The Thread That Binds the Bones (20 page)

“Presences matched us,” Laura said.

Jaimie grinned. “So you finally did something by the rules, cuz?” She turned to Tom. “Which branch of Family are you from? Got any good-looking brothers? How come I’ve never met you before?”

“Nobody’s ever met me until now.” Then he grinned, thinking that was ridiculous. He’d met more than his share of people in the world, but it had taken him thirty years to find these strangely kindred spirits.

“Coffee, Miss Jaimie?” said Trixie, finally emerging from sleep. “Would you like to have a seat?”

“Thanks, Mrs. Delarae. That’d be great.”

“You can call me Trixie if you like.”

Jaimie sat down and looked lip. “Thank you,” she said again, her eyes wide.

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“We had granola and milk.”

“Well, if you’re still hungry, help yourself to whatever you see.” Trixie brought her own mug of coffee and one for Jaimie to the table and sat down.

Tom carried the plate of toast to the table. It was still warm, steaming with that special smell of browned and buttered wheat. He wondered about that. He had finished buttering it at least fifteen minutes earlier; it should have congealed into an unappetizing mess by now.—Peregrine?

—Heat is a fine friend.

—Yes, but ...

—What?

—You did it. I didn’t.

—Not true. One of your underground systems accomplished this.

—?

—The eyes that watch everything, even when you do not know they are open. You have a webwork of such systems beyond any other I have seen.

Tom’s hand shook a little as he set the plate on the table.

Maggie walked over and sat at her place at the table. The milk in her cereal bowl was pink.

Jaimie smiled at Tom and took a slice of toast, then frowned at Maggie. “You look familiar,” she said. She cocked her head. “You’re from the Hollow too. The voiceless one. Carroll’s favorite—” Her eyes widened. “How on earth did you get away?”

“I took her,” said Tom.

Jaimie sat back. “Did you cover your tracks? Carroll will fight! Oh, Lord, he could be here any minute. He might find me! I thought it would be safe—” Her face, which had warmed with the kitchen’s heat, went pale again, and she set her toast down and twisted the hem of her sweatshirt.

Laura turned to her and gripped her wrists. “Calm down, Jaimie. Tom bested Carroll once already. We’re not afraid.”

“But if he should find Annis—imagine what he’d do if he thought we had a
tanganar
baby! He’d purge—we dread the thought—Annis hasn’t been well enough for us to run any farther, otherwise we’d be far away by now.”

“Annis is sick? Can we bring Doc Hardesty out?” Laura asked.

“Not that kind of sick.” Jaimie slipped from Laura’s grip, stood and paced. “It’s something about souls—I don’t remember all the birth lore we had, but there’s twined souls, remember? Something about that in the lessons, but Annis and I can’t remember it.”

“Twined souls?” asked Tom. Peregrine unfurled tendrils all through him.

—Wait! Tom said.

—This is important, Tom. The child must be tested and classified—sealed, if possible. Twined souls is a common malady any competent midwife could cure.

—Are you a midwife?

—No! Women’s work, women’s mysteries.

—I don’t care about testing or classifying the child, Tom thought,—but if the woman is sick—where can we get a midwife for her?

—The Hollow. Now let me take over; I must see this child.

—No. Don’t scare Jaimie.

—Honored! Peregrine’s cry was full of anguish.

“Tom?” Laura touched his hand.

“Are you a midwife?” Tom asked, his voice fluctuating between his own pitch and Peregrine’s deeper one.

“No,” Laura said. “What’s going on?”

“He wants to see the child,” Tom said.

“Who?” asked Jaimie.

“Tom’s got a Presence inside him.”

“What? Whose? I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Mom and Dad say there’s precedent. What does Peregrine want with the baby, Tom?”

“Test, classify, seal. I don’t know what any of that means. He said any midwife can cure twined souls, but you’d have to go back to the Hollow for a midwife.”

Jaimie stopped pacing. “Come,” she said. “Come home with me. Annis has been so worried about little Rupert. She doesn’t feel right without the proper rituals. You can give us those, can’t you?”

“Yes,” said an unknown part of Tom. He shook his head, frowning. “Yes,” said Peregrine.

Tom glanced at Maggie, She looked frightened. He held out his hand to her, and she took it, moving closer to him.

“You want to bring her? Oh, I suppose we can use help,” said Jaimie. “Please come now, before Carroll—”

Laura looked at Trixie. “Yes, what if he
does
come? Maybe you should come with us.”

Trixie groaned. She got a huge brown mug shaped like a barrel and filled it with fresh coffee. “All right. Hollow business! Oh, dear. Hope Bert doesn’t need me.”

“How do we get there?” Tom asked.

“How many of you fly?” asked Jaimie.

Chapter 15

Tom, Maggie, Laura, and Trixie looked at each other, then back at Jaimie.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I can manage myself, and one other person, but that’s—and we have to be sure not to leave any tracks.”

“How about we drive as far as we can, and worry about flying from there?” Tom asked.

Jaimie looked dubious, but at last she nodded. They all piled into Old Number Two, and Tom followed Jaimie’s tentative directions: east on the interstate along the gorge for a while; Old Number Two could make fifty-five miles an hour, with a great deal of ratcheting, but cruised more comfortably at fifty. They turned off at a rest stop ten miles east of Arcadia. Jaimie eyed the full daylight around them and sighed.

“I can do invisible, too, but I’m not sure I can do it enough to cover this whole group. What are we going to do?” she asked.

—Peregrine?

—If you give me leave, I can accomplish everything. You have much power in reserve. I hope you’ll let me do what’s necessary for the infant when we arrive.

—What did she mean, purging the
tanganar
?

—When a child is flawed ...

—What do you consider a flaw? No way I’m going to let you kill a baby.

—Agreed. If the child is
tanganar
,
I
will leave it alone. If the child is of our blood, will you let me treat it as we treat our own?

—Does it harm the baby?

—No.

—All right.

Peregrine spread through him even more completely than before. Tom concentrated, relinquishing control of arms, legs, fingers, toes, torso, neck; difficult and strange to do, after building the strength to hang onto control all these years, to contain the fear and anger without outward sign of its existence, to drive the sight away, to stifle the words that might get him in trouble. At each surrender, Peregrine whispered,—Is all well? Are you prepared for this? Remember that I will listen to your wishes and cede it all back to you in an instant. Is all well?

Conscious of Peregrine’s regard, the warmth the ghost felt for him, Tom let go, and found himself at last inside his head, looking through his eyes, aware that his body acted without his being in charge of it or even being able to anticipate its next move. Peregrine flexed his hands, staring down at the fingers.

“Tom?” Laura asked.

He gave her a distant smile. “No.”

“Peregrine,” she said.

“By your leave.”

“The Presence?” asked Jaimie, her tone uneasy,

“Yes, descendant. You lead. I’ll bring these others.” He held out his hands. Laura took one, Trixie the other.

Maggie, forlorn, stood small before him, glancing up with wide eyes, then away. Peregrine, who considered her a young and probably untrained fetch, frowned a moment, wishing Tom had not cluttered them up with these non-essential people. Then he relented. “Climb on my back, daughter,” he said, stooping. She ducked around Laura and got on his back, winding her legs around his waist and gripping his shoulders with her hands. By far the best solution, he decided; an almost even distribution of weight. He struggled to rise. The women helped him.

Jaimie glanced around the rest stop, made sure no one else was there to see them, shielded from the road as they were by the rest rooms, and then she rose in the air. Peregrine cast veils of no-see over himself and his passengers. Gripping Trixie’s and Laura’s hands firmly, he thought himself onto a lifter and tugged the women aloft, following Jaimie’s traces up into the sky. Maggie gasped as they rose. She leaned against his back, putting her arms around his neck, and looked over his shoulder. “Oh, yes,” she murmured in his right ear, her tone composed of pure joy.

Jaimie waited, almost invisible, above them, leaving only the faintest thread of glisten for him to follow. When he reached her height, she shot across the river.

“Oh, no; oh, no; oh, no,” Trixie said as he copied Jaimie’s speed. “Tom, I’m going to be sick. This isn’t one little bit like
Superman.
”

“Close your eyes,” he said, strengthening the spell around her so the wind of their passage didn’t touch her.

“No, no. Put me down this minute! I don’t care about Carroll, I don’t care about getting wet, just don’t—”

“Go to sleep,” he said, and her frightened voice cut off; she hung from his hand, limp weight. He strengthened the protection spell again to help support her. Maggie’s hands fisted on his chest; he felt her arms tighten, and her legs. He glanced sideways at her face, and recognized the I-am-not-present look she wore, a common fetch expression down through the ages. He felt a pang. This was Tom’s adopted daughter, however worthless she might appear, and it behooved him to take care of her. “She’ll be fine,” he said.

Her eyes darted to look at him and then away.

“You didn’t ask Trixie,” Laura said. “You told her.”

He heard the accusation in her voice, but he did not respond immediately. He was doing a job in the most expedient way possible—a job she could have helped with, if only she would master her own power. But she cast it away. His comfort lay in knowing he would help care for her child, surely the most interesting child born to the family in a great while. He glanced at Laura. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Jaimie slanted down out of the sky, heading for a clump of evergreen and maple trees in a small valley. No recent roads led over the surrounding grass-furred hills; a small creek descended the north slope and disappeared among the trees. As Peregrine followed Jaimie down, a dilapidated, weather-silvered house showed between the trees. A few narrow trails flattened the grass near the house.

They touched ground on beaten earth facing the front porch. Peregrine let go of Laura and turned to catch Trixie as the spell gently released her. Maggie loosened her grip on him and dropped to the ground, then took several steps away. He understood her putting space between them. To his surprise, he felt a small shock of sorrow.

“Trixie? You may wake now,” he said, supporting her by gripping her shoulders.

She blinked and woke. “Oh? We’re there?” She looked around, shook herself back into her muscles and bones. “Better. Much better. What happened?”

“I slept you.”

She glared at him. ““That’s very Bolte.”

“Yes. I am not Tom. I am the ancestor.”

“Oh, that’s right. All right.”

He let go of her.

“You’re not staying, are you?” she said.

He felt the heat flash in his head, and knew that his eyes were once again his weapons. She took two steps back, putting her hands up to guard her face. He straightened, shook his head, drew a breath. “No. You are right. I have had my life in the flesh. But I must see this child. Family business. It is an imperative.”

“I understand,” she whispered, lowering her hands.

He held her gaze a moment, smiled a very little, and took a step toward Jaimie, who looked frightened of him. But she nodded and led the way across the porch.

“Laura,” said a voice as Jaimie opened the door. “Maggie! Trix? And who are you?”

“Barney,” Laura said, hugging a slight, spectacled man in baggy rust-brown slacks and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. After a moment’s hesitation, he returned her hug.

“But what are all you people doing here?” he asked when they released each other. “Maggie? Is this an invasion?”

“This is Laura’s husband, Barn,” Jaimie said, waving toward Tom, “but he’s not, really—he’s got a Presence inside him, and it’ll do right for Rupert, it says.”

“What?” Barney frowned. “Can you cure Annis? Come upstairs.”

Inside, the house was clean but sparsely furnished. The stairs were polished wood, bare of carpet. As they clattered up, a baby’s awakening wail sounded, then melted into a healthy, angry cry. Barney gathered speed and darted unto a small room on the right. He returned with a tiny baby. “Wet,” said Barney.

Peregrine reached out, but Barney shook his head. “Wait’ll I change him. Annis is in there.” He pointed toward an open door across the landing from the baby’s room, and they crossed the threshold into the master bedroom.

Annis was a slender mound under a sheet, her silk blonde hair spread out around her head on the pillow, her closed eyes smudged with purple, her cheeks sunken. She had the strong bones of the stockier side of the family, but looked far too gaunt for her size. She opened her eyes.

“Annis!” Laura murmured.

Peregrine strode forward and sketched air signs above Annis with his thumb, watching as they flared red-orange. He looked toward the hall, licked his upper lip, snapped his hand open and shut above Annis as though sprinkling earth or seeds. A cloud of cobwebby threads appeared like the gray wrappings of a caught fly, trapping Annis and twisting into a single fiber that led out the door.

“Oh dear,” said Laura.

“Yuck!” said Jaimie. The webs faded from sight.

“Twined souls, yes,” Peregrine said.

“And you can’t fix that?” Jaimie asked.

“I am not a midwife.”

“She needs help!”

“Yes. I can summon help, if one of you will agree to host a Presence—”