Craft (12 page)

“Hey! What are you doing?! This isn’t
a playground!” a voice yelled out to Ellie.

Ellie turned and saw a burly man
wearing a hardhat and carrying a clipboard striding over to her.
His beard bristled with his agitation. She jumped when she saw him,
remembering her encounter with the men with rifles. She had learned
people near town were not always friendly to outsiders. She was a
stranger here and not protected by the wards and familiarity of her
kin’s craft.

Figuring he was about to kill her for
trespassing, she ran off the dock and away from the ocean. She
hurried past the industrial warehouses as quickly as she could go.
Her feet flew across the ground in her haste. The man watched her
run, a perplexed expression on his bearded face. He had never seen
such a strange sight in his whole life: a young, barefoot girl with
a crow on her shoulder running as if he were going to murder her.
He shrugged away the weirdness at her departure and focused his
attention on the dock again, shouting out orders to his crew in a
boisterous voice.

Ellie was not aware of his return to
work. She ran until she could not run anymore. When she finally
bent over to catch her breath, she realized no one was chasing her.
Not seeing anyone behind her did not help the feeling of fear in
her chest. She considered her moment with the bearded man a close
call. The ocean had distracted her from the danger of his presence.
If he had not called out to her, she would have been caught and
killed. Ellie equated the man with a life-and-death situation.
Neveah’s words of suspicion, fear, and doubt for Ellie’s abilities
were in her head.

While Ellie knew the general direction
she was supposed to be going, thanks to Thane, she had never felt
more lost. What was she doing here? Why was she searching for town
when it was so dangerous? She kept running into dangers, instead of
the new, fun things she thought she would see.

The beauty of ocean was something she
never thought she would get to see. She had not realized she lived
so close to the ocean. It came at a deadly price, however. She was
not sure she was ready to face that price. And the danger only grew
with the passing moments.

Ellie had made it to town, however.
She had traveled two days, with a Cooper no less, and had faced
down the deadliest of situations with him. She was afraid to turn
back. Turning back meant giving up on her dreams. It meant Neveah
was right. Ellie could not do that when she had fought so hard to
make it so far. The thought gave her courage. It also made her
realize that she simply needed to be more cautious. Thane’s warning
rang through her head.

The only way to stay out of the danger
was to blend in with it. She looked down at her feet and sighed.
She figured her bare feet were her biggest problem. Everyone she
had seen so far wore shoes. She hated shoes; she hated them more
than chores. She sighed again and waved her hand. Heavy black boots
that matched her black dress appeared on her feet. She wiggled her
toes, uncomfortable with the way they were suddenly squished. One
problem down, she looked at Caw in a question. She was not sure if
having a pet bird was normal.

“Do you think they’ll notice you?”
Ellie asked Caw.

Caw opened his beak slightly, but he
did not make a noise. His uncertainty was apparent. Ellie pursed
her lips thoughtfully at his response.

“Maybe we should hide you…just until
my visit in town is done,” she told him. “Just to be
safe.”

Caw cocked his head at her. His eyes
were not happy at what she was suggesting. He had only recently
been given life. He did not want to be tucked away where he could
not fly.

“I promise it won’t be long,” Ellie
assured him.

He cawed mournfully but seemed to
accept her words as truth. Regretting she would not have a friend
in town to keep her company and enjoy the new sights with her, she
waved a reluctant hand. Caw immediately changed into a necklace. A
heavy silver chain held a smaller, metal version of a transformed
Caw. Two dark diamonds were his eyes. They glittered with the
intelligence of the live bird but the metal form of the raven
remained motionless with the transformation.

Ellie put the necklace around her neck
and carefully tucked it under her dress, to make sure nothing
happened to him while she explored town. Feeling better prepared
for her visit, though infinitely lonelier, she set her feet toward
the bridge separating the town from the shipping docks.

It took Ellie the better part of an
hour to get to the town. The bridge was massive, spanning the whole
gap between the docks and the town. Ellie kept getting distracted
by the color of the light on the water and the birds flying
overhead as she walked. The birds made her want to release Caw from
his jewelry prison so he could join their flight. The happy waves
of the ocean made her want to jump off the bridge and enjoy the
feeling of the dancing water. She had to keep reminding herself
that both things would draw attention. It was dangerous.

A sign finally welcomed Ellie into
town. Sidewalks led her toward a collection of shops and
restaurants. The first thing she noticed was how fancy everything
seemed. The sidewalks were full of gadgets she did not understand –
things that spit out money if you put in the right code, for
instance – and everyone seemed to have a car. The cars whizzed past
her from one stoplight to the next. Ellie could not understand the
purpose of the lights, but she enjoyed the changing
colors.

The buildings were just as impressive
as the ones at the docks, only they were not uniformly massive.
There were short buildings, long buildings, tall buildings, and
even round buildings. The variations in the structures provided a
constant influx of wonder and excitement. Ellie’s head kept turning
to take in the buildings. She did not want to miss a single thing.
There was so much to take in.

Her second impression, after the
influx of technology and buildings, was of the people. They were so
different, so foreign from Ellie’s family. Most of the people
stayed together in family groups as they walked around. They
shopped and they went to restaurants to eat. Some of the people
were content to just walk and enjoy the sights. There were also
kids her age moving in groups around the streets, seemingly without
purpose. They were the loudest sounds after the traffic. Their
joking and their conversation made sure that everyone noticed them.
Like Thane, the people around her had strange accents. She was
impressed with the education and refinement of the people; their
accents added to the aura of eloquence in the town.

What affected her most about town was
how much effort people spent doing the tiniest of things. Thane had
not been lying about people not having craft. Where her family
would have waved a hand and accomplished something in a second,
people in town seemed to have to work twice as hard and twice as
long. They spent minutes, even hours, doing what should have taken
them seconds.

Ellie related to their plight. She
knew how taxing it could be to do things the hard way. She knew the
effort involved. She had spent years doing the same sorts of
things. She found the people even more endearing for their hard
work, but wondered why the people did not at least try to use
craft. She thought if they tried hard enough, it would come to
them. Ellie could not imagine it being difficult to find. For her,
it was as simple as concentration.

She could not stop smiling as she eyed
every inch of town she passed. Everything was a marvel, everything
a brand new adventure worth taking. Living at the house she could
never have imagined that such things could be real. Her imagination
had created whole worlds before, but this was different. This was
something she could feel, smell and touch. Town was a world she did
not have to pretend to see. It was a world she could not even begin
to understand. She had so many questions and no way to get answers
beyond what her eyes could tell her.

Ellie was only aware of the passing
time from the setting sun, and even that was only on the edge of
her awareness. Each second was a second spent trying to search out
the answers for the new sights in front of her. Darkness crept back
into the world. It slowly permeated the streets. Ellie did not
think anything of the dark. Her house was no different at night.
There was no danger. She did not know that a town could change with
the darkness. Thane had not told her there were some areas in town
she should avoid.

As the darkness settled over town, her
curiosity took her away from the fancy shops and beautiful houses
to a rundown portion of the downtown area. The houses did not
sparkle and shine. They were broken and had large weeds covering
the yards and porches. Ellie thought the houses quite beautiful in
their own right. She liked the sense of history to the brokenness.
She could tell that families had lived in them for years. She could
also tell that, at one point, the houses had been well-loved and
maintained. Many of them were similar to her house in design. The
only difference was that she was not around to clean them. The
owners had given up on the appearance of their houses a long time
ago.

The houses were the least dangerous
part of the night. They were a distraction from true
darkness.

A group of five detached themselves
from the shadow of a large weeping willow tree as Ellie passed by
and started to follow her. Low comments and hisses followed her as
she walked. She heard their words, which were as dark as the night,
and knew she was in trouble. She did not have to be versed in the
world to know evil when it was whispered her way. They would hurt
her. They were worse than the men who had chased her with rifles.
The only difference is that they wanted to play with her first,
torment her before they hurt her.

Ellie’s first instinct was to use her
craft on them. They would make lovely toads, she decided. They
would pay for their darkness. Then she thought of Thane’s words. He
had warned her not to craft or bring attention to herself. He had
told her it could get her in trouble, not only with the authorities
but also with the Coopers in town. The fight might go beyond the
moment if someone saw her craft. That was enough to stay her
hand.

Her second instinct was to
run.

Ellie took off, running in the
direction of the shops she had passed only moments ago. The men’s
calls followed her as they started running too. Adrenaline and
panic surged through her chest. She took turn after turn, wondering
when they would stop chasing her. What would it take? Would she
have no choice but to craft? She prepared herself for that outcome,
figuring she would do what it took to get away from them, no matter
if it ended her adventure early.

Another turn took her back to the main
road through the downtown. Families were still coming and going
from the restaurants and many of the stores were open for the
tourists who wandered around in seemingly aimless
directions.

Ellie ducked inside the first store
she came to and hid behind a row of clothes. She watched as the
group of men stopped in front of the store and looked around the
streets for signs of her. She trembled in fear as one of the men
pressed his face against the glass window to look for her. She held
her hand ready, just in case he saw her.

A woman, who was behind a counter in
the middle of the store, noticed the man. She came forward, shooing
the man away with her hand.

“Don’t press your good-for-nothing,
greasy face against my glass! I gotta clean that!” she
yelled.

The man scowled at her but he held his
hands up in a gesture of peace. He left without an argument. He did
not dare cross her further. The woman looked at Ellie, who was
still peeking through the clothes in fear. The woman smiled
kindly.

“They’re gone now,” she said. “Won’t
be bothering you again, so long as you don’t go wandering where you
shouldn’t.”

Ellie took courage from the woman’s
welcoming tone. She stood up straight to face the woman. She smiled
back. “Thanks,” Ellie said.

The woman waved a hand dismissively.
“Don’t mention it. You okay?” she asked.

Ellie nodded in response. She was
better than she thought she would be two minutes ago. She looked
beyond the woman to the shop, curious about her hiding place. She
had not noticed any of the details while she had been hiding. She
had been focused on the men chasing her and the adrenaline coursing
through her body.

Ellie’s hiding place was a dress shop.
While she could create any type of dress she wanted, she had never
imagined her dresses could look so fine or be made out of such
pretty fabric. She put her hands behind her back to keep from
touching them all, or creating her own versions of what she saw,
and smiled happily.

“Those are pretty,” Ellie said,
pointing with her chin to the dresses around in front of her. “Do
you make them?”

The woman’s eyes lit up with the
compliment. It was obvious her passion for dresses exceeded Ellie’s
passion. “I sure do. We got a couple of businesses we keep, but
this is mine. I love making dresses…”

“I can imagine,” Ellie said. “What
other shops do you have?”

“A bit of everything,” the woman said.
“We lost one of our shops a couple of days ago, though. Nasty
business that.”