Summer

It was a hazy late summer day. Leon stood in the field under the beating sun, the tall grasses brushing against his face. He felt the earth baked hard as rock under his feet. It was too hot to be out. All the grown-ups were inside, lounging lazily about, draping themselves over couches and chairs. Leon didn’t mind the heat, but he was alone outside, in a huge empty stillness that really wasn’t still because of the constant droning of the cicadas. He went back to the house, his feet padding lightly on the uneven ground. In front, the hounds lay in dusty depressions they had dug in the hard-packed earth. Up on the porch, the men sat drinking hot, black coffee in the shade of the sagging roof. Min sat on the front steps, drawing in a jade-colored notebook. She had nothing to do now that Jack was lying upstairs in a dark room with a bandage wrapped around his head. None of the other children were in sight.

Leon went up to the steps. “Want to go to the river?” he asked.

Min’s eyes brightened and she scrambled up. Together, the two children ran through the grass and slipped into the narrow deer trail that led down to the river. Min jumped in, clothes and all, but Leon stayed on the bank, watching a turtle that eyed him warily from its perch on a log.

“Hey, Min!” he called out to her. “There are blackberries!”

She paddled up to him, panting like a wet dog, and scrambled up the bank. “Finally!” she said, shaking water from her hair. “I’ve been waiting for them to be ripe.”

They fell upon the bushes, stuffing their hands, mouths, and pockets, and letting purple juice drip down their faces and onto their clothes. It was Leon who paused, with a sudden sense that something was wrong. The intuition that had so often saved his life in his previous existence made his body go suddenly tense. He turned.

There, twenty feet down the bank, stood Calder. Min looked over to say something to Leon, but stopped dead in her tracks as she saw him, too.

“Run!” Leon commanded. They turned and ran, both knowing that one of them had to reach the house before Calder did. He shouted something behind them and started in pursuit.

Min pulled ahead quickly. She knew these woods inside and out, and Leon knew that she could beat him to the house. He slowed, letting Calder get near, then ducked sideways and ran along the river. Calder had no reason to catch Min, and he followed Leon, as the boy had hoped. He was not as young as he had once been, but his years of training and work did not let him down. He closed the gap between himself and the boy quickly, and Leon knew he was caught. At the last moment, he did exactly what Calder himself had taught him: turned and attacked first.

They went over onto the forest floor, neither one quite on top of the other, fighting for an advantage. Leon knew he would lose, but he needed only to draw the fight out long enough for Min to make it back and alert the others. Leon was fast, faster than Calder remembered, and even without training he had learned much. He and Calder struggled silently, fighting on the forest floor in a desperate tangle of arms and legs. Then Leon moved a fraction of a second too late, and Calder dealt a deciding blow, knocking Leon semi-conscious onto his back. Calder sat back on his heels, breathing hard, while the boy lay dazed on the ground. Leon’s vision was blurry, but he forced himself to sit up, willing his eyes to focus on the man in front of him. He felt hot blood running down his face and in his mouth, and heard Calder’s voice as if from a distance.

“Careful there.”

He felt the man’s arms catch him as he was about to sink back to the ground. Calder held him till his head cleared and the world stopped spinning so much. Leon spat blood onto the dry leaves below them.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.