their points.” Making his point he picked his knife back up and set it on its point again. It stayed on that point despite Tarc’s goggled eyes. Daum reached out his hand and the knife fell into it. “I can even push little things around,” he said, dropping a copper on the bar’s surface. The small bit of copper slid a little ways down the bar, then turned around and came back to his hand.

Wide eyed,
Tarc said, almost reverently, “How did you
do
that?”

Daum
shrugged, “
I
don’t know. If you want to try it yourself, first you have to
concentrate
on the copper.”

Tarc
stared at the copper, not sure what to do. Then reached for it.

His father grabbed
Tarc’s wrist. “No. Reach for it with your… I don’t know how to say it… Use whatever it was that you felt the inside of the man’s head with.”

Tarc
’s eyes had gone to his father, now they turned back to the copper. He realized that he could
feel
it. He didn’t really know how, but “ghost hand” seemed as good a description as any. “I feel it, now what?”

Daum
lifted his chin, “Try to push it.”

Tarc
imagined pushing it. Nothing happened so he tried pushing it hard. His eyebrows rose as it slid a few millimeters along the bar’s surface.

His father grinned at him, “That’
s pretty good for a first try.”

Tarc
felt a prickly sensation in his scalp. “So what can we do with this?” he whispered almost reverently, turning wide eyes back to his dad. “You know, what can we do that
matters
?”

His father snorted, “I told you. Not much. If you wake up in the middle of the night you’ll know what time it is from where the sun is
underneath you on the other side of the world. You’ll be able to push little things around without touching them. You might think you’d be able to win at dice, except by the time you push the die you didn’t like over to a new face, everyone would see it happen and they’d decide
someone
had to be cheating.” His father looked at him affectionately, “Probably the most important thing you’ll be able to do, is to touch the people you love.”

Tarc
felt his father’s hand lightly on his shoulder; then realized that both of his father’s hands actually still rested on the bar. He
knew
no one stood behind him because he couldn’t sense their heat. Nonetheless, he glanced momentarily back over his shoulder. He turned his wide eyes back to his father, “You patted my shoulder with your
thoughts
?”

Daum
grinned wryly; then minutely nodded his head. “Better get to bed. Plenty to do tomorrow.” He frowned, “Did you do your reading this afternoon?”

“Yes
Dad,” Tarc said. When he’d finished learning to read, write and do basic math at Ms. Alman’s little school, he’d been horrified to find out that his parents expected him to keep learning. Astonishingly enough, they had materials with which he could continue his education through daily reading. However, the Hyllis family’s small cache of books, especially the medical books, was a well-kept secret. Irreproducible and more precious than gold, the possibility that their books might be damaged or stolen was one of the family’s greatest fears.

Though he
felt as tired as he usually did after a long day, Tarc lay awake thinking about his new “talent” and trying to figure out what kinds of things he might be able to do with it.
Surely
Daum only intended for his dismissive attitude towards their shared talent to tantalize Tarc?

***

All too soon, Daussie threw open Tarc’s door and said, “Tarc! Get up. We need firewood.” Then she was gone.

Tarc
felt sorely tempted to turn back over and go back to sleep.

He didn’t. First of all, his
father took such behavior very poorly. The kindly version of Daum vanished instantly if you shirked duties. Second, though running a successful tavern kept the Hyllis family significantly better off than many townsfolk, they all knew that each of them had to pull his or her weight for that prosperity to continue. His parents had drummed the concept of earning their keep into Tarc and Daussie until it was second nature.

Rolling out of his warm bed,
Tarc soaked his rag in a small tub of cold water. He quickly washed his face; then rubbed the scum off his teeth with a corner of the cloth. Putting on his shoes and shirt, he rinsed out his rag and set it aside to dry.

Entering
the warm kitchen Tarc reached for a biscuit, but his mother smacked his hand aside, “Get some wood first. The fire’s low.”

Tarc
looked over and saw that the kitchen rack had no wood at all. Stomach rumbling, he silently cursed his sister. He grabbed his coat and wood-carry strap and headed out. The outhouse stood first on his list. Done with that business, he brought in the first of many straps of wood for the day. The woodshed was getting low so Tarc knew he’d have to hitch the wagon and go to the wood sellers for a cord later that morning.

As
Tarc stacked a bundle of wood on his strap, he suddenly thought about his father’s revelation of the night before. For a moment he pictured the strapped bundle of wood floating triumphantly in front of him as he walked into the kitchen. It would certainly be more impressive than lugging it in over his shoulder. He picked up the end of the strap, wrapping it around the bundle of wood. He passed the end of the strap through the ring on the other end. Rather than lifting the strap with his hand, Tarc reached out with his ghost and tugged on the strap with it. Though he could see a slight tightening in the leather it didn’t even come all the way snug. He concentrated on lifting harder and it snugged a little more but that was all. He snorted,
I guess there’s no way my ghost is going to be carrying straps of wood for me!

Carrying
in the strap of wood, he mused disappointedly about his newfound ability. Somehow, when he’d learned about it from his father the night before, he’d felt certain that this talent would allow him to accomplish great things. This despite Daum’s dismissive attitude towards their shared abilities. When Daum had mentioned the possibility that, inheriting from
both
his mother and father, he might have greater power, somehow he had just assumed that it
would
be true.

Later, as he hitched the wagon to go for a cord of wood, Tarc wondered whether his talent might be strengthened by exercise. Perhaps it would be similar to the way his arms had strengthened from his daily chores carrying wood and water for the tavern?

Resolving to exercise
whatever talent he did have, Tarc picked up a pebble and put it on the wagon seat next to him. As he drove out to the wood cutter’s lot he pushed the pebble back and forth across the seat for practice. After a bit he had an inspiration and tried lifting it off the seat.

With a feeling of awe, he watched
the pebble rise an inch or two off the seat and float along there. He held it up there while the wagon rolled on several blocks. Eventually Tarc dropped it with the sensation that he couldn’t really hold it up much longer. It didn’t exactly make him tired, but did give him a mild headache.

After picking up a load of firewood from the wood cutter’s lot outside the wall, Tarc started the drive back to the tavern. Deputy Jarvis was on duty at the gate in the wall. Tarc said, “Thanks for your help with that soldier last night.”

“That’s our job,” Jarvis said. He smiled and winked, “
It does make the job more pleasant when you feed us dinner for doing it.”

“That guy was huge!”

Jarvis grimaced, “Yeah, it’s a good thing there were three of us.”

As he checked through the gate,
Tarc wondered whether three deputies would have been enough, had the giant soldier decided to fight.

Back on the road
, Tarc once again suspended the pebble just above the seat. Focused on the pebble, he wasn’t much paying attention to his surroundings. After all, their old horse, Shogun, knew her own way home.

A call startled
Tarc and his pebble fell, dropping to the floorboards. “Young Hyllis. Can you give me a ride down to your tavern? Something’s gone wrong with my foot.”

Tarc
drew back on the reins, bringing their little wagon to a halt. Old John Benson, the florid overweight man who owned the general store, leaned heavily on a cane beside the road. Benson was a regular customer at the tavern, frequently coming in for a drink and often a meal. Tarc waited for Benson to board, eyeing his pebble and wondering whether he could float it back up from the floorboards without Benson noticing. He decided not. Somehow, he already knew that it wouldn’t be good if others became aware of his family’s talents.

Benson settled onto the seat next to
Tarc with a sigh, “This old foot is killing me!”

“How did you
hurt it?”

“I didn’t.
It just started swelling in the middle of the damn night. My big toe turned red and now it hurts so bad I can barely walk on it.” Benson reached down to loosen the laces on his shoe with a sigh. “I hope your Mama will know what to do for it.”

“Is it hot?”
Tarc asked, eyeing Benson’s foot out of the corner of his eye. Tarc’s mother had said often enough that red, hot, swollen, and tender were the four signs of infection. Infection could be horrible, killing people quickly. Sometimes though, people with infections seemed to be the ones that his mother could help the most.

Benson turned to look at
Tarc, “How did
you
know? You going into your mom’s business?”

Tarc
shrugged, “She’s been teaching me a few things.” He didn’t want to go into the training that his mother had been giving her children over the years in the hope they would follow in her footsteps. Or the fact that he didn’t know if that’s what he wanted to do. He liked Benson and felt concern that an infection in the man’s foot might be much more dangerous than Benson seemed to realize. On the other hand, he didn’t want to worry the man unnecessarily. “I’ll pull up to the front first, so you don’t have to walk so far.”

As soon as Tarc stopped the wagon in front of the tavern, he ran in to get his father. Daum came out and helped Benson up the steps to the great room. Anxious to see what was the matter with Benson, Tarc drove the wagon around back and hurriedly unloaded it into the woodshed. He hustled to put Shogun and the wagon into the stable, all the while wondering whether his mother would be able to help Benson. As quickly as he could, he loaded his strap with wood and headed into the great room.

As he had hoped, as soon as he stacked that load of wood his father eyed him and jerked his head towards
Eva who was with Mr. Benson in the corner. Rolling up his strap Tarc approached them. Mr. Benson sat up on the table where Mama so frequently examined and treated people who came to her for care. Both of Benson’s feet were bare and Tarc could see that the left one was swollen and red around the base of the great toe. Tarc stared uneasily at Benson’s foot, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it looked.