Craft (2 page)

Ellie slowly walked through the tall
grass, lost in worry over the attack on Cousin. She was worried her
family’s retribution would come at an unreasonable price. Cousin
had only barely gotten away. What would the Coopers do to him next
time? Would Neveah get involved? Ellie knew that would only spell
trouble.

The tall grass ended at the front of
Ellie’s shack. Thick vines and overhanging trees created the
illusion her shack had sprung from the forest completely formed.
Ellie liked the vines covering her shack the most. Vines were the
hardest of plants to manipulate with craft. Her sisters could never
manage to move them beyond a few inches. It was one reason Neveah
had been so willing to give the shack away. She hadn't thought
Ellie would be able to get inside. Ellie had no trouble getting the
vines to obey her craft. It was easy, as easy as raising her
hand.

With a gesture, Ellie made the vines
part. With another, a wooden door she had painted yellow opened.
She waved her hand again as she entered, and the candles she had
placed throughout the shack lit up as one.

Though the exterior was humble at
best, the interior was well-loved and exceptionally well crafted.
Ellie had taken special care to make her refuge as comfortable as
possible. She had spent months perfecting her home. She had made a
sofa and a small coffee table with her craft; flowers she changed
daily were on the table. The floors, walls and ceiling were the
same red wood throughout, though Ellie’s extensive book collection
took up most of the floor and walls. The books were stacked at
uneven intervals around the cramped space. Candles were on top of
the book stacks. The wax from the candles did not drip on to her
books. Ellie made sure of that.

Items Ellie had picked up from her
cleaning and the others’ trips to town were spaced around her book
collection. They were reminders of the others’ adventures. They
were proof that town existed. Despite the seeming chaos of so much
stuffed in a small space, there was warmth and peace. It was a
haven in the dark.

Ellie picked up a book off the coffee
table and settled on the sofa to wait for Cousin and her sisters to
stop talking. She figured they would be cursing the Coopers for a
while. She was barely two pages into her book, however, when she
heard Neveah call her name. It was not a call in the typical sense;
it was a long-distance shout the Bumbalows had perfected with their
craft. A person could be miles away and still hear the call. Neveah
was queen at it. There were times when Ellie thought she would be
able to hear her name called from across the world.

“Ellie! Get in here!” Neveah
yelled.

Ellie automatically rose. Not
responding as quickly as possible would spell trouble. Neveah did
not like to wait. She was too impatient. Ellie rushed out of her
shack. She waved her hand once. The candles went out, the door
opened, and the vines peeled back to reveal the sun once more. She
waved her hand to close the door and replace the vines. She did not
look back as she ran through the tall grass. She trusted her
craft.

Neveah was waiting for Ellie in the
kitchen. Her foot tapped out an impatient beat on the wooden floor.
Ellie slid to a stop in front of Neveah, gasping for breath and
sweaty from the run in the heat.

“What took you so long?” Neveah
asked.

Careen, who was sitting at the small
kitchen table to the right of the door, snickered. Careen was the
middle sister and had long ago figured out that agreeing with
Neveah’s teasing was easier than standing up for her little sister.
It meant less trouble and an easier time getting what she wanted.
Ellie thought the way Careen always agreed with Neveah was the
reason Careen looked so soft around the edges, where Neveah was so
sharp and pointed. Neveah had taken all of Careen’s sharp edges for
herself. Ellie ignored Careen and focused on Neveah.

“What do you want?” Ellie
asked.

“Cousin got business in town. We're
gonna go and make sure he ain’t bothered,” Neveah said. “I want the
chores done by the time we get back. And if dinner ain’t on the
table, there’ll be trouble.”

“Can’t I come?” Ellie
asked.

Ellie knew Neveah would not agree to
take her along. Ellie always asked to go to town, and Neveah always
said no. Ellie hoped that one day the answer would be yes. The hope
kept her asking.

“Of course not, stupid,” Neveah said.
“You don’t want them mean, old Coopers to get you.”

Neveah poked Ellie in the chest with
her words. Careen and Neveah laughed at the expression on Ellie’s
face: fear for the Coopers mingled with irritation at
Neveah.

With a smirk at Ellie, Neveah left the
house with Careen on her heels. Cousin was waiting outside in his
truck. He was smoking his pipe as he sat behind the wheel. He
impatiently gestured at Neveah and Careen when they appeared at the
kitchen door. He was past ready to leave. The sisters hurried to
join him, slamming the door of his truck hard as soon as they were
inside. The rumbling of the truck switched sounds as Cousin changed
the gear to drive. It gave a choking sputter, and then the truck
lurched forward.

Ellie watched them drive away from
behind the screen-door. She was jealous of her sisters. She wished
more than anything that she was going with them. It was not just
the fact that she wanted to see town more than she wanted to see
anything in the world.

She knew Cousin’s business was not any
business beyond retribution. They were after blood: pain for pain.
Ellie wanted to make sure her family stayed safe while they
searched for that retribution. She would not get so lost in revenge
that she would allow others to be hurt.

Ellie had endured a lot from her
family over the years but she did not want to see them murdered.
She did not want another family member to fall by some unknown
Coopers’ hand. She sighed once as Cousin and her sisters
disappeared from view. There was nothing she could do to help – she
had to stay and do as Neveah had commanded. Anything else was just
foolish hope.

Ellie turned away from the door and
refocused on her chores. She swept, mopped and wiped down all the
surfaces without craft, aware Neveah and Careen would know if she
cut any corners. They could not feel craft the way she did, but
they could easily see the difference between doing things by hand
and doing it with craft. It was a subtlety that made a profound
difference to Ellie’s back, knees and neck.

When Ellie finished cleaning the
entire house, she started dinner. By the time the chicken had
finished baking, her sisters came home again. They did not come
alone. Ellie heard the sound of chattering and the slamming of car
doors before the front door opened. The sound was loud and full of
cheer. Ellie knew what it meant. The family had come to
visit.

In the next moment, her house filled
up with more people than it could contain. Aunts, uncles, cousins,
second cousins, and extended family circled the living room, the
den, and the kitchen where Ellie was standing. It was like a wave
of people breaking over Ellie’s house: a dirty, sweaty, wave of
people. Dirt was tracked all over her clean floors as they entered.
She would have to clean them all over again. No one looked at her.
No one even noticed her standing by the kitchen table.

Cousin’s wife, Eugenia, wrinkled her
nose when she saw Ellie’s tiny chicken on the table. She waved a
hand and rows of delicious food appeared, all but making Ellie’s
chicken invisible. Ellie’s family instantly turned at the crafted
food, not needing words to know it was there. They had a second
sense about food and drink. They always knew where to find both.
They dug into the food, even as their chatter filled up the space
between people.

Ellie was resigned to the scene
playing out in front of her. She knew that there was nothing she
could do about their mess or their presence. She had no say in such
matters. Instead of trying to keep the mess in check, she focused
on why they were there, the reason they had come to her
house.

From the talk surrounding her, Ellie
was able to figure out that the retaliation to the attack on Cousin
had gone well. Her kin had come to celebrate the victory. She was
not sure what had happened exactly, but she knew the Coopers had
certainly paid for hurting Cousin. Neveah, Careen and Cousin had
put them in their place.

Deciding the heat was unbearable with
the added bodies, Ellie moved through the crowd and went outside.
As she wove her way around her family, she saw Neveah in the far
corner of the kitchen talking with her boyfriend. Careen was at the
food Eugenia had crafted. Cousin was missing, though it was
difficult to see beyond what the kitchen offered. The people
blocked the living room from view. No one noticed Ellie as she
forced her way through to the kitchen door.

There were a lot of people milling
around on Ellie’s yard, but the air was not quite so thick. Bodies
were not pressing into bodies, with limited space to move, making
the summer evening feel hotter. The noise from the house followed
her outside. People called to each other across her yard. Cousin
was setting up instruments near the steps of her front porch.
Someone had crafted food for the people outside. Tables were placed
at random intervals; cars lined the interstate and filled up her
driveway. The summer evening was alive with the feel of so many
people at her house. Ellie went to Cousin, hoping for news of
town.

“Hey, Cousin,” Ellie said.

“What’s going on, girly?” he asked in
his gruff voice.

“Usual. Nothing changes around here,”
Ellie said.

Cousin nodded approvingly. His
light-colored eyes and weathered face reflected his approval. He
was not as opposed to things never changing as Ellie
was.

“Things is that way for a good
reason,” Cousin said.

Ellie sighed. She had heard those
words almost as much as she had heard words of hatred for the
Coopers. It was best not to reach for more. Things were ‘that way
for a reason.’ There was never an explanation of why things had to
stay the same. No one ever told her why her adventures could not
step beyond her imagination. Things just were. Things would always
be that way. She had her place in the family. It was best not to
argue with that. Their unexplained logic frustrated her. She did
not try to argue with Cousin. It would get her nowhere
quick.

“Did you get the Coopers back?” Ellie
asked him, hoping for a story.

If she could not have her own
adventures, she would settle for his.

“That we did, girly,” Cousin
said.

Cousin plucked at his banjo, and a
foul note resonated around the yard. He stuck his tongue between
his front teeth and started tuning the instrument. He immediately
forgot about Ellie. He focused on tuning the pegs, not offering the
story behind their attack on the Coopers. Ellie was used to such
treatment. People often forgot about her, even when they were
talking to her. It happened so much she had come to expect it.
Ellie was not as interested in the attack as she was the idea of
where Cousin and the others had been. She wanted to know about
town. She wanted someone to give in and tell her the truth about
what it was like. She wanted the truth to go with the visuals she
had formed in her mind.

“Cousin…” she said after a moment of
listening to him perfect the sound of the banjo. “What’s it like in
town? I mean, besides the Coopers…”

Cousin shook his head at her question.
His tough, old skin wobbled in time to his headshake. He was not
happy with her question. It was not her place to ask such
things.

“Too dangerous for a little girl,”
Cousin said. “Run along now, we got a party to start.”

Disappointed but resigned to his
answer, Ellie walked away. The instruments ready, Cousin and four
others started playing a high-energy song. People cheered as the
music started. They immediately started dancing in front of the
musicians with wild abandon and cheerful singing. Soon, laughter
and song filled the air as much as the strong southern dialect of
dozens of conversations.

Ellie sat at the table farthest from
the dancing and watched the festivities without joining in. Kids
raced around the dancing people, playing tag and making up games as
they ran. The adults who were not dancing talked in groups and in
pairs around the yard. They made a lot of noise as they talked,
their cheer spilling out over the yard as much as the music. There
were plenty of teenagers her age scattered across the yard, talking
and sharing secrets. They tried to impress each other with their
craft and bragged about made-up fights with the Coopers. She did
not seek them out. She had never been friends with her cousins.
Neveah’s bullying had made sure of that. Anyone with any sense
avoided Ellie to avoid Neveah’s acidic tongue and powerful
craft.

Instead of enjoying the people around
her, Ellie focused on the mess they were making. She knew she would
be the one to have to clean it all. It would take her most of the
day tomorrow, and she knew Neveah would expect her regular chores
done as well. She watched her family as an outsider would have, not
able to help but laugh at their wild abandon and cheer, despite the
way they acted as if she did not exist. They could not help but be
entertaining.