The Thread that Binds the Bones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Stop!” Tom yelled, and Eddie froze. “Don’t ever talk to Laura like that, and don’t you hurt her.”

  Eddie shivered. He opened and closed his mouth. “You’re doing it too,” he said at last. “Just like them. Pulling my strings.”

  “I warned you.”

  Pops’s eyes flickered open. Laura let go of his head and smiled down at him. Pops smiled back. “Miss Laura! So nice to see you,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She picked up his glasses from the table and held them. Tom saw a flash of silver around her cupped hands. “This might make it easier,” she said, offering the glasses, restored, to Pops. He put them on with trembling hands. He reached up and patted her cheek.

  Tom relaxed the strands of the net he had spun around Eddie. Eddie glared at him, then went to Pops. “You okay? Oh, Pops. I’m so sorry.”

  “I feel fine now,” said Pops. He sat up. “I feel good!” He tapped his chest. “Miss Laura, what did you do? I don’t have pain here anymore.”

  Laura looked at Tom, then at her hands. “Gates opening again?” she asked. “Are you doing it, or am I?”

  “You are.”

  Eddie said, “Sorry. Sorry I yelled at you.”

  She gave him a smile. To Tom, she looked like the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He blinked and saw her features glowing golden, remembered her talking about addressing her spark, and figured she was doing it now, whether she knew it or not. “You were upset,” she said to Eddie. “And you don’t know me. It’s okay.”

  Carroll strolled into the station carrying two sacks of groceries. “What is that thing outside?” he asked.

  Eddie jumped up, putting himself between Pops and Carroll. Carroll made a half-smile.

  “What? What thing?” Tom felt a shiver of apprehension. He ran past Carroll outside. Something lay at the base of one of the gas pumps. At first Tom saw only his silver net. Then he looked without Othersight and saw what appeared to be a person-sized pink potato. “Oh, God. Is she dead?”

  It quivered.

  Tom glanced back over his shoulder at Carroll. “You take Laura home if she wants you to?”

  “All right.”

  “Help her clean up the mess here?”

  Carroll grinned. The green in his eyes silvered. A dimple flashed in his cheek. Tom had never noticed it before. “All right,” he said.

  “Thanks. I’ll be back.” Tom spun a strand out to the clearing where he and Carroll-as-raven had had their talk. He pulled himself and the pink blob there.

  He sat down, hugging himself, facing the thing he had turned the woman into. Another rash choice, but he had had to think fast. She was Family; she had sitva; she was still alive. Was she still herself? He tuned in to his net. “You may speak,” he said, hoping she would have something to say.

  “Who are you? What did you do to me? Stop it right now, or my whole Family will be after you, and once that happens you’re worse than dead.”

  He felt relieved. “Who are you? Are you Gwen?” His voice dropped as Peregrine took over. “Do you think the Family would sanction your harming anyone in town? You mistake, young woman! What is rule one in tanganar relationships?”

  —What is rule one? Tom wondered.

  “Never hurt them where they live,” Gwen said.

  —But Carroll almost took Trixie in her home, Tom thought.

  —He had descended below the threshold of reason, into the realm of upper madness; something kicked him over that edge. It was a blessing you could take action, and a blessing you chose the action wisely, Peregrine thought. Aloud, he said, “You are in no position to threaten me. I would like to hear one reason why I should restore you.”

  “Who are you, please?” Gwen said in a small voice.

  “I am two people: Thomas Renfield, husband to Laura Bolte, and Peregrine Bolte, from the thirteenth generation.”

  She was silent a moment. “One reason you should restore me,” she said at last. “I’m fertile.”

  “That is no longer reason enough. You came close to killing two people in their home.”

  “One of them my own fetch! And a disobedient fetch, a runaway fetch. Surely that mitigates.”

  “You acted without knowledge. He was no longer yours.”

  “How not?”

  “I took him from you. I dissolved your bindings and established my own.”

  She was quiet. “How was I to know?” she said.

  “Answer your own question.”

  “Check,” she said. “But I’ve never heard of anything like this happening. I didn’t know to look for it. And—no.”

  “What?”

  “When I tried to re-establish—at first I couldn’t control him at all. I see. I see. But when he threatened me—”

  “Self-preservation transcended,” Peregrine said, “and you misused it.”

  She waited another moment. “Are you going to leave me like this, blind, unable to move, to care for myself?”

  “No.” He sighed. Tom murmured, “Gwen. Gwen,” to his net, told it to relax around her but stay in place. She took shape again, crouching.

  Her dark brown hair veed back from a deep widow’s peak, to fall in long, ragged-ended shocks about her shoulders. Her face had an angularity about it that reminded Tom of how he imagined faery folk would look. She had pencil line brows and slanted green eyes, set far apart, above broad, high cheekbones; a narrow nose, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. She owned a compelling, exotic beauty. Her body was muscular and rounded, graceful as a horse’s. Her toes were so long they reminded him of fingers.

  She studied him as he studied her. Their gazes caught and held. She widened her eyes, and the tip of her tongue made a full, slow circuit of her mouth.

  “Refrain from that, unless you wish to be helpless again,” said Peregrine. “We must talk.”

  She sighed. She squatted, elbows on knees, and hands dangling.

  “Do you agree to abandon this pursuit of the fetch?” Peregrine asked.

  “What choice do I have? Either your host is very powerful, or you are.”

  “Answer yes or no.”

  She looked at the ground. “Yes. I agree.”

  “And you will not seek reprisals by attacking another person in place of the lost one, or by attacking someone I care about?”

  “But, Ancient—”

  “Let it go, descendant Gwendolyn.”

  “I’ll lose status.”

  “The whole system is due for reworking. I have already initiated it.”

  “What?” She stood up.

  “I require your agreement. No reprisals, Gwen.”

  She stalked away, shaking her hands as if she could shed his words like water drops. But at length she came back. “Or else?”

  “Or else,” he said.

  “I agree,” she said.

  “You may go home now.”

  She glared at him. She flew away.

  He pulled himself along a silver spider thread to Laura.

  “Detergent might do it,” Eddie said. He swept at sawdust on the pavement; they had scattered it in an attempt to soak up the gas. “I remember we used detergent to get oil off seabirds after one of those big oil spills in southern California.”

  “There’s an easier way,” said Carroll.

  Tom went to Laura, who stood by the door to the station’s waiting room, with Pops beside her. She looked very calm—calmer than Eddie or Pops, both of whom watched Carroll with guarded expressions.

  Carroll held out his hands. He closed his eyes. Tom saw shimmering pulses of amber light rippling from his hands, spreading to touch all the pavement and everything Eddie had splashed with gas, including Pops’s clothes. Then Pops’s clothes were wet, and the gas fumes were gone.

  Eddie stooped, touched the wet ground, and smelled his fingers. “Water! Great!” he said. “Oh, God. I never thought I’d say this. Thanks, Mr. Carroll.”

  Carroll looked at Tom, one eyebrow up. Feeling awkward, Tom smiled at him, wondering how to relate to Carro
ll now that Tom wasn’t controlling him, and Carroll wasn’t trying to get back at Tom. Was Carroll serious about trying to civilize himself? Tom didn’t yet know how to do the truth flame; still, on some level he trusted Carroll’s new direction. On some other level he worried. Carroll had such a weight of history and habit to fight; Tom wondered how long he would straggle against the tide before lapsing back into his old self.

  —If he is determined, he can change everything, Peregrine said.—There are precedents. Not many; but a few.

  “We better go home,” said Laura. “We have to get ready for the wedding.”

  “Whose?” asked Pops.

  “Barney Vernell’s and my cousin Annis’s. Two o’clock, Bert said. Father Wolfe—does that mean the Catholic church, Pops?”

  “Episcopal,” said Pops.

  “Barney and Annis?” said Eddie. He looked at Carroll.

  “Sanctioned by a higher authority.” Carroll’s shoulders slumped. “I want to go home now.”

  Tom heard exhaustion in his voice, and went inside to pick up the groceries. “Pops, you take care,” he said as he came out. “I made Gwen promise she wouldn’t come back, but she might try something else. Call me at Trixie’s if you need me. Or Eddie can call me without a phone.”

  “All right, Tommy. Tommy? What happened to you?”

  “It’s a long story, Pops, and we don’t have time now. Excuse me, please.”

  “Sure, sure.” Pops waved his hands in a shooing motion.

  “Double excuse me for this,” Tom said. He spun Carroll, Laura, and himself back to Trixie’s kitchen.

  No one was in the kitchen, but sounds upstairs meant someone was home. Carroll let out breath.

  “Are you okay?” Tom asked him, setting the sacked groceries on the counter. Laura started unloading the bags.

  “I feel tired.” Carroll sat down at the table. “The market was harder than I thought it would be. I never really looked at the people before.”

  “What happened?”

  Carroll shook his head, put his elbows on the table and leaned his forehead on the palms of his hands.

  “Uh—do you want to go to the wedding, or would you rather rest?” Tom asked.

  Carroll took a deep breath, then let it out. A moment later he straightened and looked up. “Which is better? Ancestor? What should I do?”

  —Go ahead, Tom thought, then thought he didn’t really need to think it. He and Peregrine were meshing tighter all the time, changing places more easily, though they still had their own separate views on everything.

  “You are committed to changing?” asked Peregrine.

  “Yes. Something—when you asked me to help clean up—no one ever—I’ve never—that felt like—I want things to be different. I’d like to help. I’m afraid! They’ll despise me for weakness at the Hollow. What if you’re twisting my brain and these are not my own thoughts? I want them to be my own thoughts. I don’t want them to be your beguilements.”

  “There is a way for you to check.” Peregrine went to the front bathroom, found a hand mirror, and brought it back to the kitchen. He handed it to Carroll.

  Laura stopped putting things away and came to sit at the table. “Things seen and unseen?” she said.

  “A property of air; but earth, which transforms, can handle it too. Sketch the first four signs, descendant, and look into your eyes.”

  Carroll lifted his hand. He framed the signs slowly, as if dredging them from deep memory. Silver flared around him. “Sirella! What is that?” he asked.

  “My casting. Search your eyes.”

  First Carroll lifted his arm and looked at the elegant silver flickerings that sheathed it. “You did this?”

  “Tom did it. I forgot it would be revealed.”

  Carroll looked up. “I am in your hand.”

  “Your physical form is. Search your eyes before the vision fades.”

  He studied his face in the mirror. “Nothing gets in or out, but that you will it. My eyes are clear; my thoughts are mine. The casting is very beautiful.”

  The light around him flickered and faded. Carroll set the mirror down and looked up at Tom. “You don’t trust me.”

  “With some things I do. Do you want me to trust you with everything?” Tom couldn’t tell if he spoke or Peregrine did.

  “Not yet,” said Carroll.

  “Are you serious about becoming small again?”

  “I don’t know,” Carroll said. “Perhaps I can succeed without it. It’s harder, because I’m not as frightened. Sometimes I think I need fear. And I wouldn’t have understood how Maggie felt if she hadn’t been able to hurt me, if I hadn’t felt what it was like when there was nothing I could do to protect myself, no escape…” His voice sank to a whisper.

  Peregrine said, “Tell me when you decide what shape you want to walk in, and I will grant it. For now, though: the wedding. In my mind I have no doubt that things must change here and in the Hollow, and you can aid that change if you come to this wedding in your own shape, watch it, and do nothing to interrupt. It will surprise everyone. If you wish to stay away, that is understandable.”

  “I’ll go.” He stood up. “Ancient, what changed me back to this form this morning? Was it you or Tom?”

  “We did not make the decision. You did. I suspect Tom laid a condition on the casting that said when you lost the desire to do harm you could return to yourself, but since he worked in ways that elude me, I cannot be sure.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. A moment later Maggie, Michael, Trixie, and Alyssa came into the kitchen, carrying armloads of clothes. “Oh, hi! Welcome back,” said Trixie.

  Carroll smiled at her.

  “Trixie saved every piece of clothing she ever bought or owned,” Maggie said. She was wearing a pale green dress with a white lace collar, puffed sleeves, and kick pleats; and a pair of white tights and white maryjanes. She looked like a twelve-year-old on her way to an Easter service. Her brown hair had been pinned at the sides with silver star-shaped barrettes. “Everything anybody outgrew. This was her daughter Pearl’s ninth-grade graduation dress.”

  “You look good,” Carroll said. Tom touched his shoulder. He glanced back, wondering if he had done something wrong, then realized Tom was feeding energy into the casting. Carroll felt the fatigue wash out of him. He touched two fingers to his lips, then sketched an old sign for gratitude. Would Tom understand? The Presence could explain it. Tom nodded and smiled, then went around the counter to finish putting away the groceries.

  “Found you a coat,” Maggie said. “It used to be Mr. Delarue’s. It doesn’t go with the jeans, but it’ll make you look more official.” She handed him a black velvet smoking jacket with satin lapels.

  “Thank you,” he said. He glanced at Trixie, and she nodded. He slipped the jacket on over his T-shirt. The shoulders were a little too wide, but the sleeves were just the right length. He lifted a lapel and sniffed the odor of ancient pipe smoke.

  “I like this,” said Michael, holding up a dark green jacket that had a shimmer on it.

  Alyssa wore a white dress with tiny black hearts and arrows all over it. It hung straight down to her hips, then gathered, with a short pleated skirt below, and a large black bow at the side just below her right hip. She struck a pose.

  “My mother’s best jazz party dress,” Trixie said. She wore a wine-colored tent dress made of some shimmering unnatural fabric. Somehow it did not clash with her hair, perhaps because she also wore a white fox fur. “This is so strange. I can’t remember the last time I dressed up, barring Tyke’s funeral, and that wasn’t colors. But I figure if ever there was a time for it, this qualifies. See anything you like, Tommy? Laura?” Michael, Alyssa, and Trixie draped a variety of clothes over the kitchen chairs.

  Tom reached for a fine herring-bone patterned three-piece-suit in brown and white with baggy pleated pants and wide lapels. “Hot damn. Other clothes at last.”

  Laura handed him a white shirt and a wide red silk tie, then lifted a red dre
ss from under a pile of pastels. “Us,” she said. “Come on, husband. We’ll be right back.”

  “You’d better,” Trixie said. “Bert’ll be over in about two minutes to pick us up.”

  In their room, Tom and Laura changed quickly. The clothes fitted as if made for them. Laura’s red dress had a low V-neck, narrow wrist-length sleeves, a tight waist, and a sheath skirt, slit up the side. Tom zipped the back for her, and she tied his tie. As she adjusted it under his collar, he put his hands over hers and looked into her eyes.

  She smiled, her eyes glowing golden.

  “We don’t know each other yet,” he said.

  “No,” she said. Her face sobered.

  “I know you go to sleep well and you wake up well, and I love to look at you and to touch you; and when we work together it feels great. I like what I’ve seen of the way you think. And sometimes I just feel really, really weird.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “It’s like I stepped out of my real life into this—tornado. But what a ride!”

  “But we’re not going to get down off it anytime soon.”

  “Yes, we will,” she said. “The real question is where: Oz, or Kansas?”

  “Things have changed so much for me in the last three days that I think I’m going to have trouble adjusting to Kansas.”

  “Me too. Maybe we should go someplace entirely new, where we can be alone among strangers and figure out who we are before we have to deal with other people.”

  “That sounds great,” he said.

  “In any case,” she said, “I like spending time with you. And I am in love with you.”

  He put his arms around her. “I love you,” he said, and wondered what that meant. He remembered how much his mother had loved him, and Aunt Rosemary, and the casual kindnesses along the way of uncles and cousins and aunts who didn’t know what to do with him, but sometimes tried to do right.

  Laura in his arms was warm and alive, smelling of sage and spice and a hint of jasmine, tied to him with a spectrum of threads, some they had spun themselves, some supplied by others. He knew this was different from everything he had experienced before. Exciting and scary; another challenging new thing to learn. She tipped her head up and he kissed her and stopped thinking about anything else.