Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,72
get your hair cut if you wanted—and where you had to go get your hair cut if you were a guy, because boys’ hair length was part of the dress code, just like not dying it blue (whether you were a boy or a girl) was. But Edgar’s was messy and uncombed and sticking up all over the place. His clothes were a mess, too—not dirty, but rumpled, as if he’d just pulled them on and then never bothered to make sure his sweater lay flat or his shirt was tucked in. Worst of all, his hands flapped while he walked, and he twitched and stumbled along—not like he was a spaz, but as if he was constantly being distracted by sights and sounds that nobody else noticed but him.
“Oh boy,” Muirin said. “Here comes Freakazoid.”
“Do I even need to tell you how rotten saying something like that is?” Loch asked her in a perfectly pleasant voice.
“Why, no,” Muirin said, smiling a big false smile. “I can get there on my own.” She took a step forward as Addie and Edgar approached, since this was supposed to be her idea.
“Hi, Eddie,” she said unenthusiastically.
It seemed to take Edgar a moment to notice her. “You’re really pretty for a dead girl,” he told her. His voice was high pitched, like a child’s, though Spirit would have guessed he was about Addie’s age.
Muirin grimaced. “Yeah. I like you, too.”
“You didn’t say there were going to be a lot of, a lot of people here, Addie,” Edgar said. He had his book bag slung precariously over one shoulder, and he clutched at the strap as if it were a kind of security blanket.
“Remember, I said Muirin’s friends wanted to know, too?” Addie said. “This is everybody, Edgar. You know Burke. And this is Spirit White and Lachlan Spears. They came here in September.”
“Hi, Edgar,” Loch said.
“Hi,” Edgar said. He looked at Spirit. “You don’t have a crown,” he said, sounding disappointed.
Spirit blinked. She had no idea how to answer, since “I’m sorry” seemed kind of tacky. She was trying to remember if she’d ever had a dress-up princess outfit as a child—since it didn’t seem likely she was going to be crowned Queen of England any time in the future—when Addie took charge of matters.
“Come on over here, Edgar,” Addie said. “Then we can get started.”
Edgar smiled at her, and Spirit thought suddenly that Edgar wanted to reassure Addie as much as Addie was trying to reassure him. “It’s okay. We’re near the water,” he said.
Spirit heard Muirin growl faintly under her breath.
Edgar reached into his book bag and pulled out a battered metal bowl. It looked as if it was handmade—although Spirit couldn’t tell what the metal was, because it had been painted over thickly with black enamel.
“I use the, uh, the same bowl every time,” Edgar said shyly, glancing up from beneath his lashes. “I don’t have to. I just do. Ms. Smith, she says the fewer things you have to think about, the easier it is, and, and, and so your focus should be something familiar.”
“That makes sense,” Loch said, as if this were the most reasonable thing in the world to be discussing. “I wish my Gift worked that way, but it doesn’t. Mine’s Kenning.”
“Oh, oh, oh then you, you won’t want to touch my bowl, no. I’ve had it since before I came here, and, no. You wouldn’t want to touch it. No,” Edgar said, shaking his head and clutching the battered bowl to his chest. But not as if he was protecting it from Loch. As if he was protecting Loch from it. “No.”
“Okay,” Loch said, still sounding just as agreeable.
There were folded canvas drop cloths in the tool shed at the back end of the Greenhouse, and they’d brought one out to sit on. Burke seemed to know just about everything about the day-to-day running of Oakhurst. He said they used them when they wanted to move a plant from one of the raised beds to a flowerpot. Some plants “wintered” in the Greenhouse and were replanted in the flower beds every spring. The five of them arranged themselves in a semicircle on the drop cloth facing Edgar, and Edgar set the empty bowl down in front of himself. Addie picked up a nearby watering can, preparing to fill it—though she could just as easily have Called the water out of the can into the bowl with her Gift.