The Thread that Binds the Bones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  —I can’t figure out whether that’s the right thing to do. I don’t know if this is helping Maggie or…

  After what seemed like a long time, the fight slowed. Maggie’s rage had spent itself; she stopped pummeling Carroll and drew back, staring at her fists—the skin had split on her knuckles, and her hands were swollen. She had a cut on her cheek and a black eye, and a button had ripped off one of her overall straps.

  Carroll looked like blood-spattered marble painted with patches of dust. Her nose bled, and bruises rose all over her body, as if some dark flying thing inside her translucence smeared wing dust on the inner surface of her skin. She was crying, a high mindless wail.

  Trixie gathered Carroll up into a hug. Exhausted, Carroll laid her head on Trixie’s shoulder, put arms around her, and cried and cried. “There, there,” Trixie murmured. “You were right, sweetheart, I’m sorry I didn’t listen, I’m so sorry—”

  “You put her down,” Maggie said. “Don’t you hug her! Don’t you touch her. Leave her be.”

  “How could you? How could you attack someone small and defenseless?” asked Trixie.

  “I learned it from her!”

  Trixie’s hand stopped stroking Carroll’s back.

  “I learned it from every man I ever met, starting with my dad!” Maggie yelled.

  “So you pass it on?”

  Maggie waved her hands, clenched them into battered fists. “Oh, God!” She turned toward Tom, then faced Trixie again. “No! I’m not passing it on. I’ve giving it back. Put her down. She doesn’t deserve any more comfort than I had three years ago after he…raped me.”

  Carroll’s arms tightened around Trixie’s neck. She buried her face in Trixie’s shoulder, not even coming up for air.

  Maggie cried, “How can you hug him? Heard people talking out at the Hollow, Chester and Barney, about what he was like in town—everybody scared of him—not because he’s some helpless little kid, because he hurt people and broke things—now you’re feeling sorry for him ’cause he looks so little, but it’s just a way for him to trick you—” Maggie’s face was red. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she spoke.

  Trixie blinked. She thought about everything she knew about Carroll Bolte, everything she had heard and seen. She knew almost no good about him (a baby saved from drowning, an ailing cat healed, but he had done those things when he was very young); he was more destructive than any three other Hollow people, and he did things with more malicious ill will. He had been in the same class in school as her older boy Ray, and she remembered the day her younger boy Abel had had to lead Ray home because Carroll had struck Ray with temporary blindness for looking at a teacher they both had a crush on.

  Trixie stooped so that Carroll’s feet touched the ground. She tugged at the girl’s arms. Carroll held her tighter, lifting her face only enough to whisper, “Please.”

  “Come on,” Trixie said, gently loosening Carroll’s arms from around her neck and pushing her to arm’s length, then stooping, hands on thighs, to stare into drowned green eyes, remembering the sharp-cheeked, angle-jawed Carroll of years ago, the slender sneaky kid who loved to walk into her husband Tyke’s pharmacy, open six candy bars, take a bite of each, throw them on the floor, stamp on them, and leave. Most of the people from the Hollow didn’t pay for anything, at least not with money. In her girlhood Trixie had seen other kinds of payments, but lately, not even charms and blessings were offered; Carroll had never paid.

  He had looked nothing like this child with the cut lip, the abrasion on her right cheek, the blood drying on her upper lip—yet the longer Trixie looked, the more she remembered. The eyes were the same, and the line of the jaw. The full lower lip, the cleft in the chin, all details softened by gender.

  Still, Trixie remembered her first thought on seeing Maggie the day before. Good lord, it’s a child! A little hurt child. Didn’t that take precedence over everything else?

  Maybe Maggie was right. Maybe it didn’t. With an effort, Trixie suppressed her comforting instincts, and kept her hands on her thighs.

  Carroll rubbed her eyes, then stared up at Trixie, holding out her hands. “Please,” she said. “You’re so warm and soft and…comfortable.”

  “I’m your electric blanket?” Trixie straightened. Carroll only came up to her elbows.

  “No,” said Carroll. “No. You feel strong like the earth.” She shivered.

  “I don’t understand,” Trixie said. “Does any of this mean anything to you, Mr. Carroll?”

  “What?”

  “What if you were yourself right now, and Tommy wasn’t here? What would you do?”

  Carroll hugged herself and looked at Trixie, then Maggie, then Laura. Her gaze fixed on Trixie again. “I would take you away, and you would love me like you just did. Maybe every day.”

  Trixie felt strangely touched. “What about Maggie and Laura?”

  “I would take Maggie back and teach her new things I haven’t even thought of yet.”

  Maggie went white and took two steps toward Carroll, stopping when Tom laid a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “And Laura should have married Augustus or Forrest or Piron,” Carroll said. “They need breeders.”

  “Marry one of them yourself,” said Laura.

  Carroll jerked as if slapped. She held her hands away from her body and looked down at herself; then she covered her face with her hands. “No,” she whispered. She squinched her eyes shut and touched her genitals. After assuring herself of the changes there, she opened her eyes. She ran to Tom and pulled on his shirt. “Let me out! Let me out of here right now. Please!”

  “Not tonight,” said Tom.

  Carroll looked at Maggie, then at the back door. “When?” she asked in a high voice.

  “Maybe never.”

  “Then—” She ran for the back door again, but Trixie caught her before she opened it. Carroll fought like a fury, biting, kicking, and scratching. “I might as well be dead!” she screamed. Trixie caught her hands, held both small wrists in one hand, and carried her away upstairs.

  Tom touched Maggie’s shoulder. “This is weird. Did that help at all?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Tom. I thought…”

  “Yeah. You can never tell if anybody’s learning anything. We’ll just have to wait, I guess.”

  “What, exactly, did you do to him?” Laura asked. “Everything it looked like?”

  “I think so,” said Tom.

  “You’re scary!”

  “Oh, please not.” The chill returned.

  “Nobody does that one. They do everything else, but they don’t—change the deepest part of a person’s identity.”

  “Is that the deepest part?” Tom asked.

  They stared at each other.

  Maggie went to the sink and turned on warm water, then thrust her bruised hands into the stream.

  “Maggie, let me help,” said Laura, breaking out of her and Tom’s trance.

  “That wouldn’t be fair, unless you helped Carroll too, and I don’t want you to. Want her to feel it all, so I guess I get to, too.” She dipped some of the warm water up in cupped hands and splashed it on her face. “Ow. Ouch. Guess she got me there. Didn’t realize.”

  Laura went to her and touched the cut on her cheek. “No. You don’t need to suffer.”

  “Stop it!” Maggie pushed her hand away. “Don’t want to hurt anybody and not feel it myself. That’s how he went on and on for years.”

  “All right,” Laura said. She gave a small trembly smile. “Can I hug you?”

  Maggie frowned. She turned off the water. She stepped closer to Laura, keeping her hands at her sides. Laura embraced her, and after a long moment she relaxed enough to lay her head on Laura’s shoulder.

  Presently Trixie returned, having changed her bloodstained black T-shirt for a blouse. She led a scrubbed and subdued Carroll with her; Carroll wore a faded pair of boy’s pajamas, the stretchy polyester type, patterned after Spiderman’s blue and red long Johns. “Are
you hungry?” Trixie asked her.

  “Yes,” said Carroll. She sighed. “I hurt all over. I hate this hair. Can you cut it off?”

  “Later. What do you want to eat?”

  She glanced down at her stomach, looking puzzled, then up at Trixie, her eyebrows raised. “Sangany,” she said.

  “What?” asked Trixie.

  “It’s sort of like oatmeal,” Laura said. “She can have those Trix things I had this morning.”

  “You have food named after you?” Carroll asked Trixie.

  “No,” said Trixie, laughing.

  Maggie stirred, and Laura released her.

  “I got your eye,” Carroll said, cheering up. “How come she didn’t heal you yet? Is that another discipline you failed at, Laura?”

  “I’d like you to remember your size and your power, Carroll,” said Laura. “You keep baiting me and I may take a swing at you myself.”

  “What? You, Saint Laura, the perfect imitation tanganar? Strike a helpless infant? Don’t make me laugh.”

  Trixie picked Carroll up, turned her over her knee, and swatted her rear end. “Stop teasing people or I’ll send you to your room.” she said.

  “But—”

  “No buts.” Trixie stood her up again.

  “Is this new life all torture and hitting people? I can’t stand it. I’ll walk off a roof,” Carroll said.

  “Behave yourself and things will get better,” said Trixie.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “Think before you talk. Everybody here is bigger than you now, and some of us are gifted.”

  “I want to go home,” Carroll said.

  “I wonder what Arthur and Alex and Gwen and Sarah would do to you,” Laura said. “Last I heard, Gwen didn’t enjoy spending that week as a hunting dog. The twins weren’t happy as bookends. Michael didn’t enjoy being a rag. And all those offenses are six years old. I wonder what you’ve been doing lately?”

  Carroll picked at a loose strand of elastic on her sleeve. She bit her lip and looked at Trixie.

  Trixie stroked her head. “I’m not asking much, sweetie. Just be civil.”

  “I’ll try,” she whispered.

  “Good.” Trixie got up and fetched cereal and a bowl from the cupboard. “What bothers me most is Bert. He would have tried to get in touch. We’ve seen each other every day for the last five years. I can’t imagine why he isn’t here or hasn’t at least left a note.”

  “Is Bert an old, tall man?” Carroll asked after a moment’s silence.

  Trixie stopped pouring milk and looked at her.

  “He is, isn’t he? The taxi man.”

  “Have you seen him?” asked Trixie.

  Carroll stared at the floor. “I put him in the basement,”

  Tom went to the basement door, opened it, and turned on the light. Dasher, who had been cowering under the kitchen table since everyone ran out the back door, barked. A huge yellow cat yowled, flew out of the basement, and clawed its way up onto Tom’s shoulders. “Calm down,” said Tom. He stroked the cat. It bit his hand, then began to relax, the stiffened ridge of fur on its back settling, and its bottle brush tail beginning to skinny. It mrrowed, ending on a raised note like the inflection of a question. “Bert?” Tom said. “I’ll fix this. But I think I should find your clothes first.”

  “Downstairs,” said Carroll. She looked wistful as she stared at the cat, her final handiwork for who knew how long.

  Tom headed down the basement steps, closing the door behind him. Bert rode his shoulders to the bottom of the stairs, then leapt onto clothes which lay in a strangely corpse-like formation, empty socks in empty shoes below empty brown pantlegs, which stretched up to an empty shirt inside an empty yellow jacket.

  “Come here,” Tom said. He sat on the bottom step.

  The cat mrrowed and approached.

  Tom blinked into Othersight. He could tell Carroll had done good work on this transformation: the cat was knitted into a black cocoon of force, and the ghost shape of Bert’s true form above it was very faint. Tom reached out. He noticed his fingertips glowed foxfire green as he touched the webs of Carroll’s spell, which fell away. The cat wailed as it changed, a wail that deepened to a moan. Then Bert sat shivering on top of his pants in the dim cellar light.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sprained dignity,” said Bert. He got to his feet and dressed, shivering the whole time.

  “May I give you warmth?” Tom asked, feeling awkward.

  Bert glanced over his shoulder as he pulled on a sock. “Can you?”

  “I tried it a couple times today. It works.”

  “I’m game,” said Bert.

  Tom sent out a silver net, whispering warmth to each strand. As the net settled around Bert, Tom became conscious again of how tired he felt, how prickly and uncomfortable his skin was. He sighed. Bert straightened, touched one hand with the other, then peered at Tom. “Okay. Thanks. How did you know it was me?”

  “Carroll told us she put you in the basement.”

  “‘She’?” Bert folded his arms. “Where have you been all day? Where was Trixie? What do you mean, ‘she’?”

  Tom scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned. “Jaimie took us over to see Barney, Annis, and the baby. We stayed all day. When we got back, Carroll was waiting here. Did he look like a werewolf when you got here?”

  “What?” Bert touched his upper lip, reached to feel the base of his spine. “You know, I felt weird being a cat. I got here just after lunch. What time is it now? I been a cat ever since. It never got dark to my cat eyes, but now I see it must be night.” He glanced toward one of the cellar windows. “I got used to being that size, having those muscles, seeing everything clear but kind of black and white.” He glanced at his fingers, then toward the top of the stairs. Tom looked up too and noticed new pale scars on the base of the door, scratches. “It felt great to dig in,” Bert said.

  “I’ve got some souvenirs, too,” said Tom. He lifted his pantleg, revealing scratches under the dark hair on his calf. They stung.

  “I’m sorry about that, but that idiot dog scared me. That was weird too. I had—instincts.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Tom said, pulling his pant-leg down again. He felt as if he’d die of itching if he didn’t get a shower soon.

  Someone knocked on the cellar door. “Hey! You alive down there?” called Trixie.

  “Yes,” Tom and Bert answered. Tom stood up and they started up the stairs.

  “Listen,” Tom said, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “I turned Carroll into a little girl.”

  “You what?”

  Tom looked at Bert.

  “All right,” said Bert, “I guess I heard you, I just didn’t believe you. Jeeze, Tom, I never imagined…”

  “That wasn’t part of your master plan?” Tom said.

  Bert buried his hands in his pants pockets. “Actually, miles better than anything I could have wished for. You had a reason, right?”

  “He was threatening Maggie. And Trixie.”

  Bert smiled up at him.

  “You approve?” Tom said. It suddenly occurred to him that Bert had ethics, albeit slippery ones, half-submerged. Tom’s own feeling for Bert was warm, and the fact that Jaimie and Barney trusted Bert when they weren’t talking to anybody else meant something too.

  “Oh, yeah. Tommy, could you turn me into an animal?”

  “Right now?”

  “No. This is not a request. I’m asking for information.”

  “Oh. Probably I could, then.”

  “I’d like to try…being a cat again, and not locked up. Or maybe a big dog. Not right now, though.”

  “You’re a very strange person,” Tom said, and opened the cellar door, letting a flood of yellow kitchen light into the cellar’s gloom.

  “Bert, are you all right? Were you really that cat?” Trixie caught Ben as he emerged and gave him a hug.

  “I’m fine,” said Bert. He looked embarrassed.

  “So you reall
y can unspell,” Carroll said to Tom. She sat at the table, her chin propped on her fists, a bowl of soggy cereal in front of her.

  “What’d you think?”

  “It’s a rare talent. How do you do it?”

  Tom looked at Laura. She grinned. She stood leaning against the sink, her arms crossed over her chest, her tawny hair coming loose from its coil. She grinned at him, her eyes sparkling. He caught his breath and took a step toward her.

  “Answer me!” yelled Carroll, pounding the table with her spoon, one bang per syllable.

  “Manners,” Trixie said.

  “Oh. Sorry. Answer me, please.”

  “That information won’t do you any good now anyway,” said Tom without taking his gaze off Laura. “I am going upstairs now. I’m going to take a shower. After that, I’m going to bed. Want to come?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Laura.

  “Make sure you shut that shower door all the way,” Trixie said. “If you get water on the floor, it drips into the front bathroom.”

  “We’ll be careful,” said Laura.

  “Where are the towels, please?” Tom asked.

  “Go ahead and know that.” Trixie shooed them away.

  As Tom and Laura’s footsteps faded beyond the top of the stairs, Trixie headed for the stove, and the pot of coffee Tom had started that morning. She turned on a burner under it. Bert went to a drawer in the counter and got out a pack of worn cards, then sat and dealt himself a hand of solitaire at the table across from Carroll. Carroll looked at Maggie, who leaned with her back to the wall.

  “Don’t,” said Maggie.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t look at me like you own me. Never again.”

  Carroll raised an eyebrow, then took another bite of cereal. She spat it out. “It’s mugwa,” she said.

  “What is that in real words?” Bert asked.

  “Slop,” said Maggie. Carroll turned to her again, surprised. “What do you expect, I’m going to hear you people griping all day and night, watch you throw things, boss people around, and not understand you?”

  “I wish I’d known you could talk.”

  “So you could make me scream like the others?”

  Carroll’s brows slanted up. “No,” she said in a small voice.