Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I (29 page)

Gates heal. He had vaguely known that, but since it was a positive aspect of gatemagery, no one spoke of it much. When Auntie Uck referred to not having a first-rate healer, she was talking about the lack of a Meadowfriend who specialized in herbs and could enhance their healing powers. But before 632 A.D., any injury could be healed by pulling or pushing someone through a gate.

If they saw his shoulder, they would know. The injury had been severe enough it could not have healed without a mark. Only a gatemage could be unscathed.

Pulling on his shirt would not be enough. One of the aunts would insist on seeing the wound, dressing it. He had to have a suitable injury to show them. Yet how could he inflict it on himself, here in the tree?

He gripped his shoulder with all his might, jabbing his longish, dirty thumbnail into several spots. It hurt, and there were red marks, but had it been enough to bruise himself? He could only hope as he pulled his shirt on again.

When he got to the bottom of the tree, only Uncle Mook and Aunt Lummy were waiting for him. Lummy was Mama’s youngest sister and looked like her, only plumper and not as irritable as Mama always seemed to be. But then, Aunt Lummy was not a great lightmage; she was good with rabbits, a skill not much called for once she had persuaded them to leave the vegetable garden alone. So she spent her days trying to teach all the useful languages, written and spoken, to children who mostly could not understand what they might ever be used for.

And she was kind to Danny. So was Uncle Mook. And these were the two who had been left behind to wait for him.

Danny dropped from the lowest branch to the ground and faced them. “How much trouble am I in?” he asked them.

“With me,” said Aunt Lummy, “none at all.”

“Those girls should have been wrapped in a sack long ago, to teach them sense and manners,” said Uncle Mook.

“But Zog and Gyish are now your enemies,” said Aunt Lummy, “and they want you dead, to put it plainly. And many there are who think they have a point, and that the only reason you’re still alive is because your parents are who they are.”

“As if Mama would miss me if I died,” said Danny, “or Baba would even notice I was gone.”

“Don’t be unjust,” said Uncle Mook. “Your parents are complicated people, but I assure you that they care a great deal about you and think about you all the time.”

“But if the Family decided I was drekka and dangerous and had to be killed, Baba would put me up in Hammernip himself, and Mama would shovel on the dirt.”

“Nonsense,” said Aunt Lummy.

“Of course they would,” said Uncle Mook. “It’s their duty.”

“Now, Mooky,” said Aunt Lummy.

“The boy is old enough to know the truth,” Mook said to her. And then to Danny, “They know their duty to the Family and they will do it. But right now the madness is over and it’s time for you to come back home to eat. With us, I think, in case somebody takes it in their head to make a preemptive strike before your folks come home.”

“Oh, Mooky,” said Aunt Lummy impatiently. “Don’t scare the boy!”

“He should be scared,” said Mook. “He should have cut off a hand before he put those children’s clants in a sack. Now he knows it, but the deed’s been done. Everything he does from now on will be viewed with suspicion. If we mean to keep him safe, we have to help him learn to be as innocuous as possible. No more strutting around about how smart he is in school—”

“He never struts,” said Aunt Lummy. Danny was grateful that she defended him, but he realized that there had been times when he flaunted his superiority in classwork.

“It looks like strutting to the other children,” said Mook, “and you know it.”

Aunt Lummy sighed. “If only he could leave here and grow up in safety somewhere else.”

“Don’t put a thought like that into his head!” cried Mook.

“Do you think I haven’t thought of it a thousand times?” said Danny truthfully. “But I know they’d track me down and find me, and I won’t do anything like that. The only life I’ll ever have is here, and all I can hope to affect is how long it lasts.”

“That’s the attitude,” said Mook. “Humility, acceptance, willingness to sacrifice.”

They led him back to the house, and Danny ate well that night, since Lummy’s best talent was neither with rabbits nor students, but with cooking. After dinner, she insisted on applying her favorite and smelliest salves to his injuries, and when she pulled his shirt off, he was relieved to see that his self-inflicted replacement injuries had left bruises, though small ones.

“Well,” said Lummy, “either Zog is getting weaker in his old age or he was being gentler than it seemed, because you’re only bruised a little.”

“Danny has the resilience of youth,” said Uncle Mook. “They’re tougher than they look, these children.”

Well-salved and stinking to high heaven, Danny went to bed. Only then, alone in the darkness, did he allow himself to know what he must know: that he intended to survive, no matter what.

Now the entire business of his life was to figure out a way to escape from the North Family compound in such a way that they could never find him. Fortunately, unlike so many others who had ended their lives on Hammernip Hill, Danny had the power to move himself from anyplace to anywhere—if only he could figure out just how his power worked, and how to make it do things that he consciously desired.