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  “Well, tell her we want her to wait our table, not some boy.”

  Speechless, Tarc turned and headed back to the kitchen. He felt stunned on several levels. First, that someone thought Daussie was pretty. Second, that if he were Daussie he wouldn’t want to wait on those animals either. Third, that no matter how annoying he thought Daussie was, he loathed the soldiers for their… attitude towards her.

  Not knowing what to say, when Tarc arrived back in the kitchen he avoided Daussie’s eyes. He simply took his strap from her and went for more wood. Daussie resumed helping Tarc’s mother with meal preparation.

  When Tarc arrived back in the kitchen with another strap of wood he noticed that instead of chattering gaily like Daussie normally did, she performed her tasks silently. Tarc normally found Daussie’s incessant talking a daily annoyance. But, her newborn silence felt like the oppressive quiet that came over a room when someone had died. Tarc’s gut clenched with a dread he couldn’t explain.

  He’d spent much of his life tormenting his sister. Why did it bother him so much when someone else upset her?

  A minute later their mother plunked down three more plates of food. For a moment silence reigned, as if no one really knew what to do with them. Daussie stopped stock still and stared at them like they were snakes. Quietly she said, “Mama… I don’t want to go back out there.”

  Before his mother could turn to him, Tarc picked up the three plates and headed back out to the big room. As he entered Tarc wondered over the fact he was doing his sister’s job without complaint. Irritatedly, he realized he didn’t know which table the plates were for. He looked around the great room and saw that only one table seated three patrons. He headed that way.

  Arriving at the table Tarc asked them if they’d ordered the potatoes and sausage.

  The three men nodded, and Tarc set down their plates, taking their money. He glanced at the two men Daussie hadn’t wanted to serve, but only briefly during his turn back toward the kitchen. He had just begun to wonder whether he needed to take orders from any of the other tables when the big soldier barked at him, “Boy! I thought I told you to send the little blond bint back out here?”

  Panic struck through Tarc and his shoulders stiffened. Rather than respond beyond the momentary halt, he simply continued on his way back to the kitchen.

  Behind himself he heard the unmistakable scrape of the big soldier’s chair sliding back. Then came the paralyzing thump of the big man’s stride as the soldier followed in Tarc’s wake.

  Reaching the kitchen, Tarc hissed at Daussie, “Outside! Now!”

  His mother and his sister stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then, faster than Tarc would have believed, Daussie disappeared out the door. Tarc turned to the large dishwashing tub and industriously plunged his hands into the soapy water before the soldier filled the opening.

  “Boy! Are you ignoring me?!”

  Tarc turned speechlessly to stare at the enormous man with wide eyes.

  His mother, to Tarc’s great surprise, sounded completely unintimidated, “What do you want?” Eva asked in a clipped fashion. She almost always used little pleasantries when speaking to customers, so Tarc felt some surprise that she could be so abrupt.

  The big man turned to her, “I fancy the pretty little blonde wench. I told the retard there,” he indicated Tarc with his eyes, “to send her back to my table, but I haven’t seen her yet. So now I’m telling you.” He lifted an eyebrow, “Send her back to my table when she gets back from wherever she’s gone.”

  Tarc’s mother spoke evenly, in a fashion that belied the fury Tarc could sense in the trembling of the hand that had picked up the big meat cleaver. She said, “I’ve sent her on an errand. And… she’s only thirteen.”

  The big man grinned, showing a gap at his left upper canine, “I’ll be here for a while, so send her in as soon as she gets back. I like ‘em young.”

  The man turned and left without hearing Eva say, “We’re not running that kind of place here!”

  What kind of place? Tarc wondered. But then his mother turned to him and said, “Tell Daussie to run down to the deputies’ station and offer them a free dinner. I have a feeling that man’s going to be trouble.” She wiped her hair back, “Then go out and tell your dad what’s going on. While you’re out there, ask him if there are any new customers you should take orders from.”

  With a feeling of unreality, Tarc dried his hands and stepped outside. He found Daussie huddled behind the coats and the little mud room. Without any of his customary taunts or jibes, he simply passed on his mother’s instructions and then headed back through the kitchen.

  Slipping behind the long bar, Tarc stepped close to his father. He saw that Daum’s eyes were already intensely focused on the big soldier. Without looking at the man himself, Tarc said, “Mama has sent Daussie to the deputy shack to offer them a free dinner. Did you hear what the big man said about Daussie?”

  Tarc’s father only nodded, his jaw working.

  “Mama’s asked me to serve for now. Are there any new customers Daussie didn’t take orders from?”

  “By the door,” his father said, pointing with his chin.

  Their little tavern got busier with the evening crowd. Daussie returned from her errand and continued doing some of the heavy chores that Tarc usually did. Shortly thereafter three of the Sheriff’s deputies showed up for their free dinner. It made Tarc feel much better to have them present in the big room even though he noticed they were much smaller than the stranger. Tarc continued waiting tables, a job he usually hated. Normally, he would have been angry at Daussie for saddling him with it, but instead felt some surprise upon realizing that he didn’t want her to be out to the big room any more than she wanted to be there.

  Suddenly, as he passed the soldiers’ table, he found himself restrained by a meaty hand clamped to his elbow. “Where’s the blond? I told you to send her along.”

  Angrily Tarc said, “She wants nothing to do with you!”

  Tarc found himself jerked violently around to face the soldier. The man’s big knife touched the skin just under Tarc’s breastbone, pointing up towards his heart. With an angry hiss, the man growled, “Did you just disrespect me boy?”

  A sudden silence fell over the tavern as all eyes turned their way. Tarc felt a small squirt of warm piss escape his bladder. His heart thumped hard in his chest. He swallowed. Staring into the big man’s eyes, Tarc felt a preternatural sensation that he could feel things inside the man’s head. He became aware of the globes of the man’s eyes. From his experience in butchering animals brought in by hunters, he suddenly recognized the cavities behind the man’s nose, the gelatinous shape of what must be his brain, the pulsations in the arteries, the air in his windpipe. Tarc heard chairs scraping back and the distinct bang that said his father had just dropped the little section of the bar’s surface behind him as he came out into the big room. With a stutter, Tarc said, “N-no sir.”

  Behind his shoulder Tarc heard Deputy Jarvis say, “You’ll let the boy go if you know what’s good for you.”

  Tarc risked a glance to his right, seeing deputies Jarvis and Miller, hands on the hilts of their swords. He felt like he should be relieved by this show of support from the town’s officers, but the pricking of the big sheath knife evaporated any such sensations.

  Then the knife left his skin.

  The big man shoved his dagger back in its sheath and stood. Tarc stared up at him. The man was huge! And he looked very hard. Suddenly, by comparison, Jarvis and the other deputies appeared, not only small, but also soft and childlike.

  The big man’s hand rested briefly on the hilt of his sword. A sword that Tarc noticed was much longer than the ones the deputies carried. He grinned; then stamped his boot, shaking the floor and causing everyone around him, including the deputies, to suddenly jump back. He barked a laugh, but to Tarc’s immense relief he made no move to draw his sword. “We were just leaving,” he said in a tone full of disdain. His eyes traveled from one
deputy’s face to the other until he’d taken in all three, as if memorizing who they were. He lifted his chin, “You pissants are gonna regret this.”

  The big man and his companion slowly exited the still silent room.

  Every eye in the tavern tracked their passage.

  For a few minutes the usual clamor of the big room remained subdued. Then it gradually expanded back towards normal.

  Daussie went back to serving and Tarc complained because she’d fallen behind bringing in firewood.

  ***

  As usual Mama and Daussie went to bed earlier than Tarc and his father. They got up early to open the tavern for breakfasters.

  Tarc closed and bolted the door when the last customer had shuffled out. His eyes swept the room for undone chores, but halted on his dad who stood behind the bar with a faraway look in his eye. What arrested Tarc’s eye however, was his father’s big sheath knife.

  It stood on its point on the surface of the bar.

  At first Tarc thought his dad had buried the point of the blade in the wood. He found that hard to believe because Tarc’s father worked hard to maintain the condition of everything in the tavern. Then Tarc realized he could see the point of the big blade, merely resting on the surface, not submerged in it. He walked closer, trying to understand what kept the knife from falling over. When he got close enough to see that nothing held it from falling he said, “Dad?”

  His father blinked.

  The knife tilted over.

  His father caught it before it clattered onto the bar’s surface. “Yes?”

  “How did you do that?” Tarc whispered.

  “Do what?”

  “Balance the knife on its point.”

  Tarc had the impression of his father’s mind returning from someplace far away. Rather than answering the question, or trying to pretend that a knife balancing on its point was commonplace, his father asked a question of his own. “Where’s the sun?”

  Wordlessly Tarc pointed down at it, through the floor and somewhat to the west. He could feel it there, incredibly hot, though incredibly distant. Very different from the glowing coals resting in the fireplace across the room behind him. Different too, from the banked coals in the stove in the kitchen, or the small hot flames of the lamps above the bar, in the kitchen, and scattered around the great room. Tarc could also sense the amorphous mass of his father’s warm flesh directly in front of him, but he could barely detect the warmth of his mother and sister in their rooms upstairs.

  His dad grunted, “So, you have the talent. Have you ever tried to move anything with your mind?”

  “Talent?”

  His father grunted a laugh, “Do you realize that other people have no idea where the sun is at night?”

  Baffled, Tarc said, “They don’t?”

  “No,” his father snorted. “They don’t even know where the fire is, unless it’s close enough that they can feel the heat on their skin. They don’t know where other people are either!” He said this last with some astonishment. “Can you feel the insides of things?”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re different,” his father said, “than other people. Very few people are like us. My mother had talent and she passed it to me,” he shrugged, “but not to my brother. Your mother has talent too and I have often wondered whether she and I might pass it to both our children. Perhaps it might even be strong enough in one of you to be useful.”

  Tarc frowned, “Feel the insides?”

  His father raised his closed fist from below the bar and set it on the bar’s surface, “What’s in my hand?”

  Tarc’s eyebrows crawled up as he focused on the closed fist. “A silver!”

  “You seem surprised. Was that your first time? Sensing the inside of something?”

  “Uh, no. I could feel the insides of the big soldier’s head when he held the knife to me tonight.”

  His father grunted, “Yeah, new bits of my talent have often shown up when I’ve been frightened.”

  “So… this talent… What’s it good for?”

  Daum barked a derisive laugh, “Oh, lots of things. No one can sneak up behind me. I can balance knives on their points.” Making his point he picked his knife back up and set it on its point again. It stayed on that point despite Tarc’s goggled eyes. Daum reached out his hand and the knife fell into it. “I can even push little things around,” he said, dropping a copper on the bar’s surface. The small bit of copper slid a little ways down the bar, then turned around and came back to his hand.

  Wide eyed, Tarc said, almost reverently, “How did you do that?”

  Daum shrugged, “I don’t know. If you want to try it yourself, first you have to concentrate on the copper.”

  Tarc stared at the copper, not sure what to do. Then reached for it.

  His father grabbed Tarc’s wrist. “No. Reach for it with your… I don’t know how to say it… Use whatever it was that you felt the inside of the man’s head with.”

  Tarc’s eyes had gone to his father, now they turned back to the copper. He realized that he could feel it. He didn’t really know how, but “ghost hand” seemed as good a description as any. “I feel it, now what?”

  Daum lifted his chin, “Try to push it.”

  Tarc imagined pushing it. Nothing happened so he tried pushing it hard. His eyebrows rose as it slid a few millimeters along the bar’s surface.

  His father grinned at him, “That’s pretty good for a first try.”

  Tarc felt a prickly sensation in his scalp. “So what can we do with this?” he whispered almost reverently, turning wide eyes back to his dad. “You know, what can we do that matters?”

  His father snorted, “I told you. Not much. If you wake up in the middle of the night you’ll know what time it is from where the sun is underneath you on the other side of the world. You’ll be able to push little things around without touching them. You might think you’d be able to win at dice, except by the time you push the die you didn’t like over to a new face, everyone would see it happen and they’d decide someone had to be cheating.” His father looked at him affectionately, “Probably the most important thing you’ll be able to do, is to touch the people you love.”

  Tarc felt his father’s hand lightly on his shoulder; then realized that both of his father’s hands actually still rested on the bar. He knew no one stood behind him because he couldn’t sense their heat. Nonetheless, he glanced momentarily back over his shoulder. He turned his wide eyes back to his father, “You patted my shoulder with your thoughts?”

  Daum grinned wryly; then minutely nodded his head. “Better get to bed. Plenty to do tomorrow.” He frowned, “Did you do your reading this afternoon?”

  “Yes Dad,” Tarc said. When he’d finished learning to read, write and do basic math at Ms. Alman’s little school, he’d been horrified to find out that his parents expected him to keep learning. Astonishingly enough, they had materials with which he could continue his education through daily reading. However, the Hyllis family’s small cache of books, especially the medical books, was a well-kept secret. Irreproducible and more precious than gold, the possibility that their books might be damaged or stolen was one of the family’s greatest fears.

  Though he felt as tired as he usually did after a long day, Tarc lay awake thinking about his new “talent” and trying to figure out what kinds of things he might be able to do with it. Surely Daum only intended for his dismissive attitude towards their shared talent to tantalize Tarc?

  ***

  All too soon, Daussie threw open Tarc’s door and said, “Tarc! Get up. We need firewood.” Then she was gone.

  Tarc felt sorely tempted to turn back over and go back to sleep.

  He didn’t. First of all, his father took such behavior very poorly. The kindly version of Daum vanished instantly if you shirked duties. Second, though running a successful tavern kept the Hyllis family significantly better off than many townsfolk, they all knew that each of them had to pull his or her weight for that prospe
rity to continue. His parents had drummed the concept of earning their keep into Tarc and Daussie until it was second nature.

  Rolling out of his warm bed, Tarc soaked his rag in a small tub of cold water. He quickly washed his face; then rubbed the scum off his teeth with a corner of the cloth. Putting on his shoes and shirt, he rinsed out his rag and set it aside to dry.

  Entering the warm kitchen Tarc reached for a biscuit, but his mother smacked his hand aside, “Get some wood first. The fire’s low.”

  Tarc looked over and saw that the kitchen rack had no wood at all. Stomach rumbling, he silently cursed his sister. He grabbed his coat and wood-carry strap and headed out. The outhouse stood first on his list. Done with that business, he brought in the first of many straps of wood for the day. The woodshed was getting low so Tarc knew he’d have to hitch the wagon and go to the wood sellers for a cord later that morning.

  As Tarc stacked a bundle of wood on his strap, he suddenly thought about his father’s revelation of the night before. For a moment he pictured the strapped bundle of wood floating triumphantly in front of him as he walked into the kitchen. It would certainly be more impressive than lugging it in over his shoulder. He picked up the end of the strap, wrapping it around the bundle of wood. He passed the end of the strap through the ring on the other end. Rather than lifting the strap with his hand, Tarc reached out with his ghost and tugged on the strap with it. Though he could see a slight tightening in the leather it didn’t even come all the way snug. He concentrated on lifting harder and it snugged a little more but that was all. He snorted, I guess there’s no way my ghost is going to be carrying straps of wood for me!

  Carrying in the strap of wood, he mused disappointedly about his newfound ability. Somehow, when he’d learned about it from his father the night before, he’d felt certain that this talent would allow him to accomplish great things. This despite Daum’s dismissive attitude towards their shared abilities. When Daum had mentioned the possibility that, inheriting from both his mother and father, he might have greater power, somehow he had just assumed that it would be true.