Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light

“We’re here.”

I was holding Zeke’s hand now, feeling my bones creak under the desperate pressure as I looked up to see Leo, the no-name girl, and her fat dog in the doorway. Both had been coming by every day for food as I’d invited them to. Leo said she hadn’t been by yet this morning. I’d known it wouldn’t be long before she showed up. Koko’s round stomach needed maintaining. The girl might be able to hold off on breakfast herself, but he wouldn’t be willing to. Little pig. The dog grinned as if he knew what I was thinking and wriggled his butt in a spring for the bed. I shook my head at him. That motion would have Zeke screaming in pain. “Later, Koko.”

He sighed, then made for the nearest rug and rolled a good handful of brown hair on it, then rested on his back, happy as happy can be. All across his pink stomach were scars, crisscrossed . . . everywhere. Too many for even the best vet to fix. I’d seen that the first day I’d spotted the girl and her dog. I’d known then what she could do. “So you fixed Franken-doggy, did you?” I said to her.

The brown hair fell like a curtain, barely concealing her suspicious blue eyes. “He was like that when I found him.”

“Sure he was,” I said lightly. I’d known all along she was special, just as Zeke and Griffin were special. I had a knack for that; our whole family did—passed from generation to wandering generation. We’d seen it all in the way that only those who wanted to, had to cross every hill they saw could. If it existed, one of us had seen it. “Come over here, would you?”

I don’t think she would have, but Leo was at her back and she wasn’t leaving her dog. Not for anything. She moved closer to the bed. “Figure out your name yet?” I asked.

“No.” She hesitated and moved closer. “Your friend. He’s sick. He’s getting better, but he’s still really sick.”

“Yes, he is.” I patted the air above the bed and she slowly and carefully sat. Even so, Zeke’s teeth went through his bottom lip, blood welling, and I heard Griffin stagger in the shower. “It would be an amazing thing, a wonderful thing if you could do to him what you did to Franken-pup. He hurts, Whisper. He hurts. . . .”

“So much,” she finished in a stronger voice than her name. “And how did you know that’s my name? I didn’t even know.”

“You whisper the pain away. That’s what healers do.” I reached over and took her slightly grubby hand and laid it on Zeke’s chest. “Whisper our friend’s away. Please.”

And after a brief pause, she did. She leaned in and whispered in his ear. I couldn’t hear what she said. If I could have, I’m not sure it would’ve made sense to me. I wasn’t a healer . . . far from it. Her hand continued to rest on his chest as she whispered. It started to shake for a moment, but I rested mine on top of hers and kept it in place. The power that hummed under my skin was incredible. It took a long time, or maybe it only seemed that way. An hour or minutes. I hadn’t checked the clock. The first thing that let me know it was over was not Zeke; it was Griffin. I heard an exhalation so deep and sharp that I wasn’t surprised to hear him fall against the porcelain next. It sounded like his knees that hit. I assumed he was all right when I heard him breathe his partner ’s name in pure relief.

Zeke opened his eyes. Not in surprise or shock or even curiosity at being healed or the sudden lack of pain. Because that was Zeke, living . . . no, existing in the moment. “I’m hungry,” he announced. He looked at the girl. “Are you hungry?”

Small white teeth flashed as she nodded. “Me, and Koko too.”

We sent out for pizza while the dog ate the leftover meat loaf and Zeke took the next shower, squeezing his partner’s shoulder through the robe as he passed him, silently saying what Zeke himself had trouble even understanding. Griffin hit the bed and was asleep literally in midair. He hadn’t woken up long ago, but the relief from pain had him out again. The girl . . . Whisper . . . watched Zeke walk to the tub with something like awe and fear. “He’s strange—inside his head. Different than everyone else.” She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear marked with multiple piercings. “I couldn’t fix that.”

“Good,” I said matter-of-factly, sitting on the rug and rubbing the dog’s belly. “Some things can’t be fixed and some things shouldn’t be fixed and some things aren’t yours to fix.”

“So . . .” She knelt beside me and tickled under Ko ko’s chin. “You’ve seen someone like me before. Someone who can fix animals and people.”

“Once. But she was really old and gone by now, I think.” Her eyes dulled in disappointment. “But,” I went on, “this sort of thing tends to run in families. I was thinking about sending you down there. Louisiana. Her family likes me. They’ll take you in. Teach you what they know if they have any other healers there, and I imagine they do. It’s a big family.”

“You’d do that? You’d do that for me?” she said with a huge amount of suspicion and only a sprinkling of hope.

“Why not?” I grabbed Koko’s nose and gave it a good shake. “If I’d help those two troublemakers.” I nodded toward a snoring Griffin and a wet, naked Zeke. “Damn it, Zeke. The shower curtain?”

“Oh. Sorry.” He pulled the curtain around the tub, then stuck his head back out, hair soaking. “I am supposed to be sorry, right?” He took my glare as a yes and jerked his head back in.

“If I’d help them,” I snorted, “why in the world wouldn’t I help you? Besides, I’ve already needed a healer once. I might need one again someday and you’ll owe me.”

“Maybe you’ll owe me for healing the naked guy,” she shot back, and folded her arms defiantly.

“I like you.” I smiled widely. “Damned if I don’t. And you know what? Maybe I will.”

In a few hours I had her cleaned up with a suitcase of new clothes, a bus ticket to Louisiana, and a bright red collar for Koko along with a brand-spanking-new carrier. It had cushions and toys. All the bells and whistles. I could’ve lived in that thing. I also gave her three hundred dollars and a knife. “Put the money in your shoe,” I ordered. “And the knife . . .” I held it up to the sun. It was transparent and gleamed bright enough to make you shield your eyes. “It’s glass, so it won’t set off any metal detectors. Use it if you have to and run like hell if you do. Cops are an aggravation you don’t need.”

She slipped it into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her shirt over it before zipping up the bottom half of her jacket. The authorities might search her bag, but they wouldn’t search her. Not a thirteen-year-old, who looked more like eleven and who, I was betting, could cry crocodile tears of fake fear at the drop of a hat. “The world’s not a very nice place, is it?”

I considered that for a moment. It was something I hadn’t had the luxury to really think about in a while . . . not with Kimano and the Light. “I think that it’s not nice but it’s not that bad either. It’s like a peach. There are some bad spots, a few just mushy ones, and then some really great juicy bites.”

Blue eyes ringed with a thick line of deep, dark purple liner—kids—took that in and she sighed. “That was so lame.”

I tugged at the red streak I’d dyed at the front of her light brown hair a few hours before. I’d called ahead, but I told her this way they’d know she was from me for sure. Red was my signature. I tended to leave it wherever I went. I said, “When you’ve got a better one, come back and tell me.”

Her bus was due at the terminal soon and I left her at the curb with a backpack of clothes, my number curled in one hand, and the handle of Koko’s carrier in the other. I could’ve parked and gone and waited for the bus with her, but in this life she was going to have to be strong. Now was the time to start. Because she was right . . . the peach thing was lame. The world was a whirlwind of life and excitement and danger and death, a kite soaring high or plummeting to a crumpled wreck on the ground. You had to be prepared . . . from day one. This was her day one.