She clasped her own hands together.
I dropped mine quickly to my side.
Her gaze met mine again, voice returning to its usual smooth confidence. “What I intended to say, Mister Thistlewood, is that I am certainallyour tools are first rate.”
My jaw dropped.
She spun away.
“So how does this one work?” she asked, a moment later.
I stepped next to her, nottooooclose, of course, and continued as matter-of-factly as I could muster. “You pull it towards you. The opposite motion of a carving knife or a chisel. The cutting motion will feel a little different.”
She sliced off the bark, gingerly at first, though peeling off longer and longer strips with each cut. “I am not used to thinking of wood like this. Not functional wood, that is.”
“Functional?”
She set the tool down and ran a fingertip along the smooth, pale surface under the bark. “Trees like this are a part of nature. Beautiful things, yes, but a broken off branch like this has no utility.”
“Never quite made the connection between the curves and bends of tree branches, and those nice, straight boards, eh?”
She glanced briefly at me, then back at the branch.
“Well, if you think that’s beautiful, you’re in for a treat.”
“Oh am I?” As she tipped her head to gaze at me, I could swear she blinked those long eyelashes just a little slower than usual.
“Um hum.” I turned to fish through my tool satchel before my jaw dropped from looking at that gaze of hers. “I’ll… I’ll need you to unclamp the base and turn the branch around.”
“Very well.”
I could feel her moving. I could see motion from the corner of my eye. But at the moment, meeting her gaze directly was like…
She’s here to study, to learn. Maybe she’s starting to respect you a little. Maybe she’s… No. There’s nothing more to it.
“This is a little technique we learn in Thorncove.” I tapped the cross section of the stem with an angular punch, creating a pyramid-shaped hole in the center. “More for show than function, honestly, but it is…” I turned a power crystal, about the size of my thumb, over in my hands. “Funny, the little things you remember. That sense of awe when an elementary school teacher first showed us this.”
“So you are showing me something suitable forelementary school students?”
I didn’t mean it like… I bit back the words before they slipped out.
Yet there had been the hint of a tease in that subtle lilt of her voice.
I tipped my head. “Even worse.” Glancing away before those green eyes of hers could tongue tie me again, I tapped the crystal into the hole with a wooden mallet. “I’m showing you something suitable for elementary school students in a provincial backwater.”
“How dreadful.” She pushed a lock of amber hair behind her ear.
I sucked in a slow breath. Was I smiling? I was probably smiling.
“We’ll have to dim the lights.” I lowered the slatted blinds.
“Will we?”
I did my best to ignore the mind-clouding effects of her soft words as I stepped back to her. “The power crystal I inserted into the stem isn’t a very good one. But it works for this.”
“For what, exactly? Your skill at dramatic foreshadowing isn’t at the level of your woodworking, I hope you realize.”
“For this.” I closed my eyes, letting the jumble of thoughts and emotions drain out as I felt the magic around me. I aligned the base of the branch with the flow, guiding it the last little bit with my mind, until finally…
