Free Pilgrimage by Zenna Henderson

back to the house dangling the trap. Bethie screamed until Glib fell asleep over his bandaged paw.
    Dad had acute appendicitis when Bethie was two, but it was Bethie who had to be given a sedative until we could get Dad to the hospital.
    One night Dad and Mother stood over Bethie as she slept restlessly under sedatives. Mr.
    Tyree-next-door had been cutting wood and his ax slipped. He lost a big toe and a pint or so of blood, but as Doctor Dueff skidded to a stop on our street it was into our house that he rushed first and then to Mr. Tyree-next-door who lay with his foot swathed and propped up on a chair, his hands pressed to his ears to shut out Bethie's screams.
    "What can we do, Eve?" Dad asked. "What does the doctor say?"
    "Nothing. They can do nothing for her. He hopes she will outgrow it. He doesn't understand it. He doesn't know that she-"
    "What's the matter? What makes her like this?" Dad asked despairingly.
    Mother winced. "She's a Sensitive. Among my People there were such-but not so young. Their perception made it possible for them to help sufferers. Bethie has only half the Gift. She has no control."
    "Because of me?" Dad's voice was ragged.
    Mother look at him with steady loving eyes. "Because of us, Bruce. It was the chance we took. We pushed our luck after Peter."
    So there we were, the two of us-different-but different in our differences. For me it was mostly fun, but not for Bethie.
    We had to be careful for Bethie. She tried school at first, but skinned knees and rough rassling and aching teeth and bumped heads and the janitor's Monday hangover sent her home exhausted and shaking the first day, with hysteria hanging on the flick of an eyelash. So Bethie read for Mother and learned her numbers and leaned wistfully over the gate as the other children went by.
    It wasn't long after Bethie's first day in school that I found a practical use for my difference. Dad sent me out to the woodshed to stack a cord of mesquite that Delfino dumped into our back yard from his old wood wagon. I had a date to explore an old fluorspar mine with some other guys and bitterly resented being sidetracked. I slouched out to the woodpile and stood, hands in pockets, kicking the heavy rough stove lengths. Finally I carried in one armload, grunting under the weight, and afterward sucking the round of my thumb where the sliding wood had peeled me. I hunkered down on my heels and stared as I sucked. Suddenly something prickled inside my brain. If I could fly why couldn't I make the wood fly?
    And I knew I could! I leaned forward and flipped a finger under half a dozen sticks, concentrating as I did so. They lifted into the air and hovered. I pushed them into the shed, guided them to where I wanted them and distributed them like dealing a pack of cards. It didn't take me long to figure out the maximum load, and I had all the wood stacked in a wonderfully short time.
    I whistled into the house for my flashlight. The mine was spooky and dark, and I was the only one of the gang with a flashlight.
    "I told you to stack the wood." Dad looked up from his milk records.
    "I did," I said, grinning.
    "Cut the kidding," Dad grunted. "You couldn't be done already."
    "I am, though," I said triumphantly. "I found a new way to do it. You see-" I stopped, frozen by Dad's look.
    "We don't need any new ways around here," he said evenly.
    "Go back out there until you've had time to stack the wood right!"
    "It is stacked," I protested. "And the kids are waiting for me!"
    "I'm not arguing, son," said Dad, white-faced. "Go back out to the shed."
    I went back out to the shed-past Mother, who had come in from the kitchen and whose hand half went out to me. I sat in the shed fuming for a long time, stubbornly set that I wouldn't leave till Dad told me to.
    Then I got to thinking. Dad wasn't usually unreasonable like this. Maybe I'd done something wrong.
    Maybe it was bad to stack wood like that. Maybe-my thoughts wavered as I remembered whispers I'd overheard