Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (5 page)

Feeling a mixture of irritation that no one had done his chores while he was at drill
, and guilt that he’d dawdled some on the way home, Tarc hustled into the kitchen. Not only was his mother coming in with two buckets of water she could ill afford the time to get, but Tarc saw the woodpile was low as well. He took the buckets from Eva and climbed the step to pour them into the kitchen’s big barrel. Assessing the water need as more critical than the wood, he headed back out with the buckets.

As he was pouring
the next two buckets into the barrel, Daussie came in and told him that Daum needed more water out at the bar as well. Working steadily, Tarc gradually caught up with their needs for water and firewood. He’d hoped he’d get to eat then, but Eva sent him to Stevenson’s butcher for a side of bacon and some chickens.

When he got back,
Eva gave him a roast pork sandwich and sent him to Benson’s for potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and salt.

Tarc sat on the back of the wagon behind Benson’s waiting for the potatoes, irritated because his mother hadn’t been organized enough to send him on both errands at once. He had a handful of pebbles he’d been tossing at a knothole on the hitching post.
How much longer is it going to take them to bring me a lousy sack of potatoes?!
he wondered as he threw the last small stone. About to climb down and get another handful of gravel, he suddenly remembered that he could float them up to himself with his talent. He glanced around to make sure that no one was watching, then reached out with his ghost and lifted a pebble which floated gracefully up to his hand.

He had pulled the hand back to throw the pebble when a sudden clammy sensation came over him. He paused motionless, hand cocked back
; envisioning the use of his talent to
guide
the pebble after it had been thrown!

However, b
efore he could cast it, he heard Benson’s stock boy say, “What are you doing?”

Suddenly
Tarc saw the stock boy standing there beside him, a big bag of potatoes in his arms. He realized that he must look pretty odd sitting there motionless, arm cocked back to throw the pebble. “Uh, nothing.” He dropped the pebble and reached out for the bag of potatoes, helping guide it into the back of the wagon. “Thanks.”

Before he got back on the seat of the wagon,
Tarc bent and picked up one more pebble. He clucked Shogun up and started back to the tavern, waiting until he thought no one was looking. Then, as he passed the baker’s place, he focused on their hitching post and threw the small stone. Tarc had never been terribly accurate with his throws in the past. In fact, most of the pebbles he had just been tossing at the knothole at Benson’s had missed the entire post. Embarrassingly, they’d missed the post even though he was only about 10 feet away. This time Tarc was about 30 feet from the post and sitting on a moving wagon. When he threw, he knew he had missed his mark.

But, as he had intended, he focused
his ghost on the stone as it flew, trying to guide it to the post with his mysterious talent. It seemed almost as if his eye followed directly behind the stone, letting him see exactly where it was going! As he had noticed when he’d first started trying to lift pebbles, the farther the stone flew the less influence he seemed to have over it. Nonetheless, during the first 5 feet the stone traveled, he had already set its course. As it got farther from him, he was less and less able to change its direction, but its path had
already
been shaped to near perfection.

The rock hit the post with a solid “thock.”

Tarc felt goosebumps form on his skin as he thought;
Could I do that with an arrow?

Back at the tavern, Tarc unloaded the wagon then took Shogun and the wagon back to the stable. When he returned to the kitchen his mother gave him an apple turnover, crisp from the oven. “Thanks Tarc. But, no rest for the wicked,” she said, one of her favorite sayings. “Denny Smith is out at the table with something wrong. She didn’t say what it was. I told her that I couldn’t help her until we’d finished the dinner rush, so she’s waiting. But why don’t you go out and see if you can figure out what her problem is? It’ll be good practice for you.”

“What if it’s a
female
problem?!” Tarc knew that Denny was newly married. He didn’t really understand all that entailed, but was sure Denny wouldn’t want to talk to
him
about it. He was a boy; three or four years younger than she was. Just the fact that Denny was pretty intimidated him.

“Well, we won’t
know until you ask her, will we? Besides, if you’re going to be a healer you’ll have to take care of women’s problems too, you know?”

Tarc
knew that look in his mother’s eyes. He let his shoulders sag and turned to go out to the big room.

His mother called after him, “Don’t go out there looking like
that
. Part of caring for people is looking like you
want
to help and are confident you can. If you go out there looking like the only reason you’re there is because I sent you, she won’t have any faith in your treatment.”

As if there were any chance she’d trust my treatment without thinking it came directly from you!
Tarc thought to himself. Nonetheless, he straightened his shoulders, pasted a smile on his face and went out to see their patient. “Hello Ms. Smith,” he said sitting down across from Denny at the little corner table where his mother usually saw patients.

Looking a little wan, the young woman looked up at him with a strained smile. “
Tarc Hyllis, just because I got married doesn’t mean you need to start calling me ‘Mizz!’

“Sorry Denny, Eva insists that we be
very polite to our patients. She says that when you’re sick you have enough problems without our being disrespectful.”

Denny glanced around the big room, sizing up the crowd. She turned back to
Tarc, “Do you think it will be a lot longer before she has enough time for me? You know the business here a lot better than I do.”

Tarc
looked the room over as well. Daussie was coming their way and he looked up at her, “Daussie, are there still a lot of people waiting for orders?”

Daussie shook her head,
looking irritated. However, just then the tavern door opened and six more men came in. Tarc turned back to Denny and shrugged helplessly, “Those six will hold things up quite a bit.”

Denny sighed, “I’ll wait. Everybody says y
our mom’s the best. But I’d better run back out to the outhouse.” She started to get up.

Tarc
tensed, but he knew what his mother would want him to do. “Well, that’s the thing. Mom’s training me to be a healer too. While you’re waiting she sent me out to talk to you and see if I could start figuring out what’s wrong.”

Denny’s eyes flashed wide and she blushed. Quietly she said, “I don’t know if I could talk to you about
this
!”

Tarc
shrugged, feeling relieved. “That’s okay. Most things can wait a little bit.”

Denny buried her face in her hands a moment
; then spread her fingers to peer out between them at Tarc. Somehow looking both mortified and determined, she said, “Sorry, I suppose you can’t possibly learn if nobody will talk to you about their illnesses…” She took a deep breath, “When I pee, it feels like I’m on fire… down there.” She glanced downwards but didn’t point, “Even worse, I have to pee
all
the time. Then when I
do
pee, hardly anything comes out.”

Horrified,
Tarc realized that it sounded like it might
be
a ‘female problem’ of some kind. Hoping his dismay didn’t show on his face, Tarc did his best to speak calmly like his mother had taught. “Do you think you have a fever?” he asked reaching out to touch her forehead with the back of his hand. He noted with some relief that she didn’t feel very hot.

Denny said, “I’m not sure, sometimes I feel kind of warm, but Joe says he doesn’t think I’ve got a fever.”

“Is your appetite okay?”

“Appetite?”

“Do you get hungry?”

“Oh, yeah. But maybe not as hungry as I usually am. It’s the burning that’s really driving me crazy though. That, and the fact that I have to
pee all the time!”

Tarc
resisted the impulse to frown and tell her that she’d already told him that. Eva often said that sometimes the only thing they could do was to listen compassionately while their patients complained. When Denny launched into a further description of just how bad she’d been feeling; Tarc realized he could use that time to send out his ghost senses. As they entered her lower abdomen though, he suddenly realized that he hadn’t studied that part of the anatomy atlas yet. Worse, there
weren’t
going to be left and right versions of things down there
and
, he blinked,
she
was a woman and
he
was a man. He couldn’t make a comparison between her parts down there and his own because there were certainly going to be some male—female differences. In fact, he didn’t know if
anything
was the same between men and women in that region! Then he wondered if he was
allowed
to feel around down there. He felt certain that he wasn’t allowed to touch women down there with his
hands
!

Denny kept talking.
Tarc resisted the impulse to look downwards where his ghost was traveling. He kept his eyes on hers, but realized that he wasn’t really hearing anything she was saying. He hoped it wasn’t important. He quickly explored his own lower abdomen with his ghost senses. With a sense of panic he realized that things were indeed significantly different down inside there when he compared Denny to himself. He recognized his bladder because it was filled with urine. It seemed to him like the bladder must have something to do with her symptoms since she complained so much about peeing. Shifting back to her he realized that she also had a bladder, though hers didn’t have much urine in it as compared to his.
Hmmm, the wall of her bladder seems thicker than mine,
he thought wonderingly, tugging at it with a ghost finger.

“Oh!” Denny squeaked. She stood so quickly the bench fell over behind her and she said, “Oh! I have to go really bad! Sorry! I’ll be back in a minute.” Her hand made an abortive motion towards her crotch as if she wanted to hold herself
. She turned and scurried for the back door that led to the outhouse.

Worried that Denny might recognize that
he’d
done something to her bladder, Tarc stood quickly enough that he nearly tipped over the bench on his side of the table too. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he walked around and set Denny’s bench back upright.

He started back into the kitchen, but
bumped into Daussie at the door. “Hey,” she said angrily, “if you’re done
chit-chatting
with Denny, the rest of us could use some help!”

Tarc
drew a breath for a furious retort, but before he did Eva interrupted. “Daussie, back off. I
told
Tarc to talk to her, she’s a patient.”

“Why’s
Tarc
talking to her?
I
could have talked to her!”

“I’m trying to teach
both
of you how to be healers. Tarc’s at the stage of his training where he needs to see some patients and try to figure out what’s wrong with them.”

Daussie’s eyes flew wide
, her expression stricken. Turning to her mother she said, “Why
Tarc
? Why not
me
? I
want
to be a healer… I don’t think he even cares!”

“Because…” Eva said
slowly, as if she dreaded the words herself, “Tarc can… do some things… that you can’t do. Maybe in a couple years…” she trailed off.

Daussie bang
ed down the plates she’d been holding and, knuckling her eyes, turned and ran out the back door with a moan.

For a moment the
ir mother looked sadly after Daussie. Then she turned to Tarc, “I hope to
God
she gets some talent too. It’ll break her heart if she doesn’t.” Eva’s eyes went to the plates Daussie had put down and she looked back up at Tarc, “Will you take those out? They go to the two strangers by the door.”

Pissed that he had to take up Daussie’s slack,
but not wanting to cause his mother any more grief, Tarc picked up the two plates and headed out into the big room. Denny Smith hadn’t returned, so he didn’t have to say anything to her. He went to the two strangers at the door, sullen and not paying much attention. He set the plates down a little too hard, then looked at the men while waiting for their coppers. With a sense of
déjà vu
he realized they had a very hard look about them. Somehow, they reminded him of the big man who’d had a thing for Daussie the week before.

The men looked up at him and one grunted
in irritation. He made a sucking sound over his teeth and said, “What happened to the pretty blond girl?”