The Silent Strength of Stones (11 page)

Evan watched everything I did without comment.

At last we stepped outside and headed for my trail.

I stopped first and dipped fingers in the lake. Evan watched me, his head to the side.

For the first time in an age, I thought about what I was doing. Mom had taught me this lake greeting. After she left, I had ditched a lot of what she had given me, but this one was important, still. Ever since that winter day when I lay on the ice and tried to let it freeze me, I had felt an intense connection to the lake. Ice had crept up over my bare hands, but I had not frozen. I had taken off my jacket, shirt, and long Johns, and lain back down, determined to do a good job of it, and ice had embraced me. It melted a little under me and closed over me. I lay feeling it over me like a blanket, holding me in what I was certain was false warmth, and my mind slowed; I could feel my thoughts calming and crystallizing. Ice held me while I watched the short day fade and the stars blink into being in the dark sky. Later, when Pop came out of the house, calling for me, nothing in me had frozen. I sat up out of crackling ice, brushed a film of ice from my face, dressed, and went back to the Venture.

I had never told anyone. I was pretty sure it had been a dream. Still, when I touched the lake, I felt a quickening inside me, and when I went swimming in it, I dove down and stayed down for longer than I could hold my breath, to remind myself that something strange was going on. I liked it.

I touched my wet fingers to my face and straightened. I wondered what Evan was thinking. He seemed wholly wolf, though, so I didn’t ask. I headed for the path instead.

After yesterday’s heat, the morning’s cool felt wonderful. The blue of the sky was clean scrubbed, not dusty the way it got later in the day when people drove around kicking up clouds. I took some deep breaths. No sound but birds and crickets and bees and the conversations pine needles have with themselves when there’s a touch of wind. Our footsteps didn’t make much noise on the fallen needles.

My thoughts drifted to who I was going to spy on today. It occurred to me that this might be awkward. How much did Evan know about my habits? Maybe more than I thought.

“Were you watching me yesterday morning?” I asked Evan.

“Yes,” he said.

“While I was watching Willow.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t do anything.”

“Neither did you.”

Studying him, I walked.

He said, “If you had tried anything—
anything
—toast, buddy. But all you did was watch.”

“That’s all I ever do.”

“Not last night.”

I thought about kissing Willow. “That was different. It stopped being a watching thing. We moved past it.”

We traveled a way in silence. He said, “What was strange to me about yesterday morning was that you could see Willow at all. She was warded against the sight of outsiders.”

“She disappeared, Evan.”

“You weren’t supposed to be able to see her even before that.”

Lauren had mentioned second sight, something I had even heard of, unlike a lot of the weird words with which Evan and the others peppered their language. “Where did she disappear to?”

“I don’t know.” For a while we walked. “That was a woman’s mystery; I don’t understand it.”

We were approaching Lacey number five. I sat down in the path and looked at Evan, face to muzzle. “So,” I said, “this is where I sneak up and see what they’re up to.”

He laughed.

I said, “I was thinking. There’s lots you could tell me about what goes on here.”

He blinked at me, then slowly smiled.

“Or you could tell me to get out of here and stop watching them. And you know I would.”

He looked up into a nearby tree. He yawned, tongue curling.

“Or you could just sit there and let me do what I do. Want to give me a hint, here?”

“Or I could turn you into a snake and you could slither right up to the cabin. How about that?”

“A snake?” I said. “I don’t think snakes can hear very well. Let’s go with the chihuahua.”

“All right,” he said, dipping his nose.

“Uh—no, I wasn’t serious.”

He laughed. “Sooner or later, Nick. Sooner or later.”

“Later, I guess.” I shuddered. “I have to open the store pretty soon.”

“Well, you do your watching; I’m going to see if anything is stirring that I can eat. Usually I hunt at night.” He vanished into the underbrush with hardly a rustle.

It felt strange to be alone. Even though I couldn’t figure out when he was teasing (and if he wasn’t teasing, I felt apprehensive about what he had said), I liked having him with me. This was what I had been missing since Mom left and maybe before, someone to be with me; jeez, even someone I could just touch without worrying about it too much; although I hadn’t asked him if that was all right; it just felt right. Which was probably what rapists said afterward. I had better ask him next time.

I walked quietly until I came to the quirk in the path that let me see the cabin from the cover of the forest. I ducked down and looked past underbrush. The two boys stood on the porch facing the lake, holding out their arms and saying words. I watched carefully, but I didn’t see any extra light or anything else.

They stopped chanting and knelt and dipped their fingers in the water. It spooked me completely, despite what Willow had said last night about kinship. They rose again, holding wet hands toward the sun, and chanted something else.

I backed away and continued past cabin five to the rest of the Lacey’s; but it was so early only Ms. Tommassetti was up, wearing nothing but a white robe, and doing tai chi on her porch. She was a retired librarian who had inherited money late in life. We’d had some fun talks about books when she came in the store. Sometimes she brought me good ones she’d found at yard sales and library book sales. I only watched her for a minute. Her movements were smooth and graceful as a wind blowing across a field of grass.

I gave Lacey number five a moment’s study as I headed back toward the store, The boys were still chanting to the sun, and nothing that I could see had changed. I felt frustrated. So these people stood out on the porch and addressed something I couldn’t see in a language I couldn’t understand, and achieved ends I couldn’t fathom. Was watching them getting me anywhere? I had my wolf and my girlfriend now. I probably didn’t need anything else from these people.

What was I thinking? I always needed information. My credo.

When I turned back to the trail, I came face-to-face with Aunt Elissa. “Boy,” she said.

“Ma’am,” I said, backpedaling. She was wearing a black bodysuit, and she had nightshade flowers and berries twined in her red hair.
Poisonous
, I thought.

“Boy, I respect your right to lead your life as you wish, and normally I leave
Domishti
strictly alone, but the fact is, you are interfering with our work.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“The
skilliau
are shy, and your watching us makes them hesitate to respond. We have given ourselves a certain amount of time to do what we need here, and it is taking too long. You must stop watching us.”

“I—”

“Will you do that?”

“I—”
Could
I stop watching them, now that I felt like I was part of the family in some weird way. You had to watch your family. You had to know when to jump, and how high. More important still, you had to have some idea of when they were going to jump and where. On the other hand, I felt like I was part of Willow and Evan’s family, a subset of the larger group; I could stop watching the rest of them, I supposed, and I could stop watching Willow and Evan because they were letting me see them anyway. “I—”

Her mouth firmed. She held up her hand in front of my face, muttered some words in the other language, and gestured with her fingers.

The world went dark.

I rubbed my eyes, opened them again, and saw ... nothing, just blackness. I could still hear the wind and the birds and, distantly, the boys chanting.

“When we have done our work and are ready to leave, I will lift the blindness,” said the woman.

“Ma’am—“I said, my voice too high. “Ma’am, no!” How could I work like this? “No, please!” How could I live without being able to see? My whole life depended on observing. “I won’t watch! I won’t even come over here at all! Please, ma’am, I promise. Please ...”

I heard her steps moving away. I stumbled after her and tried to catch her. “Just a moment,” she said. The crackle of a branch breaking. I reached toward her and tripped over a root. I hit the ground on knees and one elbow, tried to remember what I knew about falling, tucked and rolled, fetching up against bushes, crushing pungent leaves. A little bramble branch scratched my cheek. Panic grabbed my breath away. I had to catch her. I had to make her take this back .... I had to stay where I was, because I couldn’t see where I was going. I groaned and sat up, then got to my feet, thinking about which way was up. I was all turned around. Usually my directional sense was so strong I knew where things were in relation to myself, but right now I didn’t know which way the store was and which way led to Lacey’s.

Despair tasted like warm syrup, thickening my throat. I listened and listened, finally heard the distant roar of a motorboat to my left, and the shush of little pebbles being moved by tiny wind waves in the lake fifteen feet from the path. If the lake was to my left, then home was behind me. Knowing which way home was made me feel marginally better.

Words muttered a little way off. I wanted to run and catch her, but I knew I would only fall again. I closed my eyes and hoped, wished, prayed that when I opened them the world would be there, blue and brown and green, light and shadow. I opened my eyes and saw soft black and nothing else. Muffled footsteps approached. She touched my hand, pressed the rough bark of a stick into it, closed my fingers around it. “This will lead you,” she said. “I have put an eye at the tip of it to watch ahead of you and help you.”

I dropped the stick, grabbed for her, and managed to close my hand around her forearm. “Ma’am. Please.”

“Release me,” she said. Her voice wasn’t soft and promising like Willow’s; it tasted of vinegar, and command gave it harshness and weight. Before I knew it I had let her go. She put the stick back into my hand. “Stay away from us,” she said, command still girdering her voice. Then nothing but the sound of her light footsteps, traveling away.

I closed my eyes and opened them about six times, hoping that the result would be different, but every time it was the same. I tightened my hand around the stick, wondering how it could help me, or if it would. Maybe I’d just be here, lost within sight of civilization, thrashing around until I drowned myself in the lake or fell over one of the little dropaways in the woods.

The stick thrummed in my hand. I stood with my eyes closed, touch-listening to the stick, wondering if there was really an eye at the end of it, and how that would help me. I remembered seeing blind people feeling their way forward with white canes, sweeping them back and forth. I faced toward the store and swept the stick in front of me. I felt a strange humming pitch in my hand, I lowered the stick to the ground and the thrum intensified. I raised the stick and the vibrations eased away. I swept it to the side, and felt a strong hum right before I whacked a bush.

Tapping the ground with the stick, I took a step, and then another. I swished the stick slowly right and left. It vibrated harder just before I touched something with it. Trusting the stick, I walked slowly in the direction I thought led home, turning my head, listening for birds and wind and waves in the lake, hearing squirrel chatter, crows cawing, the hum of bees in the thimbleberry blossoms. I kept my eyes closed. It would be awful if something flew into them before I could blink. How would I ever get it out again? I felt my watch. No way to tell what time it was now. Probably way too late.

Pop was going to regret giving me my freedom.

Couldn’t run the register, couldn’t stock the shelves, hell, couldn’t even make meals. Well, maybe I could learn. The stick was already feeling like a natural extension of myself; I was walking faster now, and the ground was solid under my feet.

“Nick?”

I stumbled. The stick supported me so I didn’t fall.

“Evan,” I said. I had forgotten about him. I realized how tense my shoulders had been because they started to relax. “Evan?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m blind.”

He yipped. Then he said, “I’m coming up to your left side. Stink! This stick smells like—”

I stood quiet, wanting to hug him, not knowing how to find him, not sure he really wanted to be hugged.

“Like my aunt,” he said, his voice hollow. Then he said, “What happened?” This time he was mad.

I felt my way down and sat on the path, laid the stick beside me, reached out and found his fur. “Is it okay for me to pet you?” My voice had a wobble in it.

He pushed up against me and I put my arms around him. He was big and warm and furry, and he smelled like dirt and dog and herbs and blood. After a long moment he shook his shoulders and I let go.

“What happened?” he repeated.

“She told me she didn’t want me watching them anymore because it was disturbing the skilly—skilly—you know what I mean.”

He growled. It lasted for a while, and it expressed part of what I was feeling too, a spinning anger.

Then he said, “Let me smell your face.”

I sat still and felt the little puffs of sniffs, heard the quick breaths, occasionally felt the wet touch of his nose.

“
Faskish!
” he said at last “She can’t do this to you! You’re mine.
Kolesta y kiya, Sirella
.” He licked my eyelids. “Casting, begone from my fetchling,” he muttered. He licked my eyelids again. “Open your eyes, Nick.”

I opened my eyes and saw light, and colors, and fuzzy blobs. “Oh, God,” I said, blinking. Slowly things came into focus. Evan stood just in front of me, his eyes wide and amber yellow, his head cocked to one side. “Oh, God. Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” I touched his cheek and he leaned his head against my hand,