Craft (4 page)

The thought of them appearing without
warning to attack her made her paranoid. Her skin prickled with the
feeling of being watched. The dark closed in on her. Were they
waiting for her right now? Would she be safe to go back to her
shack? When would the next attack come? Ellie shivered at the
unanswered questions. She realized how stupid her call had been.
She should have fetched someone instead of calling out.

Ellie looked away from Neveah, to get
a handle on her fear. That was when she noticed Careen. She was
trying hard not to ruin Neveah’s teasing, but her expression gave
away the truth. A mischievous smile dominated her round face. Her
eyes were full of light at the teasing. Ellie saw the expression
and knew Neveah was not as sincere as her expression led Ellie to
believe. Her sisters were having fun at her expense. Her fear
turned to irritation.

“That's not funny, Neveah!” Ellie
said.

Neveah shrugged one shoulder. She was
unaffected by Ellie’s discovery of the truth. “Sure it is,” Neveah
said. Neveah’s warning had not changed, however. She set aside her
teasing and looked at Ellie seriously. “Still, you should have come
got me, instead of calling out like you did. The Coopers would have
killed you, if their aim was a little better. Best you don’t do it
again.”

Ellie was surprised at her sister’s
tone. Neveah almost sounded concerned. Uncertain if her sister was
still teasing her, she looked out over the darkness again. Her eyes
lingered on the places where the lights were brightest. The calls
from her family were difficult to listen to without trying to do
something.

“Did they hurt anybody?” Ellie
asked.

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Neveah
said. “Now, go on, get. The adults got work to do before the
night’s done.”

Ellie scowled at Neveah. Neveah
smirked at the expression on Ellie’s face, daring Ellie to argue.
Ellie knew better. She clamped her mouth shut. Without another
word, Neveah and Careen moved across the road to help the Bumbalows
closest to them. Ellie obediently turned away to go to her shack.
There was nothing she could do to help. The others would tell on
her if she tried to help. After the fear of the attack, and her
guilt at doing nothing, Ellie was not eager to face a beating from
Neveah.

Ellie’s eyes searched the dark around
her house for Coopers as she turned. She knew Neveah had been
teasing her, but she also feared the Coopers more than it was
logical.

As she turned, she noticed a dark
shape in the trench. Ellie took a step closer, letting the light of
the others craft give her details. The shape was a person on the
ground. She did not remember anyone on her side crawling in there,
but she had been too overwhelmed to notice much. She peeked over
the edge of the trench at her family to be sure she wasn't being
watched. Everyone had a task. No one had noticed the person
yet.

A smile crept over Ellie’s face. She
could help the person without Neveah ever knowing the truth. Ellie
could play her part and help her kin. No one beyond Ellie would
ever know the difference.

Ellie double and triple checked to be
sure Neveah and Careen were distracted by the others. Neveah was
working healing craft on an aunt. Careen was next to a cousin and
doing the same. Their eyes were closed as they focused on their
work. Ellie could feel their familiar craft reach across the space.
It bound Ellie to the nature of their task. They would be at it for
a while.

Satisfied, Ellie hurried over to the
prone figure. All she could tell from the amber and red lights
radiating in the night was that the dark figure in the trench was
male and was lying face down in the dirt.

Ellie turned him over, expecting to
see a familiar face, perhaps a cousin, or even some of her extended
family. What she saw was anything but familiar. She stood again and
pressed her back against the dirt of the trench. Her fear rocked
her body. She let out a low gasp of shock. He was not a Bumbalow or
anyone the Bumbalows had married. If he was not a Bumbalow, he was
a Cooper. It was that simple. The world only consisted of two
sides: her and them.

Ellie almost called out to Neveah.
Neveah would know what to do with the man. She would take care of
him before he could kill them all. Ellie stopped herself just shy
of the call. A feeling in her gut explained to her that she would
regret the moment forever if she did. It was a moment she could not
have explained to anyone if she had tried.

Ellie hated the Coopers, but she could
not stop the feelings in her chest as she looked at the man. The
feelings told her she had met a kindred spirit. He had crawled into
the trench as well. He had shared her hiding place through the
chaos. He had been as afraid as she had been.

The pause gave her time to consider
the truth of what would happen to the man if she called out. Ellie
knew what her family would do to him. It was what the Coopers would
have done had a Bumbalow fallen on their property. They would make
him pay for the attack, and it would have been her call that sealed
his fate. She could not do it. There had to be another way. The
Coopers were murderers, but she was not. She wanted to be better
than them.

She was also curious. She had never
met another person who could not claim some blood or marriage
relationship to her family. The man was different, unique. Ellie
had never met someone so foreign. Whatever evil he was guilty of in
his life, he signaled an adventure to her, however brief. He
offered her the excitement of one of her stories. The heroes in her
books always faced down mortal enemies and life choices. She always
faced her chores. The difference was profound. It was profound
enough for her to betray one of the Bumbalow’s oldest rules: Never
help a Cooper; they’ll just stab you in the back if you do. She was
willing to take the chance. She was willing to prove she was not
afraid to seek out an adventure.

Ellie peeked over the edge of the
trench. Neveah had not moved. Her eyes remained closed and her hand
outstretched as she worked her healing craft. Neveah would notice
little beyond the healing she was committed to finishing. Ellie
moved back to the man and tried to figure out how to hide him from
the others. Knowing that the others did not feel craft the same way
she felt it, she decided to take a risk.

Ellie waved her hand and cloaked the
man in darkness. His body disappeared into the night. She waved
another hand to make him rise off the ground. Her craft complete,
she climbed out of the trench with him in tow. No one looked at her
or the strange darkness trailing after her.

Ellie hurried through the tall grass
around the edge of her property. She was careful to avoid the
house, where those who were not helping to heal the others were
milling around in a confused dazed. Ellie heard them talking about
the attack and trying to figure out what had happened. She knew
their excitement would keep them from peering off into the dark
long enough to notice the grass moving.

Even though she knew they were safely
distracted, the adrenaline surged like wildfire in her veins. It
made every step an adventure all on its own. She was overwhelmed
with relief when she reached her shack. Even then, her heart raced
at the idea of what she was doing. She could not account for the
future; she had no way of knowing what would happen next in her
journey. She just knew she was doing something wildly out of
character. She had never done something so bold in her
life.

Inside her shack, and protected from
the scrutiny of her family, she set the man on her couch and
released the darkness from around him. He did not try to get up or
move to attack her. His eyes remained closed, his face peaceful.
His hand hung over the edge of the sofa without moving to craft
against her. He was unconscious.

Ellie hovered near the door, terrified
and impressed with herself in the same moment. She was certain he
was going to wake up at any second and kill her. She was not sure
she had the proper craft to defend herself. The fight had proved to
her how little she had focused on dark craft. Her experiments had
always focused on creating and manipulating her environment, never
on hurting. The oversight seemed grave now that she had witnessed a
real attack.

The darkness gone, Ellie leaned in to
look at him from her place near the door. She did not move closer
to him. She was not ready to take that step without absolute
certainty he was not pretending to be unconscious. She noticed a
wound in his side and blood running down from the back of his head.
He was definitely injured. The wound at his head explained why he
was unconscious. He needed healing craft. Ellie had never healed
someone before but she thought she understood the basics. She had
seen it enough times to know. She had a clear picture in her mind
of what she had to do. She just needed to do it.

She immediately found the healing
harder than she had thought it would be. It took more focus and
concentration than she had ever spent on craft before. She had to
keep her thoughts locked in place. The minute she lost track of
what she was doing, the craft fell apart. It took her an hour just
to get the bleeding on his side to stop.

By the end of that hour, she was
mentally drained and uncertain she could continue. She had not even
started on the wound at his head. She sat down on the floor, as far
from the man as possible, and took a moment to gather her strength.
Her moment did not last long.

“Ellie! Get in here and clean up this
mess!” Neveah called through her long-distance shout.

Ellie sighed at the call and stood
automatically. She eyed the man who, on closer inspection, was not
as old as she had thought, and decided he would live long enough
for her to clean whatever mess Neveah was talking about.

Neveah was waiting for her at the edge
of the tall grass separating the shack from the house. Neveah’s
eyes were bright with her sustained happiness of the fight she had
helped win. It was the kind of happiness that thrived in violence.
Though happy, she was still abrupt with Ellie when she stepped out
from behind the tall grass. There was no kindness for her sister in
her eyes. Nothing had changed between them with the fight. To
Neveah, it was just another part of the ongoing
struggle.

Everything had changed for Ellie. For
the first time in her life, Ellie was daring to disobey Neveah. She
fidgeted with the truth of her rebellion on her mind. She was
nervous Neveah would find out the truth. Neveah gestured behind
her, toward the house.

“Clean this mess before morning.
Grandma and Grandpa Bumbalow are coming to visit before Sunday
church. You know how they feel about messes.”

“It’s past midnight!” Ellie said. “And
I’ve been cleaning all day…”

“You best get started, then,” Neveah
said. “They’ll be here at nine.”

Ellie looked at the mess of plates,
empty bottles and cans, and leftover food her family had left
around her house and yard. It was a mess of monumental proportions.
Her craft had not been able to keep up with their messiness. She
knew she would have to pick it all up by hand. Her exhaustion was
overwhelming, but she knew if she did not clean it all up as
quickly as she could, her punishment would go beyond
Neveah.

Grandma and Grandpa Bumbalow were
old-school crafters who believed the best cure for disobeying was a
healthy beating. Ellie had been through one, and it was enough
never to want to go through it again. She still had the scars on
her back as proof of the memory. She knew Neveah would be happy to
blame the mess on her, to complain to the grandparents that Ellie
was not doing her part to help the family. The grandparents would
believe Neveah. They always did.

Grumbling under her breath, Ellie went
inside to get a garbage bag from under the sink. Neveah followed
her inside. Her smirk was wicked as she passed Ellie in the kitchen
on her way upstairs.

It took Ellie the rest of the early
morning to pick up the garbage and return the house to normal. By
dawn, she was trembling from exhaustion, but she was happy to be
finished with her work. It meant she could go back to the shack,
rest a moment, and finish her healing craft. It was possible she
could finish her craft before the grandparents came over and
demanded she visit with them. It also meant she could continue
doing something forbidden, terrifying and exhilarating. It was
rebellion against Neveah, even if Neveah never found out about
it.

When Ellie got back to the shack, the
man was no longer on the sofa. He was on the floor, near the door.
His hand clutched at his recently healed side. The back of his head
was still covered in blood.

Ellie thought she understood how he
had gotten there. He had tried to escape but had fallen back into
unconsciousness before he could get out. Some of her books had
fallen with his attempt to escape. A few had fallen on top him. Her
coffee table was on its side. She waved a hand at the books and the
table. The books flew off him and stacked in the corner again as
the table righted itself. She waved another hand to light the
candles. A final quick wave of her hand put him back on the
sofa.

He moaned when she set him down, and
his eyes opened briefly. His eyes were a warm brown, different from
the greens and blues of her family. The difference was another
surprise for Ellie. His eyes focused on her face. She saw
determination and hate clearly.