104

“There was an accident.”
“An accident?”
He nods.
“What kind of accident?”
“He looks uncomfortable. “Look,” he says, “I’ll explain everything when there’s time, really. But come now, please?”
“What? With you?”
Barry looks offended. “Thank you very much,” he says, “yes, with me. That’s the whole point of leaving an injured friend in the middle of the night to come to your door. Unless you have really good cake or something.”
“That’s not what I mean. Can’t you bring him here?”
He shakes his head. “That’s the trouble with injuries, they make travel such a bother.” Then his face softens, and he looks sincere. “Please, Kestrel,” he begs. “We have to go now.”
“Who is this guy?” I’m still stalling for time. I don’t know what to do, and this is starting to sound too real to me.
“You don’t know him.” And I can tell from his face that he realizes how ridiculous this all sounds.I have no idea what he’s hiding, but it’s got to be pretty big, and there is no way that I’m going to get involved.
“Look Barry, I’ll get you all the supplies you need. But I’d be stupid to go off into the woods in the middle of the night with some guy I don’t even know. I don’t know what’s wrong, and I don’t think that I could help. You need a doctor, not me”
“Kestrel, I do need you. I need your magic.”
I freeze. “What?”
“I know that you’re good at magic, greenwoman magic.”
I’m about to tell him that just knowing what we learn at school isn’t enough to do practical magic, but he doesn’t give me the chance.
“I haven’t seen you myself, but I know someone who has. I don’t think that anything short of magic will save my friend’s life. It’s either you, right now, or he dies.”
“Barry, I don’t know what you think you saw...” I begin, but my words die at the hard look in his eyes and the tip of his head. He really does know. “Who was watching me?” It comes out as a half-strangled whisper.
“Another one of my friends. It was an accident, really, but he says he saw you in the goat shed a couple of weeks ago. He said that your hands were glowing orange and then blue.”
My grandmother has a phrase she says sometimes about someone walking over her grave. That’s how I feel. How could someone have seen me? I don’t know which time, but if there was someone looking, he very well could have seen me in the goat shed with my hands glowing. It’s just that I thought I had been more careful than that.
“Barry,” I tell him, “I don’t know what your friend said he saw, but regardless, I don’t know how to heal anyone by magic.” That sounded good. The first part of the sentence is technically true, and the second part really is true.
The question now is what his friends will do with that knowledge if I don’t come. At school you have to learn the theory. But magic at EI is all about crystals, about energy transfer. Normal people don’t do the kinds of things that I do.“You seem to have a lot of new friends. How do you know so many people who aren't from here?” I ask him, trying to think of something to change the subject. It works. Actually, it works a little too well. His face turns white.
“They’re just...just cousins on my mom’s side of the family. There’s a family reunion. And they’re visiting. You know how it is. And you don’t know any of them. Please. Please come.”
Now I’m the one to raise an eyebrow and fold my arms. “Barry, I want to believe you, but this is too much. If I can help without doing anything stupid, I will. Do you want to come call a doctor? Eleanor is probably on the switchboard tonight, but if you yell loudly enough, you can almost always wake her up. We had to call the doctor last summer for Feldspar’s collar bone.”
“No,” he says immediately, holding out his hands. “No, a doctor would come too late. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll just...I’ll just go find someone on the way back to him.” He seems to think about what he said and adds, “In fact, one of the other guys did go for the doctor, but I thought you would be faster to come and help. So It’s taken care of, don’t worry about it.”
He looks upset, really upset. It almost changes my mind, but I can’t get over how dumb I would be to go off with a guy I only kind of know to go save a supposedly hurt friend that I’ve never met. Assuming that I wasn’t kidnapped and killed by Outliers, my parents would kill me. My parents are the kind who find out things like that.
“We have some medicines,” I say. “I don’t even know what he needs, but I know where she keeps the jars to bring down fever, to stop bleeding, to ease pain. I can get those for you.”

(108)


1) "I look at him. He looks so miserable and pathetic out there. I wonder if he's telling the truth. “Come in and at least get warm,” I tell him. "There's some hot water in the kettle. You can make some tea."
"Just hurry," he says. 



http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/08/108-x.html






(109)


2) He doesn't look happy, but I'm not about to trust him. "I'll be right back," I say as I begin to close the door.


"No wait!" he says, stepping forward to put his foot in the door.


I push back, hard. Even though he is stronger, I moved faster, so I get the door shut. It bounces open half an inch, but I slam myself against it and shove the bolt home.



http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/08/109-x.html