The Thread That Binds the Bones (33 page)

“Carroll bought some; I put it away.”

“Let’s go down there ... of all the places I’ve ever been, Trixie’s kitchen feels most like home. Everything in my apartment in Portland is blue and white, the colors of air and distance. I don’t even remember the bed being warm. Tom?”

“What, love?” He guided them down slowly, using the invisibility Peregrine had taught him on their journey crossing the river.

“I don’t feel the cold anymore. Is that something you did?”

“No. More gates opening, probably.” They landed on Trixie’s driveway with a faint jar, taking a step to steady themselves. “How do you feel about that? Would you really want to turn your old teacher into a toad?”

“She was acting like one.”

“Was that typical behavior?” he asked.

“No.” Laura stared into a distance that wasn’t there. “She was my real teacher, Tom. When everybody at home kept trying to convince me I was worthless, she snuck me books and told me I had a gift. She taught me how to be curious and search for answers. She encouraged me to act, and she let me stay after school and help her with things. She made life bearable.” She looked at him. “I should have said thanks, instead of arguing with her.”

“I think she was having fun with you.”

“She was always tricky. She used to give us simple-sounding homework assignments, like write an essay on our family, and then she’d cull the statistics from the essays and give us a lesson on demographics—number of single parents, siblings, what the birth order was, how the sample in class matched with the community at large. She’s a very weird woman.”

“I liked her. Did you really want to turn her into a toad?”

“I really wanted to turn Father Wolfe into a toad.”

“Now that you know you have powers, do you want to use them like Gwen does?”

“No!” She took a step away from him and glared. “I wouldn’t, even if I knew how! I just wanted to see what it felt like to act like everyone else in my family.”

“How did it feel?”

“Familiar. Like I was someone else, but somebody I know really well. And don’t like much.” She turned and walked up the driveway. “I still don’t see why
I
have to be the one who acts grown up all the time!” she yelled at him over her shoulder as she opened the kitchen door. Then, in a quieter voice, she said, “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know anybody was home.”

Coining up behind her, Tom grinned at Michael and Alyssa, who sat at the table playing a card game with a layout he had never seen before. “There you are,” he said. “We were looking for you to introduce you to Father Wolfe.”

“Wasn’t that ceremony torture enough?” asked Michael.

“I’ve never seen a
tanganar
wedding before,” Alyssa said. “It was ugly, except for the flowers. It went on too long, and there weren’t enough thanks, and they with a baby already.”

“Well, I’m glad you left. We needed an excuse to leave too,” said Laura. “And we left through the roof. So there.” She stuck her tongue out at Michael.

He stuck his tongue out at her.

“Laura?” said Alyssa. “What was that you were saying about acting grown up?”

“Oh—” She glanced at Tom, who had moved past her and was getting instant cocoa out of a cupboard in the kitchen area. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just jealous. Tom keeps going off to take care of other people. Or—”

Tom leaned over so he could peer at her through the gap between the counter and the hanging cabinets.

“I wonder where you came from,” Laura said to him. She came in and shut the door behind her. “Is this what you always do, Tom? Sweep in and take charge of wherever you are?”

“I never did it before I met you.”

“You’re saying I had something to do with it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “There are a lot of things I never did before I met you. All connected to everything.” He straightened, set mugs on the counter, filled the kettle with water, put it on a burner, and turned the burner on high. “I feel—I feel like I was only half alive until you walked into the bar.”

“This is so romantic I may vomit,” said Michael.

Tom came out of the kitchen alcove and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze met Laura’s. “Toad?” he said.

“Toad,” she said.

“Why not try something creative, like a kangaroo or something?”

“Toad,” she said.

“Will you do it, or shall I?”

“Well, I’ve never done it before. But—”

“Yes, about time you did your own spinning. Let me help you this first time.” He went to her. Standing behind her, he put his arms over hers. “You imagine net spinning out of your fingers to encompass him,” he said. “You did it before—spun a net around his hand, when you stopped him from casting at Trixie.”

“Oh. Hmm. Net?”

“That’s what I see. What did you think?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Wait a minute,” said Michael. “Are you talking about transforming
me
?”

“Yep,” said Tom.

“Don’t be ridiculous! That’s way out of her range. She’s only a minor fire power.”

“Net,” Laura said.

“Uh-huh.”

She flicked her fingers, working them back and forth. Tom saw blue threads striking out and clinging to Michael, eeling around him and knotting to each other. It looked different from when he did it—his nets usually spun together in air and then wrapped around people. Michael tried to slap the threads away, but they tightened around him until he couldn’t move.

“Not so tight,” Tom said. “You don’t want to strangle him. Tell your net, ‘Michael. Michael.’”

“Michael,” she said, still spinning, and the net relaxed. Michael could move, but it clung to him like another skin.

“Enough net,” Tom said. To his Othersight, Michael looked like a blue man. Laura stopped spinning. She snapped her fingers, severing the last threads, which wrapped around Michael.

“Now it’s your net around him. You speak to it, and it’ll turn him into whatever you like.”

“Tom? Fayella never gave us any lessons like this. Where did you learn?”

“Part of it is how I see, and part of it is instruction from Peregrine.”

“Bless the Presence,” said Laura. She hesitated, staring at her younger brother, who looked shaken. Laura glanced at Alyssa. “Your permission, Sister?”

“To turn my husband into a toad?” said Alyssa. “For how long?”

“That depends.”

Alyssa frowned. “Oh, very well. But I want him back soon.”

“Toad, toad,” Laura whispered to her net, and Michael shrank down to toad size. Tom saw a shadow of Michael’s human form hovering over the small toad-shaped piece of himself. When Carroll had changed Tom into a jackass, where had the extra come from? Did everyone own bigger selves than they knew, with much of it residing sideways from them along some other axis?

The toad in the kitchen chair thrummed. Laura slid away from Tom and danced around the table. She touched the toad’s head and laughed. Then she ran back and embraced Tom. “Okay! I did it! Now I can let go of it. How?”

“Tell your net, ‘Michael. Michael.’”

“I don’t dissolve my net? Fayella always said to clean up after our spells.”

“Well ... I never dissolve my nets.”

“You just leave them there? Oh! ‘Things seen and unseen.’ Carroll. And he doesn’t even hate you for it. But if I leave this on Michael ...”

“Your choice.”

“Take it off, please,” said Alyssa.

“All right.” Laura whispered “Michael” to her net until the toad changed back to himself, then pulled the net inside her. Tom watched it happen, not understanding: the net slid off Michael, flowed across the floor, enveloped Laura and sank into her.

“Weird,” Tom said.

Michael touched his arms and face. “Oog. You did that good, Laura. How? How could a wingless learn to do that? What kind of powers do you have, Tom?”

Tom shook his head.

Laura said, “I was never really sick.” She grinned.

A car pulled up outside. The teakettle whistled. “How many cups of cocoa?” Tom asked, and Bert walked in.

“I want one. Cocoa, Bert?” said Laura.

“Yep. Where’d everybody run off to? I saw you two rascals fly away, but when did Mr. Michael and Miss Alyssa leave, let alone Trixie and Maggie and Mr. Carroll?”

Tom stirred cocoa in three mugs and gave one each, still with spoons in them, to Bert and Laura. He kept the third for himself.

“That place made me edgy,” Michael said.

“He dragged us off before I even had a chance to meet the bride and groom and admire the baby,” said Alyssa.

“It’s time for us to go home and report back to the elders,” Michael said. “I mean, normally Alyssa and I would be on our Together Quest by now, but ... I don’t know if anyone at the Hollow has any idea of what’s going on here, and I think it’s important—maybe even as important as World War Two.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Bert.

“All this mixing. The marriage—a landmark! We were sort of prepared because at first we all thought Tom and Laura were a mixed—but that’s not it. Tom overpowers us, and that’s not new. But Barney and Annis and the baby—”

He broke off as Trixie, Carroll, and Maggie came in, all with rosy cheeks, though Maggie’s half-bare arms were smooth, un-goosebumped. Laura narrowed her eyes, studying the three people just in from the chill afternoon. Then she glanced at Tom. “Leftover nets?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Fetching,” she muttered. He looked at her with wide eyes.

“—and if Carroll’s going to stay in town, they should know that,” Michael said. “They’ll need to get Alex and Arthur to step into the hunting shoes. And we need to tell them we have friends in town so they’ll leave you alone.”

“Tell who what?” asked Trixie.

“The elders at the Hollow. Alyssa and I should go back home. We have all this news.”

“And you don’t understand half of it,” said Carroll.

“What do you mean, Uncle?”

“You let the wedding proceed without questioning.”

“So did you!”

“I questioned it; I knew it was sanctioned. I have a lot more background on these developments than you do, but Tom and Laura have the most information of all. Honored, would you agree to come back to the Hollow and offer news?”

“You talking to me, Carroll?” asked Tom.

Carroll nodded. He wore not a trace of a smile.

Tom looked at Laura. She nodded too. “Ask Peregrine,” she said. “I think he plans to change things out there. He’s been talking like he has plans. I don’t know if we can leave on our own Together Quest without clearing this up, or at least making some attempt.”

—Peregrine?

—For the sake of the Family, she is right. But I leave the decision up to you, Tommy. My most important work is your training; I will not force you to do anything.

“I thought you wanted me to take you away from all this,” Tom said to Laura.

“I do, but I can wait. Maybe one more day. For—for Family.”

“I don’t want them doing to my
miksashi
what was done to us,” said Carroll. “I don’t know what it was; I just know it hurt, until I came here.”

“Your
miksashi
,
Uncle?” Michael asked.

“The boy Rupert,” said Carroll. He grinned. “Barney asked me.”

—Miksashi.
Special guide and guardian. There is wisdom in that, Peregrine told Tom.—The better for our blood.

“All right,” Tom said. “I’ll go back and talk to them again. I don’t promise anything. But this Fayella business ...”

“Fayella?” Carroll looked at Maggie, who still had her arm through his.

“We talked about it after you left to get groceries this morning,” said Michael. “The Presence thinks she may be—what was it you said?” he asked Tom.

“She rewards the dark disciplines and bypasses the light ones,” said Laura.

“She unbalances everything. The faults at the Hollow may lie not with the blood, but with the teaching,” Peregrine said. “The more I observe, the more I believe this. So many of your generation are cripples.”

“But this stuff is not all new,” said Trixie. “There’s strange stories about the Hollow going back to the founding days. Some of them not so nice.”

“Good mixed with bad,” Peregrine said. “You speak of Mr. Israel and Mr. Jacob setting things to rights as best they could, and of aid during disasters.”

“And Mr. Hal and Miss Laura are good souls, even if Mr. Hal got into mischief,” said Bert.

“No,” said Peregrine. “Designated cripples. They made friends in town because they had few friends at home.”

Laura punched his arm. “Ow!” said Tom. “He’s not just talking about power cripples, he’s talking about emotional cripples too, understand? Carroll and Gwen didn’t come out of this any better off than you, my love.”

“Sony. I forgot that if I punched him I’d hurt you.”

“Okay, for now. We’re going to have to work at this, I guess. Anyway, sure, I’ll go out to the Hollow and talk to them. Anyone join me?”

“I will,” said Carroll. “Maybe with a proper farewell, I can come back and change in peace.”

“I will,” said Michael. Alyssa nodded.

“I’ll go, and do my own toads this time,” Laura said.

“I’ll go if you need me,” said Maggie.

“No. Oh, no,” said Carroll. “Somebody might hurt you.”

She opened her hand to show him the silver seal in her palm.

“Oh,” he said, taking her hand and touching the brand. “I forgot. Would we need you?”

“Who can tell?” said Tom.

“Hell, we’ll all go, and scandalize ’em,” said Trixie. “I’m game if Bert is.”

“I’d like a chance to see the inside of that place, and this expedition sounds like it might get in and back out again,” said Bert. “I’ve been puzzling over what it must be like out there for years. Those who visited to talk to the
Arkhos
never did come back with a very clear description.”

“Now?” asked Tom, looking around the room. Everyone was still dressed up from the wedding.

“Now,” Maggie said.

“Just coming up on suppertime,” said Laura. “The important people will be in the kitchen great hall, where we met just after Purification, Tom.”

“All right,” Tom said. He already had loose nets around Carroll, Bert, Maggie, and Trixie. He flexed his hands and sent out sheets of silver net to envelop Michael, Alyssa, Laura, and himself. With Othersight he delighted in the vision of the beautiful silvery net as it settled around all of them, linking them to him. He sent a thought thread ahead to the kitchen, finding enough empty space for them to land, and pulled his whole family there. “Hi,” he said to a startled group of people eating soup. “We’ve come to talk.” Behind him he felt the others gather closer, linking hands.