The Silent Strength of Stones (18 page)

“I’ll stay away,” I said. “I won’t watch anymore. I’ll leave you people alone.”

“I don’t know if we can permit that,” said Rory.

“What?”

“You know too much. We will have to make a decision about how to deal with you.”

“Hey!” said Evan,

“I don’t know anything! I don’t know your language, I don’t know what you people are doing when I
do
watch you, I don’t even know where you came from. I’d like to know, but I really have no idea.”

Rory smiled at me. Mariah would have melted if she saw that smile. Lots of nice teeth in it. “I sympathize, Nick Verrou. We don’t know anything about you either. I don’t think what I need from you is anything serious or painful—just a minor binding that wouldn’t even violate your salt privilege.”

“Stop it,” said Evan. “No one binds or unbinds Nick but me.”

“This is a family matter,” Rory said, “I am glad you brought it to our attention. You have not been acting in the best interests of family, however, and you have no authority here, Evan Seale.”

Evan’s eyes widened. He stepped forward, sliding half in front of me. “I have fetch right,” he said.

“What?” Bennet said. His voice held thunder.

“We do not recognize that right,” said Rory. “This changes the whole complexion of the problem. It is you, Evan Seale, who have violated salt privilege.”

“I have done Nick no harm, nor ever intend to.”

“The very existence of fetch-bond is abomination enough,” said Rory, “and demands an unbinding, unless you release it of your own will. I would advise you so to do.”

Evan turned his head so I could see his profile, and looked me in the eye. “Nick, do you want me to unbind you?”

“No,” I said. Evan had said he would protect me from these people, and that he wouldn’t hurt me himself. So far the only one he’d protected me from was Willow. Maybe the others would think twice now that they knew he and I were linked, or maybe they wouldn’t. Even the chance that they would think twice was something.

Anyway, I didn’t want to lose my connection to Evan. If I lost my connection to Evan, I would fall back into my own life, and that wasn’t where I wanted to be, given a choice.

If I lost my connection to Evan, I didn’t know where our friendship would go, and I was worried about that. Also about how I would relate to Willow.

Rory made a series of gestures with his fingers. “Say again, Nick Verrou, and this time, clear of compulsion. You may speak freely, without fear of retribution.”

“No, I don’t want Evan to unbind me,” I said. Sky blue flame shot from my mouth as I spoke. I clapped my hand over my mouth, only worrying that I might burn myself when it was too late, but I couldn’t even feel the fire.

“Truth,” whispered Rory. Blue flared from his mouth, bigger than the whispered word.

I dropped my hand. “I wish the rest of you would stop messing around with me,” I said, still spitting blue fire. “I never did anything to you.” This time the fire was a little more green.

“Watching is doing,” said Elissa, in blue.

“Oh,” I said. Blue with a streak of white through it “What is this stuff, anyway?” White flame edged with blue.

“Truthspeak, a power of air,” Willow said in blue. “Blue is true.”

“Quiet!” said Rory, blue laced through with black. I don’t know what the others felt, but after he said that, my tongue was locked in place the way it had been earlier when Evan had told me to shut up. Rory made a series of gestures again. The people around him relaxed. “We need to deliberate,” he said. His words had no color in them. Now I knew why people had relaxed. Evidently truthspeak was not a real popular power. “You may speak and consider.”

I could move my tongue again, and I was relieved. I decided to get as far away from these people as I could. Orders from Evan intrigued me, but orders from a room full of hostile strangers—

Rory said, “Nick Verrou, go to sleep.”

My eyes fell shut and my balance wavered. Evan caught me before I collapsed. I blinked at him, remembered him telling me that other peoples’ words would slide off me. Though the “quiet” one hadn’t. Maybe other people’s orders could get to me if I thought they could. I took a deep breath, and stood up. “Stop it,” I said to Rory. Fear and anger simmered inside me. I thought of Mariah’s pink unicorn. I wanted to go back and beat myself up for selling it to her. I thought about Kristen, sleeping by the pool because I had told her to, and I wavered. Going to sleep was better than going nuts, wasn’t it? “Deliberate all you want. I’m leaving.” I slid out of Evan’s grasp and stomped out of the cabin. The instant the door slammed behind me I wished I had grabbed Granddad’s creel while I had the chance, but then I thought,
Those are scary people in there
, and, amazed that I had managed to walk out on them, I ran.

I wasn’t ready to go home to the store, though I couldn’t figure out why not I ran to the fort instead. I changed out of the wet swimsuit and into my clothes, hanging towel and suit on some outreaching roots. Then I sat holding the calming rock in the shade of the root fort for a while, trying to figure things out.

How had it gotten to the point that all these strangers felt they could boss me around? Did they do this to everybody, or was I a special case? Did I invite this stuff? Because I said yes to Evan, did that make me a target for the rest of them? Should I maybe talk to the Laceys’ produce driver and leave Sauterelle right now?

Presently I stopped wondering about anything and just cradled the gray rock between my hands, occasionally touching it to my forehead. I breathed. I tasted air and watched shadows and sun move across the forest floor. All the tension drained out of me. I felt unreasonably calm and cheerful.

Small flashes of memory came when I touched the stone to my forehead. Mom taking me to a clearing in the woods when I was very small—some other woods, because we weren’t living at Sauterelle yet—and playing “find the stone” with me. She would show me sixteen different little rocks, all of which looked the same, then ask me which one was different. I would touch the one that hummed—though it was a feeling hum rather than a heard hum: a silent hum. She would make me hide my eyes, and then she would hide the humming stone somewhere, and I would track it for her. She always laughed and touched foreheads with me after we played.

Sometimes she took the special green stone, the one that leaked light, and touched it to my forehead.

Strange. I hadn’t thought about Mom’s stone games in a long, long time.

When I looked up and saw Willow standing there, I smiled at her.

“What are you doing, Nick?” she said in a hushed voice.

“What does it look like?”

“Using
skilliau
.”

I smiled again, stroking the rock. “Maybe,” I said.

“Have you been laughing at us all along?”

“No,” I said. “Definitely not laughing.”

She took two steps toward me. “Where did you get that?” she murmured.

“Found it here.” I held it out to her. “It’s nice.”

She knelt before me and reached out a hesitant hand, almost touched the rock, then lifted her hand away.

“Why are you and Evan scared of it?” I asked. “It’s a rock. It’s a nice rock.”

“I must ...” She kissed her thumb, then used it to sketch a sign in the air above the rock.

The rock started humming and grew warmer. “Wha—!” I said.

She murmured to it, a liquid string of sounds that sounded the way caresses feel. Radiant warmth flowed from the rock into my hands and all through me—not enough heat to be uncomfortable, which was odd, because the day was warm enough as it was; the rock made me feel as though I were wrapped in clean down quilts and sipping hot chocolate on a cold day. It was better than comfortable; it was a dream of comfort come true.

Willow, on her knees, edged closer. She said a sentence and made another thumb gesture, then waited. The warmth kept pouring from the rock into me. I saw when the comfort reached across space and touched her. Her face relaxed and her shoulders lowered. She held open hands out to me and I placed the rock in them.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you,” she murmured. I figured she was talking to the rock and not me. I didn’t care. The rock had me convinced that I was going to be warm and comfortable for the rest of my life; I could feel its energy even though I wasn’t touching it.

Eyes closed, Willow touched the rock to her breastbone. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you, Nick.”

“Me?” I said.

“Thank you. Thank you, Powers and Presences.” She took a deep breath, let it out in a long contented sigh. Gently she set the rock on the dried ferns between us. She put her hands flat against the ground and asked a question in the other language. A second later I felt the answer, and it was yes.

Willow looked across the rock at me, her eyes alight. Then she leaned forward and kissed me. She tasted like clover flowers. Touching the rock, she said, “Look, I’ll give this to them, and then maybe they’ll lay off you and Evan.”

I frowned. I had handed her the rock, but I didn’t think that meant I had given it to her. I had thought I was just loaning it to her—if it were mine to loan to anyone, which I wasn’t sure of. “And that’s okay with the rock?”

She nodded. “It agreed to be moved,” she said. She picked up the rock and made a sign above its surface, smiling down at it like a woman looking at her own baby. “First piece of luck we’ve had since we got here.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it.”

I looked up and saw Evan standing at the edge of the smoothed earth of the fort.

“It’s Nick,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Willow asked, setting the rock down.

“The reason the Keyes can’t find
skilliau
now. This is my theory, anyway. They’ve been mean to Nick, and the
skilliau
like Nick.”

Willow stared at me, eyes wide. She flicked a glance at Evan, then back at me. “Nick, do you know where more
skilliau
are?” she whispered.

I couldn’t remember other rocks that had behaved exactly like this one had. On the other hand, I had touched or picked up a lot of rocks around the lake over the years, and not always for reasons I understood. Some of them hummed silently, and some of them felt warm, and some of them just called to me somehow. Mom had always been interested when I found a special rock. She had hugged me, but she hadn’t touched the rocks themselves. I remembered hiding some of them, throwing some of them into the water, taking some of them home and having Pop throw them away because they were “clutter.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe. I want to learn how to do what you just did. Willow. It made the rock stronger, even more awake .... What happened after I left?”

Evan dropped to sit beside us. “Lauren got in trouble for sharing salt with you. I was chastised for fetching you. I’m supposed to know better. As if they never noticed that I don’t do anything they tell me. They’re sure that Willow has made mistakes, too, though they don’t know what those mistakes might be. Aunt Elissa still wants to punish you for making her wrong. Uncle Rory isn’t my favorite person, but he’s more fair than Aunt Elissa or Uncle Bennet. He’s not sure what they should do. He did some more guidance queries, but there were no leadings. It really bothered him. Bet they wish they had a
krifter
with them now. Still, they’re paying attention to all the wrong things.”

“What should they be looking at?” Willow asked.

“Elissa and Bennet were warded, and Nick saw them. Elissa dismisses it as extra sight—doesn’t that mean anything to her? Lauren was warded and Nick saw
her
. Lauren is intelligent and curious. But shy. Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell them about you and the salt privilege before or ask any questions.”

“Lauren said maybe I had second sight,” I said.

“Second sight? What’s that?” Evan asked, frowning. “Extra sight Second sight. I haven’t heard of this before.”

I said, “There are all kinds of stories about people with second sight Never thought I was one of them. They can see fairies and stuff like that.”

“What’s a fairy?”

“It’s a small magical being that—heck, I don’t know. I always thought they were made up, anyway. Maybe not.” I looked around. The only magical being I had seen besides this family was the face above the flames at Lacey number five. There was a lot of vocabulary I didn’t have yet.

“I don’t know about second sight, but you can see more than most people. Why aren’t they concentrating on this information? If we were home, everybody would notice this stuff. They’d call a
krifter
and see what they could find. Uncle Bennet could have sent to Southwater for a
krifter
, if he were only curious instead of condemning. Anybody could check Nick’s signature, but so far only you and I have done that, Willow. The Keyes just keep wondering how they can make Nick shut up and go away.”

Willow frowned. “You can see people when they’re warded, Nick?” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’ve been spying on us.”

I stared at the ground for a moment, then looked up at her. “That’s what I do,” I said. “Or did.” I hunched my shoulders and looked toward the forest. “That’s what ... that’s what you do if it’s no fun at home and you don’t have people to talk to. That’s what you do if you really, really need to know what makes people tick. That’s what you do if you don’t want things to happen without warning, like people acting like everything’s normal and then leaving without telling you.” I touched my lips, wondering where these words had come from and if they made sense. I couldn’t remember if I had always wanted to be a detective or just since Mom left.

The trees I was watching weren’t moving much. I glanced at Willow.

Willow stared at me, not frowning, not smiling. I remembered how beautiful she had looked, naked in the morning light with the water shining on her skin. “Where do you go when you disappear?” I asked.

She blinked. “I disappear?”

“Evan said it’s a woman’s mystery.”

For a moment she stared at me, frowning. Then her eyes widened and her face flushed. “You were watching me yesterday morning?”