Lament - Мэгги Стифватер

Sighing, I set down the large present and took the little one from her. Tearing off the patterned blue paper, I found a little jewelry box, but when I opened it, its white satin center was empty. I looked up at Granna, quizzical.

She slid the dull ring, the one she'd shown Luke, from her finger and laid it in the box. "It was my mother's, and her grandmother's before. And now it's yours. I suspected you were old enough to need it, and now I'm sure."

No, what I needed was Luke back in the driveway and Granna to be normal for once. I looked at the ring. I didn't like jewelry anyway, but even if I did, this ring was pretty darn ugly.

I said, my voice icy, "Uh, thanks."

"Put it on," Granna said. "You'll thank me later."

I put it on my right-hand ring finger, and Granna's smile became genuine. "Thank you. Now, I'm going to get out of the heat and go see my frantic daughter and my scheming daughter." She took the large package and headed indoors.

I stayed outside, staring down at the ring on my finger.

I was curiously close to tears, which is how James found me five minutes later when he pulled into the driveway. Where Luke's car had just been.

He came to me and took my arms. "What are you doing?"

"Being pushed around."

"Let's go inside and talk about it."

With Delia and Mom and Granna? "Let's not."

As if to illustrate my point, Delia's voice rose from the kitchen window. James glanced at the window and then back to me. "Okay. Into the shade, at least?"

I agreed and we walked into the back yard. Knees pulled up, I sat against one of the massive oaks, its broad trunk shielding me from the view of the house. James sat down in front of me, his knees nearly touching mine. For a long moment he just looked at me, serious. I was so taken aback by this side of him that I almost blurted out everything that had just happened.

But James spoke first. "I have a confession to make."

My heart lurched. I had a horrible idea of what he was going to say, and I wanted to cover my ears. Don't, James. You're my best friend.

He didn't say it. Instead, he said, "I'm a little psychic." He paused. "You may laugh now. But only a little bit. Fifteen seconds is probably appropriate, without being rudely disbelieving."

I didn't laugh. "I believe you."

"Oh. Well, that makes it easier, doesn't it?" James glanced toward the house and pushed his fingers through his auburn hair. "Mind you, I'm not a very good psychic.

But I get hunches, and they turn out right. And weird feelings when it's going to be a weird day.

Not very often. Peter says it happens to him too." Peter was James' older brother, on pilgrimage in California to find fame and fortune with his rock band. James idolized him, and I thought he was pretty cool, too--maybe the only other non-family member besides James that I could talk to.

James chewed his lip before continuing. "Yesterday was weird. And today was weird, too. I had a hunch I'd find you upset, so I left practice early. What's going on?"

All of a sudden, it seemed stupid not to have told him everything from the beginning. So I told him. I left out the bits where Luke had touched me, and the feeling of Luke's lips on my ear, but the rest I told him, as best as I could remember.

He took the key when I offered it, and the ring from my finger, and studied both. "They're both iron. Isn't that funny?"

"Funny 'haha' or funny 'strange'?"

James handed them back. "Funny 'occult.'" "Ah. Funny 'strange.'" James looked at me sternly. "Don't start that. I'm supposed to be the humorous one." He watched me put the ring back on and pocket the key again. "Iron's supposed to be a ward against evil supernatural creatures, if you're into that magic druid crap."

I couldn't help goading him. "If it's magic druid crap, why do you know about it?"

"A man should be well educated."

"Well, Granna is into that," I pointed out. "She's into all that holistic/natural/spiritual stuff.

Cosmic debris. She once told me the color of my aura."

"Mine's tartan," James said. He took my hand in his writ-ten-upon ones and turned the ring on my finger, absently. It reminded me of Luke's hand on mine, earlier. How can two hands feel so different? "And the clover? The one that you moved this morning? Do you still have it?"

"Thought I moved," I corrected, and shook my head. "Yeah." I shifted my weight so I could pull it from my pocket.

"So move it."

I looked hard at him.

"Well, if you can't move it, like you said, it won't move, and you won't have to worry about it anymore, will you? But if it does--well, then you're a freak." James grinned. He plucked the slightly crushed clover from my finger and set it in the sparse grass beneath the tree. "Go, go, magic clover."

"I feel foolish." I did. We were like two kids hunched over a Ouija board, part of us hoping for something strange to happen, proving the world a mysterious place, and the rest of us hoping desperately for nothing to happen, proving the world safe and free of monsters. I cupped my hand, like earlier that morning, making a little goal for the clover to shoot into. "Come on, clover."

A breeze kissed the sweat on my forehead. The clover tumbled end-over-end into my hand.

James closed his eyes. "It makes me frigid when you do that."

"It was the breeze." It was just the breeze.

He shook his head, and opened his eyes again. "I always get cold when I get one of my weird feelings, and that just about hit glacier-cold on the weirdness chart. Do it again. You'll see. Next to my leg, where there's no breeze."

I picked up the clover and set it down in the shadow of his leg. Cupping my hand, I said faintly, "Come on, clover." The clover and several other leaves rustled, and then skipped across the ground into my hand. A huge, dry collection of leaves, the color of summer, pressed against my fingers.

"Telekinesis." James' voice was as soft as the rustling of the leaves, and when I looked at him, I could see goose bumps standing out on his tanned legs. "Suddenly the world seems a lot more interesting."

What it seemed was a lot less ordinary.

FOUR

Tuesday. Wednesday. Two days crawled by. James came by, but he wasn't who I wanted to see. I might be able to move spoons without touching them and make clover sail like tiny ships across my bedstand, but I couldn't bring back what Granna had driven off. Nor could I vanquish the little voice that said he'd been driven off fairly easily.

"Deirdre, you haven't practiced for days." Mom pushed open the door of my room and frowned. I was lying on my back, studying the ceiling, and the techno CD James had given me for my birthday was shaking every flat surface in the room in time with the bass line. Mom turned off the stereo. "I didn't know you liked that sort of stuff."

"I do now." It came out sounding recalcitrant, but it was actually true. I'd never listened to techno before, but I was a sucker for good music of any sort. And the pounding monotony of the tracks perfectly matched what was going on in my head. Time passing for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Mom opened the door wide. "Don't be sour. Go practice. Get out of this room. You make me nervous when you aren't doing something."

"Fine, whatever. I'll practice. I'm going outside to do it, though."

"It's almost dark, you know."

I slid off the bed. I didn't want to sit inside and have an ordinary night practicing. "Cooler."

She followed me downstairs and watched me gather up my harp, then trailed me to the back door. Abruptly, she bent down and picked something off the kitchen floor. "Deirdre, I told you to press these things in a book if you want to keep them. I'm tired of picking them up." She stuffed a four-leaf clover into my hand.

Good for driving away snakes. Curing scorpion bites. Seeing faeries.

Feeling rebellious, I pulled off Granna's iron ring and set it on the counter before I went outside.

Maybe I didn't want evil supernatural beings scared away tonight. Maybe the person I wanted to see qualified as one.

Outside, it was all the rich golds and dull blues of twilight, with long shadows cutting across the yard in the shapes of spectral trees. Fireflies glowed in the tall grass on the edge of the yard, and a mourning dove called, low and sad and beautiful. I found a seat on the crook of a tree and leaned my harp against my shoulder. I didn't know what to play, so I just let a little lonesome tune escape from the strings. I really ought to have played an I'm a Pining Idiot tune instead.

Mysterious. Extraordinary. That's what I wanted. I began to play a slow reel, "The Maids of Mitchelltown," a tune that promised mystery. The wind lifted the leaves of the trees; it was scented with mown grass, flowers, and thyme.

My fingers stilled and I lifted my head, catching the breeze again. I wondered if I'd imagined the smell. But no, the scent of thyme was undoubtedly there. Not only there, but getting stronger. I squinted at the shadows around me, trying to catch the direction, but it was impossible.

A shadow flicked across one of the bright strips of evening sun, and I jerked to look at it. There was nothing there. Then, between two of the oaks at the edge of the yard, I saw a form. The face looked at me and smiled--red-haired, freckled, reeking of thyme.

The kid from the reception. I blinked, and in that second, he was next to a beech tree, ten feet closer. My skin crawled.

"Beautiful night."

The voice was right beside me.

In the second it took for my blood to run hot with adrenaline, I swung a hard fist, feeling skin beneath my knuckles.

"God," groaned Luke from next to me. "Remind me never to sneak up on you."

My breath caught in my throat. I suppose I should've felt embarrassed, but I was too overwhelmed that it was Luke. I laughed in amazement. "I thought you were that freaky guy from the reception."

He stepped into the light, rubbing his jaw. "No, I'm not. Well, I am a guy from the reception."

His light hair picked up the gold of the evening and lent him a brilliant halo. He looked at where the four-leaf clover sat on my leg and took it, making a face. "Why do you seem to always have these with you?"

"Why does it always seem to bother you?" I immediately regretted saying it. The last thing I wanted to do was to drive him away again by violating the rules. "I thought you were gone for good."

Luke crouched next to me. He looked over at the beech tree where the ginger-haired boy had been, his eyes intent, then dragged his gaze back to my face. "You sound so sad, pretty girl."

I looked away, pretending to pout to cover up how I'd felt the past two days. "I was so sad."

"I thought I was gone for good, as well." He settled down, cross-legged, and set his flute case across his lap. "Unfortunately, I'm still fascinated. May I play with you?"

"Even though I punched you?"

"Despite that. Though you didn't say sorry."

"You partially deserved it, for leaving without any warning." I grinned and put my fingers on the strings.

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