Craft (8 page)

Annoyed with herself and her lack of
knowledge, she put her head in one hand and picked up a stick with
the other. She started making designs in the dirt as a distraction
from the depression and the fact that she was alone in the woods
without a friendly face to keep her company. Her first sketch
slowly transformed into a raven. It had sad eyes and sleek feathers
and somehow seemed to know her frustration and unrequited sense of
adventure.

Ellie sat back and looked at the
drawing for a long moment. She related to the sad eyes and felt
quite proud of how the picture had turned out. She did not think of
herself as an artist, but she thought there was something special
about the picture. It looked alive. It was real somehow. She liked
it so much she decided to add her craft to the drawing. If she
could not have a friend with her in the woods by choice, she would
make one by hand.

She was not sure how to give the bird
life. She had never experimented with that sort of craft. She
thought she understood what was involved, however. It was as simple
as focus. She fixed the living form of the bird in her mind and
drew in the necessary craft from her surroundings. Satisfied with
the picture her imagination had formed, she raised her hand and
flicked her wrist once. The flick of her wrist was a forceful
command. The craft had to obey that command. Ellie opened her eyes
with the release of craft.

Nothing happened. She frowned,
disappointed. Her craft had failed before, but never in such a
boring way.

Then, the dirt started to move. It
danced around the shape she had drawn with sparks of light and a
wind that belonged only the drawing. The dirt finally stopped
moving with a dull plop.

A yellow beak came out of the dirt
first. A small body and the black wings of a raven quickly
followed. It took a moment for the bird to crawl completely out of
the ground. When it did, it was as real as Ellie. The bird was
forged out of dirt, but was fully formed into the flesh and bone of
a living animal. Free from the dirt it had been made of, it jumped
onto the log next to Ellie. He cawed once in a question, as if
asking how it was possible for a living bird to be formed out of
dirt. His caw was strangely intelligent and aware.

“Do you know where we are?” Ellie
asked the raven hopefully.

He cawed again and cocked his head to
the side at the question.

“I didn’t think so,” Ellie
said.

Ellie put her head in her hand once
more and pursed her lips in disappointment. While she was no longer
strictly alone in the woods, she was no better off. A bird could
not direct her toward town; it did not know the way. A bird was
still a bird, no matter how it had come into being.

“How is that you can do such strong
magic?” a voice asked her.

Ellie stared at the raven
in confusion.
Had
it spoken? She had not meant to give it a voice, but
sometimes her craft did not go the way she planned. The raven
looked equally as confused by the question. He had not been the one
to speak.

Ellie heard a twig snap behind her and
realized she was not as alone as she had thought. She jumped off
the log and raised her hand to attack. The darkness was almost
complete in the woods, but she saw a shape next to a
tree.

“Step out where I can see you!” Ellie
commanded.

The figure moved closer, and she saw
the familiar shape of the boy she had rescued. She did not lower
her hand right away. His expression was curious but not welcoming.
They were still enemies.

“I thought we agreed to go our
separate ways?” Ellie asked suspiciously.

“I have to go this way to get back to
my family,” he pointed out.

“I thought you Coopers could just
appear wherever you wanted,” Ellie said still suspicious of
him.

“What gave you that idea?” he
asked.

“The way you and your kin appeared
last night. It was like you weren’t there, and then you were,”
Ellie said.

“My cousin made light magic as we were
sneaking up on you because he’s scared of the dark, and it gave us
away. We had cloaked ourselves in darkness is all. We parked our
cars away from your house and walked fifteen minutes to keep you
from noticing our approach.”

“Oh,” Ellie said.

Ellie finally lowered her hand. She
did not trust him, but his explanation was logical. It put to rest
some of her fear. Their craft was not so foreign after
all.

“So, how can you make such strong
magic? Aren’t you just a little girl?” he asked returning to his
original question.

“You’re only a year older or so older
than me, I reckon,” Ellie said.

“Yeah, but at least I’ve seen town,”
he said.

Ellie blushed at his words and lifted
her chin haughtily, thinking he was calling her simple.

“I don’t know what you Coopers call
strong crafting, but with my kin, what I do is nothing special,”
she lied.

The truth was that she had always had
an affinity for craft. Her momma had always said she was naturally
gifted in that way. Craft was something Ellie had been born knowing
how to do well. Things other Bumbalows saw as a challenge, she
understood instinctively. Learning craft had not been the ordeal it
had been for Careen and Neveah.

“If that were true, we’d have a lot of
dead Coopers on our hands,” he said.

“My kin chooses not to kill for no
reason,” she said, her chin still haughtily lifted in the air. “We
only kill if a fight is instigated and there’s no other
choice.”

The boy’s expression switched to
anger. Ellie took a step back from the radiating power of his
emotion.

“Tell that to my cousin Sally!” he
said. “She was the one they snuck up on and killed with their
attack in town yesterday.”

His expression of anger changed with
the words. Ellie could tell he had loved his cousin. He was sad at
her death. He was angry Sally had never gotten the chance to fight
for her life. There was no way he was lying about the attack. The
Bumbalows were not innocent.

Ellie was horrified at the idea. Her
first instinct told her he was telling the truth. His expression
and anger were sincere enough, but her head was telling her that
Coopers were skilled at lying. She did not want to believe such a
horrible thing about people related to her.

“They killed somebody yesterday?”
Ellie asked.

“As if you didn’t know!” he
scoffed.

Ellie had thought the party had been
for setting a place on fire, ruining Cooper business, or something
that had not resulted in actual casualties. She wanted to believe
the Bumbalows were above such brutal retaliation. Her family had
shared in their own deaths and had been forced to pick up the
pieces of the Coopers’ brutality. Surely they would not return such
pain on the Coopers, no matter how much they hated them.

Ellie realized her hope had been a
lie. Her gut told her Neveah and the others had gone searching for
a life to end. They had wanted to make sure the Coopers understood
the repercussions of attacking Cousin. Ellie knew in her heart they
killed as often as the Coopers killed. She had always known it,
even if she had trouble admitting it. Now, she could no longer
ignore the truth. Her family killed.

Ellie could understand the Coopers’
actions better now. It was no wonder they had come to her house.
One of their own had been murdered by her family. Ellie knew her
kin would have had the same reaction if one of her family had been
killed. Neveah would not have rested until she had the heart of a
Cooper as payment for the bloodshed. While Ellie’s family saw
justification in what they had done to Sally, Ellie only saw
murder.

Ellie sat down again. She felt her
heart sink at the idea of her family killing someone in cold blood.
She could not meet the boy’s eyes. The cost of the knowledge was
heavy.

“I swear I didn’t know!” Ellie said.
“They don’t tell me nothing, especially about the feud. I’m just ‘a
girl’…someone too stupid to understand what they’re on about. I
just gotta do all the chores, put up with Neveah’s bullying and eat
crow.”

The raven she had made out of dirt
cawed once at her words. She petted it without thinking, taking
comfort in the touch. The boy looked at her with curious
understanding in his eyes. Her confession meant something to
him.

“What’s your name?” he
asked.

Ellie found his eyes. She did not
answer right away. Her mind worked overtime to understand. He acted
as if knowing her name would erase their animosity. Was it a trick?
She wanted to believe that he was genuinely eager to lay aside
their differences. The dark was a convincing reason to be
indifferent to whatever opinions she held in the light. Being lost
in the woods was another reason to allow for a moment of peace
between them. It was the only moment of peace that would ever
happen between a Cooper and a Bumbalow.

She answered him slowly, her doubt
circling her mind. “Ellie. What’s yours?”

“Thane.”

“Thane?” Ellie repeated.

She giggled at his name. She did not
consider that her giggles might make him angry and the feud would
flare back up between them. She could not help the laughter. His
name was too funny. Thane frowned at her, silently demanding an
explanation.

“Sounds like something someone would
say if they were cursing!” she said around her giggles.

Thane wrinkled his nose and stepped
closer. He sat down facing her. His expression suggested she was
not far off the mark. “It does when my dad gets hold of it,” he
said dryly.

Ellie stopped giggling at the
admission. His words reminded her of Neveah. Neveah had a way of
turning Ellie’s name into a curse as well. Maybe they were not as
different as Ellie had assumed.

“I reckon I know what that’s like,”
she admitted.

They stared at each other for a
minute. Ellie was uncomfortable. She could not help but wonder what
mischief he was dreaming up as he looked at her. He had to be
planning something. Why else would he bother to stop and chat with
her? The fact that she had seen very little of the outside world
did not mean she was stupid enough to trust someone she was
supposed to hate. Her books had taught her enough of life to be
weary of a sudden change in character that came out of nowhere. A
Cooper purposefully searching out a conversation with a Bumbalow
was definitely out of character. She was not sure when the last
time the Coopers and the Bumbalows had words that were not some
kind of threat or curse.

“What do really want?” Ellie asked
finally. “Why’d you stop?”

Thane shrugged casually. It was as if
he was admitting to his hair being brown instead of planning to one
day use their conversation against her.

“I figure you’ll be the only Bumbalow
I’ll ever get the chance to talk to. It’s best to know the enemy,
so I can fight you better in the future.”

“Seems that’s a sad way of looking at
things,” Ellie said.

Thane shrugged again and looked around
at the darkness pressing in on them. Ellie also looked around at
the night. It moved against her and made the monsters of her
nightmares crawl to the surface of her mind. What kind of evil was
hiding in the dark? Were more Coopers waiting around the trees to
attack her and take back their kin? Was it possible the monsters
she had read about in her books were real?

She had trouble sorting fact from
fiction in the dark. There were just so many things she did not
know about in the world. She knew her books were not real, but some
of them had mentioned magic. Though they distorted craft from what
she knew it to be, it was enough to know that some things in her
stories were based in reality. It was enough to fear the monsters
in the dark. The dark scared her more than she was willing to admit
to a Cooper.

She wanted company, no matter the
source. She was also insatiably curious about him. His reasoning
was not far from hers. He was also the only Cooper she would ever
meet who seemed friendly, if only temporarily. He was talking to
her, at least, and not trying to kill her or ignore her. Ellie
thought of a compromise that would sate her fear of the dark, the
fact that she was lost and her strange curiosity for the boy she
had saved.

Ellie eyed him carefully. She took in
the way he was eyeing the dark and the way his body was full of
tension. He did not seem to like the dark any more than she did.
Only, he managed to hide his fear better. The thick woods would
have scared anyone with common sense.

“How about this?” Ellie asked. “We
treat this forest like neutral ground. In here, the feud doesn’t
exist. Since you gotta go this way to get to your folks, and I
gotta go this way to get to town, let’s just act like the feud
isn't there 'till we get where we’re going. It’s only two days
after all.”

Thane stopped eyeing the dark to look
at her. For the first time since meeting him, he did not try to
blame her for having ulterior motives. He was willing to agree to a
tentative peace between them. The dark made it easy.