Firestarter(107)

They went into the stables, which were dim and fragrant. Dusky sunlight slanted in, making mellow bars and stripes in which motes of hay chaff danced with dreamy slowness.

A groom was currying the mane of a black gelding with a white blaze on its forehead. Charlie stopped, looking at the horse with delighted wonder. The groom looked around at her and grinned. "You must be the young miss. They told me to be on the watch-out for you."

"She's so beautiful," Charlie whispered. Her hands trembled to touch that silky coat. One look in the horse's dark, calm, mellow eyes and she was in love. "Well, it's a boy, actually," the groom said, and tipped a wink at Rainbird, whom he had never seen before and didn't know from Adam. "After a fashion, that is."

"What's his name?"

"Necromancer," the groom said. "Want to pet him?"

Charlie drew hesitantly near. The horse lowered his head and she stroked him; after a few moments she spoke to him. It did not occur to her that she would light another half-dozen fires just to ride on him with John beside her... but Rainbird saw it in her eyes, and he smiled.

She looked around at him suddenly and saw the smile, and for a moment the hand she had been stroking the horse's muzzle with paused. There was something in that smile she didn't like, and she had thought she liked everything about John. She got feelings about most people and did not consider this much; it was part of her, like her blue eyes and her double-jointed thumb. She usually dealt with people on the basis of these feelings. She didn't like Hockstetter, because she felt that he didn't care for her anymore than he would care for a test tube. She was just an object to him.

But with John, her liking was based only on what he did, his kindness to her, and perhaps part of it was his disfigured face: she could identify and sympathize with him on that account. After all, why was she here if not because-she was also a freak? Yet beyond that, he was one of those rare people-like Mr. Raucher, the delicatessen owner in New York who often played chess with her daddy-who were for some reason completely closed to her. Mr. Raucher was old and wore a hearing aid and had a faded blue number tattooed on his forearm. Once Charlie had asked her father if that blue number meant anything, and her daddy had told her-after cautioning her never to mention it to Mr. Raucher-that he would explain it later. But he never had. Sometimes Mr. Raucher would bring her slices of kielbasa which she would eat while watching TV.

And now, looking at John's smile, which seemed so strange and somehow disquieting, she wondered for the first time, What are you thinking?

Then such trifling thoughts were swept away by the wonder of the horse.

"John," she said, "what does 'Necromancer" mean?"

"Well," he said, "so far as I know, it means something like 'wizard," or 'sorcerer'."

"Wizard. Sorcerer." She spoke the words softly, tasting them as she stroked the dark silk of Necromancer's muzzle.

18

Walking back with her, Rainbird said: "You ought to ask that Hockstetter to let you ride that horse, if you like him so much."

"No... I couldn't..." she said, looking at him wide-eyed and startled.

"Oh, sure you could," he said, purposely misunderstanding. "I don't know much about geldings, but I know they're supposed to be gentle. He looks awful big, but I don't think he'd run away with you, Charlie."

"No-I don't mean that. They just wouldn't let me."

He stopped her by putting his hands on her shoulders. "Charlie McGee, sometimes you're really dumb," he said. "You done me a good turn that time the lights went out, Charlie, and you kept it to yourself. So now you listen to me and I'll do you one. You want to see your father again?"

She nodded quickly.

"Then you want to show them that you mean business. It's like poker, Charlie. If you ain't dealing from strength... why, you just ain't dealin. Every time you light a fire for them, for one of their tests, you get something from them." He gave her shoulders a soft shake: "This is your uncle John talking to you. Do you hear what I'm sayin?"

"Do you really think they'd let me? If I asked?" "If you asked? Maybe not. But if you told them, yeah. I hear them sometimes. You go in to empty their wastebaskets and ashtrays, they think you're just another piece of the furniture. That Hockstetter's just about wettin his pants."

"Really?" She smiled a little. "Really." They began to walk again. "What about you, Charlie? I know how scared of it you were before. How do you feel about it now?"

She was a long time answering. And when she did, it was in a more thoughtful and somehow adult tone than Rainbird had ever heard from her. "It's different now," she said. "It's a lot stronger. But... I was more in control of it than I ever was before. That day at the farm"-she shivered a little and her voice dropped a little-"it just... just got away for a little while. It... it went everywhere." Her eyes darkened. She looked inside memory and saw chickens exploding like horrible living fireworks. "But yesterday, when I told it to back off', it did. I said to myself, it's just going to be a small fire. And it was. It was like I let it out in a single straight line."

"And then you pulled it back into yourself?"

"God, no," she said, looking at him. "I put it into the water. If I pulled it back into myself... I guess I'd burn up."