I was six when I began to understand what the whispering was all about. My parents did their best to pretend everything was fine, that I wasn’t different from the rest of them. But children are amazingly aware of their surroundings, and I had an especially keen eye for detail. Unfortunately, an eye for detail isn’t magical.

“It’s got to show up some day,” my dad said, not bothering to keep his voice down. My parents thought I was playing in the back yard as I crouched behind the hedges below the open window.    

“Caryn’s nearly seven now, Roger. Her Talent should have shown up years ago.” I heard my mother sniff. “Maybe we should take her to the doctor.”

“No! There’s nothing wrong with her.” A thump like a fist hitting a wooden tabletop. “She can already do magic like everyone else. Her Talent will develop in its own time. We just have to be patient.”

I scooted to the end of the hedge and dashed across the back yard to my tree house. After I climbed inside, I crumpled to the floor and cried. My Talent was never going to show up. I would never have anything more than ordinary magic. It wasn’t fair! Everyone had something they could do better than the rest—why not me?

My father would say, “Magic comes in bits and pieces, Caryn. And the biggest piece is always last.” But I’d known better. My cousin had shown signs of his Talent when he was only six months old. Most of my neighborhood friends were at least showing the beginning stages, like William Kleidon who carved magical wood and changed it to stone without losing the wood’s powers.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and took a deep breath. My eyes felt puffy, and I didn’t want my parents knowing I’d been crying, so I stayed in the tree house for a while, drawing. Even at six I showed real skill, but, like an eye for detail, being able to draw well isn’t magical either.

By the time I turned eight I’d given up. My Talent would never develop. At least I had my art. I spent every spare moment drawing or painting. It was a release for me, a compulsion. My walls were covered with sketches of plants and animals from the forest. I gave them away to friends and family, and even sold a few in town. Everyone oohed and ahhed over my ability to capture the colors. They said my paintings “popped off the page.” But the praise was always followed by a look of pity.

Around strangers I pretended I was one of those people who liked to keep their Talents secret. I even began to wonder if some of them were pretending, too.

“Don’t be silly,” William said one day as we walked through the forest looking for fallen branches. At ten, he stood a full head taller than me even though his birthday was six months after mine. “It’s just that some people have really weird Talents, or they don’t see the value of them, so they keep quiet. But we’ve all been given gifts, Caryn.” He stopped and looked at me with those bright blue eyes so full of friendship and concern. “Yours is in there somewhere. You just haven’t figured out how to reach in and pull it out.”

My cheeks warmed and I turned away. Why did he have to be so sweet? I didn’t deserve a friend like him, someone whose Talent outshone everyone else’s as far as I was concerned. He had gone beyond turning wood into stone, and could now transform any natural substance into any other. I was jealous and proud of him at the same time.

The flush left my cheeks when I spied a branch half-hidden behind a toadstool. I reached down and grabbed it, and then held it out for William to see.

“This one would be perfect, don’t you think? It looks like Water Maple, and it’s big enough around, isn’t it?”

William’s face widened with a smile that crinkled his eyes. “Yes! If I carve it into a sphere, I can hollow out the middle and transform it to crystal.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, as the flush returned, but on my neck now instead of my cheeks. Sometimes it seemed as if he read my thoughts.

We spoke at the same time then—“A snow globe!”—and William grabbed my hand as we ran to his house.
    

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