“The rest of you. You’ll show off your money, you’ll show off your brains. But you won’t show off the thing that makes you different.”
“Possibly we have more important things to do than to amuse you,” Gregor said.
Clearly, these two had not finished their fascinating discussion.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ve started on the wigwam. Bring the poles.”
Turk stopped fighting with Gregor and walked all around the work I’d done.
“Who told you we were going to put it here?” Turk said, looking at the holes I’d made.
“Dang. Forgot to ask your permission,” I said. “Bring the poles.”
“I was going to put it by the entrance,” Turk said.
“I got tired of waiting for you to finish snarking at Gregor,” I said.
“Well, I want it at the front,” Turk said.
Gregor had been looking at the plans.
“Hah. Eight sticks in a circle. Nothing but a basket turned upside down,” Gregor said, ignoring Turk. “Simple.”
“It had better be simple if you’re going to work on it,” Turk said.
Gregor disappeared around the corner and came back with the poles.
“With my vampire strength, things will go quickly,” he said.
“But—” Turk opened her mouth, then bit down on unsaid words.
“Score,” I thought.
While Turk and I struggled to get one pole into the ground, Gregor forced the other seven into their holes. Jenti strength. But there was something more going on. Intensity. I figured he was trying to show Turk how much better he was.
When the poles were pointing to the sky like bony fingers, we tied them into pairs so they made arches. Gregor bent them together like they were straws, and Turk and I tied the knots. We had the frame of our wigwam, and it hadn’t taken an hour.
Then we took the next eight poles and did the same thing. Now we had a pretty complicated framework. We made hoops.
The hoops were four rings that ran around the outside of the framework. We made them by tying the saplings we had left together in twos and threes. Then we lashed them to every pole they crossed. We finished just as the first cool breeze of evening came up from the river.
I was panting. So was Turk. Even Gregor was breathing hard. But the thing was real. It didn’t look like a playhouse or a joke. People had lived in these things, and they had been strong enough and warm enough to protect a whole family against a Massachusetts winter.
I crawled inside and looked up through the lattice of poles we’d made. The sky was turning a deeper blue, and the sun was just above the trees.
It hit me for the first time: We’d done it. We’d actually homesteaded this place. We’d made it ours.
“It feels right,” I said. “It feels like we belong here.”
“Gadje,” Gregor said. “Gadje fantasies. You think you are pioneers now. Cowboys.”
“What’s your fantasy?” I asked.
“My fantasy is that you two forget about this place and never come here again,” Gregor said.
“You’re right,” Turk said. “That is a fantasy.”
“Anyway, we’re done here,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
“You want a ride, Gregor?” Turk said.
Gregor laughed and threw out his arms, jumped into the air higher than any gadje ever could, and changed. His wings unfolded, and he hovered over us. He seemed to fill the sky.
“Tell me when you want to work again,” he shouted down.
Gregor beat the air three times and pushed himself up to the level of the mill roof. He tilted his wings to catch the river breeze, and rose a little more. Then, screaming something in high jenti, he angled away from us and flew toward the night.
“I guess that meant no,” I said.
14
The next week was busy. With eight hundred tons of homework to do every night, I didn’t have a chance to get out to Crossfield. Neither did Turk. I noticed that, smart as she was, she had to spend almost as much time as I did cracking her skull open to put into it everything that Vlad said was supposed to be there.
So it wasn’t until Saturday that Turk and I went out to find that somebody had burned down our wigwam frame. There was nothing left but a circle of soot, ash, and the stumps of blackened sticks.
The corn patch had been dug up, too.
Turk said some really choice things in Spanish when she saw the remains. I stuck to English and jenti.
“I wish I knew who did it,” Turk said when she’d calmed down a little. “I’d murder them.”
“Ah, hell, take your pick,” I said. “Some