109

[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

108

[108]

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 this 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 since Mallee is still little, 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 wood spirits--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 hurrying, 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 grandmother sews on snowy evenings. 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 drawstring 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?"

[110]
"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. But if there’s any chance that I am the only one who can keep someone alive, then maybe I should go.

http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/08/110-x.html

[111]
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? Terrance Hill has a greenwoman, and he didn’t go to 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/2012/08/111.html

107

[From 103, 109]

[107]

My feet beat on the ground, blood pounds in my ears, but there is also the thump of boots behind me. I try to separate the sound, to tell how close it is without turning around.

Trees thin and the small wood gives way to scrubby grass and sagebrush. They are low, and I leap over them rather than dodge around. From the noise behind me, I’d guess that he crashes straight through.

I ignore the stretch of a stitch in my side. I try to breathe. My face is a grimace as I push myself to go faster.

And then smack. I’m falling; I can’t breathe. His weight smashes my face to the ground. Something hurts; everything hurts; I can’t tell what. I twist, kick. His arms are around my waist, pulling me upright.

“Stop. Just stop!” he roars. “You have to help me. Kestrel, it’s me, Barry, from EI.”

“Let go,” I mean it to be loud, but it comes out as half cough. Still, he lets me loose, and I crawl a few steps away. As I turn to look at him, I taste the blood, gingerly prod my lip with my tongue to see how deep the cut is. Deep enough, but my teeth didn’t go all the way through. I spit blood on the grass.

The light from his lumicube is in my eyes, too bright in the darkness. At least he was telling the truth. “Barry, what is going on?”

“Come back with me. You have to, I need your help. Someone was hurt. Really hurt.”

This is a bad dream. It can’t be real. I can’t make it seem real. I should be in my room studying or sleeping. And yet I find myself following him back to where flames still licks at the trunks of a couple of trees. Fortunately there are few cottonwoods and mostly green willows.

Another young man, a dark shadow comes toward us. I tense, ready to run again if I need to.

“Grant,” Barry says, “where is he?”

As he nears the glow, I can tell that Grant isn’t in great shape either. He is holding his arm, which doesn’t look right. There is a shiny spot on his coat sleeve that could be wet.

Grant nods his head toward a low tent. “Over there. Yarrow’s with him.”

We walk over, and I see that the the tent is just a tarp draped over a tiny frame, low to the ground.

“Yarrow,” Barry calls softly. “Can you come out for a second?”

A tall, thin girl crawls backward out of the tent. She reaches out her fingers toward Barry and then turns her head toward the tent.

“Bad?” Barry asks.

Her eyes never leave him. One curt nod. There is something about the lack of emotion on her thin face that frightens me.

“Let Kestrel see what she can do,” Barry says. “Can you get bandages, water, whatever he needs?”

She glances once at me,  then nods again and walks away.

“Go ahead,” Barry tells me, gesturing toward the tent.

“Barry, what do you expect me to do?”

“Just get in there, and then we’ll talk,” he says. Seeing what is in that tent is about the last thing that I want to do right now, but the tone in his voice is not a good one to argue with. I hesitate, but I already know that he can run faster than I can.

There is only enough room for the hurt man and me kneeling next to him. Barry crouches in the doorway, holding a lumilamp. It casts shadows from below that mix with the ones on his lumicube and make him look ugly and evil rather than just worried. He raises the lamp a little so that I can appreciate the red spreading over the lower part of the man’s shirt, and spreads across the top of his pants. The cloth is ripped on his hip, ragged edges that might be cloth, might be skin, or both. I wonder if I will throw up or pass out, but I am strangely calm. The tarp rubs against my back, and I wish it would stop.

“So what do we do?” Barry asks.

“What do you mean? I don’t know.” But he looks at me like I should be a part of this.

“Kestrel.” His face looks green-gray, and I wonder if it’s just the light. “Look at him. I know that you know about magic. Your grandmother does all that herb stuff. If you don’t know what to do, he’s going to die.”

I assume that he means that I’m good at school magic, because there is no way that he can know about the practical kind, the forbidden kind. And yet, why would he be so determined to get me here. I look down. Either way, I don’t know what to do. I have no idea what to do. “Barry,” I start. “It’s not the same thing. Magic is energy, not medicine.” I’m about to lose it. I’m breathing too fast. I can feel the texture of the cloth under my hands as they rest on my knees. I avoid looking at him again, but I can’t stop hearing his breathing, his little moan of pain.

“Energy? Then give him some. I don’t know. Try something. I can’t even sew him up, and if I just wrap a bandage around that, he’s going to die. I know it’s not enough. So do something.” He grabs my arm and gets close to my face. “Get creative, but do something. He can’t die. Not tonight.”

And maybe I’m scared or inspired, or maybe I just don’t want his death to be my fault. I swallow and reach over to him, gently lifting his shirt. I ask Barry for a knife, and I carefully cut through the waistband and shove my gagging back down into somewhere deep inside of me where it won’t bother me tonight, not right now--though I know I’ll have to pay for it later.

Whatever it was that cut him didn’t just slice a red stripe in his hip; it ripped part of it out. I can tell that much since a big chunk of muscle is just gone, and the skin is ragged around the edges. Even if my grandmother had taught me how to use the special curved needle and the black thread that she uses, I still wouldn’t be able to make the ends meet.

My hands are shaking, but I reach out and place two fingers on the wound. I close my eyes and feel a spark. I can still see it on the inside of my eyelids, real or imagined, I don’t know. I’ve never used magic for more than lights, for fires, for moving small things. Not like this.

I have just a bit of an idea. If I could apply the principle of Wertenhouser’s Theory to his muscles, maybe they could move close enough together that I could at least slow the bleeding. Maybe I could find the blood vessels and close them. As I start to think in terms of mathmagics rather than blood, I can calm my breathing. I can see the small tubes that are letting so much blood free. I don’t know how, but I can see them, not see really, but feel in my mind the shape of them. I can feel the pulse, but maybe that’s just a guess or what I would expect to be there.

The trick now now is to tell them what to do. That’s the problem with mathmagics in general is not harnessing the energy, but focusing it for a specific purpose. That’s what they use machines for--and as I debate with myself, more of his blood soaks into the grass beneath us.

“Close,” I tell his veins. My fingers tingle, but nothing much happens. I feel an alertness, though, as if his body is listening. “Ciro,” I try in Galliun. And the tingling spreads. “Ciro,” I say again, this time louder, willing energy to move from my center and down into my hands. “Ciro.” I feel the veins begin to tremble, and the open edges press together. The bleeding slows to a drip. I breath out. I open my eyes. The raw meat that was once his leg is still there, but the rubbery little tubes that look like straws or balloons gone wrong have pinched themselves shut. I lift my bloody hands, not knowing where to put them.

I look at Barry. He looks at me. Neither of us dares to hope. We don’t say anything aloud, but there, in the middle of the night, over what would surely have been a dead man, we say everything with just our eyes.

And then I am aware of his breathing. I am waiting for it.

It doesn’t come.

I turn to look at him, look back at Barry.

“Sage,” he says. “Sage wake up.” He tries to scramble into the tent, but there just isn’t room. He grips my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

And then we hear a shallow breath, a whisper. Not deep enough, not long enough. Just a thin sputter.

I look at Sage’s white face. “Too much blood,” I guess. But I know that it’s a good guess.

“So now what?” he demands. “Can’t you...make some more or something?”

“I”m not a magician,” I remind him. “And even they don’t make blood. Do you think that people would die if magic could save them?”

Barry’s fingers tighten, pinch into my shoulder. “I don’t want him to die--he is my friend, but tonight his life means a lot more than that. If you don’t heal him, it won’t just be him who dies. You stopped the bleeding, there has to be something else you can do.”

“Barry, you’ve read the same books I have. You know that there isn’t anything else. What can I do? I can tell you about energy transfer ratio, not blood. There’s no spell for making blood.” But even as I say it, I can see the connection. I don’t know how to make blood, but his body does. I stare at Barry for a several seconds before I realize that he’s shouting at me, some of tirade about saving lives and a noble cause. I don’t care. Right now, I don’t want this man to die.

I push my hands back into the wound. I close my eyes and think, “I need to see you. Marrow. I need the marrow...” My voice dies out. I don’t have the courage to sound that ridiculous aloud. Not with Barry there watching. What if it doesn’t work?

“He stopped breathing!” Barry yells, which doesn’t help me at all.

What I need is a way to talk to Slade’s marrow--which is admittedly a really strange thing to do--to connect to the inside of his body without thinking about how stupid and impossible it is because then it really will be impossible. And I need it to work, regardless of how stupid it is.

Barry is still shouting. I reach one red hand toward him, press a five-fingered stain across his mouth. “Shut up,” I say very softly.

And then I remember other words, words he can’t possibly know. They were more like a secret, or a remembrance, a gift from my grandmother. I could use her help now. She isn’t here. No one who can help me is here, but I have her words.

Gweler I say, pushing magic into the word as I press my hands on him.

And there they are, the long bones in his legs, above and below the knee. I don’t know what bones look like, not really, but I know the shape of his bones, know how to find the marrow inside of them.

Gwella I tell them. Gwella. I hope it’s the right word. I know so few. But they seem to understand, and red seeps into being. A little, so little. He’s too weak.

I bite the inside of my lip and feel something tighten inside of me.

Gwella I say again, only this time, instead of pushing something out, in front of me, I bring myself with the word. I flow into the marrow of his bones and stretch my fingers out through it, reaching as much of the hollow that I can.

I fill the emptiness of his hip with myself, stretching out my arms, bending my back to cover the hole, to negate the void. I don’t know how it works. If I stop to think about myself, I know that I am there, here, kneeling next to him, head bent. But then the work slows, and I have to forget about myself again, about what is real and possible and just do what needs to be done.

There comes a point when I open my eyes and wonder what is happening because my hands are still red, but they rest on pink skin. Raw, but whole.

And I turn to look at the lumilamp, but I see it as if from a long way off, down a dark tunnel. And I think that there is something about that that isn’t quite right. And I try to talk to...to the, the him there, but I can’t think of the words, and it’s darker, and my--isn’t; I’m not quite right.

“Kestrel.”

I wish that someone would stop saying my name; it’s too loud.

“Kestrel.” I want to not hear it, to not hear ringing around in my head, and my eyes don’t want to open, because it’s black, and I’m tired, and I want the voice to go away. I just want to sleep.

[200]
Continue on to Chapter 2.
http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/08/200_22.html

Section 2/A/B

My breath is shaky and doesn’t come quite like I plan for it too. I count to three, open my lips. Then I close them and count to three again. I can’t say anything. Perhaps I’ll stand like this until Anen is disgusted and leaves me. Will anyone find me if I stand here for days? Or will I die here, and whoever finds me will wonder about the skull and the knuckles.

“Effro.” It feels like someone else is saying it. If I could see what I feel, it would look like a thin wisp of smoke coming out of the skull. And then I am inside.

Sometimes when I dream or even when I read, I guess, I can be the person in the story and myself watching it happen at the same time that’s what it is like now. I am myself, incorporeal and watching from behind and a little to the left, but I am also a girl sitting on a hillside. As far as I can see is purple heather. It is like resting on a purple wave, next to me is a single rowan tree.

At first I am filled with just seeing, feeling the wind blow against me as it ruffles the heather around me, bringing its scent crashing into me like waves. And then I realize that there are things I know. I love this place. I have come here often. Today I am here to say goodbye. Emptiness stretches out farther than I can see. There are years, so many years ahead and I am only on the first day. How can I keep them from crushing my heart with the weight of all those empty years knowing that I will never see this place again?

“Kestrel. Kestrel.”

For a moment I am aware of myself again--the watcher behind the girl on the hill. And then I blink, and I see the creased face of my grandmother, waves of years ride the skin of her face like rolling land covered in heather.

“It was you,” I say, discovering it as I say it. I wipe at my wet cheeks. “Where was that place? How...” I hesitate, not wanting to be rude, but unable to stop my wonder and horror, “how old are you?”

Her hand grips tightly, fingers biting into my shoulder. The nails of her other hand rub against my palm as she scrapes the skull from me. “Once again,” she says, looking upset. “I counted the cost incorrectly. Apparently there are things I fail to learn regardless of all the years I have had in which to learn them. I did not think that you would be able to call up that much. Forgive me. I have trained more than one apprentice, and it always takes a lot of practice even to see the scene clearly. There is much that I don’t know about you, my granddaughter. Be careful of your gifts. Sometimes power that is too easily won is more of a curse than a blessing.”

“Tell me how you are connected to the Outliers. Tell me what they even are.  All I know are stories about revolutionaries who hurt people in order to make a statement to the government. They were never anything I wanted to be a part of.”

Anen pulls out the wooden box and tucks the skull back among the cotton padding before latching the box and stowing it in her skirt pockets again along with the pig’s knuckles. It would seem that the lesson is over.

“There are men that run these worlds,” she says, and the bitterness in her voice slices into my ears, “who are evil. Nothing but evil. They coat their deeds with fine, embroidered words, but what they do is oppression, exploitation, and violence. Kestrel, I do not always want what the Outliers must do--I certainly don’t always condone it--but we must have change. The Archipelago must find freedom or everything will wither and die. I have foreseen it. If I could tell you what I have seen--”

“There you are!” Wren calls over to us from the lane. She walks and runs over to us. Then she stops and puts her hands on her legs, bending over to catch her breath. Of course, Wren is much too lady-like to sit on the grass without a blanket. She might get her dress dirty. That would be very well if she had a dress that was worth keeping clean. But I don’t see why I should worry about grass with a dress that I use to feed chickens and milk a cow.

“What is it?” I ask, as she gulps in air. “Are we in trouble because we won’t have a full hour to dress for dinner?” Anen looks at me sharply, but it’s true. We only dress for dinner when we have company, and when that company is a greenwoman, what’s the point?

Wren shakes her head. “Outliers,” she finally gasps. “Dad says to come home right now, to make sure that you’re safe.” She looks around as if expecting to be attacked any moment. “I didn’t think that I would have to come this far to find you,” she explains. “Otherwise he never would have let me come, but Feld is still helping with dinner.”

“Outliers?” Anen asks, calm and slightly concerned. “But there has been no Outlier activity here for over a year. Is he sure?”

“He’s sure,” Wren says, “Slade Carpenter found a camp in the woods.”

“Was there anyone there?” I ask, not sure if I was worried for Barry or for what Barry could have told about me.

“Something big happened there. He found burned trees and,” she pauses to give her words dramatic weight, “and there was a dead soldier.” She pulls on my hand to get me up, then she helps Anen.

The three of us start back for home without another word. I look at Anen, wondering if I should be running away from the Outliers or toward them.


Continue on to Chapter 3

http://kestrelbook.blogspot.com/2012/02/chapter-1.html

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

200

Chapter 2
“Kestrel! Kestrel!”
I swim through what feels like thick fog while someone beats a steady rhythm inside my head. I start to open my eyes and think better of it.
“Kestrel, it’s time to get up. Past time. Your grandmother will be here soon, and I wanted you to watch Mallee so that I can finish getting ready.”
Inside my befuddled mind, two things are going on. One is that I don’t want to get up, and I don’t want to tend Mallee. The other is a little nagging voice that says that there is something odd about my mother calling me to get up.
And then I remember. I was in the tent. How did I get here? I sit straight up and instantly regret it as some bad fairy whacks me right behind the eyes. I groan and hold still for a moment until I can only feel the throbbing rather than see it as expanding and shrinking tunnel vision.
Then I hear footsteps. Small ones. Great my mother has sent Mallee upstairs to make sure that I get up. I hurry to grab my clothes and put them on before she barges through the door because as much as I like my sister, having a four year old help me get dressed is not top of my list for fun things to do today.
Thwack, thwack. It’s not her fist. She must be hitting my door with something else. “Kestrel! Mom said chickens. And Feld said that chickens poop eggs, so I want to see.” The tail of her sentence becomes a shriek. I hurry to open the door before she can get any louder.

It’s too fast. I need some time to put myself together, to figure out what happened. I don’t need normal life to come banging on my door. But she’s there anyway.

“Okay, okay,” I tell her as I open the door. Just let me get my boots on. It’s full light outside already, which means that either my father or Wren will have had to do the milking. If it was my father, I’ll feel bad. If it was Wren, I’ll never hear the end of it.

Shoes and coats and mittens don’t seem like a big deal when I’m by myself, but when I’m with Mallee, they’re a whole project. And she doesn’t stop talking--the entire time. She has to point out what color everything is and what other things are the same colors. Then as we walk out toward the hen house, she tells me what animals are on the farm and what noises they all make. She doesn’t use the noises that you would read about in a book, she has her own squeaks and snorts that she’s made up. I have a hard time keeping track because I can’t always understand what she is saying, and I definitely can’t identify the sounds most of time. So I just agree with everything and then she’s happy.

We pass Feldspar as we come back to the house. He’s got an armload of wood to fill the box, and I hold the door open for him, even though Mallee is inside wailing for me to help her with her coat buttons. I hear the thumps as she kicks her boots off and they smack into the walls.

“Kestrel, can you come help me with this?” my mother asks much too cheerfully.  Apparently she got more sleep last night than I did. I know today is called Work at Home, but since there are the normal days, Work at Home, and Sacred Day, then that doesn’t leave any time for fun day--or catching up on missed sleep and worrying about my future day. Instead, I’m sucked into my mother’s world of making sure that the house is perfectly clean for when my  grandmother, Anen, comes. It’s not that I forget about what happened last night, about waking up in my own bed when it shouldn’t have happened. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with the fact that it happened, so I leave it alone and pretend that it’s not there.

I finish with Mallee and then walk cautiously into the kitchen. I can tell that she has already cleaned everything, but since she then proceeded to get out every dish and bit of food in the house so that she could cook, cleaning in the first place didn’t help a lot. I look at the dish bushel and sigh. I start to rub my face with one hand, but then stop because my mother is looking at me, and I don’t want to annoy her first thing. Maybe if I’m really calm and clear, then she’ll understand.

“Mom,” I say. “It’s not that I don’t want Anen to come. It’s just that now isn’t a really good time.”

She hands me a bowl of green beans. Of course. I can’t just sit. I have to be working all the time. Some day, as a Lady Domini, I plan to spend a few days doing absolutely nothing, just to see how it feels.

“I know that you have Exams next week, and I know things are a little bit unsettled.”
No, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t even know the half of it, I think to myself. She thinks that I’m tired because I stayed up too late studying. She has no idea that I feel like a cow kicked me in the head.  I don’t really know what happened, but I think I saved a young man’s life by performing illegal magic.

But I don’t say it. How could I? She reaches over to pat my hand. I have no option but to start snapping the ends off of beans and put them into a bowl. I resent needing two bowls for this job because I know that my next job will be to wash dishes.
My mother chatters on about every detail of everything we will eat for the day and how to cook it and what it will be served on and who ate how much of it last time she fixed it. I think my head is going to explode.

Anen is my father’s mother--everyone calls her Anen. She’s a greenwoman for her zone, and she doesn’t care about having so many courses or what dishes they are served in, but somehow, my mother can’t let go of how she thinks that life ought to be. Which I think is a problem when she doesn’t have any servants besides her children to help. Of course, if I had a real staff of servants, that would be different. It’s just that a greenwoman isn’t really the person you need to impress, even if she’s your mother-in-law.

Once I’m finished helping, I go out to the shed to check on the goats’ water. If Wren did the chores, the she will have forgotten to fill up the water trough. This time I’m glad I have an excuse to get out for a few minutes. I need some time to myself.

1) Briefly,I consider taking off and heading to Daisy’s house, or even to Boron’s house.  But I instantly discard the idea of seeing Boron. I look awful, and it won’t work to go see him if I look awful.  To him, I have to be perfect, the future Lady Domini--that is, I have to look like I could be so that he’ll think of asking me. I really thought that he would say something last time I was there. 


I need to see him, but later. For now, I'd better spend time with Anen so that my mother won't be angry if I slip away later. 


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

2) I don’t know that I look good enough to invent an excuse to try to see Boron, and he probably won’t be there anyway, but I could go to visit Daisy. After all, isn’t studying more important than visiting Anen? It's a good rationale to justify it to my mother, but really, after all that happened last night, I need to think, to sort it all out. Maybe I can tell Daisy about it, but what I don't need is hours of polite dreariness right now.