Between the Spark and the Burn by April Genevieve Tucholke Page B

and we were down to the drops. I vaguely wished in the back of my mind for a spatula, something to scrape the last bits out of the bowl, like Freddie had done when we made Dutch Coffee Chocolate Cake.
    And then I shivered. Shivered at the absurdity of scraping pig’s blood from a bowl like cake batter. My shivering arms splattered the last red beads on the ground instead of the stone, and they made small, melted dents in the snow. Four little black holes.
    This town was too quiet.
    Too . . .
bizarre
.
    Something was wrong. Off. Something worse than dead birds and blood.
    I could feel the bowl in my hands, see the dead birds, hear the sound of my feet crunching on snow. It was real.
    Wasn’t it?
    River, am I being glowed?
    Or sparked?
    Are we all?
    I shook my head. Blinked.
    River’s glow felt good.
    And Brodie’s spark hurt like hell.
    I would know. I felt sure I would know.
    Pine took the bowl from me and set it on the ground. She stood up, and shuddered as the cold wind hit her small body. I took the scarf from around my neck, my new striped one, and wrapped it around her, moving her white-blond hair as I did it. “Keep this,” I said. “I’ve got another back home.”
    â€œPeople will ask where it came from,” she said, not taking her eyes from the pretty white and black stripes.
    â€œJust tell them you found it in the forest,” I replied.
    She looked up at me. “Thank you.”
    I stared into her light blue-gray eyes. “Pine, are all your ancestors buried here, in this graveyard? It’s so small . . .”
    She nodded. “A group of them came over from Scotland, way, way back when. Married each other. We . . . keep to ourselves.” She tilted her chin up, like she was ready for my scorn. “We used to go to a real school down the mountain, but Pastor Walker Rose stopped that. Now we go to school in the church right there, three days a week. Duncan Begg and his daughter Prudence teach us, ever since Widow McGregor died. It’s mostly knitting and carving and carpentry, but they do reading and math too.”
    â€œPine, what do all the dead birds on the signs and doors mean? Does this have something to do with the devil-boy?”
    She looked up at me, again. I wasn’t that tall, but she was still a good six inches smaller. “The Droods, they caught the boy in their daughter’s room. They tried to stop him, get him off Charlotte, but a flock of ravens swept in through the window and started pecking at their eyes and face and head and hands. They still have the sores. The herb woman says they’re not healing clean.” She paused. “And then there’s all the people, mostly older but some children too, who say they’ve seen him in the woods, dressed all in black, with a dark cloud of ravens flying above him, following him wherever he goes.”
    I could picture him, clear as day. Brodie. Red hair. Midnight-blue sky. White snow. Black ravens.
    Neely had joined me by this time, stepping up beside me, listening quietly. Luke and Sunshine still hovered by the iron gate, whispering to each other.
    â€œSo these Droods still have the sores?” Neely. “Then the birds aren’t an illusion. It means he’s controlling animals now too. That can’t be good.” The grin was back on Neely’s face like it was nothing, like it was just a bit of juicy gossip, like it was,
For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn.
    â€œThey think killing the birds will anger him,” Pine added. “Make him come out into the open so we can catch him. But he’s gone. I know he is. I can feel it, in my insides, somehow. A . . . lessening. Ma made me bring the blood out here, to ask our ancestors for help. But I know he’s already gone.”
    Neely’s eyes had that up-to-no-good glint that I’d seen in River’s so many times.