Free A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman Page A

she asked.
    He stared over my head at the west tower window and the night outside. “I have ideas.” His gaze lowered to my face; the pupils of his eyes widened. “You’ve been sick.”
    “Sure, I had the flu last weekend. You knew that. You got me Gerry pictures.”
    “You were sick while we were all gone. Was it very bad?”
    I shrugged.
    Tobias leaned closer, staring into my face. “Was it very bad?” he asked again.
    “I don’t know.” I leaned back. His gaze was so intent I felt it. I shrugged again and looked away.
    “Gypsum.”
    Jasper and Beryl stared at me, too. I picked at a scuff in the tablecloth, then glanced up. “Sure, I was really sick.”
    “All alone.” Tobias’s voice was a whisper.
    “I called July, and she stayed with me.”
    “July!”
    “You were all gone. She came right over. She was great! She’s always great.”
    “You had July watch over you while you went through transition?”
    “Transition!” My stomach dropped down into a bottomless pit, and my hands iced over. “What do you mean, transition? I’m too old for transition.” I checked my brother and sister. They looked as shocked as I felt. Transition! I’d never heard of anybody going through transition at twenty. Maybe everything would change now. Maybe I’d finally be a real member of the family. Tiny tendrils of hope unfurled in my mind.
    Tobias didn’t look happy, though. “What did she say? Did she tell you
    how sick you were?”
    “Transition,” I whispered.
    “Gypsum.”
    “She almost called an ambulance, but then my fever broke and I got better.”
    “She didn’t say anything about … accidents?”
    I shook my head. “Transition, Uncle?”
    “Late transition.”
    His voice sounded so cold and dark I waited for what he was going to say next. All my life I had longed for some kind of power. Wasn’t that what transition was? Growing into some kind of power? What did late transition mean?
    “Do you feel your power, Gyp?”
    I took a couple deep breaths and tried to see If I felt different from the way I had last week, before I got sick. How horrible would it be to go through transition and not even get anything out of it? My stomach rolled over. It had been doing that since the weekend. I hadn’t thrown up, though, just felt a little sick off and on. Was that what power felt like?
    “Does power make you sick?” I asked.
    Something tightened his face until I saw the bones beneath the skin. I usually didn’t wonder how old GreatUncle Tobias was. He didn’t look old, but I knew he had lived a long time. He could remember things that had happened before there were cars, telephones, movies, though he didn’t talk about that much unless it came up in the context of something else. Now I thought, he’s more than a hundred years old. I can see it for the first time.
    “I understand transition makes you sick, but it seemed like everybody else felt much better afterward,” I said. I hoped that If I talked fast enough, he’d turn back into his regular self. “I felt much better afterward. Except I’m still kind of sick to my stomach every once in a while. I mean, not that I think that was transition. How could it be? You never told us it could happen this late.”
    “Sometimes it happens late in the interests of mercy.”
    “Mercy!”
    “If, afterward, you have one of the unkind powers.”
    I sucked in a big breath and forgot how to let it out again.
    Jasper and Beryl stared at me.
    Tobias put a hand on my head. “Breathe,” he said.
    Breath rushed out of me. In a moment, I managed to breathe in again, and out. Calm flowed into me from Tobias’s hand.
    “We haven’t done any of the right things for you, child. We should have noticed this coming on. We should have watched over you, helped you through. Now we should celebrate.”
    “Celebrate an unkind power?”
    “Every transition is some kind of gift.”
    “But I—” If transition was a gift, what had it given me? I hadn’t noticed any