Beyond Talent

The grandsisters waited until we were four days into the family reunion to test me. I’m sure they wanted a few days of “family time”, just the semblance of normalcy, so the cousins could talk to the fish and command the waves without interruption. Exercising their talents was their favorite pastime, which left me at a loss, since I had no talent yet. I was almost relieved when my testing day arrived. I was still nervous, though.

The first cousin they sent to me was Grace, just a year older than me, but far more confident. She met me down by the pier in front of our pine-wood cabin and made the water move with her mind. First, she placed a single pinecone into the water, and together we watched it bob up and down on the waves. Then, she sent ripples out across the glittering blue St. Germain Lake, against the waves that came crashing into shore, against the power of the moon and tides themselves. With each thrust of her hands, which created a new wave greater than the last, she would look up at me. “See, Emma? It’s as easy as that. You have to sense the waves, and then they will obey you.” Grace’s talent was one of the more useful ones in the family. She could dock boats with only a swish of her hands through the humid air, and then the vacationers would clap for her. She enjoyed that, I could tell. The grandsisters had been overjoyed when they discovered her power. Great Aunt Mary had called it “a miracle from God.”

With a wave of her hand, Grace made the water climb up the wooden beams of the pier until it coated the entire surface. She let the water fall back into the lake. “Why don’t you try?”

I copied her hand movements. I swept my hands out in front of me, whirled them around my head, whooshed my arms through the air, but to no avail. The lake had returned to its natural state. Each wave met the shore gladly, the same as the one before. I was not a water master.

Grace walked back up the cracked steps to the cabin above, and I waited down by the pier. Although I wasn’t yet allowed in the sunroom, where all important family meetings took place, I could infer what they were talking about. Me. The grandsisters would be scattered around the room in the most comfortable chairs, their children, our parents, crowded together on couches nearby. Children of age would be sitting on the floor, picking at the woven rug. The in-laws had taken the younger kids out for ice cream already.

I sat with my feet in the water and wished I could be back inside, reading or writing.

Ten minutes later, they sent Amelia, who used to take me on walks through the pine forest when I was younger. We would pick wild strawberries and run our hands over the Queen Anne’s lace, but the flowers she touched grew taller, and the ones I stroked seemed to sag. Amelia flounced down the steps, a smile on her face. “Hi, Emma!” she called. “Come over here. I want to show you something.”

The object of interest was a budding purple coneflower. The red-violet petals stuck up into the air like a set of spikes surrounding the precious brown center. Amelia beckoned for me to kneel with her in front of it. “Okay. The grandsisters agree that you’re probably not a water master, so now they want you to try and make this flower bloom. Great Aunt Janine says that to be a flower master, you have to really concentrate and communicate with the flower. Go on, try!”

I stared intensely at the coneflower, making my eyes go as they could without hurting. It remained as it was. I wondered: Which part of your brain do you use to make a flower bloom before its time? Does it give you a headache? Or does the power come from the heart? Amelia did it effortlessly; with a single thought or a gentle stroke of her hand, she could make withering stems stand tall, convince the flower to let go of its seeds, or even coax flowers out of their buds. Why was magic so easy for her and Grace, but not for me? I realized I hadn’t been focusing on making the flower bloom.

“Uh, okay.” Amelia’s frown was quickly replaced with another smile. “Doesn’t look like you can command flowers either, but we already knew that, so it’s not like it’s a disappointment. Who wants to be a flower master, anyway? It’s useless. Uh…good luck, Emma.” She hurried back up the steps, less energetic this time. I watched her head around the side of the cabin and back to the sunroom. Through the window, I could see Great Aunt Mary tilt her head back to sip from her glass.

As the shadows lengthened and the sun descended from the center of the sky, I tried again and again. The grandsisters sent the greatest variety of talents the family had to offer: Joe the fish master, a rambunctious boy of fourteen; sixteen-year-old Annalise, the air master, Camila, the poor ten-year old girl whose fungi mastery no one knew what to do with. Still, I found myself jealous of her. Even she, as useless as her talent was, had a place here. She was connected with nature in a way I couldn’t seem to grasp. Just like the rest of them.

The grandsisters kept sending out the children and young adults from different offshoots of the family. By late afternoon, they had already exhausted the the Boston Kaufmans, the Madison Kaufmans, the Marquezes, the Shipleys, and the Heilmans. In their desperation, they even sent out a second flower master, Benny, who tried and failed to make me germinate a sunflower seed. The grandsisters were running out of talents. Finally, the only known talent left was little Liam. Liam was only six years old. His mastery of woodland creatures had been discovered early, completely by accident. At age five, he had wandered away from the family cookout to pick flowers by the dumpster near the dirt path. Everyone heard the crash and the scream that came from the other side of the house a few minutes later. His parents, Uncle Brad and Aunt Jennifer Shipley, sprinted over to the dumpsters, the rest of the family behind. The rest of the story is still laughed about around family campfires today: How Liam’s parents found him sitting on the dirt, trash strewn all around him, petting the snout of an enormous docile black bear. Since then, he had tamed a fox, two rabbits, and a family of deer that frequented the dirt road by the cabin. Little Liam was a prodigy; although some children accidentally discovered their talents before age ten, no one had ever discovered it as early as him.

At the grandsisters’ request, Joe and Annalise took me and Liam on a walk through the forest, as we were too young to go alone. Liam ran ahead, unafraid of cougars and bobcats. The spindly trees around us cut a sharp shadow through the orange light of the sunset. We walked through these shadows, our faces flickering between light and dark, as Joe and Annalise questioned me.

“So, nothing yet?” Annalise sneered. “Not even a little fungi power like Camila?”

“Nothing yet.”

“I always knew I was going to be an angler,” said Joe. He had found a broken branch on the side of the path and was using it as a walking stick, crunching pine needles as he went. “The grandsisters made me try the other talents, but I was way better at commanding the fish. The tests were such a waste of time. Just think of what you’re already really good at, and that’s probably your talent.”

“Grace told me you couldn’t move the water, but you mastered the hand movements in like five minutes,” said Annalise. “You know, if all else fails, you could be the starving actor of the family!”

She laughed at her own joke. Joe snickered a little, then caught me looking and turned red. Before the deep-cutting shame really settled in my heart, Liam called to us from up ahead. “Come here! I found a deer!”

A deer! I ran down the path, the bouncy bed of pine needles cushioning my steps. This would be it. This was going to be my talent. I was so good with animals; Eugene, the Shipleys’ dog, loved me more than any of the other cousins. After all this time, I was going to finally—

“Be careful!”

Liam sighed in frustration as the deer, spooked by the noise I had made running over, bounded away into the woods. “Never mind.”

“I scared it away,” I whispered. The deer didn’t like me. It was scared of me.

“Try telling it to come back,” Liam suggested. “If you have the talent it’ll trust what you say.”

The deer, a beautiful, dappled doe, lingered behind a tree about a hundred feet away. Shoes skidded on dirt behind me. Annalise and Joe had caught up to us. They waited behind me, Liam at my side, as I opened my mouth to speak to the deer.

“Hi. Can you…can you come over here?”

The deer stared.

“It’s just…I really need to pet you. To prove something. I’ll just pet you on the back, or your nose if you want. I’ll feed you the last raspberries in the fridge if you follow me back to the cabin.”

It flicked an ear. I couldn’t tell if it was out of annoyance of curiosity.

“Don’t you—don’t you want to fit in?” I asked the deer desperately. “Wouldn’t you be so sad if everyone in your family was exceptional, if they led ordinary lives for most of the year and then when they come up here they shine? Wouldn’t you be sad if your family could command fish and make plants grow and talk to animals and manipulate the waves to dock a boat without any humans, and you’re just the girl who’s allergic to trees?”

The deer blinked at me. And then it turned and galloped further into the woods, flitting in and out of the shadows until it was out of sight.

My shoulders slumped, and I started to cry. Joe put a hand on my shoulder. After an awkward moment, Annalise suggested we head back to the cabin.

The sun finally disappeared behind the silhouetted pine trees. The warm, dry day turned into a chilly night. By the time we returned to the cabin, there was no more sunlight coming in through the sunroom windows. One of the grandsisters, tired of waiting in the half-light, had turned on a lamp.

Besides Joe, Annalise, Liam, and the grandsisters, the family was gone. Off to eat at the supper club down the road, no doubt, reveling in their accomplishments. My trials today must have reminded them of their own success when they were ten years old.

The grandsisters stood up one by one and met us at the entrance to the sunroom. Great Aunt met my eye and smiled. Out of pity, I thought bitterly.

Great Aunt Janine, the youngest grandsister, bent down to talk to Liam. “What do you have in your hands, dear?”

“I found a toad on the path!” he exclaimed. “He hopped away from me at first, but I told him not to worry about us.”

“That’s lovely, dear, but let’s let our toad friend go,” Great Aunt Mary said. “Janine, will you take the kids outside?” Clearly, I was not the “kid” she was referring to.

“Of course,” Great Aunt Janine agreed. “Come along, kids.”

Liam, Annalise, and Joe followed her onto the deck, followed by, to my surprise, the other two grandsisters. Only Great Aunt Mary and I were left in the darkening cabin, standing in the doorway between the living room and the sunroom.

Great Aunt Mary strode into the sunroom and beckoned to me. “Come in, Emma.”

Come in. What could that mean? I didn’t have a talent. I wasn’t allowed in the sunroom yet. Maybe ever. Still, I obeyed and sat down on the couch next to her.

“I know today must have been hard for you,” Great Aunt Mary said with a sigh. “It’s difficult when you don’t quite fit in somewhere, but you love it nonetheless. Families are like that sometimes.”

Not knowing what else to do, I nodded.

“Please forgive us for what we put you through today. We had to be sure you didn’t have any talents. We already suspected, of course, but we had to be sure. My sisters wanted me to tell you this because they felt you were the most comfortable around me. Even your grandmother agreed.”

I looked out the sunroom window and saw Liam, Joe, and Annalise bending down in the grass outside, the other grandsisters standing behind them. Liam uncupped his tiny hands to let the toad go free. Curiously enough, it didn’t move from his palm.

“The thing is…” Great Aunt Mary shifted her position on the couch as if she was uncomfortable. “You do not have a nature talent, Emma. But we do believe you are talented, in a way no other member of this family is.”

“What’s my talent?” I asked.

“Your purpose goes beyond a magical talent. Your talent is your ability to tell our story,” said Great Aunt Mary. “Do you remember that picture book you made for us when you were four? Or the full family tree you drew for your grandma’s seventieth birthday?”

I did. It was hanging up in the living room, although until now, I hadn’t realized anyone still looked at it.

“We all love your drawings and your stories. We love it when you tell us folk tales or ghost stories around the campfire. You entertain people down at the boat launch while Grace eases their boats into the water. Most of all, Grace told us how perfectly you copied her hand movements today. On the first day of vacation, you asked Amelia and Camila lots of questions to find out exactly where they harness their power from. You observe, you capture, and you write. This is your talent. Our family is very important to the town of St. Germain. It’s about time someone documented our magic.”

“You want me to record stuff about our family?”

Great Aunt Mary nodded. “Our family history, the talents of each person, even how they feel about all the responsibility. And of course, you’ll interview some of the locals without magic, too.”

“Geez.” I wanted to look anywhere except for Great Aunt Mary’s face, so I risked another glance outside. The cousins and grandsisters were gone already. I turned back to Great Aunt Mary. “You’re sure this is what I’m meant to do?”

She nodded. “Positive.”

“Where do I even start?”

Great Aunt Mary smiled once again. “How about today?”