Chapter 007 — The Bone in the Butcher's Block

Lillian Marsh ran the butcher shop on Main Street. She was a large, loud woman with forearms like bridge cables. She had taken a liking to Elias three weeks ago, when he had helped her move a refrigerator out of a truck by himself and then apologized to the truck for denting its bumper.

"Your boy needs something to do," she told Evelyn on Tuesday. "He mopes around that shop of yours like a gray ghost. Send him down. I'll give him boxes to lift. I'll feed him lunch."

Evelyn wanted to say no. She had spent the last three days taking the knives out of her own kitchen. She had hidden the cleaver. She had bought plastic cutting boards. She had watched him lift a fifty-pound sack of flour like it was a pillow and decided he did not know how strong he was.

But Elias had been quiet. He followed her around the shop, watched her when she thought he was not looking, held her hand a little tighter when they walked.

She needed him out from underfoot for a few hours.

"One day," she told Lillian. "Boxes only. No knives. No bones."

At noon she walked down with his lunch. She was half a block away when she heard it.

A sound like a gunshot. Then a scream. Then a lot of voices all at once.

She ran.

The butcher shop door was open. The street outside had stopped. Evelyn pushed through.

Inside, Lillian was leaning against the counter, one hand over her heart. The butcher's block was in the middle of the floor. On it, in a white cloud of powder, was what had once been a pig femur.

Elias was standing over it, holding his right hand up, staring at it, like it had betrayed him.

"Elias."

He turned. His face was white.

"Evelyn. She said she needed the bone split for the soup. I picked it up. I didn't squeeze it hard. It just —" He held out his hand. His knuckles were not even red. "It just did that."

The room was quiet.

Lillian found her voice. "He picked it up with one hand. Like a pencil. And then — like it was chalk."

The crowd outside murmured. Evelyn crossed the room, took Elias by the wrist, and turned to Lillian.

"Story. He hit it with the back of the knife. Several times. He was showing off. He missed the block. The bone shattered on impact. Right, Elias?"

Elias blinked. He got it.

"Right. I hit it with the knife. Several times."

"Very hard," Evelyn said to the room. "He is very strong. He does not know his own strength."

The crowd was not buying it. But they were polite. They murmured about farm boys and drifted away.

Lillian poured Elias a glass of water. "Honey. You don't need to come back tomorrow."

"I know."

She walked him home. He was quiet the whole way. When they got inside, he sat at the kitchen table and looked at his hands.

"Evelyn. What is wrong with me?"

She sat down across from him.

"Nothing is wrong with you."

"Yesterday I crushed a bone. Three weeks ago I lifted a refrigerator. I think I am not a normal person. I think you know it. And you will not tell me."

She said nothing.

"Is it the fall? Just tell me I am not a monster."

She reached across the table and took his hands. They were warm. They were steady. They had just turned a pig femur to powder without trying.

"You are not a monster. You are the kindest person I have ever met. You cried over a stuffed dog. You rescued a wolf pup. You apologize to inanimate objects."

"Then why —"

"Because you are stronger than most people. That is not a curse. That is a fact. And we are going to be careful with it, that's all."

He looked at her. He did not believe her. But he let it go.

That night, after he was asleep, she spread a map on the kitchen table. She drew the routes north, east, and west. She marked the safe houses her grandmother had left her — old witch caches, hidden by blood and silver.

She had the map half-drawn when Elias came in.

He was not asleep. He was standing in the doorway in his pajamas, holding a mug of warm milk. He put it down on the table.

"Evelyn. Are we leaving?"

She stopped.

"What makes you say that?"

"You are drawing on a map. You have been locking the door twice at night. You told me not to leave the yard. Something is happening."

She folded the map. She put it in her pocket.

"Elias —"

"Just tell me if we are leaving. I will help. I will pack. I will carry everything. I just want to know."

She looked at him. He was standing in the doorway in his pajamas, his hair sticking up, his face tired and worried and kind.

"Maybe. Soon. We might have to go somewhere for a little while."

"Okay. Can I bring the birds?"

"The birds?"

"The nest under the eaves. The baby birds. Can we bring them?"

She stared at him.

"Elias. They are wild birds. They live in a nest."

"I know. But if we move, they will be alone."

"We are not moving the birds."

"Can I at least say goodbye to them?"

She laughed. It came out wet. She wiped her eye with the back of her hand.

"You can say goodbye to them."

He nodded. He drank his milk. He went back to the couch. She listened to him settle in, then pulled the map out again.

She drew one more circle on the map. A town two hundred miles east. A library there, old and gray, that her grandmother had told her about once — a place that held the old texts, the witch archives, the books that could break a seal and unmake a tracking mark.

She did not know if it was real. She did not know if it was still there.

But it was the only thing she had.

Outside, the wind got up. Somewhere on the ridge, an owl called.

And two hundred miles east, on a dark highway, a black sedan with tinted windows rolled slowly through the rain, following a silver dot on a phone screen that moved, very slowly, toward the west.