Free The Healer of Harrow Point by Peter Walpole Page A

circle around you, and everything in that circle will be safe, and healthy, and strong.”
    “A circle,” I repeated.
    “It starts in your heart and comes out all around you, out of your fingertips and toes. Just imagine it. Wish that it was so, like make believe. This isn't hard, Thomas.”
    I think I was looking away from her.
    “I'm listening,” I said.
    “Just pretend that within this circle everything is healthy and strong, wish that it would be so. Let the circle be small, just big enough to surround you and anything you might touch, and then, slowly, let the circle grow.”
    I was looking at her now.
    “Let it become big enough to reach around your house, to hold your father and mother. Let the circle come back to you, and then cast it a little wider, out to the woods where you live, and then back, and cast it a little wider, a little farther each time. And Thomas, do this for me: cast your circle all the way out to me.”
    “I will,” I said, but then I hesitated. “It won't—it won't do anything. It won't really help anything.”
    “You don't know that,” Emma said firmly, but there was a light smile in her eyes. “Anyway, it's a wish. And it's good practice. So do it. Tell me you'll do it, each night.”
    “I will,” I said again.
    “And remember,” she said, and now she was turning, and walking away from me. “Remember, the circle surrounds you, too. Be sure to include yourself, healthy and strong and well. And throw that last circle all the way out to me—don't forget, all the way to me, dear.”
    “I will,” I said a final time, to her back, as she began her walk home. I thought I heard her say “That's good,” but I wasn't sure. I wanted to call after her, to call her back, but I didn't. In just a few moments it was hard to see her in the falling dusk, and then she was gone altogether. It was strange, awful; I had the strongest sense that I would not see her again.
    I was too old to cry, I thought. I was too old to run home crying. So I walked home, slowly, purposefully, thinking about Abigail, thinking about Emma, and Reggie, and wanting to send out a circle that would encompass them all, without being at all sure what that would mean.

Chapter 5
    I tried, that first night, to do as Emma had told me, but almost as soon as I was in my bed I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, with little more than vague thoughts, images in my mind of circles and balls flying and bouncing around my room. My mother practically had to pull me out of bed in the morning. All the events of the day before had left me feeling heavy and stupid. I don't think I was awake in any useful sense until I was at school, sitting at my desk, gradually aware of all the noise and chatter around me.
    Hunting season was barely a week away. In such a rural community as ours, the beginning of deer season was a major occasion. It seemed like every boy in school was talking about who was going hunting this year for the first time, who had a gun of his own, and who didn't. I had been withdrawn somewhat from all this talk. But then, I had always been a fairly quiet person.
    Among the boys at school I had a status of sorts, because my father was a policeman: to a bunch of eleven and twelve-year-old boys, being a policeman was about the greatest thing a man could be. If I was quiet, if I kept my thoughts to myself, it wasn't put down to being shy or awkward or overly introspective; in the odd, scarcely explicable world of schoolyard politics, I was Deputy Singer's son, and so I didn't need to be funny, or smart, or tough, or anything else. It was a blessing which, like all blessings I suppose, I could neither earn nor deserve, but had just been handed to me.
    In truth, I didn't have anywhere near enough confidence to voice my newfound conviction that I wouldn't go hunting when the season began. There was no one I could talk to about Emma. I certainly wasn't going to tell my friends that I had been speaking with deer, and learning to