“I guess,” Gabe acknowledged.
“He’s the one who brought you here. He had a hard time of it too.”
Gabe rolled his eyes. “Did you hear that at the museum as part of the tour? I wish they’d stop telling that stupid story. And give me another worm, would you? Mine wiggled off the hook.”
Patiently Matty had helped him to rebait his hook. “You need knowledge,” he said. “That’s how Jonas got to be Leader, by studying.”
“I don’t want to be Leader.”
“Neither do I. But I want to know stuff. Don’t you?”
Gabe sighed. “Some stuff, maybe. Not math. Not grammar.”
Matty had laughed. Then he had turned serious again for a moment. “And Gabe?”
“What?”
“You’re going to find that you have a gift of some kind. Some of us do, and you’re going to be one. I can tell.”
Gabe busied himself with the worm and the hook. For some reason the conversation had begun to make him self-conscious.
“I know,” Matty said, “it’s hard to talk about it because it’s hard to understand. But it’s another reason why you must study. You must make yourself ready. Someday you’ll be called upon for something special. Maybe something dangerous. So you have to prepare yourself, Gabe. You’ll need knowledge.”
“Look,” Gabe said loudly, changing the subject, and pointed. “There’s a big trout over there where the rock makes a shadow. He’s hiding. But he sees us. Look at his eyes.”
Matty sighed affectionately and turned his attention to the large fish suspended in the dark water by the rock. It withdrew further, as if it felt their sudden interest, and its shiny eyes darted back and forth. Matty watched. “He thinks he can escape us by lurking there in the dark. But not us, Gabe! We’re too clever for him. Let’s do it. Let’s try to get him.”
Thinking of it now, Gabe remembered it all: the laughter, the puzzling conversation, the sunshine that day, the sound of the slow-moving river, and then their stealthy maneuvers as they stalked the huge, silvery fish, finally caught him, and then threw him back. It had all been years ago, and they had never had another chance to talk in that way.
Matty had been correct, though, about needing to learn stuff. Gabe had tried hard to settle into his studies, and it served him well now, the math he had hated, as he measured and fitted together the pieces of his boat.
But he found himself wishing now that he had not felt so awkward, that he had confided in Matty that day. He had just discovered it then, the power that he had, the power to veer, and was still confused by it.
It had been at a feast, one of the usual celebrations. Probably Midsummer, he thought now, remembering it. With the other boys his age, eight and nine, he had joined the crowd watching a contest. Two of the village men were wrestling. Their bodies were smeared with oil so that their hands slid as they tried to grasp at each other. The crowd shouted encouragement and the men repositioned themselves, shifting on their feet, each waiting for the right instant, the right move, to topple the other and emerge as the winner. Gabe, watching intently, found his own bare feet shifting in the dirt; he panted, imitating the wrestlers. He focused on his own favorite, the man called Miller, who was in charge of grain production each fall. Miller was a large man and a likable one who sometimes on slow workdays organized the boys into teams and taught them intricate games on the playing field. Even in the midst of this intense match, Miller was laughing as he caught his opponent in a hold and struggled to down him.
Gabe, moving his own skinny body in imitation of the wrestlers, found himself wondering how it felt to be Miller: to be so strong, so in command of his muscles and limbs. Suddenly an odd silence enveloped him. He stopped hearing the grunts of the wrestlers, the shouts of the crowd, the barking of dogs, the music from the fiddlers preparing nearby. And he felt himself move, in the silence. He veered—though the word had not yet come to him then—and entered Miller. Became Miller. Experienced Miller. Was Miller for that instant. He knew, briefly, how it felt to be strong, to be in command, to be winning, to be loving the battle and the coming win.
Then sound returned. Gabe returned. The crowd roared in approval and Miller stood with his arms raised, victorious, then leaned forward and helped his laughing opponent up. Gabe slid to the ground and huddled there in the cheering crowd, breathing hard, exhausted, confused, and exhilarated.
After that day it had happened again, several times, until he could feel it coming, and then—later—found that he could command and control the veer. Once, he remembered guiltily, he tried to use it to cheat in school. Seated at his desk, floundering over a math test—fractions, which he had not studied the way he should have—he glanced up at Mentor, the schoolmaster. Mentor was standing near the window, looking at the board on which the test questions had been written.
If I could veer into Mentor right now, enter Mentor, Gabe thought, I could grab all of the answers to these test problems. He concentrated. He closed his eyes and thought about Mentor, about his knowledge, about what it would feel like to be Mentor. Sure enough, the silence came. He felt his consciousness shift and move toward the schoolmaster. Within seconds he was there, within the man, experiencing being Mentor.
The veer worked. But not in the way Gabe had planned. He found no math answers there. Instead he had an overwhelming feeling of a kind of passion: for knowledge, for learning of all sorts—and for the children who sat that day at the small desks, as Gabe did. He felt Mentor’s love for his students and his hopes for them and what they would learn from him.
The veer ended suddenly, as it always did, and Gabe put his head into his hands. The sounds of the classroom returned, and the schoolmaster appeared beside him.
“Are you all right, Gabriel?”
Gabe found himself shaking. He had tears in his eyes. “I don’t feel well,” he whispered.
Mentor excused him for the rest of the day and Gabe walked slowly away from the schoolhouse, promising himself that he would study, that he would not disappoint his teacher again as he had so often in the past.
He never told anyone. Veering seemed a private act, something to both savor and sometimes dread alone.
Now, though, he found himself wishing he had confided in Matty when he’d had the opportunity. Not only about the veer. He wished he had told Matty about how desperately he yearned to know about his mother. He couldn’t tell his lodge-mates; they would laugh. But Matty would have understood. And it was lonely, to yearn so, all alone.