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Page 5

 

  Of course there were other kinds of trades, Matty knew, though he didnt fully understand. He had heard murmurs about them. There were trades for things you didnt see. Those were the most dangerous trades.

  "Theyre in here. " Jean opened the door to the storage shed attached to the house at the back of the kitchen. Matty entered and knelt beside the mother dog where she lay on a folded blanket. The tiny puppy, motionless but for its labored breathing, lay in the curve of her belly, the way any puppy would. But a healthy pup would have been wiggling and sucking. This one should have been pawing at its mother for milk.

  Matty knew dogs. He loved them. Gently he touched the puppy with his finger. Then, startled, he jerked his hand away. He had felt something painful.

  Oddly, it made him think of lightning.

  He remembered how he had been instructed, even as a small boy back in his old place, to go indoors during a thunderstorm. He had seen a tree split and blackened by a lightning strike, and he knew that it could happen to a human: the flash and the burning power that would surge through you, looking for a place to enter the earth.

  He had watched through the window and seen great fiery bolts split the sky, and he had smelled the sulfurous smell that they sometimes left behind.

  There was a man in Village, a farmer, who had stood in the field beside his plow, waiting as dark clouds gathered overhead, hoping the storm would pass by. The lightning had found him there, and though the farmer had survived, he had lost all his memory but for the sensation of raw power that had entered him that afternoon. People tended him now, and he helped with farm chores, but his energy was gone, taken away by the mysterious energy that lived in lightning.

  Matty had felt this sensation—the one of pulsating power, as if he had the power of lightning within his own self—in the clearing, on a sunny day with no storm brewing.

  He had tried to put it out of his mind afterward, any thoughts of the day it had happened, because it frightened him so and made him have a secret, which he did not want. But Matty knew, pulling his hand from the ailing puppy, that it was time to test it once again.

  "Wheres your father?" he asked Jean. He wanted no one to watch.

  "He had a meeting to go to. You know about the petition?"

  Matty nodded. Good. The schoolteacher was not around.

  "I dont think he really even cares about the meeting. He just wants to see Stocktenders widow. Hes courting her. " Jean spoke with affectionate amusement. "Can you imagine? Courting, at his age?"

  He needed the girl to be gone. Matty thought. "I want you to go to Herbalists. Get yarrow. "

  "I have yarrow in my own garden! Right beside the door!" Jean replied.

  He didnt need yarrow, not really. He needed her gone. Matty thought quickly. "Spearmint? Lemon balm? Catnip? Do you have all of those?"

  She shook her head. "No catnip. If cats were attracted to my garden, the dog would make a terrible fuss.

  "Wouldnt you, poor thing?" she said sweetly, leaning down to murmur to the dying mother dog. She stroked the dogs back but it did not lift its head. Its eyes were beginning to glaze.

  "Go," Matty told her in an urgent voice. "Get those things. "

  "Do you think theyll help?" Jean asked dubiously. She took her hand from the dog and stood, but she lingered.

  "Just go!" Matty ordered.

  "You neednt use a rude tone, Matty," Jean said with an edge in her voice. But she turned with a flounce of her skirt and went. He barely heard the sound of the door closing behind her. Steeling himself against the painful vibrating shock that he knew would go through his entire body, Matty placed his left hand on the mother dog, his right on the puppy, and willed them to live.

  ***

  An hour later, Matty stumbled home, exhausted. Back at Mentors house, Jean was feeding the mother dog and giggling at the antics of the lively puppy.

  "Who would have thought of that combination of herbs? Isnt it amazing!" she had said in delight, watching the creatures revive.

  "Lucky guess. " He let Jean believe it was the herbs. She was distracted by the sudden liveliness of the dogs and didnt even notice how weak Matty was. He sat leaning against the wall in the shed and watched her tend them. But his vision was slightly blurred and his whole body ached.

  Finally, when he had regained a little strength, he forced himself to stand and leave. Fortunately his own homeplace was empty. The blind man was out somewhere, and Matty was glad of that. Seer would have noticed something wrong. He could always feel it. He said the atmosphere in the homeplace changed, as if wind had shifted, if Matty had so much as a cold.

  And this was much more. He staggered into his room off the kitchen and lay down on his bed, breathing hard. Matty had never felt so weak, so drained. Except for the frog. . .

  The frog was smaller, he thought. But it was the same thing.

  He had come across the little frog by chance, in the clearing. He had no reason to be there that day; he had simply wanted to be alone, away from busy Village, and had gone into Forest to get away, as he did sometimes.

  Barefoot, he had stepped on the frog, and was startled. "Sorry!" he had said playfully, and reached down to pick the little fellow up. "Are you all right? You should have hopped away when you heard me coming. "

  But the frog wasnt all right, and couldnt have escaped with a hop. It hadnt been Mattys light step that had injured it; he could see that right away. Some creature—Matty thought probably a fox or weasel—had inflicted a terrible wound upon the small green thing, and the frog was almost dead of it. One leg dangled, torn away from the body, held there only by an oozing bit of ragged tissue. In his hand, the frog drew a shuddering breath and then was still.

  "Someone chewed you up and spit you out," Matty said. He was sympathetic but matter-of-fact. The hard life and quick death of Forests creatures were everyday things. "Well," he said, "Ill give you a nice burial. "

  He knelt to dig out a spot with his hands in the mossy earth. But when he tried to set the little body down, he found that he was connected to it in a way that made no sense. A painful kind of power surged from his hand, flowing into the frog, and held them bound together.

  Confused and alarmed, he tried to scrape the sticky body of the frog off his hand. But he couldnt. The vibrating pain held them connected. Then, after a moment, while Matty knelt, still mystified by what was happening, the frogs body twitched.

  "So youre not dead. Get off of me, then. " Now he was able to drop the frog to the ground. The stab of pain eased.

  "What was that all about?" Matty found himself talking to the frog as if it might be able to reply. "I thought you were dead, but you werent. Youre going to lose your leg, though. And your hopping days are over. Im sorry for that. "

  He stood and looked down at the impassive frog. Churrump. Its throat made the sound.

  "Yes. I agree. Same to you. " Matty turned to leave.

  Churrump.

  The sound compelled him to go back and to kneel again. The frogs wide-open eyes, which had been glazed with death only a few moments before, were now clear and alert. It stared at Matty.

  "Look, Im going to put you over here in the ferns, because if you stay in the open, some other creature will come along and gobble you up. You have a big disadvantage now, not being able to hop away. Youll have to learn to hide. "

  He picked up the frog and carried it to the thicket of high ferns. "If I had my knife with me," he told it, "Id probably just slice through those threads that are holding your leg. Then maybe you could heal more quickly. As it is, youll be dragging that leg around and it will burden you. But theres nothing I can do. "

  He leaned down to turn it loose, still thinking about how best to help it. "Maybe I can find a sharp rock and slice through. Its just a tiny bit of flesh and it probably wouldnt even pain you if I did it.

  "You stay right here," Matty commanded, and placed the frog on the earth beside the ferns. As if it could bop, he thought.


  Back at the edge of the small stream he had crossed, Matty found what he needed as a tool: a bit of rock with a sharp edge. He took it back to where the wounded frog lay, immobilized by its wound.

  "Now," Matty told the frog, "dont be scared. Im going to spread you out a bit and then carefully cut that dead leg away. Its the best thing for you. " He turned the frog onto its back and touched the shredded leg, meaning to arrange it in a way that would make the amputation simple and fast. There were only a few sticky strands of flesh to slice through.

  But he felt a sudden jolt of painful energy enter his arm, concentrated in his fingertips. Matty was unable to move. His hand grasped the nearly severed leg and he could feel his own blood moving through its vessels. His pulse thrummed and he could hear the sound of it.

  Terrified, Matty held his breath for what seemed forever. Then it all stopped. The thing that had happened ended. He lifted his hand tentatively from the wounded frog.

  Churrump.

  Churrump.

  "Im leaving now. I dont know what happened, but Im leaving now. " He dropped the sharp rock and tried to rise, but his knees were weak and he felt dizzy and sick. Still kneeling beside the frog, Matty took a few long breaths, trying to get his strength again so that he could flee.

  Churrump.

  "Stop it. I dont want to hear that. "

  As if it understood what Matty had said, the frog turned, flopping itself over from its belly-up position, and moved toward the ferns. But it was not dragging a useless leg. Both legs were moving—awkwardly, to be sure, but the frog was propelling itself with both legs. It disappeared into the clump of quivering ferns.

  After a moment Matty was able to stand. Desperately tired, he had made his way out of Forest and stumbled home.

  ***

  Now, lying on his bed, he felt the same exhaustion, magnified. His arms ached. Matty thought about what had happened. The frog was very small. This was two dogs.

  This was bigger.

  I must learn to control it, Matty told himself.

  Then, surprisingly, he began to cry. Matty had a boyish pride in the fact that he never cried. But now he wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  Finally, shuddering with exhaustion, he wiped his eyes, turned on his side, and slept, though it was still midday. The sun was high in the sky over Village. Matty dreamed of vague, frightening things connected to pain, and his body was tense even as he slept. Then his dream changed. His muscles relaxed and he became serene in his sleep. He was dreaming now of healed wounds, new life, and calm.

  6

  "New ones coming! And theres a pretty girl among them!"

  Ramon called to Matty but didnt stop. He was hurrying past, eager to get to Villages entrance place, where new ones always came in. There was, in fact, a Welcome sign there, though many new ones, they had discovered, could not read. Matty had been one of those. The word welcome had meant nothing to him then.

  "I saw it but couldnt read it," he had said to Seer once, "and you could have read it but you couldnt see it. "

  "Were quite a pair, arent we? No wonder we get along so well together. " The blind man had laughed.

  "May I go? Im almost done here. " When Ramon ran past and called to them, Matty and the blind man had been clearing out the garden, pulling up the last of the overgrown pea vines. Their season was long past. Soon summer would end. They would be storing the root vegetables soon.