Walking The Woods

The forest is quiet as I walk through it. It’s easy to find desire paths made by animals and the more structured lines made by people. I trip a few times on stones, use my talent to stop me from falling. I’m far enough onto the beaten paths that I have a couple of sticks in the air around me, pushing and pulling at them without any effort at all. I swirl bits of gravel about it: working on precision and seeing how long I can use the talent before I need to rest. It’s been almost two hours and I’m not hungry or too tired of using the talent; I’ll need to rest soon, but that’s just me and not it at all.

Four months ago I’d have never even tried to talk two hours alone or all at once. But a new life, freedom, good food, friends: it’s all added up to me more than the parts. I have friends. I’m getting less stares than I used to at school. I’m not failing any classes. The normal things are holding together; I think it helps with everything else as well.

My phone beeps, and I pull it out of my left pocket and check the time. I have at least two hours before I need to be back. I still don’t have a gift, and don’t think Lia would want flowers. I know Aram wouldn’t, but he’s ex-secret-government and things are still odd between us from when he technically tried to kill me. It was the only way to save the town, but things have been off since and I don’t know how to fix it. My talent and push and pull things easily. Scarily easily, but I don’t think it extends to things like trust. At least, I don’t want it to.

I shove my hands back into my jean jacket, ignoring the usual twinge of pain from the burns on my right hand. Some wounds don’t heal even if they do. I snort and shake the thought away. hardly fair to my body. Harder to heal when your parents burn you themselves and don’t take you into any doctor. Or even out of the house for over eight years. But they were done, and Lia and Aram are – better than my parents were.

“You didn’t float your phone?”

I spin at the words behind me and find myself face to face with Lia. The sticks and stones I was floating have moved between us, an instinctive barrier. I drop it all to the ground and just stare. “You followed me?”

“Aram texted me thirty minutes ago, worried you weren’t back yet. I used the find phone app on my phone, and Sam is at Kim’s doing a play-date. You wandered; I came right toward you,” she adds gently.

“I didn’t even hear you.”

“I still have some talents.” She smiles, taking any sting from the words before I can protest. “And you were rather focused on yours. Not that Aram won’t still have yelled at you, of course.”

“Sorry, I just –.”

“You just?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble. I’m not good with words at the best of times.

Lia stares at me. She used to be a magician, because she met Aram. Before they had Sam. She doesn’t talk about it often, because the magic might want her to claim it again even if the town has a magician in Mr. Pickles the cat. But sometimes her stares go right into the heart of you, no matter what she’s done or become. “Noah.”

I feel myself blushing and look away.

Lia pulls my face back gently with her right hand. My face is a mass of too many freckles and too much acne at the best of times; she doesn’t hurt it at all. “Talk to me.”

“I – I – I don’t know what to get you,” comes out on the second try.

Lia blinks. Once. She lowers her hand, stares up at me. Sometimes it’s hard to remember she’s actually shorter than I am. She offers up a waiting silent as she turns and starts walking back toward town.

I follow. “I just – it’s complicated. I never got my parents any gifts.”

Lia snorts. “I’d be horrified if you had. Did they ever get you anything?”

I shake my head. “Not once. But you guys have, and you’re mom to – to me. I just wasn’t sure if – if it was okay? What I should get? If it should be just a card?”

“A card is more than enough, Noah. You saved my life.”

“Huh?”

“If not for your talent – and your friends helping you – I might have had to be a magician again to protect Rivercomb. I didn’t, and that means more than you can ever know. Being a magician was important, but it was also all I was. You can’t be a magician and love another, or have a child you care about as much as a mother should care for their children. It’s simply not safe. The magic gives much, but it replaces other things.”

I hesitate. She’s never talked about it this much with me before. “I’m not one.”

“No. A talent is far smaller, though yours is the kind of talent that can stand against a magician. There’s generally only a handful of talents that potent with every generation. You could have been one, I imagine, but instead all that energy focused into one thing.”

“So – so why do people become magicians and not talents?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes we’re in the right place at the wrong time, or vice versa. For me, it was being sixteen in the woods, alone, wondering if maybe trees could talk. Wishing they could, as hard as I wished for anything. I don’t even know why: we want things when we’re that young with a passion we never know again. But I could hear trees. The forest. Life. The town itself. Everything flowed into me, through me.

“I can’t put it into words,” Lia adds, slowing to match my pace. “I don’t dare to, in case I want that moment again so much that I can’t stop myself.”

“Could I stop it? You from becoming one again?” I ask when she looks over.

“I have no idea.” She is quiet almost a minute. “I would appreciate it if you tried.”

“Oh.”

She pulls me in for a gentle hug. “There are many things you need to worry about in this world, Noah. If you call me mom, if you call Aram dad – this isn’t one of them. We’ll be content either way, and you in our lives is present enough.

“Honest,” she adds when I look over.

“Oh,” I say, even smaller.

Lia lets go. For a moment her eyes are suspiciously bright. “You don’t need to ever worry about things like cards and gifts. You are enough.”

She doesn’t need to talk like she can for me to believe her. I gulp. Nod. “Can I get you a card anyway?”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

“And flowers. A lot of flowers. With roses and pansies,” I add quickly before I can lose my nerve.

Lia’s eyes narrow. “Only if you expect to receive flowers delivered to your desk at school every day for a month.”

I start laughing, unable not to that the idea, and we walk back to town. The conversation turns to normal things. Sam. When Aram is going to be able to get out of work today. If I need help with any school assignments.

And I think that the only gift this day needed was this. Even if a small part of me wonders how someone could give up the ability to talk to a whole forest; I don’t ask. I’m not about to. Some things you just don’t talk about, and that’s part of love too.