Section 3/A/A Variation B End

The look on Barry's face as I turn away is awful, and I try to wipe it out of my head. There is no way that he's telling the truth. But that doesn't mean that it's not important. Just because Barry doesn't want my parents involved in this doesn't mean that I agree. And if he's mixed up in what I think he is, then someone who can do something about it definitely needs to know.

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

109 x

[from 104]

[109]

I feel terrible, leaving Barry there with his face pressed against the glass. I just don't feel terrible enough to  let him in.

Still, there could always be a real person out in the woods dying right now, so I run through the hallway to where my mother's room is, not the room where she sleeps, the room where she lives. Everything in that room is beautiful. When she left her home to be married, she brought some things with her, and they are in this room. Furniture, real peacock feathers, a silver bud vase, her rosewood embroidery stand. And when she is not in this room, it is locked, safe, like a memory. That’s why the walnut box is in here, the one that has all of the medicines that my grandmother brings. The little glass bottles have wax-covered stoppers and paper labels that are gummed on with flour paste glue and are written on with thin, homemade ink. And the medicines inside work.

The lumicube bounces against my chest as I run. Shadows dance like wood spirits on the walls. Not that they're supposed to really exist, but people still say prayers of protection when they're outside. My grandmother says that she believes in them. My mother told me that, but then followed it by saying that of course followers of the Benevolent Force didn't have anything to do with the old ways. But she rubbed a locket at her neck while she said it--a locket that she has never let me open.

I don't like this particular door frame. It's not like any other doorway in the house because the frame is bigger--wide enough to keep a key on top of it. I reach up and chant "...and protect us, followers of the Light," just in case there are spiders or demons.

Once I have a collection of tiny bottles nestled in protective muslin bags, I don't head for the back door. Instead I hurry as quietly up the stairs as I can and head to my room. It's above the kitchen, so I won't have to yell. I dump the yarn and crochet hooks out of my work basket. Then I set the bags inside. I tie one end of a skein of yarn to the handle. I'm ready.

He looks up as I slide open the window. "Kestrel!" he whispers loudly, "what are you doing?"

"I have the medicines," I tell him. "They're labeled with instructions. You be able to do anything that I could do for him." As I say it, I set the basket against the wall of the house and let it free. Then I hold the skein with one hand and slowly pay out the line.

"No Kestrel," his urgent whisper could almost pass for a shout. "He won't live without magic. I don't know what to do. Please come with me." Barry points out into the darkness. "He's real. He's out there slowly bleeding to death. Without you, he's going to die."

[112]

"I press my mouth into a firm line. “Barry,” I say firmly. “We can go get my father to come with me, but I am not going with you by myself.”

Barry looks pained, desperate even, but if he really wants help, why won't he let me get someone who could actually do some good? Should I let my willingness to help make me an easy target for whatever he has in mind?

“I swear I'll explain later, but it has to be just you.”

“No it doesn't.”

The basket touches the grass, and with one snip of my scissors, I cut through the yarn and watch the end float slowly down to the ground."

http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/08/112.html

[107]

I don't know Barry very well. Am I willing to bet my life on what I do know? I look down at Barry, and I can see the agony on his face. No one could fake that, could they? I look around the room, as if I will find advice waiting for me there. I wish that I could ask my parents, but I know what they would say. What if they're wrong? And as I realize that this decision is mine alone, I also realize that I will think of his face every day and wonder. "I'll be right down," I tell him.

http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-chapter-1cc.html

Section 3/A/A variation A

Barry follows me into the house, which makes me more than a little bit nervous.  "I can't ask you to come with me," I tell him. "My mother doesn't like us to bring anyone into her medicine room."  Which is true as far as it goes. She doesn't want anyone playing in there, and she keeps the door locked to prevent mixups with the medicines, but there isn't a rule about not allowing friends to go in there.

There is now.

I wish that I had thought of bringing a lumilamp. The small light around my neck casts too many shadows. Of course as you're walking, you think that you see something out of the corner of your eye. But sometimes I wonder if I really do. I wonder if my house is haunted with the soul of some murdered woman who can't rest. Or maybe there are gremlins--they are supposed to only be stories, but you still get people who will chant the prayer of protection when they are walking alone at night.

The floorboards creak. Floorboards always creek. I reach to bring the key from its hiding place on top of the door frame. I never like this particular door. It's not like the others. It has a wide ledge on top, and I always imagine that when I reach up, I will feel a mouse or a spider under my fingers.

I feel something soft brush my arm, and I half shriek as I turn around.

"Kestrel," Barry says. He's standing too close, and I have to back up against the door.

"I'm sorry, but I can't stand to sit calmly in the kitchen and wait. I keep thinking about what could be happening to him right now. Where are the medicines?"  He leans forward eagerly, and I'm wondering if I should hit him and run when he finally takes a step back.

"I just have to unlock the door," I say.

"Okay."

Now I have to turn my back to him. I hurry to get the key in the lock and because of it, I fumble and drop it. He dives to grab the key and runs into me. We both end up sprawled on the floor. He grabs my knee, and before I can think about it, my elbow strikes hard.

"Ooof." He drops back. I feel something under my knee and stand up. The key.

My hand covers my mouth. "Sorry," I say past my fingers.

He gasps out something about it being okay, but it's hard to understand because he can't breathe properly yet.

"I'll go get the medicines."

I finally unlock the room, and I search quickly for the right bottles. I tuck them into the little wool bags that my mother makes us sew on snowy evenings so that she has a stack of them. She is very adamant that her remedies won't spill because the glass bottles were jostled by a clumsy driver over a road filled with holes and ruts.

I handed the little collection of draw-string bags to Barry. "There are instructions written on them.  For pain, fever, to prevent infection, that kind of thing."

He looks down sadly at his hand. "It won't be enough," he says. "Are you sure that you won't come with me. How can you live with a man's death on your conscience?"

1) I recoil at that. Would I have to spend the rest of my life with his death on my conscience? I won't know until it's too late. Maybe I should reconsider. After all, if I can cause that much pain with just an elbow, then maybe I don't have anything to worry about.

(This needs a bit of transition work--possibly an alternate version of the same section.)
http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-chapter-1bb.html

2) There is something about his tone that still makes me suspicious. After all, why would I be the one person in the whole area who can save someone's life. My mother is practically a greenwoman, and he won't let me get her. He's just preying on my fears to get me to change my mind. Did I really hurt him,  or was it a clever way to make me feel that there was nothing to worry about.

 http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/chapter-1aa-variation-end.html

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

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

102

As I take one last look at the window and then move back to my desk. Love potion really is too strong of a term. I would never think of trying to change Boron’s mind. He likes me. I’m sure he likes me. If I didn’t already have some encouragement from him, then I wouldn’t have thought of it. I just think that a little bit of help getting him to make up his mind is in order. After all, he would be marrying lower--only slightly lower--down.

And I’m running out of time.

It’s all based on the idea that perception is one of the five functions of magic. We never learn about it at the Educational Institute. It’s not really useful. At least, my teachers say that it’s not really useful. My grandmother says otherwise.

I don’t bring up my grandmother at lot at when I’m at EI. Greenwomen are not exactly respected by the academic world. But they still have their own magic. My teachers think that charms and spells are...silly. They don’t say silly, but they certainly don’t take them seriously.

But I do. The problem is that greenwomen don’t use crystals. They use bone and bits of fur or maybe sticks and beetles. So I don’t know how to apply greenwoman magic to a crystal, or even if it’s possible.

The crystal lies in my hand, the facets reflecting the light. Of course, I haven’t tried it the other way around yet. If greenwomen can use a bone to do magic, then a bone would have to hold magic, wouldn’t it? Bones, beetles, sticks...they were all from living matter. They are made of cells. Can cells hold magic?

I look around my room. What do I have? Not much. There aren’t any plants in my room, because I’d forget to water them. And a quick search of the room, holding my lumicube like a candle to peer in the dark corners, shows that there isn’t a spider or a moth around when I need one. The idea of moths reminds me that I have some wool things in my closet. I could cut off a string--though I have no idea how to put magic into a piece of wool yarn. But I bet that my grandmother could do it, so there must be a way.  

When I open the door, I stare for into the gloom. Besides wool, there is something else in my closet that used to be alive. Several of those wool sweaters have buttons on them. I’ve never thought before about what buttons are made of. Glass? Wood? Bone?

in just a few minutes, I have a sweater that is now buttonless and four plain wooden buttons lie in the palm of my hand. Each one has a grain that I trace with my finger tips. After setting the others down, I sit at my desk with one in my palm. I press a finger to the center of the button and listen.

Crystals are much louder. Loud isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s kind of like a noise. There is something there, and crystals have a lot more of it. That doesn’t mean that wood is silent, though.

This one whispers in a crinkly pattern that reminds me of ferns. There is order if you know how to look for it, but it’s not as obvious as the straight lines of crystals. Of course I don’t hear noises, but it’s like hearing; it’s like paying attention. I think that this could work.

Filters are advanced and not really what this is. It’s not hard to take a crystal and put a little twist to the magic so that when the energy is released, it comes out as light or heat. Motion is a harder, but good engineers can use magic to power machines--machines that we use all the time.

I think that this is the same thing. It’s just that no one I know would agree with me. When Boron puts his hand on the crystal, or button, or whatever it ends up being, then the magic will alter his perception.

Only a little. Just enough.

If I were beautiful, then I wouldn’t need it. My hair is brown, not chestnut. I’m sort of an average height, average build. I’m not willowy, I’m not sporty. I’m just me.

But he likes me enough to smile at me when we are studying, enough that my heart beats faster when we’re alone for a few minutes. He’s even walked me home a few times when he ran into me on the way back from town. Once, I was sure that he was about to kiss me, except that the housekeeper bustled in to ask him about guests who were coming.

A kiss isn’t quite the same thing as a proposal, but it’s getting close.

I saw his mother’s ring once. I was young when she died, but once there was a midsummer party. She wore lace and jewels--and I could tell that they were real ones, not made by magic. They were beautiful. I had been playing badminton, and I was hot and sweating. She floated over like rose petals on a stream. She smiled at me and called me a pretty child. She would never wash dishes--and certainly she would never break a plate if she did. She would never reach under a hen to grab an egg and find something squishy on the shell. Someday I will be Boron’s wife and be graceful and kind and never sweaty or dirty.

But first I have to figure out how to get enough magic out of a thin slice of wood that it can power a perception long enough for him to get up the nerve to propose. After that, I can quit worrying about magic and focus on my wardrobe.

Just then, I hear a clatter on my window like tiny horse hooves on cobbles. I run to the window to look and raise the glass just in time to get a face full of gravel. “What?” I demand, shaking tiny pebbles out of my hair.

“Kestrel!” says a voice that can’t decide if it’s whispering or yelling. “Kestrel, you have to come down here.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.” The voice sounds impatient. “Barry. Barium Hawkins? Come on, I’m in your 10 o’clock class for ancient texts?”

“Yes, I know who you are, Barry. The question is what are you doing here?”

“Can you come down, please? I can’t keep shouting up at your window.  I’m going to wake your parents up.”

I consider, but then I shut my window. After all, I’m dressed. I’ll never get to sleep if I’m wondering what he wanted.  I head downstairs grabbing my boots and coat as I go. It’s still cold out, in spite of the spring thaw. The kitchen door is locked. I grab a lumilamp, switch it on, and open the door.

“What is it?” I hiss as I step on the porch. I quickly shove a foot into my boot because the flagstone step is cold on my bare feet.

“You have to come with me,” he says.

I don’t know what that sounds like he’s asking, but whatever it is, it’s not good. I turn back to the door.  “Oh, come on, Barry,” I say. “It’s late. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “No, Kestrel,” he says, his voice all quiet and serious. “Really. You have to come with me now. My friend is in the woods; he’s been hurt. I think he’s dying.”

1) I stop and look at him more carefully.  “Okay, Barry, this isn’t a joke. Tell me what’s really going on.” I try to imagine what he could possibly say that will convince me that his story is true because I don’t think that there is any way he could get me to run off into the woods with him in the middle of the night.


http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-chapter-1aa.html


2) “Dying?” I demand. “Who?” His voice sounds urgent, and I find myself hopping again as I shove my other foot into a boot. The handle of the lamp gets shoved between my teeth so that I can put my arms through my coat sleeves as I follow him across the yard and into the north pasture. “Barry,” I say once I’ve done the buttons and the lumilamp is swinging, the shadows it casts dances on the ground across the shadows that his lumilamp throws. “What is this all about? Who’s dying? What does that have to do with me?” My eyes narrow. “If I find out that this is just some kind of prank or...” My imagination doesn’t want to go any farther about what else he could be leading me toward in the middle of the night. “...something,” I finish lamely. “I’ll kill you myself, I really will.”


http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-chapter-1bb.html 

109? 112?

“There was an accident.”
“An accident?”

He nods.

“In the woods?”

“And what were you and a friend doing in the woods?”

Barry looks uncomfortable. I wait. He squirms a little. “Camping,” he says finally.

“With EI in the morning?”

He nods. I think his cheeks have turned a little bit pink, but it’s hard to tell in the dim light.

“And you know that we’re doing Exam reviews tomorrow?”

He nods again.

“So does this sound as bad a plan to you as it does to me?” I ask dryly.

“Listen, Kestrel, call me an idiot all you want. I had a good reason for being in the woods tonight.  But things...went wrong. And now he’s hurt, and I need you to come.”

“Can you bring him here?” I counter.

He shakes his head.  “Please, Kestrel,” he begs. “We have to go now.”

“Who is this guy?”

“You don’t know him.” And I can tell from his face that he realizes how ridiculous this all sounds. A friend that I haven’t met who is close enough for him to go out all night with in the middle of the week? It doesn’t add up. 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?”

“Kestrel, I know that you’re good at 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. “You seem to have a lot of new friends lately,” I tell 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. An they’re visiting. You know how it is. And you don’t know any of them, but they’ve been my cousins for a long time. So, will you 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 will be 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.

“My mom has 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.”

He nods. “Thanks. I guess I shouldn’t have expected more.”

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.