"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Airborn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

Airborn
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
This story copyright 1996 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use.All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


If I had to pick my favorite way of going home, I wouldn't choose the one I was traveling now. It
would be more fun to come home for Christmas -- where I could look forward to spending time with my
twin sister and my parents, and the emotional atmosphere would be hey, let's have fun, let's do all the
traditional things and enjoy each others' company. And afterward I could leave again, heading back to
my own place.
Not like now. Scooting up Oregon back roads in my tiny antique Honda, I had most of my
independence squirreled around me; my clarinet case bumped my heels whenever I took my feet off the
pedals. I was going home in half-defeat. I had moved away from home at seventeen, finding an apartment
in Spores Ferry, a major town an hour away from the small town of Atwell where I grew up. I wasn't
even eighteen yet, and I had to move back to my parents' house.
I had made a promise to the powers of air that I would learn about them and become their disciple if
they helped me through something I couldn't have survived myself, and they had delivered. The teacher I
needed lived in Atwell.
So: I was on my way home, on my way back to school.
Cultivated fields spread out from the road, their green skirts bordered by woods. I slowed at the top
of Sourgrass Hill to look at the Crooks Farm produce stand. It was autumn, and fruits and vegetables
were ripe. Maybe I should bring Mom some apples as a hostess gift. It would reinforce my guest status
in the house where I had grown up, be a pledge that I planned a visit, not a lifetime.
A man stood beside the road, his thumb out. He wore moccasins, dusty leather pants, and a fringed
leather jacket. A beat-up narrow-brimmed hat sat low on his head. His scraggly dark hair came down to
his shoulders, and his face, as tanned as the leather he was wearing, made his pale green eyes look like
lights at night. He stared at me and I heard a whisper of music in my mind, the faint squeal of a fiddle. I
felt sparks traveling along my muscles. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, turned the wheel
toward the man.
I shook my head, pulled myself together, and drove on, without stopping for apples or the hitchhiker.
What had I been thinking? There was no room in the car. Besides, the guy gave me the creeps. He
looked too much like a maniac from stories after lights-out at camp.
In the rear-view mirror I saw a big gold car pull over. The leather man climbed into the back without
even speaking to the driver.
I picked up as much speed as I could. Whispers sounded around me, but I couldn't make out the
words. If I had my air powers already, maybe I could have strengthened the voices so I would know
what they were talking about.
The big gold car passed me on an uphill climb, and I saw those pale eyes in that dark face staring out
the rear window at me. They burned their image into my mind so that I kept seeing them even after the
car was out of sight over the hill.

* * *
 Atwell hadn't changed since the spring, except the leaves on the maples along Main had grown bigger
and turned a darker green, and the movie showing at the Cinemart was different.
When I reached my parents' street, everybody's cars were gone from the driveway of our white