The Silent Strength of Stones (17 page)

He had told me I would be safe from his relatives. I had wanted to believe him, but I never really had. How could you stop a snake in midstrike?

Evan looked hollow-eyed and exhausted. He stared back at her. “I didn’t stop it,” he whispered. “I should have.”

Willow gripped my hand hard. “Not again, Evan,” she said. “Can’t lose him.”

“No,” he said. He touched Megan’s cheek. “Thank the Powers you were here. You gave us grace. Thanks.” She stared at him unblinking.

He lifted his hand and laid it on my throat. It was warm. “Heal,” he murmured. He ran his hand over my chest. “You are refreshed. You repair yourself. You feel fine and energized.”

I closed my eyes and just breathed in and out for a while. His hand was warm against my chest, almost tingling with a heat that radiated outward, chasing the deep chill out of my blood. I could feel the soreness fading, though the hurt wasn’t evaporating instantly this time the way it had before. In a little while my throat didn’t feel as though I had swallowed broken glass. I opened my eyes and looked up at Evan.

He said, “Nick. Listen. Take this in. Don’t get in front of Uncle Bennet, okay?”

“But he was hurting you!”

“Hey. I’m supposed to protect you, not the other way around. I should have stopped him from—I was too shaken up and couldn’t think in time to—don’t risk yourself for me, Nick. I mean it.”

I could feel that command trying to take hold of me the way his other words had, but it didn’t lock in. I tried to figure out why. “Well, I couldn’t—I didn’t—I don’t know, it wasn’t like I knew I was going to—” I tasted wolf, remembered how we had exchanged breath that morning, and said, “You’re in me.”

He patted my chest three times and looked across me at Willow. She wiped her eyes.

“Besides,” I said, “you didn’t hurt me. Your uncle did. It’s not your fault. It’s not his fault,” I told Willow.

She touched my face, my mouth, my chest. She shook her head. “I didn’t do anything either,” she whispered. “I couldn’t think fast enough.”

“I’m okay now.”

Willow looked across me at Megan. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Megan finally blinked. “Once a lifeguard, always a lifeguard,” she said.

I said, “Thanks, Megan. I owe you.”

“No problem.”

“I owe you, too,” Evan said to Megan. “Willow’s right. Nick’s my responsibility.” He sighed. “And that’s more important than what was happening to me .... Nick? I can’t be your dog anymore.”

“What? I—What? Why?”

“Because I was stupid. As long as I stayed a wolf he couldn’t do anything to me. The change web protected me. But I relaxed my web, and he locked me into this”—he thumped himself on the chest—“and took my change web away. Dad gave Uncle Bennet a sliver of my snow crystal, and he used it on me.” His yellow eyes narrowed as he stared in the direction of cabin five. “I can’t shift shapes—my own or anything else’s—now. And that is the part of my power that I treasure, the part I use.” He shook his head slowly. “This isn’t what Mom and Dad meant to happen when they sent us to be with Aunt Elissa and Uncle Bennet. I know it isn’t.”

“No,” said Willow. “You haven’t exactly been behaving the way Mom and Dad expected you to, though.

I’ve been doing what they tell me to, and they’ve been okay to me.” She shook her head. “But Uncle Bennet should never have done that to Nick.”

Evan looked off into distance, then stared down at me, his mouth grim. He touched my chest. He said, “I told you they smelled wrong, Willow. They’re not supposed to hurt people. Let alone Uncle Bennet violated the covenant of salt! You could have died, Nick. Stupid
paragar
. Didn’t even think it through. This is wrong.”

“Yes,” Willow said.

Evan patted my cheek twice. “I am crippled, Nick, but this much I can do. Introduce you to the family and tell them you have shared salt, that they have to leave you whole and well. Megan, eat something with us.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “No.”

Evan sat back and looked at Megan. She crossed her arras over her chest. “No. I just saw that guy stare at Nick, and Nick jumped into the water and nearly drowned. I like you, Evan, but I don’t want to be where you are. I mean, that shapechanging thing was almost too much.” She shook her head slowly. “This web stuff, and crystals and all that ... I’m sorry, but I can’t take any more of this.”

He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “But—” he said.

“No,” she said. “No, I ... no.” She got to her feet and walked away, pausing briefly; to look at sleeping Kristen and pick up her towel and magazine.

Evan watched her go. When he looked back at me, something had gone from his eyes. “Come on,” he said, rising and pulling me to my feet. “Come meet the rest of us.”

6. Family Matters

I had left my clothes back by the fallen tree. Without them I didn’t feel exactly ready to meet the rest of the family, but Evan was waiting, so I wrapped my towel around my shoulders. He patted my head. “I’ll tell them right away about the salt,” he said. “Then they should leave you alone.”

I glanced toward Kristen, who was still asleep. “Just a minute,” I said, and went over and knelt beside her. “It’s okay to wake up now,” I murmured. “You’ve had a nice nap and everything’s okay.” I touched her shoulder gently. She sighed and woke up, smiling at me, then frowning.

“You’re not Ian,” she said.

“You’ve been asleep. Didn’t want you to sunburn.”

“Oh.” She yawned, stretched. “Thanks, Nick.” She glanced past me at Evan and Willow, and for a moment her pupils snapped wide, then irised down to pinpoints.

“These are my friends Willow and Evan,” I said. “Willow you met last night.”

“Yes,” she said in a toneless voice.

“We have to go.”

“Okay.”

“You okay?”

She closed her eyes. A single worry line split her forehead. She looked at me and said, “I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Why?”

I bit my lower lip. I remembered when all I had wanted was for her to look at me, to give me a chance, to maybe take me seriously even though Pop had said it wasn’t possible. Now I knew I could tell her to fall asleep and she’d do it, and who knew what else she might do if I told her in just the right voice? I had plenty of ideas left over from nights of staring at the sloping ceiling above my bed and thinking about her. She might even enjoy some of them. Who knew?

“Just am,” I said. I had told Willow we were better off not ordering each other around, and I was pretty sure I had meant it. What if I told Kristen to do something and she did it? How would I know whether she liked it? What if I didn’t even care?

What if I ordered Pop around the way he had been ordering me around all this time?

“Okay,” Kristen said and sat up. “Where’d Megan go?”

“Back to her cabin, I think. We had sort of an argument.”

“Wow, I was really out of it.” She gripped her forehead as if trying to squeeze knowledge out of it.

I stood up. “You going to be okay?”

She lowered her hand and glared at me. “I feel fine,” she said.

I shrugged and went to join Willow and Evan.

Granddad’s creel was sitting on a low table in front of the living room fireplace in Lacey cabin five, surrounded by bits of flora—leaves, flowers, pine needles, a rubbery gray-green piece of lungwort, and a moss-covered branch with a small shelf fungus on it—and other weird objects: a clouded crystal as big as my hand, a small brass bowl holding a flickering fire that gave off spice-scented smoke, a slender green glass vase with liquid in it, small bones from I couldn’t tell what kind of animal, and tangled woven stuff that reminded me of bird nests and macramé.

The wood-veneer walls of the cabin were draped in silver-gray webs that looked almost spidery but much too big. The webs even hung across the French doors that led out to the porch above the lake. Things that winked and glittered hung in the webs.

All of the other furniture that belonged in this room was gone. Nothing here but a lot of people, the cluttered table, the fireplace, and a bunch of webs big enough to trap toddlers.

Evan’s hand rested light and warm against the back of my neck. Willow stood to my right. Everyone else faced us: Aunt Elissa, in something long and black and almost translucent; Uncle Bennet, bulky and ominous in the clothes he had worn to the pool, pseudojeans and a blank white T-shirt; the third grown-up, whom I saw clearly for the first time, a tall thin jeans-and-flannel-shirt-wearing man with sandy hair, sleepy blue eyes, and smile lines, just the sort of man Mariah would have been attracted to if she had met him; pale redheaded Lauren disguised in dirt, staring at Evan as though she had never seen him before, which maybe she hadn’t—at least in human shape; and the two stair-step boys, their features blurred mirrors of each other, both dark-haired, the older my height and gray-eyed, the younger a few inches shorter and green-eyed.

“I told you to work, Evan,” Uncle Bennet said. “What are you doing here? Why did you bring that?” He stared at me. I didn’t want to get trapped by his gaze again. I closed my eyes, turned my head toward Lauren, opened my eyes, and studied her. She looked small and scared, but she offered me a shadow of her tiny smile, an instant of expression and then gone.

“Uncle Rory, I respectfully request hearing,” Evan said.

The sleepy-eyed man straightened and crossed his arms over his plaid-shirted chest. “Powers and Presences, aid us and guide us. Evan Seale, I recognize you.” His voice was deep and full.

Evan put his hand on top of my head. “This is Nick Verrou. Lauren gave him salt privilege yesterday, I submit that Bennet and Elissa have violated that covenant grievously though unknowingly and in three different ways. First, they have both hurt him; they have not respected his salt privilege. Second, Elissa blinded him; she has not respected his personhood. Third, Bennet came close to killing him! They have not respected his life.”

“Bennet and Elissa, how say you?”

Elissa said, “I have acknowledged my error and made my plea for forgiveness, which this person said he accepted.”

“Nick Verrou, is this true?” Rory asked.

“Yes,” I said. Elissa’s gaze was on me, and I could almost feel the burn of her regard. I wished she would forget that I existed.

“Elissa mentioned some boy had salt privilege, but I didn’t know it was this one,” Bennet said. “All I have ever done to him was put the wander-eye on him. Hardly murder or attempted murder.”

“Evan?” said Rory.

“Because of Bennet’s wander-eye, Nick wandered into the pool and nearly drowned,” Evan said, his voice low and hot. “If not for the help of a
Domishti
girl, Nick might have died.”

“Nick Verrou, is this true?”

“Yes,” I whispered. I touched my throat, remembering the crushed-glass feel after I had coughed up the water.

“I gave him no direction toward the water,” Bennet said.

“
Akenar
, water was the only direction away from you!” cried Evan, his fists rising.

“Evan!” said Rory.

Willow’s hand crept into mine.

Evan stiffened. His hands opened and sank to his sides. “I submit,” he said and took a breath. “I—my words were not well thought out. I apologize. I submit that Uncle Bennet did not knowingly try to kill Nick, but that thoughtlessness is its own kind of violation.”

“Nick Verrou, do you require healing?” Rory asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Evan healed me.” I wished Rory wouldn’t keep talking to me. I didn’t like having Bennet and Elissa staring at me the way they were.

“Nick Verrou, do you wish restitution?”

I wondered what restitution might involve—treating Bennet and Elissa the way they had treated me? A cash prize? Or what?—but before I could ask, Evan said, “What we ask is that Nick be left alone, as is his clear right by salt privilege.”

Rory closed his eyes. He murmured something that sounded like a prayer. We all waited.

The air tightened. The fire in the little bowl flickered a sign that looked like writing in Hebrew or Sanskrit to me. Nobody else was looking at it. I glanced at Willow. Her eyes were wide and watchful, her gaze fixed on Rory’s tranced face. Evan was staring at Rory too, his eyes hot and yellow. I wondered if I should say anything, but thought probably not. I watched the fire some more. A little face flickered above it and smiled at me. I shrugged. It stuck its tongue out, then vanished. I looked around the room. Lauren put her index finger in front of her lips. I figured she hadn’t seen the fire doing tricks.

No one spoke.

The longer I stood there, the worse I felt about the whole thing. I had thought we were just going to come and tell these people to leave me alone and get out of here. This was way too involved for me. Meanwhile, outside, Saturday afternoon was ticking away. The ironic thing was that if I were watching all this stuff through a window and it was happening, to someone else, I would have been fascinated. At least at first.

Finally Rory opened his eyes and looked around the room, even though as far as I could tell, nothing had changed. “I do not perceive any clear leading from the Presences and Powers. Does anyone else? Do any have more to say in this matter?”

“This boy is interfering in the collection of
skilliau
,” said Elissa, my fan club. “I wish him no harm, but I wish him at a distance.”

“I submit that my aunt speaks in ignorance,” Evan said. Willow squeezed my hand.

“How dare you?” Elissa cried.

“What evidence do you have?” said Evan.

“This boy has been spying on our invocations and enticements, and seeing more than he should be able to—he is one of those
Domishti
with extra sight, it seems—and even though we use the forms that for years have succeeded, this time the
skilliau
resist us. Give me another explanation.”

Willow glanced sideways at me, her eyebrows rising. I tried to remember if I had ever discussed spying with her. I thought probably not. I looked down at our clasped hands; she didn’t pull her hand away.

“I don’t have another explanation yet,” Evan said slowly. “I’m working on a really great one.”