The Thread that Binds the Bones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Then why? For all the talking fetches get to do at the Hollow, we might as well be rocks.”

  Carroll stood up, turned to Trixie, who stood by the stove, sipping leftover coffee, grimacing, then taking another sip as though trying to prove to herself it was really bad enough to throw away so she could start another pot. “I don’t want this anymore,” Carroll said, pointing to her cereal.

  “Throw it down the garbage disposal and wash the dish,” said Trixie, sitting down with her coffee.

  Carroll lifted the bowl. Some milk spilled over the edge. She looked at the splotch of by-now pale pink milk on the table, then at the bowl in her hands as if surprised by the unstable quality of its contents. She glanced wildly around the kitchen. “Please,” she said. “How do I—” She pointed to the spill. “What’s a garbage disposal?”

  Maggie came out of her stiff pose against the wall and grabbed Carroll’s arm, dragging her around the counter to the double sink. “There,” she said, pointing at the split rubber cover over the drain. “That’s a garbage disposal. Real people’s houses have them. Pour it in there.”

  “I can’t,” said Carroll. “It’s all over the floor now.” Her voice sounded high and scared.

  Maggie looked and saw Carroll had spilled everything out of the bowl on the route between table and sink. “You stupid tanganar, you clean that up right now.” Maggie turned to the paper towel dispenser and jerked paper towels off the roll. She wadded them up and threw them at Carroll. “Clean it up! Don’t leave a drop or something you hate but can’t imagine will happen to you. Get to work! Sti kravna plashtookna, kurovny. Akenar! Kalla!”

  Carroll stood motionless, arms bent, her hands palm outward in front of her face, as Maggie pelted her with wadded paper towels. Furious, Maggie jerked Carroll’s hands away from her face. Carroll had tears on her cheeks.

  “That’s it! Cry, scream. We prefer the screaming method. Three weeks and you’ll adjust. We could just enchant you into liking it here, but it makes you stupid, and we like it better if you’re smart. You’re more fun to play with.”

  “I never said that to you,” Carroll said, her voice wavery.

  “Sure! I didn’t cry or scream any to begin with! I heard that speech three times. Isn’t that what they always say to new fetches?”

  Carroll jerked herself free of Maggie’s grip and dropped to the floor. She retrieved some paper towels and scrubbed at the spilled milk.

  “Kooshna,” Maggie said, loathing in her voice.

  “Maggie, please,” said Trixie.

  Carroll glanced up with narrowed eyes. “Oh, she just wants to turn into me,” she said.

  “Tashkooly! Take that back!” yelled Maggie.

  Carroll stared at the floor, focusing all her attention on rubbing milk.

  Maggie grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Take it back,” she said.

  Carroll looked at her, wide-eyed and unresponsive.

  Trixie came around the counter. “Leave her alone, Maggie. Haven’t you done enough?”

  “But—” Maggie let go of Carroll and straightened. She looked down at the smaller girl, scrubbing at the floor, her hair tumbling down, obscuring her face. Maggie felt an aching sadness flood her. She turned and ran up the stairs away from it.

  Trixie got a sponge and ran warm water on it, wrung it out, and joined Carroll on the floor. “Look, this way’s easier,” she said, sliding the sponge along a streak of pink milk and picking it up.

  “What is that thing?” Carroll asked in a low voice.

  “This is a sponge.” Trixie handed it to her.

  Carroll held it, turned it over, squeezed it until everything it had just picked up ran out of it. “Oh, no!”

  “Wipe it up again.”

  Carroll tried it. “This is magic,” she said. She skated the sponge along the trail of the spill.

  “When it gets full, you squeeze it out over the sink and start over, understand?”

  Carroll tried it. She smiled, delighted, cleaned up her spill, cleaned the milk splotch off the table, washed a coffee ring left by someone’s mug. Bert played solitaire and watched her without expression. Trixie sat on the floor and straightened out crumpled paper towels, piling them in a loose stack. Carroll dropped the sponge in the sink and joined her.

  “Are you all right?” Trixie asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Carroll. “All those dark places on me hurt. I’m not used to it.”

  “I mean what just happened with Maggie. Did that upset you?”

  Carroll stared down at the towel between her hands. It was white, with a faint green print of bell peppers, onions, carrots, lettuce, and radish bunches on it. Her hands trembled. Then her arms trembled. Then all of her was shaking, and she couldn’t even look up at Trixie, and she despised herself for being small and powerless in this place where she could not escape and everyone was angry with her.

  —Maggie, she thought, shaking, the paper towel making a muffled rustle between her hands. She saw an image of Maggie’s pale face, three years younger, looking up at Carroll with utter trust and hope.

  Trixie picked Carroll up, a vast warm presence she could shiver against, firm hands and arms holding her without judging or demanding. Carroll could not remember being embraced like that before. She put her arms around Trixie’s neck and held on tight, smashing her face against Trixie’s shoulder. “Time for bed,” said Trixie.

  Bert watched Trixie carry the little girl away. He finished his solitaire hand, thinking about his first view of Carroll that day, a full-grown man sitting uninvited at Trixie’s table, eating pretzels and studying the newspaper. Bert had always kept his distance from Carroll, though he had contacts in Chapel Hollow. “Step into the basement,” Carroll had said in a beautiful and persuasive voice. “You’re not the one I’m waiting for.”

  Bert had walked without question into the basement, and spent a long afternoon being a cat.

  Now Carroll was a little girl without her full range of powers, but she still had calculation on her side.

  Humming the way he did when he was deep in thought, Bert put dirty dishes in the dishpan to soak, then let himself out of the house, locking the door behind him.

  Chapter 18

  Trixie woke up without the benefit of coffee the next morning, surprised awake by the presence of someone small and warm in her bed. She lay looking at the lamp on the bedside table, a pale ceramic lamp she and Tyke had bought at the Danica outlet on a trip to Portland. It was elegant and didn’t go with anything else they owned.

  She had last awakened next to someone the morning Tyke died. He had gone in the night, not unexpectedly; he had been twenty years older than she, and his health had been seeping away since a stroke two years earlier.

  She had opened her eyes to morning, and reached out her hand to Tyke, touched his shoulder. It was warm, but not blood warm. She had sat up and searched for a pulse at his wrist, staring at his peaceful face, beautiful and pale. Breathing did not disturb his tranquility.

  As she dialed Doc Hardesty a sense of loss had crept down her throat and into her chest, where it spread out like thick hot syrup, claiming her as its territory…

  She reached out under the covers, touched the small shoulder of a child, felt the child stir. The echo of her old loss invaded her, and she hugged the child to her, feeling it press its face to her breast and slip an arm around her as far as it could reach, clutching a fold of her flannel nightgown in its other hand. For a long time they lay unmoving together. She felt her longing for Tyke gentle down to manageable again. She lifted the covers, stroked the child’s curly head. It looked up at her, green eyes in a face of innocence, though it had a scrape on its cheek, now nicely scabbed over.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said.

  It gave her a tiny smile in return, a smile that melted right away as if uncertain of its reception.

  “You ready to get up?”

  It looked away, its eyebrows rising on the insides. “Do we have to?” it said.

&nbs
p; “I don’t know about you, but I have company, and I have to see to them. Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Yes,” said the child, and swallowed.

  “Come on. Let’s go look at what we found in the attic last night, see if you like any of these clothes.” She threw off the covers; cold air surrounded them instantly, and the child pressed itself against her.

  “You’ll warm up with some cocoa in you,” Trixie said, sitting up. “Let’s go get dressed.”

  The child rubbed its eyes and followed her over to the dresser and the easy chair. She had draped clothes from her children’s youth over furniture.

  “Can you cut off my hair?” the child asked, catching sight of itself in the mirror on the vanity.

  “Manners.”

  “What?” The child stared up at her, confused.

  “When you’re asking someone for a favor, you say please. When someone does you a favor, you say thank you.”

  The child nodded. “Oh. Yes. Please, can you cut off my hair?”

  “Sure.”

  The scents of coffee and melting butter greeted them, and the kitchen was alive with people.

  “Barney wants me to be his best man,” Bert was saying as Trixie and the child walked to the table and took seats, Trixie next to Maggie, the child edging its chair close to Trixie. “Out of everyone in town, he asked me. I’ve known him since he was little, but doesn’t he have any friends his own age?”

  “He’s got friends,” said Laura, and yawned into the back of her hand. “I suppose they don’t approve of what he’s doing. Or maybe he’s just afraid they won’t approve.”

  Maggie, whose black eye had darkened to plum purple, got up and brought Trixie a mug of coffee. “Thanks,” said Trixie. “I promised the kid some cocoa. There’s instant in the cupboard over the stove, if there’s water hot.”

  “Wish I could do that kettle trick like yesterday,” said Maggie, studying Carroll, whose hair was now cut about even with her earlobes. In jeans and a black T-shirt, Carroll looked androgynous, too young for gender to matter. “Never saw you do that.”

  “What?” said Carroll.

  “Just hold a kettle in your hands and warm up water.”

  “That’s a water skill, and I am of earth. Was of earth.”

  “But couldn’t you just transform it from cold water to hot?”

  Carroll frowned. “Mm,” she said, and gave Maggie a lightning grin. Startled, Maggie grinned back, then thought about it, frowned ferociously, and went into the food prep area, where Tom was operating the stove. He handed her a mug full of steaming water, a spoon, and a packet of Carnation instant cocoa.

  “Want some too?” he asked her, but she shook her head. She already had a mug of coffee waiting at her place at the table, between Laura and Trixie. She took the cocoa fixings and set them down in front of Carroll.

  “Thanks,” said Carroll, picking up the sealed foil packet of mix, turning it over and studying it. After a moment she bit her lower lip and looked up.

  “What time is the wedding?” Trixie asked Bert.

  Maggie took the packet from Carroll, shook the powder into one end, tore a strip off the other, and dumped the powder into the mug of hot water. She put the spoon in and stirred. “You got to mash the lumps up,” she muttered.

  “Thanks,” Carroll muttered back. Maggie handed her the spoon and she worked on blending.

  “Two o’clock this afternoon,” said Bert. “Father Wolfe is waiving the license and the blood tests, since it’s a Hollow thing. Barney asked me to invite you all.”

  “Who wants what eggs?” Tom asked over the sizzle of frying butter.

  “Two, sunny side up, please,” Trixie said.

  “Toast?”

  “Mmm. It’s been years since I had this kind of service at breakfast.”

  Tom grinned. “Laura, what would you like?”

  “A piece of toast. I’m not a big breakfast person.”

  “Maggie?”

  “Uh—oatmeal?”

  “It’ll take a little while.”

  “Whatever’s easiest, then.”

  “This is easiest,” he said. “Bert? Carroll?”

  Bert glanced at Carroll, who was eating cocoa with her spoon. Carroll lifted an eyebrow.

  “Two over easy?” Bert said.

  Tom cracked two more eggs into the frying pan.

  “One, please,” Carroll said.

  “How do you want it cooked?”

  “Svitly.”

  “Speak English, Uncle,” Laura said. “Tom doesn’t know Ilmonish yet. She means over medium.”

  “‘Svitly’ means ‘over medium’?”

  “Uh—no, it means ‘no jiggles.’”

  “Oh.” Tom added another egg, slipped two staring yolk-topped eggs out and onto a plate. Toast popped up. He buttered it and added it to the plate, then brought the plate, silverware, a napkin, and a jar of raspberry preserves to the table for Trixie. “Butter?” he said to Laura, catching another piece of toast as it popped out of the toaster.

  “Please,” said Laura. He buttered the toast, put it in the center of a plate, and held the plate up.

  “Take it?” he said.

  The plate drifted through the air to Laura.

  Tom went back to coordinating the meal.

  “So do you all want to head over to the church together?” Bert asked as Tom handed him a plate with two eggs on it.

  “We could all fit in one cab,” Tom said. “What if someone else needs a cab, though?”

  “We officially take this time off. I’m part of the ceremony, and you’re not technically a driver anymore.”

  “Okay,” said Tom. He gave Carroll a plate with an egg on it and a knife and fork, then went back to the stove and dished up two bowls of oatmeal. Taking maple syrup from the fridge, he brought it and the oatmeal over to the table, handed one bowl to Maggie, and sat down between Bert and Laura. He poured milk and syrup on his oatmeal and ate.

  “But what do we do with the kid?” Bert said.

  Carroll stretched her hand out toward the salt cellar, frowning in concentration. Trixie passed it to her. She sighed and salted her egg.

  “She goes too,” Trixie said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Bert.

  “Why not? We can hardly leave her somewhere.”

  “Don’t you think she’ll make a fuss?”

  Carroll set the salt down and looked up. “Make a fuss about what?”

  “About the wedding,” said Bert.

  “What wedding?”

  “Barney and Annis,” Trixie said.

  “Annis? You didn’t say Annis!” said Carroll. “Who’s she marrying? That fetch akenar she ran off with? How can she? Tom, you let me go now. I have to stop them.”

  “No way.”

  “You don’t understand! This is important! Annis has more potential than Laura. She must come back to the Family. We need her bloodline.”

  “No you don’t,” Tom said, though he heard echoes of Peregrine’s logic in Carroll’s speech.

  “Yes we do.” Carroll opened her mouth to say more, then glanced at Trixie, Bert, and Maggie. “Would you—please—come in the other room with me a minute? Please?”

  Tom glanced at Laura, saw her sparkling with inner delight. He ate another spoonful of oatmeal, then said, “Okay.”

  Carroll looked at Laura, then decided something and shook her head. She grasped Tom’s sleeve and led him into the front parlor.

  “Look,” she said after he sat down on the sofa. “I know you don’t think I—you don’t understand how I operate. I know I can’t figure you out. I’m sorry I said things and did things to you when I met you, but how was I to know you’d be—” She frowned. “It’s that Laura. She has never done anything right. So now, when she actually brings us good blood, I have trouble getting used to it.”

  “Are you saying you’re glad Laura married me, in spite of everything that’s happened?”

  Carroll paced back and forth, her face set in a frow
n. “I am and I’m not. I hate being so weak and powerless. I feel like I have no choices in this body; people are telling me what to do all the time, and they can force me to do what they say. You made me like this. But your being able to do that, that’s a sign of great hope for the Family, if it’s a power you can pass on to your children. There are two halves of me, me alone, and me of the Family. And the Family is in trouble. You’ll help the Family.” She searched his face for signs of comprehension. “Your children…”

  “I understand.”

  “But if Annis goes off and marries this—Barney? Some tanganar—that’s a waste of bloodline. We don’t have any to waste right now. The blood’s thin. The talents are dying. I can’t stand it, I can’t stand watching my Family die.” She looked at him with tearbright eyes. “I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I’ve been thinking about it all night. I wonder if I’m really a girl inside, and if I carry the same bloodline I had before. If I do, maybe I’d ask you to leave me this way, only if I could be four years older, so I could have a baby—” She turned away, and hit the coffee table with a fist. “Because I’m the most gifted of my generation, but I have sowed my seed and none of it quickened. My male self has no hope of children.” She stared at him with eyes that burned with green fire, a terrible smoky despair.

  Abruptly she paced away, stood facing a wall. “So what I’m asking—and if you grant me this, you can do whatever else you like to me—is, if you’d just let me be myself long enough to hunt Annis and Jaimie up and take them home where they belong. Please, please, please.”

  Tom bit his lip.

  “Please,” Carroll said, turning to stare at him again.

  —Is this a weasel ploy? Tom asked Peregrine.

  —Perhaps, but he speaks from the same place I speak from when I talk of Family, and that, I believe, is sincere. With your leave, I will answer him.

  —Go ahead.

  “Descendant Carroll Bolte,” said Peregrine.

  Carroll jumped and straightened, eyes wide. “What? Presence?”

  “Yes. I have taken up residence in this student. I am training him. I share your concerns, but I wish to tell you that as far as Annis is concerned, all is accomplished. I tested her fetch: he is not wholly tanganar. I tested their child: it is a child of power, sign fire. I duly sealed it to the Family, and sanctioned their union, with the aid of another Presence summoned for the work. Family will benefit from this union; be easy in your mind.”