Craft (18 page)

“I swear, I didn’t,” Ellie
said.

Neveah raised her hand, as if to slap
Ellie. Ellie tensed, but she did not take a step back from Neveah.
It would only make her sister hit her harder. Neveah did not like
fear. Neveah nodded at Ellie and lowered her hand. The gesture had
only been a warning to tell the truth.

“Fine,” Neveah said. “Stay away while
the grandparents are here…they won’t want to see you on account of
your disappointing habit of doing nothing to help the family out.
When they’re gone, come back and do the chores you got waiting for
you. You got more than a couple of days’ worth.”

Ellie nodded at her sister. While she
was not happy about the prospect of chores after a long couple of
days of fear, adventure and minimal sleep, she was glad she had
avoided punishment. The happiness of that erased all of her other
worries.

Ellie turned away from her sisters and
Cousin without another word. They were staring at her. It was the
first time she had ever been stared at for any reason beyond
punishment. She knew that the longer she was under their scrutiny,
the more chance she had of her lie being discovered. She walked
through the tall grass as quickly as she dared. She felt their eyes
on her back until the grass swallowed her from view.

Before she was out of earshot she
heard Cousin say, “About time that girl gets some proper
experience, don’t you think?”

“The girl is about as useful in the
fight as a whistle pig,” Neveah said. “Couldn’t craft her way out
of a pickle jar…”

“Could be,” Cousin said. “But she
managed to survive being kidnapped. No denying she’s growing up.
Most her age have already fought and hurt a Cooper. She’s behind
the others. You can’t make it seem like you don’t approve of your
own sister fighting the feud. Someone else might decide to lead the
fight…”

“I promised…” Neveah started to
say.

“Promises are for those not fighting
the Coopers,” Cousin said.

“Suppose…” Neveah admitted
grudgingly.

Their words haunted Ellie.
It did not bode well for her future. Would they really make her
fight? She was no longer certain she
could
fight.

The Coopers were no longer the
invisible enemy. They had faces. They had names. She thought going
to town would make her ready to fight. All it had done was make her
realize that they were not so different. If Neveah forced her to
fight, she was not certain what the outcome would be. For the first
time in her life, she was more afraid of fighting a Cooper than not
fighting one.

The difference shook her to her
core.

Chapter 7:
Momma

Caw had eaten all of his food when
Ellie returned to her shack. He was preening his feathers when her
candles flickered to life. He looked up briefly when she walked in
but he was too focused on his task to greet her properly. Ellie did
not mind his distraction. Her thoughts raced with the idea that
Cousin had left in her mind. The feud was growing
closer.

In an attempt to soothe her racing
mind, Ellie picked up the book she had been reading before she had
gone to town. Words on the page had always been a source of
comfort; they were a way to escape the moment. They were not good
enough this time. She could not focus on the words long enough to
read even a single page. The words blurred together. She read the
same sentence three times before she gave up. There had been more
excitement in the past three days than in her entire life; it was
difficult to repress such things. Ellie threw the book to the floor
and stretched out on the sofa.

As she did, the sights she had seen in
town rose up in front of her eyes. She saw all the things she had
never imagined possible and wondered if the whole world was full of
such wonderful things. She wondered if the ocean, dolphins, people
without craft, shops and houses were repeated the world over. She
wondered, too, if the whole world was as scary as being chased by
men with rifles and dark shadows of men down a lonely street. How
many places held the sad remains of a lost stone bear? There was a
fine balance between the dangerous things and the wonderful things.
Good and bad were mixed in a way she could not have conceived of
three days ago.

Somewhere around the images of her
trip, she realized that one of her long-held opinions had shifted.
Seeing town had changed more for her than just gaining new
knowledge. Tried-and-true fact had changed to something a little
less true. Not all Coopers were evil. Not all of them could be
trusted but they were not all the things Neveah had said they were.
There was no taking back the past. One of the Coopers had killed
her father and broken apart their family.

There was also no denying that not all
of them were guilty of the murder. The Coopers had complex
emotional relationships, dysfunction and love. They were not so
different from her family.

While Thane and Ellie were not friends
by any stretch of the imagination, Ellie knew she could not have
gone on her adventure without him. He was the reason she had
accomplished something she had long dreamed of doing. He had taken
her to town, had showed her a world beyond her expectations. She
would always remember him, not as a Cooper, but as an ally in her
adventure.

Feeling more changed than she had ever
thought she could, Ellie realized that the feud was not as natural
as she thought. There was no real reason to the continued
bloodshed. What differences bound the feud together beyond the
perceived ones? The fighting was violent and unnecessary. It
perpetuated itself because no one knew how to stop. It was not
because there were legitimate differences between the two families.
If she could get along with Thane, there was no reason that her
family could not get along with the Coopers.

Her mind fixated on that fact. She
could not let it go. Her realization was useless. She would not get
them to stop fighting, but she could not let the idea rest. It was
profound. It meant her life had been lived in a lie.

Ellie wanted to rest, to sleep before
her chores, but she could not get her mind calm enough to do so. It
hummed with the visuals of town and the feelings in her
chest.

After a short time, where her whole
world switched around to reveal new truths, she went back to the
house to do her work. She was eager for the distraction of physical
labor. It meant not dwelling on the truths she had discovered while
in town. She also knew that the sooner she was done with the
chores, the better. Putting them off was not a good idea. Neveah
would just add more chores to the list the longer they were left
undone. Ellie’s adventure had ended, and reality had come knocking
again. Her reality always included chores. Reality was better than
consequences. She was determined not to be reckless again, not to
put others in peril because of her dreams. Chores were safe. No one
was abducted because she did chores.

Her grandparents were in the living
room. The sound of their voices carried around the house. It filled
up the space with their negativity. She quietly bypassed them and
went upstairs to start her cleaning there. The grandparents did not
even notice her. They were too busy talking about the escape of
Thane’s aunt. They chastised Neveah for letting her prisoner go.
They asked how she could have been so easily tricked into falling
for the distraction. Neveah took their verbal lashing without
argument. She knew better than to speak up when they were
chastising her. Ellie was not the only one to feel one of the
grandparents’ beatings. Ellie could sense her boiling anger around
the silence. Someone would pay for the escape and the attack on the
house. Neveah would get her revenge and take out her anger. The
Coopers would pay for making a fool out of her.

Ellie cleaned her sisters’ rooms
slowly. She took her time, knowing Neveah would be looking for a
reason to criticize her. The details would matter. Ellie had
started on the bathroom upstairs when she felt a familiar sense of
craft in the air. It whispered through the house in a soft, steady
breeze. It was the sort of skilled, subtle craft she associated
with only one person.

Ellie stopped scrubbing the toilet and
looked up hopefully. She craned her neck, hoping to let her mundane
senses confirm what her craft already knew. She heard the sound of
a soft voice carry up the steps from the first floor. It was a
voice from her dreams. Forgetting that Neveah would be angry if she
did not finish her chores, Ellie dropped her cleaning things and
hurried down the steps. She jumped them two and three at a
time.

Ellie’s momma was in the middle of the
living room. Her red hair was warmed by the summer sun streaming
through the open windows. To Ellie, it looked as if her momma had a
halo. She was the brightest part of the room. Momma was crafting
gifts for Neveah and Careen with a flick of her wrist. Neveah
looked annoyed at the craft, while Careen was smiling happily at
the candies and flowers piled on her lap. Careen was as glad as
Ellie was to see their momma. The surprise was a welcome one.
Neveah had her arms crossed as she sat between the grandparents on
the sofa. The grandparents mirrored Neveah’s body language. Their
frowns had deepened. Disapproval for Momma dominated their
expressions. Ellie had never seen Neveah look more like Grandma
Bumbalow than in that moment.

Ellie ignored the judgmental aura they
were radiating with and focused on the person in the room that
mattered most to her.

“Momma!” Ellie yelled
happily.

Momma turned at the cry. She smiled
warmly when she saw Ellie on the steps. She held her arms out in
maternal warmness. “Hey, baby girl!” Momma said.

“I thought you weren’t gonna be back
again until fall,” Ellie said as Momma hugged her.

“I got a feeling I was needed and came
back soon as I could,” Momma said. “When I heard about your little
adventure, well, I just knew I was right. Shame I didn’t get here a
bit sooner to stop your abduction before it happened.”

“She’s fine,” Neveah said. “They
didn’t even hurt her a little.”

Neveah sounded disappointed at the
admission. The expression on her face was one Ellie was used to
seeing whenever Momma came around. It was angry and hateful. It
blamed Momma for the past ten years of Neveah’s life.

“I don’t see how anyone could hurt
you, baby girl,” Momma said, touching Ellie’s face. “You’re too
sweet.”

“See? No one hurt her. You can go back
to wandering or whatever it is you do while betraying your family,”
Neveah said hatefully.

Grandma and Grandpa Bumbalow nodded
approvingly at Neveah’s words. Their faces were full of disapproval
for Momma. They had never liked her. They had never thought she was
good enough for their son. She was certainly not good enough to
lead the battle against the Coopers. Her leaving was just
confirmation of what they had always thought; she was no good. They
did not dare say this to her face, however. They feared her in a
way they did not fear Ellie, for good reason.

Momma turned away from Ellie and
arched an eyebrow at Neveah. Her smile disappeared in an instant.
The expression on her face was what had made her so famous in the
family. It was a look of unspeakable anger. While many saw her and
her family as an outsider to the feud – her family had moved into
the area only fifty years ago – no one could deny her crafting
ability, or her fierceness in a fight. Stories of her craft were
legend in the Bumbalow family. People still talked about the fights
she had won. Even the Coopers had learned to fear Momma’s name. No
one dared get in a fight with her by choice. Neveah was lucky that
Momma had learned control.

Momma waved a quick hand and a gag
appeared around Neveah’s mouth. Neveah’s hands moved to the gag, to
pull it away, but the fabric did not move. Momma kept her craft on
the gag, to teach Neveah a lesson. Neveah’s craft was not strong
enough to move the fabric.

“I know you think you’re something
else, with taking over the feuding and leading the family in this
ridiculousness you call living, but I am still your momma, and you
will not speak like that to me,” Momma said. “You keep it up, and
I’ll show you that you are not too old for certain lessons…Do you
understand?”

Neveah nodded once. Her anger had lost
out to fear.

Momma waved her wrist again. Neveah
finally managed to pull down the gag, but she did not backtalk. She
knew Momma was not the sort of woman you messed with unless you
wanted a heck of a fight.

Momma refocused on Ellie. She rolled
her shoulders once to rid her body of her radiating anger and
smiled again. Ellie smiled back. She was glad her momma had not
lost her temper. She’d had enough of fighting for one
day.

“I brought you something. I found it
in an old bookstore in Maine and thought you might like it,” Momma
said.

Momma flicked her wrist
for a third time. A book appeared in her hand from nowhere. She
held it up for Ellie to see. The title read:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
.
Ellie took it with a smile. It would be another book for the
collection.

“Thanks,” Ellie said.