Craft (21 page)

Thane smiled, but he did not make any
promises. “I’ll be back next week at the same time,” he
said.

“Alright,” Ellie agreed.

Thane stood at her agreement. Their
visit was over. He had secured her blessing to come back and now he
had to go home. Ellie was disappointed. She was tired and sore from
cleaning the house and three days of walking, but she had hoped
they could talk longer. The distraction had been kind.

“You gotta go now?” she
asked.

“Yep. My brother will come looking for
me if I’m not back soon. They have me on a short leash after what
happened with my aunt. They all think I’m pouting somewhere…It
won’t take them long to realize I’m not at Rachel’s.”

Thane gestured at his eye again, the
reason behind his family thinking he was pouting.

“Oh…” Ellie said.
“Alright.”

“Well…I’ll see you,” Thane
said.

“I reckon,” Ellie said.

Ellie was cautious about allowing the
hope she was eager to feel. She was certain he would not return.
Thane smiled at her words and waved a goodbye. He disappeared into
the darkness surrounding their clearing, his small light showing
the way. She stared at the spot he had been sitting for a long
moment, her mind whirling around what had just happened. She was
not sure what to think, or even if it was okay to think those
things. She was not used to the idea that adventures could continue
after the exploring was through. All her stories of adventure ended
when the characters got what they were after. Could there be more
to her story? Had her adventure not been as complete as she had
thought?

“Well, how about those strange turn of
events?” Ellie asked Caw.

Caw was too busy digging for bugs to
respond to her words. He jabbed his beak into a hole and rooted
around for a moment. He pulled back with a beetle.

Ellie stretched out her legs out on
the forest floor. She took a moment to let her body unwind. She
looked up at her light and started making odd shapes with it. The
light stretched, bent and formed geometrical shapes of her
imagination. As she played with the amber light, she thought over
her day and Thane’s strange appearance at her house.

For the first time in her life, she
had met someone who wanted her friendship. He wanted to see her
again. She was not certain if he had another motive. Her lingering
suspicion of Coopers made her think that his father had sent him
back to her, to find out information on her kin. She shelved the
thought to the back of her mind.

She dared to hope beyond what the feud
and her family had taught her. She dared to hope that she had made
a real friend. He was a friend she was not keen to lose.

Chapter 8: Something
Fair

There was no profound shift in the
universe with Ellie’s agreement to meet Thane. The earth did not
crumble with the neutral ground a Cooper and a Bumbalow had forged
in the forest. Ellie was actually quite disappointed with how
easily the world shifted back to normal after her days of
excitement.

A week passed with nothing to
entertain Ellie beyond chores and teasing from her sisters. There
were more of the chores than the teasing, something Ellie was
grateful for. She preferred to be alone with her chores.

Her sisters’ treatment of her had not
changed with her adventure to town. Careen acted as if nothing had
happened and went back to treating Ellie as a servant. Neveah,
while also content to treat Ellie as a servant, seemed to register
the fact that something had changed. She knew Ellie was not the
same person. There was no denying the spark that had lit in Ellie’s
soul at seeing town, no matter how hard Ellie tried to hide
it.

When Ellie happened to catch Neveah’s
eye, she noticed a thoughtful glint that had not been there before.
The thoughtfulness had steel in it. Ellie was not sure what it
meant or why it intimidated her, but she was extra careful to go
out of her way to blend in to the background. The less Neveah
noticed her, the better. She did not want to find out what darkness
Neveah was dreaming up. Around the thoughtfulness, Neveah piled on
the chores, almost as if she was punishing Ellie for her
abduction.

The summer heat saw the slow,
unchanging turn of sluggish days and active nights over the course
of the week separating Ellie from her meeting with Thane. There was
more feuding on the outskirts of the Bumbalow property but the
Coopers did not try to attack the house again. They were quiet.
Ellie thought it might have been Thane’s doing. There were more
family gatherings at the house that Ellie had to clean up after,
but the parties were the most exciting part of her week. She spent
her free time in her shack, reading and dreaming up new adventures
to keep her occupied. None of her dreams filled her with as much
hope as seeing Thane again.

With the return of normalcy, Ellie
began to believe that her time in town had been nothing more than
an illusion. The only reminders were Caw and the boots she had
saved. Even Caw became a familiar sight in the week separating
Ellie from her next meeting with Thane. The familiarity made her
start to forget the role he had played in her travels.

On the second day of their return to
the house, Ellie created a door for Caw in the roof of her shack so
he could come and go as he pleased. Caw was gone a lot, especially
during the day when she cleaned. It had taken her a full day to
teach him not to land on her when Careen and Neveah were around. If
Neveah and Careen noticed him, they thought nothing of him beyond a
hungry bird searching for food.

Ellie was in her shack when Caw
brought Thane’s next note to her. It was near midnight when Caw
flew through the trapdoor. The heat from the day was still circling
her shack. The air was stagnant and strong. Her clothes were
drenched with sweat. She did not try to craft a cooling draft; she
was too lost in her anxiety. She had waited up for Thane. She
expected him not to show. She was afraid to see him again. She was
afraid that he would not be as willing to be her friend after a
week of living outside their mutual adventure.

The note Caw delivered was simple. It
was on the same coarse paper of his first note and was rolled into
a tight cylindrical shape. When Ellie took it from Caw, she saw
that the paper was larger than she thought. It was as long as her
forearm. In the middle of the paper were the words, ‘Just
checking.’

Ellie rolled her eyes when she saw the
brevity of Thane’s note, having expected a letter from the size of
the paper. She crafted a pen and wrote back on the same sheet of
paper under his words.

‘Takes a Cooper to waste a whole piece
of paper.’

She rolled the paper up again and sent
Caw to deliver it.

Thane sent Caw back with an even
longer piece of paper and an even shorter note.

‘And?’

Ellie laughed as she read his one word
response. Then, she jumped to her feet. He was waiting for her. She
did not want to keep him waiting for long. Caw flew ahead of her,
his dark wings blending in with the night.

Thane was waiting on the same fallen
tree as before. The bruise around his eye had started to heal,
though there was still discoloring from the hit. Ellie’s bruise had
long since healed; Neveah’s slap had not been as brutal as his
father’s punch. It made Ellie think Thane’s father was not the sort
of man to cross.

Thane appeared to be in a good mood
when Ellie joined him in the clearing. He was not lost in reasons
for the feud, at any rate. He had moved beyond trying to figure out
something that had no reason.

“Howdy,” he said.

“I reckon,” Ellie said, yawning
slightly in greeting.

She had been forced to do the chores
twice after Neveah had invited the cousins over for an impromptu
gathering. Careen and Neveah had done their best to track dirt into
the kitchen when they saw Ellie cleaning, and the cousins, a messy
group of people by nature, had thrown trash around the yard and
house and had dirtied anything else they touched. Neveah had
threatened Ellie with a week of staying with the grandparents if
Ellie did not clean everything by morning. Neveah’s boyfriend,
Deacon, was coming over in the morning to see her. She did not want
him to see the house dirty. On top of the added mess of her
cousins, Ellie had rushed in her cleaning, so she could see Thane
on time. The combination of hurrying and added work had taken its
toll on her body.

“How’s your week been?” Thane asked as
Ellie plopped down on the ground in front of him.

“Fine,” Ellie lied.

“You look like you’re about to fall
over,” Thane said skeptically.

“If I do, just prop me up against a
tree and act like I’m listening to what you’re saying,” Ellie said.
“Maybe I’ll hear you somewhere in my dreams.”

“Nah, I’ll just talk to Caw. He’s
probably got more to say, anyway,” Thane teased.

“Likely,” Ellie agreed
easily.

Ellie yawned again and fought against
her exhaustion. Her questions made it easier to focus on the
moment. Her curiosity brought her strength that she would not have
had otherwise. “So, what was it you were so keen to talk about?”
she asked.

Thane shrugged once in a question. He
did not appear to have thought that far ahead. He knew he wanted to
see her again, but he did not know why. “I dunno. What do you want
to talk about?” he asked.

Ellie realized there was a lot about
him she did not know. They had shared her adventure to town, but
she did not know much about him beyond the fact that he was a
Cooper and his name was Thane. A week ago, that would have been
enough.

Something she had been curious about
since he had admitted going to school out of town sprung to mind.
She hoped he would be willing to talk about it. She was not sure
what boundaries they had to toe or what topics were off limits.
Thane was a new world to her. It was one she was not sure was safe
to tread on.

“What’s it like in other places? The
places you get your schooling and the like,” she asked.

“It’s not anything great,” Thane
said.

“Not great to you, maybe,” Ellie
pointed out. “All I know of other places is what my books have
said…”

“And your trip to town,” Thane
reminded her. “You have that as a reference.”

“Course,” Ellie agreed. She smiled
hopefully. “Still, I wouldn’t mind a story or two of the way things
are,” she prompted him.

Aware that his stories were not as
dull to her as they were to him, Thane started talking about his
school days. He talked about the last year of school he had gone
through and the year he still had left. He embellished some for
Ellie’s sake, but the embellishments were not necessary to keep
Ellie’s interest. He barely made it through a sentence before Ellie
asked him to explain what he meant or describe something in greater
detail. His impatience with her questions was obvious but he
answered as completely as he could.

Her questions, though full of her lack
of experience, were not stupid. They pointed out how little thought
he had given to the simplest of things, things he had long taken
for granted, and he realized he did not know as much as he thought
he did about the world; he had not asked why as much as he should
have.

Ellie kept up her questions until she
could no longer resist sleep. Her eyes grew heavy and finally
closed as Thane explained about his school out west. Thane noticed
when he lost his audience. The questions stopped abruptly and
snoring took its place. Ellie was propped up against a fallen log,
her head bowed over as she slept. Caw was next to her on the log,
mimicking her body language. He had his beak tucked under his wing
as he slept.

Thane watched her for a moment, amused
she could fall asleep in such an awkward position. He had never
seen anything like it. Then, he grew worried. The forest could be
as dangerous as town, given the proper circumstances. She was not
safe, and he felt indebted to her to make sure she was always safe.
Regretting the circumstances, that he could not leave her to her
sleep, he shook her awake again.

Ellie jerked out of her dreams,
startling Caw, who also jerked awake with the movement. He clicked
his beak in agitation and flew a bit away from them, so he could
rest in peace. Ellie blinked up at Thane and started rubbing her
tired eyes. She tried to focus on him but focusing was difficult.
It felt like the hardest thing to do in her life. Her eyes kept
sliding shut.

“You better go home,” Thane
said.

Ellie nodded in agreement. She knew it
was useless. She could not stay awake any longer. “Next week?” she
asked sleepily.

“Yeah. It’s your turn to share,
though,” Thane said.

“I don't have such grand stories of
cities and moving around the world,” Ellie declined.

“According to you,” Thane
said.

Ellie smiled. “Well…if you’re
interested, I’ll tell you all about me. Don’t say I didn’t warn you
about it being boring, though.”

“I won’t,” Thane promised.