The Thread That Binds the Bones (28 page)

Carroll tapped her lips twice with her index finger. “Yes.”

“Things won’t be what you want all the time.”

Carroll glanced up at Tom. “I’m learning that. I don’t like it, but I think I can learn it.”

“Bert, what do you think?” Trixie asked.

“I think you’re crazy. What do you think’s gonna happen when she gifts? Think she’ll stay this way? She’ll go back to being her old self. You don’t keep a cougar as a pet just because it was a cute kitten.”

Light flared in Carroll’s eyes. She stared at Bert, her lips thinning. He met her gaze unsmiling. At last she looked away. She picked up the fork and felt the tines of it, then looked at Trixie, tearblind.

“Maggie?” Trixie said.

Carroll turned to look at Maggie.

Staring at her, Maggie said, “Last night?”

Carroll waited.

“You were right, and I hate that. I hate what you taught me. I’m going to get rid of it, not live that way.”

“Yes,” said Carroll.

“
Klanishti koosh.
If I can, you can. Bert’s wrong.”

Carroll tapped the palm of her left hand with the business end of the fork. She began jabbing herself. “I don’t know,” she said to Maggie. “I don’t know what’s wrong or right. I don’t know what I can let go of.”

Maggie jumped up and grabbed her hand. “Stop that!” She jerked the fork out of Carroll’s hand and slammed it onto the table top. “Nobody gets to hurt you but me. Look what you did.”

Carroll looked at her left palm and saw it was beaded with blood.

“Laura, will you please fix this?” Maggie said.

“If you let me do your eye.”

Maggie stared at Laura; her breathing deepened. Then she turned to Carroll. Each of her breaths held the tag end of a sob. “Oh, I hate you,” she said. “I hate you and I love you.” She closed her eyes and hugged Carroll ... and felt small arms return her embrace. For the first time she felt warmth from Carroll. Then gradually something changed—the embrace still felt warm, but different, familiar. She squinched her eyes tight shut, hugging as hard as she could, trying to resist unwanted knowledge.

“
Sirella
,”
she heard Michael whisper, and she opened her eyes. The face closest to her was male, and he had his eyes tight shut too. Carroll, restored, knelt with his arms around her.

“Let go,” she whispered. “Please let go.”

His eyes opened. He released her and stared, appalled, down at himself. “No,” he said, “No, not now. Not now!” He turned to Tom. “Not now.”

“I didn’t.”

“You must have. Please. Change me back, please. Maggie—”

She backed away from him.

Carroll, still on his knees, looked at everyone: Laura, who looked sad; Bert, remote; Alyssa, frightened yet intrigued; Michael, appalled; Maggie, waiting; Tom, puzzled; lastly, he looked at Trixie.

“I slept with you last night,” she said, and laughed uproariously,

“That was the nicest thing that ever happened to me,” he said, resting his hands on his thighs. “Will you do it again?”

“Hell, I was ready to adopt you.”

“Please,” he said. Then to Tom, “Change me back? I know I can’t do it right myself. I want these rules and these manners and—” He glanced at Trixie. “I don’t want to lose everything important.” He frowned and looked at Maggie.

“You can do it for yourself,” Tom said. “You’ve been inside of it. You know it from skin to bones.”

“If I try and screw it up, will you help me?”

“All right.”

“Can we go in the other room?”

“Okay.”

Carroll rose to his feet. He pinched the material of his jeans and shirt; they had grown with him, which made him wonder if Tom were lying when he disclaimed responsibility. It took a neat thinker to adjust clothes as well as body. And how else could this have happened?

“Wait a minute,” said Maggie

He looked down at her. It felt strange to see her from above again.

She took two steps forward, then a third. “I’m not scared of you anymore,” she said.

He smiled.

“Want to try an experiment.” She took his left hand and looked at it. It bpre fresh scabs from his recent attack with the fork. “Now you can heal it yourself, can’t you?”

“Not one of my strong suits.”

“You can so heal. I know from experience. Do it.”

Eyebrows up, he sent energy into his hand and healed it.

“Okay, good,” Maggie said. “Remember what I told you, about getting rid of stuff.”

“I remember everything I’ve heard you say.”

She tugged on his shirt. “Come back down here a second.”

He went down on his knees in front of her and waited.

She hugged him. He closed his eyes and breathed carefully, afraid anything he did would upset her, not wanting to upset her during the first touching she had ever initiated with him in his own form, but he could feel his body responding to her; without his intending it, his arms went around her. It was not like hugging Trixie; the energy was different, not a vast outflowing of uncomplicated love and acceptance from her to him, but the touch of two bodies who had known each other in many ways, seeking to learn a new way to relate. He felt uncomfortable but excited, uncertain, afraid. She moved one of her arms and he froze, wondering what would happen next. She slid her hand up between them and gripped his chin, then tipped her head and kissed him, surprising him completely. He felt heat flash through him in a way he had never experienced before, but his body’s physical response was familiar. He gripped Maggie’s shoulders and gently pushed her away. “I don’t know how this works for you,” he said, and stopped, thinking about that. He had never focused on how his partners felt, beyond a rudimentary concern for their comfort and readiness, “—but I can’t take any more.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wouldn’t stop if we went any further. I don’t want to do that to you again. But I do want to—” He touched her black eye, channeled healing at it, stopped when the discoloration and puffiness had vanished. Then he let go of her and put his hands on his thighs again.

“Don’t change, Carroll,” she said.

“How can I learn when there are no restraints?” Already he could feel the wanting rising in himself. All these people watching them. Simplicity to turn them into stones so he could be alone with Maggie, explore what they might do next. Or he could take Trixie into another room, weave the slenderest of compulsions and lay it tenderly on her, setting in her mind that he was a cherished son who could do no wrong. It wouldn’t hurt her, and how wonderful it would be to know that he could always come into town and be welcome into the warmth of this house.

“Put them on yourself. You can.”

He thought about that. If he cast a tangle just right, he could give himself a mental straightjacket, reduce his abilities to near nothing, with a secret word to unlock it in case of emergencies. Or he could try to operate from one moment to the next, block all the impulses he had grown accustomed to satisfying. Hard work. He could work hard, and did, in service to the Family. But so much easier to have the restraints be external. He looked at Maggie. “I don’t know. And there’s two parts to this, anyway. The other part is fertility.”

She opened her mouth, closed it. “You were planning to have a baby?” she said.

“Is your head screwed on tight, boy?” Bert asked, apparently against his own will,

Carroll turned terrible smoky green eyes on Bert, who leaned away from him.

“Stop it,” said Maggie, snapping her fingers in Carroll’s face. He shook his head and smiled at her.

“What do you want with a baby, Uncle Carroll?” Laura asked, laughter in her voice.

“A baby is imperative,” he said. “Is that another thing you don’t know?”

“Manners,” said Trixie.

“Sorry.” He shook his head again, focused on Trixie. She returned his look. Their gazes locked; she saw the little girl, remembered sitting her down in the master bathroom early that morning, putting a towel about her shoulders, snipping off her curls—a child who sat pretematurally still, smiling a small smile; who afterward held one of her own curls and marveled at it, so that Trixie knelt and let the child touch her hennaed hair, to feel the difference between coarse and fine. She remembered the sweetness of awakening to someone live curled up against her.

She saw the man, and remembered him stalking around the pharmacy, saying things in that foreign tongue. Tyke made it a policy that both of them retired to the back room when Carroll came in: less seen, less noticed, less acted upon. Trixie remembered going to fetch a light bulb for a customer after a visit from Carroll and finding nothing but naked filaments in sockets and glass dust. She remembered watching him from the pharmacy window one evening as he dropped from the sky in front of Polly Martin, who was fifteen and should have known better than to be out walking after dark. Polly had not even screamed. She had stared at Carroll, leaned closer, until his arms went around her and he lifted her into the sky and she disappeared forever. Trixie had watched. Everything in her had screamed to stop it, but she knew there was nothing she could do but call Polly’s mother and tell her to grieve.

“Will you come home with me?” Carroll asked Trixie.

“Is that an order?” said Bert.

Carroll glared at him, then shook his head, put his hand over his eyes. “No,” he said,

“No, it’s not an order?”

“No, I’m not going to turn you into a cat again. Restraints. You’re her friend.”

“And no, Carroll,” said Trixie. “I won’t go home with you, but thanks for asking.”

“Will you—” He frowned and stood up. “This is hard,” he said to Maggie.

“Yeah,” she said, grinning.

“Will
you
come home with me?” he asked her.

“No.”

He opened and closed his hands. “I’m going to lose it,” he said. “If I go home alone. They all know who they expect me to be, and it will be hard to be someone new without help.”

“Don’t go home,” said Trixie. “Stay here.”

“Your room?”

“The couch in the front parlor,” she said.

“Okay. Thanks. I’m going to get some food for you now.”

“What?”

“I want to help. You need food. I’ll be back soon.”

“Do you have any money?” Trixie asked.

“No.”

“Money’s part of manners, Carroll. Only—” She went to the counter, to her purse, and pulled out her wallet. After looking in the currency compartment, she frowned. “Damn!”

“They wouldn’t understand at the market anyway, Aunt. I never use money.”

“You better start. I know. I’ll write a check. Let me make a shopping list.” She took a pad of paper and a pen out of one of the drawers and began checking through her cupboards.

“Uncle Carroll?” Michael said.

“What?”

“Have you gone crazy?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. Nor do I care.” Trixie brought him her list and a check filled out for everything but amount. He accepted the pieces of paper and touched her hair, his movement slow, as if he expected to be challenged.

“You upset?” she said.

He nodded. She saw the hand that held the papers shake.

“I’ll let you out the front door.” She headed for the hall, and he followed her.

“Carroll,” said Bert.

He paused at the threshold and looked back.

“The wedding’s in a couple hours. You want to come, I’ll give you a ride.”

“Thanks,” said Carroll. Closing the door behind him, he followed Trixie down the hall and into the front parlor.

“Talk to me,” she said when they arrived.

“You’re afraid of me,” he said.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Maggie says she’s not, but I could change that with a word. I don’t want to. But it feels like—it’s so much easier to make mistakes now. I have the power to make big mistakes, and you can’t stop me when I’m in this form. I have habits. I don’t know if I can catch them in time to stop them. I—don’t know if I’ll want to enough, if there’s no more ...”

“No more what?”

He stared at the floor. “No more electric blanket,” he said, and she saw the muscles in his arms tense and release.

“If I sleep with you, you won’t hurt anyone?” Trixie felt pain in her gut. She remembered Polly Martin, and what little she knew from Maggie. “All right,” she said.

“No! Not like that,” he said. “Not because you’re scared or because you want to save somebody else. Not because I force you. I’ve already done that. I try and try. I know there’s something I need. I could never find it—until I was little and weak. Then you cared about me. If that’s what I have to do, I’ll do it again. But first, I’ll get groceries. I won’t be able to do that later. They won’t know me to be scared of me.”

“Do it different. Look, this is a check,” she said, showing him what he held. “You take the groceries through the checkout line, and when Veraa totals them up, you write the amount in here. Okay?”

“This is money?” He studied it.

She grinned. “Yeah.”

“This is your money.”

“Yes, Carroll.”

“But if I use this, Aunt—it won’t be a present.”

“Yes, it will. Manners. Every time you use manners I consider it a gift. All right?”

“All right,” he said.

She frowned. Then she hugged him, finding it easier than she had thought it might be. He was shaped the same as her boy Ray, tall and thin but wiry, and with her eyes closed she could almost forget she had her arms around the most dangerous person in the county, and was about to send him off to terrorize other people.

“Thanks,” he said. He touched her face and left.

“When did he get here? What did you
do
to him?” Michael asked in a whisper as the door closed behind Trixie and Carroll.

“Michael,” Laura whispered. He leaned forward. “That’s none of your business.”

He lifted a hand toward her. Alyssa slapped it down. They looked at each other a long moment; then Michael smiled. “Yeah,” he said. He sighed. “Yeah. We really came to see how you were doing,” he told Tom. “There were a lot of parties and meet-the-in-laws and spellcasting for fertility and all that
skoonaclah
,
and our wedding night—” He glanced at Alyssa, who grinned. “But I’ve been wondering about you ever since you came. And Laura. I always knew where you were, but I didn’t really know—who you were, maybe?”