The Spell-Bound Scholar

Chapter 19

By the time she was fourteen, Finny had begun to take her turn disciplining and teaching the younger children. She had also developed some very pronounced curves and a face that made the town boys whistle when they saw her, but there was still something threatening about them. When they called for kisses, she didn't go chasing them anymore. Instead, she and the other girls scolded them, refusing to be treated with disrespect, but the attention gave her a glow and made her feel special. More than that, it made her feel powerful in a strange way. When that feeling came upon her, the boys stared, then began to talk to her in admiration, and her foster sisters began to be envious—but when the boys crowded close to try to fondle, the girls drove them away with slaps, the power of which was increased by telekinesis.

At home, she would catch her foster brothers watching her with open admiration now and then, though most of the time they only talked with her as they always had—after all, she was only Finny and they'd known her all her life. But there was a new note of respect in their tones now, something notably absent from the town boys' voices, and it kindled that warm, powerful feeling again.

Finister found that remembering that feeling and letting it build made her foster brothers vie with one another to help her with her chores.

"That bucket must be too heavy for you, Finny!"

"Oh, no, Jason. I can manage it easily."

"Nonsense. Here, I'll carry it. Aren't Mama's flowers beautiful this year?"

Then there would be a nice, close conversation that made her feel even more special. Finally she decided to try the effect of that feeling on her foster father. She waited until they were alone in the keeping room at the end of one cold winter day. Papa sat down by the fire and she said, "Here, Papa, let me pull your boots off!" She bent to tug at his boot, then smiled up at him, letting the special feeling grow.

"That's good of you, Finny," he said, then looked at her a second time, staring. "Why, Finny!" he exclaimed, "you're a projective empath!"

"A what?" Finny asked, confused, and the special feeling went away.

"Mama!" Papa leaped to his feet and went to the kitchen door. "Mama, come here! Our little girl is growing into a projective empath!"

"Really?" Mama came bustling out, wiping her hands on her apron. "You must mean Finny! We've known for a long time that she's good at making people think she doesn't look like her real self. You mean she can project emotions, too?"

"Project them and raise them in another person!" Papa turned to her. "Show Mama what you just did, Finny!"

Finny wasn't at all sure she wanted Mama to know how she had charmed Papa—but the older woman was looking at her with such hope that it made her remember the few times Mama had been delighted when she'd been particularly deft with telekinesis and, hoping to receive that kind of approval again, she tried to remember the feeling the boys raised in her. She managed to recall it and let it grow—and grow, and grow.

Orly came in with a load of firewood in his arms. He turned toward the fireplace and saw Finny. The wood clattered on the floor as his jaw dropped.

"Yes, I see." Mama beamed, lit by a glow of her own. "How wonderful, Finny! But I think that's enough now." She looked up at Papa and said, "I think our little girl will go far."

"Even to high places," Papa agreed, one arm around Mama's shoulders. "Congratulations, Finny! An ability like that is rare, very rare indeed!"

"Unfair, too," Orly grumbled as he bent to pick up the wood.

"Oh here, let me help you!" Finny cried, all contrition. She knelt to pick up the logs, but Orly's breath hissed in and she straightened, staring. "I—I'm sorry, Orly."

"Don't be," the teenager said. "It's been a horrible day, but you just made it a good one."

His eyes were warm with admiration, but also with amusement. Finny smiled and helped him finish with the wood.

When they were alone later that night, though, Mama had some very earnest words for her.

"It's a gift with which you must be very careful, Finny. If you make a boy fall in love with you, he could become very angry when you spurn him—and very badly hurt inside. You could do a great deal of damage."

Puzzled, Finny asked, "You mean I shouldn't use that gift?"

"If you can project one emotion, you can project them all," Mama said slowly, "and raising pity or sympathy in somebody, or a sense of responsibility, can do a lot of good. If you fall in love with a boy, of course, you're going to want to try to make him fall in love with you—but strong though they may seem, boys aren't made of steel, you know."

Finny looked doubtful. "You don't mean I could use that gift to hurt a boy, do you? I mean, do real damage."

"You certainly could," Mama said, "and you must be careful not to, unless your commander orders it when you're grown up. If you play with boys' hearts carelessly, you could wreck homes, turn men into thieves, make them kill one another—all sorts of horrible things."

Finny swelled inside with the feeling of power that gave her, even as her heart shrank from the thought of the guilt she would feel if she used her gift in such a way. "I'll be careful, Mama. I promise."

She was, trying very hard not to let the special feeling leak out—though she couldn't keep it from rising whenever one of her foster brothers let slip a glance of admiration. She reminded herself that, when a boy smiled at her that way or whistled or came over to talk, it wasn't her face or figure that had attracted him but the warmth of the emotions that she had let slip out. She knew she was a cheat and a fake, but she couldn't see any way to be anything else. She was born to be a deceiver and would have to live with that nature for the rest of her life.

In town, Finister discovered a new and thoroughly acceptable use for her gift. When five of the girls went shopping and a gang of town boys gathered to heckle them, she let her special feeling grow and projected it. Then the boys began to sweet-talk her and she paid attention first to one, then to another, until she had them arguing over who would have the pleasure of escorting her back to Papa's wagon. Then she projected anger into them as she led her sisters away a step at a time, watching as the boys began to shove one another and shout insults. They forgot the girls as they began to fight in earnest, and Finny and her sisters made their escape. As soon as they were out of sight, they began to laugh at the boys' foolishness—but Orma didn't laugh and began to eye Finny with envy. That bothered her.

In fact, her emotional growing pains were becoming strong enough that the schoolroom was something of a refuge. There Mama and Papa took turns teaching the more advanced subjects, such as physics, psychology, economics, and history— not just the history of old Earth but also of the whole Terran Sphere. They learned about SPITE, the Society for the Prevention of Integration of Telepathic Entities, the selfless and virtuous organization that spanned all the colonized planets and all of civilized time to try to save the people from tyranny—especially the tyranny of VETO, the Vigilant Exterminators of Telepathic Organisms, the totalitarian organization that tried to enslave all common people and make them labor at jobs that dulled the spirit until they became virtual robots, all in the name of the State. The inefficient and equivocating democratic governments weren't much better, according to Mama and Papa—they spent so much time vacillating and never making a decision that they left the people victims of Big Business, which was as willing to grind the workers into robots as VETO was, but also poisoned the people with the products it made them buy. Worst of all was the DDT, a democratic government that was trying to subvert the government of Gramarye.

All the children became very angry at the villainous VETO but even more at the sneaky DDT. Mama and Papa told them that if they became really skilled in their use of ESP, they would be allowed to join SPITE when they grew up and become Home Agents. Then they could help rid Gramarye of both VETO and the DDT. Finny began to realize that she could use her special gift to set the men in both organizations fighting each other the way the town boys had. Men were so easy to manipulate, after all.

Now that they were old enough, Mama took the big girls aside and told them how they had probably come to be born—not by parents who wanted them but didn't have money enough to keep them, but by women who had let men seduce them with their lies and charms, get them pregnant, then abandon them. Those women may have wanted to keep their children, but having no husbands, they would have been hard-pressed to make enough money to live. Worse, once they were no longer virgins, few men would be willing to marry them, not without dowries, and they might have to become prostitutes. It was quite possible that several of the children could be half brothers or half sisters, the unwitting by-blows of their mothers' pathetic attempts to make a living—though most of the money they earned would have been taken by their pimps.

Now Finny began to feel the hot, burning anger that would be with her the rest of her life, the urge for revenge upon the man who had seduced her unknown mother or forced her into prostitution. Since she didn't know who the man was, she would spend long years trying to revenge herself on any man who came by.

Except for Orly, but he came later—at least, as something other than a brother.

Mama and Papa knew which of their foster children were more tenderhearted than the others and knew that Finny was among them, so they didn't let her see a chicken beheaded until she was twelve. Even then, they told her to brace herself, described what she would see, and told her to erect her full mental shield so that she would not feel the fowl's death pangs. They did tell her that it would be quick, and it was— but in her case, twelve was still too early; she was naturally a very sensitive and affectionate child, and it gave her nightmares. The next year, they let her start seeing sheep butchered, and at fourteen, pigs. It was horrifying and sent her into fits of tears, but Mama told her gently, "It's the way of the world, Finny. If we want to have chicken for dinner, we have to kill the chicken first—and if we want bacon and pork chops and pigskin to sell, we have to slaughter the pig and clean it. You'll learn to cope with it, dear. We all do, sooner or later."

Finny tried, she tried very hard, though she couldn't stand to eat meat for months after each encounter. As the years went by, though, she managed to repress her horror and become herself a hardened butcher. Papa congratulated her when she beheaded her first chicken, and Mama herself made much of her. They both showered her with approval again when she butchered her first pig, then her first sheep—but when they were alone, Mama gathered Finny's head onto her breast and let the teenager weep. "I know it's hard, Finny, but the world is hard. It's a cruel place, and the only way to live in it is to become capable of cruelty yourself, and to harden your heart to others' pain."

That was hard for a telepathic girl, very hard, but Finny learned how to make her mental shields more dense and managed it.

The older girls started telling her about menstruation well before her courses began, so it was no shock to her, and she had a passage party just as the older girls had had. Afterward, though, Mama took her aside to make sure she understood how women became pregnant and to warn her against men who wanted to use her. Then her older sisters taught her how, even if a man did manage to seduce her, she could use telekinesis to keep from becoming pregnant. Finny listened intently and rehearsed as much of it as she could without a boy on whom to practice. She wasn't apt to remain a virgin forever, after all, though from everything she was hearing and from what she saw in the barnyard, she wasn't terribly interested in sex. Mama had made it quite clear that, since they were foundlings with no family and certainly no dowry, the girls weren't very likely to marry. It might happen, of course, especially if the young woman were really beautiful, but Finny knew she wasn't. She might be able to bewitch a man into thinking she was, but did she really want a husband who fell in love with the illusion she created, not with the real Finny? Maybe Dory could find a husband, or Orma—they were both beautiful, and certainly they were patient and good-natured, even sweet—but not Finny. She accepted the fact that she would never marry, but she was determined not to become an old maid. Old she would one day be, but not a maid. It was only a matter of time.

Then Orly changed, and she decided that time didn't matter.

She was in the middle of her sixteenth year and a few of the village girls her age had already married and were with child. Orly was a year older. She couldn't say how he had changed. Maybe it was that the last signs of baby fat melted from his face under the sun that summer, or maybe it was only that she had never noticed. Certainly when he came in from the fields and stopped by the well to strip off his shirt and sluice away the dust and sweat of the day, she noticed how huge his muscles had become and wondered why she had never noticed before. It started a peculiar feeling in her, like the special feeling that came from boys' admiring glances but stronger, much stronger. The biggest difference came when they talked. Somehow they managed to be alone even if there were others nearby, alone sitting on a bench in the backyard and talking about the stars or the crops or the newest baby—talking as they always had, about subjects they had always discussed, but somehow the conversations seemed so much deeper, so much more meaningful; it was as though she were hearing undertones and hidden meanings she'd never known before. Both of them had their mental shields up, as they had all learned to do—the constant storm of others' thoughts could drive you crazy, after all, and you didn't want everybody knowing your personal secrets.

They didn't notice Mama and Papa watching them with thoughtful faces, then looking at one another and nodding slowly.

It must have been an accident, of course—certainly Mama wouldn't have sent her up to the hayloft if she had known Papa had just sent Orly up there to make sure the hornets hadn't started another nest. He caught Finny kneeling to pet the swollen cat and called, "Why, Finny! Have the kittens come, then?"

"Oh! You startled me!" Finny leaped up, then saw it was Orly and couldn't help letting out some of that special feeling as she gave him a sleepy-eyed smile. "No, they haven't come yet, Orly. But it's late enough that we need to watch her closely."

"We should have been watching her closely two months ago." Orly grinned as he came closer. "It's a little late now."

He was standing a little too close and Finny felt a strange new presence about him, something like her own special feeling, and wondered if Orly were a projective empath, too. She lowered her gaze and looked up from under her lashes. "Puss didn't seem to mind it at the time."

"Yes, but look at her now." Orly frowned, drawing a little away. "There are always consequences."

Finny felt a touch of distress—she had liked him standing close, even liked the hint of danger in it. She let out more of her own special feeling as she said, "There don't have to be. She'd have two litters a year if we let her."

"You mean you stop her from. . . ?" Orly frowned. "Can't be. I've seen her go into heat only a few weeks after one litter's grown."

"Into heat, yes, but we don't let babies start." Finny spared a wink for the cat. "We females have to take care of one another, don't we, Puss?"

Puss purred and stretched, flexing her claws.

"You certainly do!" Orly said in surprise. "I didn't know."

Finny made a face at him. "Boys don't need to know everything."

"Maybe not." Orly grinned and stepped closer again. "We know what really matters, though."

"Oh?" Finny said archly. "And what is that?"

"Ask Puss," Orly said deep in his throat and stepped a little closer, reached out to almost touch her waist, and his face hovered near, so very near, and his breath smelled sweet and musky. She looked deeply into his eyes and felt her special feeling growing; she clamped her shields tight on the instant, but left an opening for him and felt his mind reaching out. For a moment their thoughts mingled, and she shivered— but she realized he wouldn't close that last inch on his own, so she swayed just a little forward.

He swung toward her as though he were iron and she a magnet and their lips brushed, then brushed again. It was a tickling that called deep within her, and her whole body answered with a wave of sensation that frightened her even as she welcomed it. His lips brushed again, then stayed; hers melted against his, her whole body seemed to melt against his, and he was so hard and strong, his chest pressing from the front, his arms holding her fast, and her lips fluttered open. He gasped, and the tip of his tongue touched her lips. She shuddered and opened her mouth wide. For a moment, tongue caressed tongue, and fire coursed through her—for a moment, then another moment and another.

Finally the feeling ebbed; she realized, with surprise and shame, that she had been pressing her hips against his and stepped away, eyes downcast. "Orly ... we shouldn't—"

"Oh, yes we should," he breathed. "You know it and I know it—but not today."

"Not ever." She spoke sadly, managing to get her hands between them—but that was a mistake, too, because they felt the hardness of his chest and seemed to want to go exploring on their own.

So did his hands, though they didn't stray far from her waist. "Someday, beautiful Finister," he breathed. "Someday."

It was the first time she had ever really liked the sound of her name.

Somehow they met frequently after that, every other day or so, then every day. The first few times, Mama and Papa had made mistakes again, Mama sending Finny down to the creek to pull tubers for dinner, Papa sending Orly there to rake the leaves from it. They would start to talk, not meaning to embrace, but it was as though they couldn't keep apart from one another. Kissing led to caressing, and caressing to a desire for more intimate touching. They began to meet in the barn, in the woodshed, in the grove to explore one another's minds and bodies—never going as far as they wanted, of course.

They were so wrapped up in one another that they never stopped to think some of their foster siblings might have noticed, and certainly not that Mama and Papa could be aware of their meetings, for they would have stopped them at once, wouldn't they? They both felt guilty about it, but not very— just enough to add another level of thrill to their secret.

The family always went to the midsummer festival—that expedition was no surprise—and Papa always told them to go in three different wagons by three different routes so that they wouldn't seem so intimidating to the villagers; they didn't usually all come to town at once. This time, though, Finister and Orly exchanged a glance, then quickly looked away. It never occurred to them that their older siblings might have thought of this before them. They were only delighted at how easy it was to slip away.