State of Grace Read Online Free PDF Page A

matter what the pond looks like. I mean, who actually cares?
    I get up from my squat and straightaway Blaze does too.
    ‘But maybe I just haven’t seen the right ponds.’
    Brook’s watching me really closely now.
    ‘If you two want to hook up,’ he says, ‘why not just say so?’
    ‘We don’t,’ me and Blaze say at the exact same moment.
    And if you asked me, I couldn’t even tell you which one of us is louder. So I guess that sorts that out.
    ‘Enjoy yourselves,’ Gil calls out as I follow Blaze down the path, back across the lawn, away from the huts and the orchard.
    I start talking, because it’s superunlikely Blaze is ever going to.
    ‘So, where exactly is this amazing pond?’
    Blaze kind of points with his head but stays pretty much silent until we reach this clump of magnolia trees, all thick with flowers. Blaze shoulders his way through them and I follow him.
    Only to stop in front of the plainest, globbiest-looking pond Dot ever created.
    ‘You brought me that entire way for this?’
    ‘Didn’t think you wanted to stay.’
    Apparently my blurting strategy didn’t work on Blaze. That thing with the wren and the bonfire? I’m pretty sure he noticed. Just like he somehow guessed what was going to happen when I climbed the rocks earlier. Dot only knows how, but he seemed to understand how I’d be feeling even before I did.
    Blaze slides his bare feet into the pond, just like at the rockpools. But then guess what happens? He swishes his legs in the water and, I swear to Dot, the pond lights up. Wherever Blaze’s legs move, these little specks of pale green light follow them. When he stops moving, the lights fade away.
    ‘How in creation …’
    ‘Little animals.’
    Seriously, Blaze says the most prenormal things. I mean, there’s obviously no animals in the pond. It’s the rest of creation that’s teeming with them. Big cats dozing in the sun, deer cropping the grass, butterflies and monkeys chitter-chattering in the trees. Parrots, flamingos, eagles, macaws, snow owls and even wrens, when they’re not smashing into Gil’s shutters. But nothing whatsoever in the pond.
    I don’t make a big point about it though. Mostly, I want to try the light thing out for myself. And when I slide my legs into the pond, the water does the exact same thing it did for Blaze. I try with my fingertips and the lights follow them as well. I smile and when I look over at Blaze – guess what? He’s already smiling at me.
    ‘Cool, hey?’
    I’m leaning forward. It’d be so easy for Blaze to push me in, but I’m pretty sure he never thinks about doing that. It’d be totally different if Blaze were some other creation.
    Jasper, for example. Jasper would have pushed me into the pond ten times over by now. And I would have been so busy trying to get him back that I wouldn’t have noticed the lights Dot put in the water.
    For ages me and Blaze stay like that, trailing our fingers and kicking our legs. I keep on starting to talk but Blaze never really lets any conversation get going. One time he even tells me I don’t have to talk if I don’t want to.
    ‘I do want to.’
    ‘If you’re always talking, there’s no time to think.’
    Exactly .
    Think too hard and you’re going to end up stuck on the things you’d rather forget. Such as the eye blurring thing, or that prenormal trembling in my hands. Feathered bodies in fires. Those things are way better ignored, in my opinion. I guess that’s where me and Blaze are totally different.
    At one point Blaze gets up.
    ‘Where are you going?’
    I don’t know why, but I want him to stay near me.
    He disappears behind a magnolia tree and I hear the sound of liquid hitting the dirt. For some Blaze-ish reason I guess he feels like he can’t just go in front of me like anyone else would.
    When he’s finished, I think he’s going to say we should go back to our huts but, surprise, surprise, he doesn’t. He slides his legs back into the pond and goes on stirring up