After the first few trees, which are deep and thick, they thin out again, forming a circular space where boulders and stones have been placed into an inner ring. In the centre, three chairs positioned in a close arc that look like they’ve been sculpted from the roots of trees, rise from the ground to cradle whoever may sit them.
The Maker takes her place in the centre.“Sit.”
I do, taking the seat to her left.
Her sightless eyes travel to my throat as I take my place. She reaches out with one of her hands, her spindly finger hovering over the burn on my throat.“You seem to be missing something.”As her finger grazes over my skin, I fight the stinging sensation that sparks all the way down my chest.“Interesting.”
“Is that all you have to say?” I don’t speak inside my mind to her.
“What would you have me say?”
“I don’t know. Something to help or explain it to me? Tell me what happened. What happened to me to leave this mark?” It was my hope that she would lay the answers out to me.
“You showed that you cannot be bound, child. That is clear. Do you remember what I told you?”
Riddles. Those confusing words. “It is earth and space and time and everything in between,” I repeat the most confusing parts of what she told me back to her, and she just chuckles.
She lifts her hand to my neck again and tilts her head to the sky.
Suddenly, we’re not in the woods anymore. We’re back in the Great Hall, and we’re having tea.
I step forward and watch the scene play out, a bystander to a memory—my memory, just like I’ve done before.
“Like good and bad? Light and darkness?” I hear myself ask the question. I’d almost forgotten what she said, drowned by the horrors and the constant reminder that perhaps my magic is only a curse. A link to death.
“You are learning that your gift can amplify or drain. But it is not confined like the other Orders. I see all because I was the first. You will see possibilities. For you. For others. To weave and thread and sew. To nurture or to destroy. But at the centre of itall is your mind and heart. And the way to rule them in harmony is to master your emotions. Something that takes years.”
Control my emotions.Easier said than done. And when my emotions have peaked, that’s when I’ve felt the most powerful. That’s when I’ve been able to use my magic.
Her words float in my mind again.“Caress it, nurture it, for it can be fickle and stubborn and deadly.”
Deadly.
The Maker pulls us back from the memory, leaving me with more questions than I started with.
“Is it fickle, or am I just bad at all of this?” I ask. “Because my emotion seems to be the key, and now I can pull on powers I shouldn’t have. Any magic I’ve experienced, I can feel now.” She doesn’t answer. “I saw what the Usher plans. What he wants to do.”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t question what that might mean—a disgruntled and powerful Natural coming back to rid Kirrasia of everything they know. “You know this?” My face scrunches up at how calm she is. I came back here to do the right thing, and she already knows?
“You know I see all, child. You will see possibilities.”
“So, the Usher?”
“That will be for our Goddess to decide.”
Aslendrix.
“And… what the Usher did, calling on Novandia. Did that change me and my power? Will I have gifts from both God and Goddess?” Is that why my magic feels so eager, now that I do not need touch to command it? “Because I’m afraid. Afraid of this power that seemed to vanish and desert me, and then come back with force. Since crossing back into Kirrasia, I’m able to cast all of us under a cloak of invisibility like it’s nothing.” I take a breath, my heart pounding and beating for more answers,wanting to purge myself of the questions and fill the gap they leave with knowledge that will ease the emptiness that’s taken root in the depths of the well that housed my power.
“Whatever I did that night destroyed my necklace. I thought I needed that to stop the power from turning me mad—from taking over. Yet, I’m fine. It’s as if I’m restored to before my Transference. Will my power right itself, and how will I fight my brother if he comes? He?—”
The Maker holds up her hand, silencing me.
And everything around us.
The light starts to shift, and the sun lowers, scattering shadows around us as the darkness grows, and the stars begin to bloom overhead in the sky.
