“Oh, baby girl. I love you more than air, but you can’t come along with me. It makes things too complicated. Besides, the road is no place for a girl like you.”
Ellie’s expression fell. She had expected her momma to say something along those lines. Momma never agreed to take Ellie along when she left. She never explained her reasons. She just let the ‘no’ speak for her. Ellie had hoped that her momma would see her as more than a girl who needed to beware a dangerous situation. She had hoped seeing town might prove to her momma that she could take care of herself on the road. Of all people, she had hoped her momma would see the change. The disappointment rocked her to her core.
Ellie was the only one who really understood the changes that had taken place. She would be stuck at the house with those changes eating away at her forever. The idea sent shivers down her spine. She had never felt so trapped.
Momma shook off the darkness of their conversation, unwilling to let her brief stay be tainted by the no. She smiled at Ellie, her face transforming with the smile.
“Let’s go on a walk, baby girl, and you can tell me about your adventures,” Momma said.
“Okay…” Ellie agreed.
Caw hopped onto Ellie’s shoulder, and Ellie and her Momma left the shack together to take their walk. They walked along the road, away from the house and from Neveah, who had gone back to talking with the grandparents.
Ellie told her story, knowing Momma wanted details. She explained about her time in the woods, the men with rifles, and her joy at seeing the ocean for the first time. The only thing she left out was the fact that she had become friendly with a Cooper. If her momma knew about the lie Ellie was keeping – that she had not made the journey alone – she did not mention it. Momma listened in silence, occasionally making comments about the area, asking if Ellie saw certain buildings and landmarks, but otherwise allowing Ellie to share her story.
Ellie found that telling her momma about her adventures made the confliction of good and bad in the world she had discovered feel easier to resolve. The actions were simply part of the adventure, part of the story she had to tell and nothing more. What she had gone through was not so confusing. As she told her story, she realized it was okay to feel the way she did about Thane. Their adventure had linked them in a way she could not change. Thane was different from the rest of the Coopers. It was okay to remember him fondly. His help in her adventure made it okay.
By dusk, it was time for Momma to leave. She did not tell Ellie about her impending absence but Ellie knew the truth. Momma never stayed past dusk. She never stayed longer than a day. Her wandering nature would not allow it.
Ellie had never felt so sorry to see her go. This time it was not simply because there were no chores and no bullying from Neveah when her momma was around. Momma was the only person who understood the adventure Ellie had gone on. Someone in her family had heard her story.
Neveah and Careen watched with Ellie as Momma walked down the road and out of sight. Momma turned to wave once before the road curved out of sight. Careen and Ellie waved back. Neveah maintained her frown. She did not wave; she did not act as if she even saw Momma. Momma smiled, then focused on the road ahead. In the next breath, she was gone. It took all of Ellie’s willpower to not chase after her and beg to go along. Momma’s answer had not changed. Neveah’s expression hardened when Momma was gone. She turned to Ellie.
“You didn’t do your chores,” Neveah said to Ellie. “I think for that, you get to clean out the basement. If it’s not done by morning, I’ll give you the worst beating of your life.”
Ellie turned away from Neveah without answering her threat or acknowledging her angry bitterness. Seeing her momma leave had put Ellie in a bad mood. It always did. Dealing with Neveah was always twice as hard after Momma was gone. Ellie did not want to get in trouble for speaking her mind. It would just cause problems she was not equipped to deal with after the circumstances of the day.
Neveah’s eyes narrowed as Ellie silently turned away. Neveah waved a hand and applied her craft. Ellie stumbled and fell over the invisible rope stretched out before her. She hit the ground hard. Careen laughed once as Ellie pushed off the ground to stand again. The front of Ellie’s dress was ripped at the bottom. Her knees and arms were covered in the gravel of the driveway, and she had skinned her knees and hands during the fall.
Ellie looked at her bloody palms for a brief second then glared up at Neveah. She felt as if she had never hated anyone more, not even a Cooper. Careen stopped laughing at the look, sensing trouble. Neveah had not laughed at Ellie’s fall. She was too eager for Ellie to retaliate in a stupid way. She wanted a real reason to punish Ellie.
“You’re a bully,” Ellie said. “The only time you’re happy is when you’re making others feel as bad as you do.”
Neveah’s face hardened and an angry fire burned in the depth of her eyes. Ellie had never dared speak the truth so pointedly before. Her anger had made her brave. Neveah’s hand lashed out and she slapped Ellie on the face. The hit was hard. Neveah put the whole weight of her arm behind it. Ellie’s eyes filled with tears at the slap. She clutched at her cheek in surprise. The pain was intense. The whole side of her face burned with a tingling fire. She felt blood in her mouth.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” Neveah demanded.
Ellie looked up at Neveah. Her anger boiled over. She wanted to yell back, to give as much as she got. She wanted to hit Neveah or use her craft. She felt her craft move around her body. It whispered of the coming violence. It was the first time Ellie had felt so out of control. Her craft was moving without her command. She would hurt someone. The fear of losing control was the only thing that kept her from forcing powerful craft on her sister’s head. Ellie did not want craft she could not control. Neveah did not know how close Ellie came to attacking her. All she saw was Ellie’s pain.
“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 earli
er,” 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.
Craft Page 14
