Section 2/A

Absent mindedly I grab a handful of dry corn and settle myself on an old stump near enough to the chicken yard that I  can throw bits over the fence and watch the fat ones scurry to get to the food first.

I’ve been teaching Galliun to Boron for nearly a year now. I guess I was the natural choice since it’s not a really common language here. My mother is from Galliun’s Lap, and she taught it to all of us so that she can remember it. She speaks it with us--she says that it’s so that we know another language and trains our memories. I think it’s really so that she can hear someone say the words to her. I think that sometimes she misses home. How could she not? She doesn’t talk about it, but occasionally she’ll mention something about a party she went to, about what she used to wear, and I see the look on her face. I think she loves my father. They get along well enough, but she’s never entirely belonged here.
She was friends with Boron’s nanny, though. When we were little, it didn’t seem like any big deal that he came to visit two or three times a week, first walking, then on a sleek pony with a lead rope. He and I would dam up the little stream with rocks. We hauled rockes from all over the pasture. Then he would bring scraps of paper to make into boats. I’d whittle them from kindling--when my mother wasn’t around to find out that I carried a pocket knife. We’d sail the boats over the waterfall or send them in spinning circles in the pool and then follow them downstream until they sailed farther than we were allowed to go or dipped a little too low in the water and sank to the bottom of the stream.
And then he stopped coming.
The first time my mother sent me with herbs and medicines to the House, I bounced up and down and planned what to say to him. I thought that he could show me the toys he had told me about. But I didn’t see him. Of course I didn’t. Why would he be at the kitchen door? I wasn’t even  invited inside to chat and have a drink of cold buttermilk before I trudging home...not that first time. And later, when I did see him, it wasn’t at all like I had planned.

“Mom says to come inside!” Feldspar yelled from the back porch. It was loud enough to make the chickens scurry and cluck disapprovingly amongst themselves. My mother tries to train him, but he thinks that shouting is the same as going to fetch someone.
I toss the rest of the corn, which mollifies the fattest hens a little. Then I wipe off my hands and follow Feld indoors. We begin the ritual of sitting primly on sofas and discussing everyone’s school and health. My grandmother hates this part, I suspect, but it’s another thing that my mother doesn’t want to give up. I think it’s not the same without satin dresses in a room that will hold more than one sofa and an arm chair. How can you chat with people when you’re all seated in a row and have to look sideways to answer questions?
Fortunately, no one wants to try to keep up appearances with a four-year-old for very long. It’s too much work. And fortunately, there is more to do to get ready for what would normally be called supper but tonight will be called dinner. Poor Feld, the only boy, will be turning a turkey on the hearth for a while. He says he doesn’t mind as long as Mom lets him whistle. She always does at first, until she can’t stand it any more. Then he reverts to humming until she leaves the room for a minute--which is why I am willing  to take my grandmother on a walk.

Wren had to go run an errand--again. And fortunately Mallee was more interested in the steamed pudding that needs to be powdered with confectioner’s sugar and topped with candied cherries and oranges.

So we’re quiet at first. Honestly, I’m thinking about last night. How can I forget it? How can I keep it from coming back to me every time I get a quiet second? The hard part is making sense of what happened, but I see flashes of little details, and I keep checking my fingernails for blood.

The other point is how I ended up in my own bed again. I’m assuming that they brought me home--Barry, and maybe one of the others. That I passed out, and they carried me all the way home. They carried me the whole way. They broke into my house and knew where my room was. They carried me the whole way, and I didn’t wake up. These are troubling facts. I’m not sure what to do with them.

“Part of the reason I came today was to thank you,” Anen says.
I look over at her, confused.

“He is my apprentice,” she says casually, as if this kind of comment fit anywhere in the normal world. “I didn’t know that they were going last night. I knew about the plan in general, of course, but not when and not where. They’re a bunch of brave fools, and it almost got one of them killed.”

I’m not walking any more. I’m not sure if my jaw is dragging on the ground or not because I’m not trusting my senses or my ability to think at the moment.

“Tell me about the words you used,” she says. “The report I got was that you used some words that they didn’t know, but of course they couldn’t remember what they were.”

Anen is an old lady. I forget that she is old. Suddenly I’m aware of her wrinkles, of the way I think of the bones in her hands and the skin on them as distinct things because one is much too loose to cover the other. For the first time, I wonder if she ever gets tired. If she’s a real person who worries when things seem impossible just like I do.

“Gwella,” I tell her. “I used gwella.”

She smiles. “Good girl,” she says. “Of course I hadn’t planned on you needing them quite so soon, but I’m glad that you knew what to do. I knew that I was doing the right thing.”
Finally I can’t stand it any more.  “What are you talking about? Barry? You know Barry and the other people who were there? You know Sage?”

Anen nods. “I was going to introduce you, just not quite the way it turned out last night,” she says with a dry chuckle.

And suddenly I realize that I know absolutely nothing about her. She was always this mostly nice, kind of odd lady that showed up sometimes. My mom fusses when she’s coming, and I don’t like that. Suddenly I don’t know what’s going on.


“Crystals have hard, sharp edges. They’re good for fencing in power, I will say that for them, but that’s no way to treat a memory. Memories are pierced by crystal, they become ragged and hard to hold on to. Bones remember, though. Bones wrap around memory and hold it.” She pulls something out of her pocket. It’s a small wooden box that she unlatches. She lifts the lid and pulls out the white bone of a bird’s head. She holds the little skull in her palm and strokes it lovingly with a finger. I’m trying my best to stick with her, but all I can think is how creepy she looks. If I want to do this, do I have to go around with a pocket full of bones? I can think of so many ways that my life would not be better if I kept bones everywhere.

“Of course, it’s the magic that unlocks the memory,” she says. “It stays inside the bone, but you have to call it forth.” She reaches out and takes my hand, turning it palm upward. Then she carefully tips the tiny skull. It rolls awkwardly, slides a little way and then tips upside down. She rights it and then nods encouragingly at me. I’m wondering when the black candles and star in a pentagon are going to appear. Does my mother know about this? That her mother-in-law is a witch? They’re supposed to be extinct. Greenwomen are very different things. Aren’t they?

“For something as small and simple as this, you will be able to use your own power quite safely, but even so I don’t recommend that you get into the habit of it. If you always carry something around with you to use, then you will never wear yourself out.” She looks at me seriously. “You’ve been in EI, so I expect you know all about staying up too late and wearing yourself out that way?” I agree with her. “Well, magic isn’t like that. With sleep or nutrition, you might get sick, but you have plenty of warning before it gets too serious. Magic goes deep, deep into the bone, deep into the core of who you are. You think that you’re just getting tired, but you start to lose yourself. You can’t kill yourself or change who you are by one night’s lack of sleep or even a week’s. But with magic, it’s not hard to drain yourself dry.”

She pats my shoulder. “There, there. Don’t let me frighten you. All you have to do is take the proper precautions, and you’ll be just fine. It’s quite safe, and it’s not hard to keep a bit of bone or skin or twig around with you.”

I don’t say anything.

“You look pale. Are you up to trying this? Do you want to wait until next time?”

It takes me a minute. “No, no I’m all right,” I tell her. But it’s a lie. I’m not okay. What about last night? All of that energy, I had pushed it out of me like a rush of water. When things had gone dark...how close was I? Could I really have killed myself?”

“So,” I say as casually as I can manage, even though my voice is a squeak. I lick my lips. “So, what exactly could you do? You know, how much magic could you use before it becomes a problem?”

“Oh, are you worried about that?” she says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want to frighten you. If at some point you need to call a memory or make a light or something, you should be fine.”

But I’ve studied energy output rates, and I know that the volume of flow needed for light is nothing compared with the amount of energy you need to move--and if you want to change, it’s even more. What I did last night...it was...I’m not sure what it was, but some of both. “So, if you were going to heal or something?” I ask.

“No, I wouldn’t recommend. I mean, in theory something small, quite small...you,” she stops and looks at me. “You did have another energy source for..You didn’t...?”

I look up at her and my head goes up and then down just once.

“What happened?”

“I passed out I think.”

“Hmmm...Yarrow told me that you were exhausted and they helped you home. She failed to mention that you were unconscious at the time. When did you wake up?”

“Just a few minutes ago.”
Anen pinches her lip, tugs on it and then looks back at me. “Well, I thought we’d had a narrow escape on all sides, but I didn’t realize how narrow. I suspect that you should be dead right now. Why you’re not, I don’t know, but I recommend that you don’t try such a thing in the future. It’s a bad idea to tempt fate too often.”

I completely agree with her.

“Well, in that case, I insist that you learn how to call a memory,” she continues.
“What?” I had expected her to say just the opposite. Something like “That’s enough magic for you, missy,” or something like that.

“If you’re that accomplished at pulling magic from inside yourself,” she begins, and I think about all the times I’ve warmed coffee or started fires or other small things...all done the wrong way. “Then you need to at least know how to pull from other sources. And I want you to practice doing it the right way. Otherwise, some crisis comes along and you’ll throw yourself into it, and while I am very happy that Sage is alive, I prefer not to buy his life with yours. Do you understand me?”

Is she serious? Of course I do. I’m trying to keep from shaking or throwing up, and that little token of death is just sitting in my hand, waiting for me to call it, wake it, feed it a little piece of my soul.

“Now,” Anen says, “take this.” She hands me what looks like a string of pig knuckles. So now I’ve got bits of dead animals in both hands. “Now I know that you remember the words. Use effro to call out the memory.”




1) All I can think about is placing my hands on torn, bloody muscle. A human shouldn't look like something that has just come back from the butcher. I look at the dead bits of animal in my hands. Do I want to know the inside of a pig as well as I know the muscle and bone of Sage's body? I don't. I can't. There are some things that aren't right, and that is one of them.




2)I feel like a sugar girl in a glass of water. Any moment, I’ll fall apart and flow into the universe and not be me any more ever again. More than anything else, I don't want to call up the memories that have been haunting me all day. But she’s right. What would happen if I don’t do this. It feels like a long, dark tunnel that I have to choose to deliberately walk into.


http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/chapter-2ab.html