Section 3/A/A Variation End

I rush to the workroom and find the right bottles. I also grab my mother’s first aid kit that she keeps ready there. I bring it to Barry.

“I’m sorry Barry.”

“Please come.”

I feel guilty, but there is a little part of me that stays logical. How easy would it be to sound this desperate if it were some kind of trick, some kind of bad situation? Too easy.

“I can go get my parents. My mom can come. Really, she’s the one you want if it’s that serious. I don’t actually know anything.”

He looks panicked. “No, Kestrel you can’t wake up your mom. You can’t tell anyone.”

“Why?” I ask. I’m kind of scared now, but I’m trying to make a joke out of it. “It’s not like you’ve got a band of Outliers in the woods or anything, right?”

“I’ve got to go.” He takes the basket from me and turns. “You won’t change your mind?”

I shake my head. This is just too wrong.

He nods and begins to run off in the darkness. The moon is pretty bright, so he doesn’t use a lumicube.  It would only cast shadows and keep his eyes from adjusting to the darkness at the speed he is going.

I shut the door quickly. Lock it. Bolt it. But I watch out the window even though I can’t see anything. Is someone really dying? Should I have gone with him? Or am I alive right now because I didn’t follow him?

It occurs to me that regardless of whether or not he’s telling the truth, I should go get my parents. And not in the morning. Now. I know that Barry told me not to, but I also know that he’s not being exactly honest with me, which definitely voids all obligations of honor where telling parents is involved.

I head up the stairs to my parents’ room. Rousing them takes a minute, especially my father, who sleeps as hard as he works. For one moment I stop, looking at his large, calloused hands. I look at my hands. Do I already have the hands of a farmer’s daughter? The skin is smooth, but underneath you can see veins, tendons. They are not rough yet, but they are strong. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

“Dad,” I say. “Dad?”

He grunts incoherently.

“Dad I think I need your help.”

The message registers at last. Suddenly he is awake, up. So is my mother. “What is it?”

“You know Barry Hawkins?”

My father’s face is cloudy, cautious. He doesn’t know where this is going, but he can’t think of any good ending to me waking him up an hour after he went to sleep to tell him about Barry Hawkins.

“He was just here. He wanted me to go help him in the woods; he says that he has a hurt friend there.”

“You didn’t go with him did you?”

I look at him. He must not be completely awake yet.

“I mean of course you didn’t. You’re here.” He rubs his half-bald head with one hand. “Is he still here?

“No, but I thought I should tell you because he said that I don’t know his friend. And they were camping when there’s EI tomorrow. It’s not just a regular day either; it’s a review for the Exam. It just seems kind of strange, so I thought I should tell you.”

My mother puts her hand on my arm. “And you were wondering if he might be mixed up with Outliers?”

I nod.

“If there are Outliers here,” my father says, “that is important.” He smiles at me. “Thanks for telling me.”

In just a few minutes, my mother has called what seems like half our zone. My father has dressed and gulped some warmed-over coffee. Warming the coffee was my job, and he is in such a hurry that he doesn’t notice that his cup is steaming hot unlike the lukewarm stuff in the pot on the stove. The wood fire is burning, but it takes a while for a fire to gain momentum, and when no one was in the kitchen to see, I warmed his cup myself. I’m getting more efficient, so that my hands hardly glow at all when I’m focused on heating something. But I still consider it as practice rather than a good solution because my hands feel like they have been toasted afterward, and it makes me tired.

Even more tired, that is. I should have just gone to bed instead of trying to stay up late studying. Then Barry wouldn’t have found a light, and whatever happens to some guy in the woods wouldn’t be my fault. I pull my blanket tighter around me and press up against the warming cast iron stove. Is it really my fault? Was Barry telling the truth? What if he was? How could I go with him? I think again about running off into the darkness with a guy that I don’t know very well to save the life of someone I’ve never even met? What could I have done? Barry should have let me get my mother. She would have brought her bag of medicines. She knows how to stitch a wound and lower a fever.
Barry said that his friend was hurt. Will I ever know how? What if they ran into bears or wolves? Or was there a fight? Or maybe they were cutting firewood and the ax slipped. My mind races on, imagining one horror after another. What would it be like to be alone in the dark, waiting for Barry to come back, not knowing if he would bring help or not?

“Hey,” my mother says, her slippers flapping against the floor as she comes in. “Is there any way you could get some sleep? It’s an important day tomorrow.”

I shake my head. We both know that there is no way I’ll get to sleep for a while.

“You want to talk about it?”
“Mom, is there some guy dying out there? Is it my fault?”

“Kestrel, listen to me. First of all, I really doubt that this mysterious dying friend exists, but even if he does, you have to let people be responsible for their own choices. If he was fatally hurt, then he must have been doing something wrong. As much as you would want to help people, sometimes you can’t save them from the consequences of their own choices.”

“So it’s okay to just let him die?”

“I”m not saying that. But think about it. The whole thing is so absurd from start to finish. I don’t know what Barry was thinking. I do not want you to feel guilty for making the right choice. Even if Barry was telling the truth, and even if you had gone with him, what could you have done? What in the entire Archipelago made him think that you could keep someone from dying. You’re not a doctor.  He was either lying or he panicked, either way, you certainly did the right thing by getting us. Leave it to your father. He’ll sort it out.”

I almost ask her if she really believes what she just said or if she’s trying to make me feel better, but I don’t ask. I don’t want to know. The truth is, that I don’t know what’s true any more. Someone had to have been watching me. Maybe more than one someone. And maybe those people really were in the woods tonight.

And my mom does have a point about whether or not I could have helped, but she doesn’t know the truth, because she doesn’t know anything about my magic. Until tonight I would have thought that healing someone by magic was impossible too, but now I’m beginning to wonder. The more that I replay Barry’s words in my head to prove them wrong, the more my arguments fall apart. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to try, but now I think it just might be possible. Which means that everything my mother just told me is wrong.






Continue on to Chapter 2