Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner Page B

magic would be tamed? If it were that simple Cam wouldn't have died.
    “Your first lesson,” Karin told Jared, “will be in how to douse the light you've created. Come.”
    “Now?” Jared sounded startled.
    “Now. You'll not go to bed until you learn something of control.”
    Karin took the glowing stone in one hand, Jared's hand in her other. Alan gave his son's shoulder a squeeze before Karin led him away, pride clear enough on Alan's face. Jan brushed an arm across her eyes and smiled, sadly but without fear.
    Samuel laughed. “So much for my generator. Within a year we'll be lighting the whole town with Jared's stones, mark my words. It's just as well—our lightbulbs wouldn't have lasted forever.”
    Only the girl beside Allie scowled. “It's not fair,” she said. “Jared's younger than me!”
    Jan drew her into a hug. “Don't be in such a rush,
    Kimi. Magic is quite a responsibility. You'll have time enough later.”
    “It's true,” Allie said. “Magic's lots of work.” She glanced at me, as if I proved her point. “Come on,” she told the other girl. “Let's get some cornbread and see if Tallow will eat
that.”
She dragged Kimi back toward the kitchen, Tallow trotting at their heels.
    The townsfolk began talking and drifting back to their tables. A few stopped to shake Alan's or Jan's hand first. “That's it?” I said. A few pretty words and everything was all right?
    Samuel rubbed his chin and regarded me soberly. “It's different in your town, isn't it?”
    That's not our fault,
I screamed silently, even as Samuel went on, “We know well enough the dangers of uncontrolled magic, Liza. There's not an adult in this town who didn't lose someone to the War.”
    “But now the War is over and everything's perfectly safe?” I didn't even try to keep the anger from my words.
    “Magic is never safe.” Samuel shut his eyes a moment, opened them again. “Yes, we've lost children to magic here. Is that what you wanted me to say? But there's not a person born since the War who doesn't have some magic. What can we do but learn to control it?”
    “We are
not
all born with magic.” How could he think that? My hands shook, but my voice held steady. “Not in Franklin Falls.” Only Matthew and I were so cursed. And Cam. And Rebecca.
    “Magic is your burden,” Samuel said. “Your burden and your gift.”
    “Not mine.” He couldn't make me accept this. “Magic destroyed the world.”
    “Indeed,” Samuel agreed. “And now it's the only tool we have to mend it.”
    I thought of the wondering look in Jared's eyes. Of Allie saying lightly, “That was fun!”
    “So I've been meaning to ask,” Samuel said slowly, “what your magic is.”
    I thought of my visions: fire and ash, towers falling to dust. I thought of how Cam had laughed even as the brambles destroyed him and his parents. I felt I might throw up.
    “No magic.” I stumbled to my feet. The Commons seemed suddenly too small, too close. I turned from Samuel's kind gaze, and I fled.
    I ran through the town, not knowing where I was going, stopping only when the green Wall loomed up in front of me. I fell to my knees there. Green tendrilsstretched out to twine around my fingers. I jerked back, skin prickling. Magic like this had killed in my town. Yet Karin had built the Wall on purpose, for protection.
    Thunder rumbled somewhere far away. “Rebecca,” I whispered. I tried to picture Father taking my sister in his arms, asking her to repeat a few words, speaking to her of magic with the same gentleness he'd used when teaching me to hunt and plant corn. The vision wouldn't hold. I remembered instead cracked bones and a moonlit hillside. “Rebecca.” I imagined my sister on the other side of the Wall, asking me without words for safe passage. I whispered her name again, reached toward her, drew back. Rebecca was gone. I knew that. There was no use in pretending.
    I was crying, not sure when I'd started, staring up at the Wall and at clouds