Craft (20 page)

“Now, get inside before I really get
mad!” Neveah said.

Ellie ran away from her sisters and
slammed her way through the front door of the house. She went to
the bathroom and locked the door. She took long, trembling breaths
to control her rage. Her whole body shook with the moment. Her body
wanted her to craft powerful darkness over Neveah’s head. It urged
her to go back and attack her sister, to teach her a lesson. It was
something Ellie would have never contemplated a week ago. Had town
changed her that much? She worried at the change. She was not a
violent person. She had never hurt another person in her entire
life. Was she turning into Neveah? The thought scared
her.

Ellie spit the blood from the hit into
the sink and put a cool cloth on her cheek, to soothe the pain. She
moved quickly, purposefully, as she tended to her injury. Every
moment she spent in the bathroom just made Neveah happier. Ellie
could not bear the thought of Neveah getting so much happiness from
her pain.

When Ellie came out of the bathroom,
she was composed. She showed no signs of her pain or her anger. She
was unwilling to show Neveah the internal battle she had faced. She
ignored Careen and Neveah, who were searching her face. Instead,
she focused on scrubbing the kitchen. The familiarity of the work
kept her from giving in to her emotions. It was a true return to
life at her house. With the familiarity it did not take her sisters
long to forget about torturing her. They went off to do their own
things, to entertain themselves in other ways. Ellie was left alone
with her task.

It was past two in the morning when
Ellie finished her chores. Neveah and Careen had fallen asleep
upstairs, the sounds coming from their respective rooms dying down
as the night wore on.

Ellie’s back ached from her cleaning,
and her hair was a tangled mess of sweat and dirt. Her night spent
on Rachel’s uncomfortable sofa only added to the pain in her back.
Ellie put her supplies up and went back to her shack, feeling as if
the day had lasted an eternity. The hours had turned into decades.
She wanted to go to bed and not wake up for a year.

Her plans were interrupted not three
feet on her grassy yard. Caw, his black eyes flashing in the dark,
landed in front of her. As he landed, he dropped a piece of paper
at her feet. Ellie looked at Caw in confusion. He had not been
trained to send messages, but then she did not really understand
what he was capable of. She bent down and picked the paper up. It
was thick and course. On it was a message. There was no
salutation.

All it said was: Can you meet me
behind your shack?

Ellie thought she knew who it was
from, but she was suspicious. Why would Thane be back? He had no
reason to come to her house now that their adventure was over. She
had assumed they would never see each other again. It was not only
because they were on opposite ends of an unending feud. She had
gotten the idea that he did not care for her company. He had spent
the whole trip making fun of her and mocking her for being stupid.
She looked at Caw again and pointed at the note.

“Did Thane give you this?” she
demanded of the bird.

Caw clicked his beak at her in a way
that made her think he meant yes.

“You best not be lying,” Ellie warned.
“If there’s an imposter running around, I best know about it. Could
be dangerous for us both.”

Caw let out a low, comforting caw and
flew up to Ellie’s shoulder. He started preening his feathers as he
landed. Ellie shook her head at Caw’s unhelpfulness and her
feelings of confusion. She was not sure what to do, but she knew
she had two choices: stay or go. Staying was safe. Going was
dangerous. It was not as easy a choice as it seemed. A part of her
had found excitement in dangerous. Being safe meant she did not run
the risk of getting others hurt.

She made her way through the tall
grass to her shack, still trying to decide. She was convinced after
such a long day, and after Neveah’s brutal slap, that no one would
want to see her twice on purpose. No one was that forthcoming with
affection, even friendly affection. She was not liked in that
way.

She paused at the crafted ward that
separated her property from the woods. Her choice was in front of
her. The shack or the woods? Ellie was afraid the note was a Cooper
trick meant to try to draw her out and kidnap her for real. Thane
could have told anyone about their adventure together. His aunt
could have connected the dots. She could have figured out that
Ellie and Thane had gotten friendly and had rescued her because of
their friendliness. Why else would a Bumbalow help a
Cooper?

Both instances were more likely than
Thane wanting to see her again. He was not bound by the same fear
that had held Ellie’s tongue in check. He did not run the risk of a
beating for telling the truth. She could tell that much from the
way he had interacted with Rachel and his brother. He did not have
years of beatings under his belt. He had years of school. Ellie was
hopeful the note was sincere, but she was not stupid. She did not
want to walk into a situation she could prevent.

She frowned as she realized she could
end up standing in one spot until the end of days, trying to decide
if it was a trick, or she could take a risk. A risk was more of an
adventure than standing still; it was a continuation of the journey
she had begun in town. Her story did not have to end.

She stepped past the ward and into the
thick woods. She listened to the night for a minute, trying to
sense craft nearby or anything that would give away mischief and
trickery. There was nothing beyond the sounds of crickets. She
crafted a small light in her hand. She focused briefly and made the
light levitate in the air above her so she could see the ground in
front of her as she walked. The floating light left her hands free,
just in case.

Ellie pushed through a row of thick
trees surrounding her shack and came out on the other side at a
small clearing. The first thing she noticed in the clearing was
Thane sitting on a fallen tree. He had a small light in his hand.
He cupped it so that the dull blue light was not easily seen by
anyone outside the clearing.

Ellie and Thane looked at each other
for a moment. Tension and suspicion was on both of their faces.
Trust was not as simple as two days’ worth of adventure. It took
more. Thane’s face was less suspicious than hers was. He had
harbored the fear that she would tell her sisters about his
surprise visit, but he did not seriously believe the notion. He
knew that someone who would rescue his aunt and save him from
torture and death would not put his life in danger despite his
surprise appearance at her house. His gamble had paid
off.

Ellie peered around the clearing. She
looked for Coopers peeking out from the woods. She waited for the
craft to descend. The only thing she saw was the green of the
underbrush and moonlight filtering down through the trees. They
were alone but that did not explain the oddness of Thane’s
visit.

“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you
around here again,” Ellie said slowly.

“Just wanted to say thanks for saving
my aunt,” he said.

Ellie shrugged nonchalantly, though
she blushed at his thanks. She sat down on the forest floor and
allowed her light to grow brighter so that she could see him
better. She immediately saw that the skin around his eye was black
and blue. She had seen enough of hits to the face to know that
someone had punched him. She felt empathy for the pain. Her face
still ached from where Neveah had hit it.

“What happened?” Ellie asked, pointing
at his eye.

Thane pointed at Ellie’s cheek, where
a bruise had formed from Neveah’s hit. “I could ask the
same.”

Ellie touched her cheek lightly. She
shrugged and moved her hand away from the injury. There was no use
worrying about the past. “I back-sassed my sister…I shouldn’t have
done it, but I got mad.”

“Do you want me to heal it?” Thane
asked.

Ellie shook her head. She had learned
her lesson on that issue years ago. “She would hit me harder if I
healed it. She always does.”

Thane nodded in understanding. He knew
his father would do the same. The point was to feel the pain, to
learn the lesson. Healing the injury prevented the education of the
hit.

Thane relented on the reason his
father had hit him. “My father didn’t like it that I went and got
my aunt on my own,” Thane said. “He wanted to do it himself. He
wants to do everything himself. He wanted the fight. When my aunt
told them you helped me…well, he really didn’t like that. Made him
angrier than I’ve seen him.”

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,”
Ellie said. “And I’m sorry you’re hurt.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Thane
said.

“Still…I know it hurts,” Ellie
said.

Thane shrugged as if the hit was not
as big of a deal as she was making it out to be. Ellie knew it was.
She could tell from the expression on his face. He was not as used
to being hit as she was. The pain was lasting. It went beyond the
physical.

“He said if I was caught hanging out
with a Bumbalow again, he’d kill me,” Thane admitted.

“That sounds like something Neveah
would say,” Ellie said.

“I’m beginning to realize that maybe
our families aren’t that different…” Thane said his face
sad.

Ellie understood his sadness. Their
families were murderers. There was no escaping the truth. They were
not so different in that regard. The truth of that was hard to face
after a lifetime of propaganda.

“This whole thing is sort of messed
up, isn’t it?” Thane asked after a moment.

“What thing?” Ellie asked.

“The feud,” he said as if nothing else
in the world could be messed up enough to comment on.

Ellie tucked her knees to her chest
and set her chin on them thoughtfully. She considered his words for
a moment. Her adventure had made her realize for the first time how
strange the feud really was – how it affected so many people in
such a negative way – but she did not see what good that knowledge
did them. Knowing the feud was messed up did not change the
situation. The feud was unstoppable. She finally
shrugged.

“Yeah, it is. But it’s the way things
are,” she said.

Thane was not content with her answer.
It just made him more determined to get his point across. “We
managed to spend three days together and we didn’t kill each other.
Why can’t that be the same for the others? Why do we have to fight
at all?”

“I was wondering the same thing
earlier,” Ellie said. “But I reckon if it made sense, we wouldn’t
be doing it.”

“That doesn’t make sense, either,”
Thane said. “We have craft…we have the ability to make it stop. We
could make it stop.”

Ellie laughed skeptically. The idea
that she and he could stop anything was ridiculous. Their families
were dedicated to feuding. They were involved in the feud for so
long that they did not know how to stop.

“What are you thinking? You and I
should stop the feud singlehandedly?” Ellie asked. “That’s about as
easily done as making sense of the reasons for the feuding to begin
with.”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Thane
admitted. “Maybe I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah, I reckon you’ll feel better
about us killing each other in the morning,” Ellie teased
lightly.

Thane tilted his head at her, looking
like Caw when he was trying to understand something. Ellie smiled
at the expression on his face. She hid the smile, thinking he would
be offended by the comparison.

“Can I come visit you sometimes?”
Thane asked.

Ellie’s smile disappeared. She did not
understand the question. Was he teasing her somehow? She did not
like that form of teasing. She would like to have a real friend, a
friend that could talk back. His teasing just hurt. It did not
occur to her that he genuinely wanted to see her again.

“That’s not funny,” Ellie
said.

“What isn’t?” Thane asked.

“You shouldn’t tease like that,” Ellie
said.

“How am I teasing you?” Thane
asked.

“You know…” Ellie said. She gestured
at him, meaning the request he had made.

“I’m not teasing you. I just want to
visit you,” Thane said. “Is that possible?”

“
For real?” Ellie
asked.

“You can wrap your mind around the
concept, can’t you?” Thane asked.

“Don’t be nasty,” Ellie
said.

“Well, can I?” he demanded.

Thane fidgeted impatiently as he
waited for her answer. His eyes were a curious mixture of hope and
expectation. He hoped she would say yes, he expected she would say
no. He seemed prepared for both answers, for different reasons.
From the look in his eyes, Ellie decided he was serious. There was
no sour expression of mocking on his face just sincerity. He really
did want to visit with her despite their backgrounds and the risk
involved.

“I reckon, but only if you keep the
insults to yourself,” Ellie said.