Free Sunshine by Robin McKinley Page A

wildflowers. She’d fetched a mug from the kitchen and filled it with water, and the flowers were standing in that, on the rickety little table that still sat on the porch. We’d been walking in the sun, which was very warm, and were now sitting in the shade of the trees, which was pleasingly cool. I could feel the sweat on my face drying in the breeze. My gran pulled one of the flowers out of the mug, put it between my two hands, closed my hands together over it so it was invisible, and put her hands over mine. “Now, what have you got in your hands?” she said.
    This was a funny sort of game. I said, smiling, “A flower.”
    â€œWhat else could you have inside your hands instead? What else is so small you can hide it completely, doesn’t weigh very much, doesn’t itch or tickle, is so soft you can barely feel it’s there?”
    â€œUm—a feather?” I said.
    â€œA feather. Good. Now, think feather.”
    I thought feather. I thought a small, gray-brown-white feather. A sparrow, something like that. There was an odd, slightly buzzy sensation in my hands, under her hands. It was a little bit sick-making, but not very much.
    â€œNow open your hands.”
    She took hers away from mine, and I opened them. There was a feather, a little gray-brown-white feather there. No flower. I looked up at her. I knew that one of the reasons my mom had left my dad was because he wouldn’t stop doing spellworking, and doing business with other spellworkers. I knew he came from a big magic-handling family, but not everybody in it did magic. I had never done any. “You did that,” I said.
    â€œNo. I helped, but you did it. It’s in your blood, child. If it weren’t, that feather would still be a flower. It was your hands that touched it, your hands that carried the charm.”
    I held up the feather. It looked and felt like a real feather. “Would you like to try again?” she said. I nodded.
    She told me that we only wanted to do little things this first time, so we turned the feather into a different kind of feather, and then we turned it into several kinds of flower, and then several kinds of leaf, and then we turned it into three unburned matchsticks, and then we turned it into a tiny swatch of fabric—yellow, with blue dots—and then we turned it back into the flower it had been to begin with. “First rule: return everything to its proper shape if you can, unless there is some compelling reason not to. Now we’ve done enough for one afternoon, and we want to say thank you, and we also want to sweep up any rubbish we’ve left—like sweeping the floor and wiping the counters after you’ve been making cookies.” She taught me three words to say, and lit a small bar of incense, and we sat silently till it had burned itself out.
    â€œThere,” she said. “Are you tired?”
    â€œA little,” I said. I thought about it. “Not a lot.”
    â€œAre you not? That is interesting. Then I was right that I had to show you.” She smiled. It was a kind, but not a reassuring smile. She was also right that I couldn’t tell my mother.
    My mother had stopped bringing me out and taking me back after the first few visits, although she made me wear a homecoming charm. I realized later that this might have looked like the most colossal insult to my gran, but my mother wouldn’t have meant it that way and my gran didn’t take it that way. I hung it on a tree when I arrived and only took it down again when I was leaving. My gran walked me out to the road and waited till the bus came into sight, made sure the bus driver knew where I was going (the charm wouldn’t have stopped the bus for me if I’d forgotten to pull the cord, and I was still only a kid), kissed me, and watched me climb aboard. “Till next time,” she said, which is what she always said.
    We played that game many times. I was soon