Nate Kenyon - The Reach

Perhaps in time, she would be able to give it.

One crisp fall afternoon, less than two weeks after they had arrived at the Voorsanger farm, Sarah took Jess by the hand and led her outside. Patrick was in the kitchen helping Cristina clean up after lunch, and Annie was napping in the bedroom upstairs.

Sarah pulled her eagerly down the path and to the rear of the barn. “I want to show you something,” she said, her eyes shining. “You know how I’ve been feeling better lately? My chest is almost healed. The scab came off today, and it’s only a little pink and puckered there now. Before, I couldn’t do… you know. Maybe a little, but not much. But now…”

She turned and faced a small drift of leaves that had piled up against the side of the barn. Her little face screwed itself up into a look of deep concentration.

It was a particularly calm day, not a cloud in the sky. But suddenly a touch of wind wafted over them, the temperature plunged, and the pile of leaves swirled and lifted up, bits and pieces drifting and darting around their faces.

“You see?” Sarah said, turning back to her as the debris settled around their feet. Her little face was shining with pride. “I can control it just fine, nothing happens now. I can do whatever I want, and nothing bad happens!”

Jess touched the girl’s face. “Good for you,” she said. “Good for you, Sarah.”

But the girl had something else in mind today. “Now you do it,” she said.

“I can’t, honey. I’m not like you.”

“Sure you can,” she said, insistent. “You just close your eyes, and reach out, and you… push. Just push. Try it. Please?”

Jess felt a fluttering in her chest, and frowned. In the weeks since the accident she had sensed something different about herself, something foreign that had settled down to live deep inside her breast. But it had been so long since she had taken any of the drug, surely whatever effect it might have had on her was long gone now.

She turned back to the remains of the leaf pile. The wind had died down, and the sun felt warm on the back of her neck. “Go on,” Sarah said eagerly. “Try it.”

Jess closed her eyes. She imagined herself reaching out with long fingers like wind, pictured the leaves lifting themselves up and scattering before her touch.

Inside her mind, something twitched; she opened her eyes to see the slightest breath go whispering through the pile. A single cracked and brown leaf trembled at the edge of the ground, whirled and lifted up as if suspended in the air, and then drifted down again and was still.

“There,” Sarah said, into the silence, into the cold and still loneliness of the bright fall afternoon. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you so.”

Jess nodded. She wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered.

On the long walk back to the house, Sarah reached out and took her hand. Her grip was warm, and Jess’s hand remained so long after she had let go.