“So what about Ani?” I ask, eager to move on to less awkward ground. “How does his Sun energy work?”
“As the Sun arcana with a fire affinity, Ani’s energy is always going to shine bright—brighter than anyone else in the room. You know how he has that uncanny ability to put people at ease and make everyone laugh?”
I grin. Just thinking about my favorite ginger brings a smile to my face.
“See, that right there?” Kirin points at my face, returning my smile. “That’s the Sun energy. Ani will always seek to make people happy. He’s adventurous and free-spirited, creative, easy to talk to, andwaymore fun than the rest of us.”
I nudge him with my elbow. “Don’t sell yourself short, Genius Boy. You’ve got your fun moments, too. I mean, youdidtake my flying on bikes today.”
“True. But with Ani… He doesn’t just do fun things or have fun moments. Heisfun. He’s light and joy. Laughter. All of it.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine he evenhasa dark side.”
“It’s not dark in the way we think of the Magician now. But as much as Ani has a gift for humor and childlike fun, he can sometimes be naive, or use that happier side himself to mask what’s hurting him. He also has a hard time taking things seriously. That’s the nature of bright-side people in general, because they always want to believe the best in every person and every situation. But with Ani—the Sun energy—it’s just a lot more intense. If he were to give in to his inner darkness, it could very easily lead to vanity and shallowness. Maybe even deception. Add in the fire aspect, and Ani could turn to a lifelong pursuit of passion and pleasure without the underlying joy—similar to the Devil energy in that respect.”
“And Doc?” I ask.
“Cass is The Moon arcana and a water-blessed mage. He can tap into emotions, read people and situations, feel and sense things most others can’t. Well,youprobably can, considering your empathic skills. But Cass is very attuned to emotional energies. I know he calls his specialty mental magicks, but really it’s emotional magicks. Manipulation happens at the emotional level, not the logical one. Fear, love, desire—it’s all emotion.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Doc, as you call him, challenges us to see what’s beneath—to search for deeper truths and meaning, to delve into the depths of our own unconscious realms, to trust our inner voices. But he also has a tendency to lose himself in his own emotions. That’s the danger with the Moon energy. It can sweep you away, pull you under, make you lose sight of what’s real and what’s fantasy. Cass struggles with walking that line sometimes. He’s…” Kirin sighs, and I can tell he’s weighing how much to reveal. Despite how close I feel to the guys now, I’m still the new kid on the block, and intimacy—physical or emotional—has to be earned.
“It’s okay, Kirin.” I place my hand on his arm. “You don’t need to share Doc’s personal demons. That kind of thing doesn’t fall under the no-secrets clause.”
“I know.” Kirin sighs. “It’s just… There’s still so much for you to learn. I’m trying to give you an overview without totally overwhelming you, and right now, we’re still just scratching the surface. A lot of this you’ll just have to feel your way through, figure it out on your own.”
“I’m not on my own, though,” I remind him, linking my arm through his. “I’ve got you guys.”
“And we’ve got you,” he says. “Which makes all the darkness more bearable.”
We walk a few minutes in silence, the mist swirling around us, tiny droplets of water condensing on my hair. Sensing he’s not quite ready to share the details of his own Arcana darkness yet, I decide to bring up my mother instead.
“That day you guys told me about the Brotherhood,” I say, “Cass said my mother was part of it. That she was The World.”
Kirin nods. “The World is the final card on the Fool’s Journey, the last of the Majors. It holds an energy of completion and total fulfillment that I’m sure fueled your mother’s passion and dedication to her work. It likely allowed her to see all possibilities, before and after, and to interpret the prophecies with this endless, cyclical nature in mind. But the end of one journey contains the seeds of new beginnings, and I believe that your mother may have succumbed to a darker aspect of this—a feeling that her work was never complete, that she couldn’t risk tethering herself in a fixed point in time or space—not even for your father or you. I know some believe she went mad, but it’s so much more complex than that. I think she just… She lost herself. Lost all sense of time. Lost her place in the human world, her feeling that she even belonged in it. And even though she ultimately left the Academy and her work behind, a part of her soul likely remained here, still seeking, still endlessly searching.”
“Part of that makes me so sad. But it also brings me comfort—you know? Just thinking she’s here with me. Does that make sense?”
“Sheishere with you, Stevie. Not just when you see her in your dreams, but every time you open her notebooks. You’re touching the same pages she touched, reading over words and passages inspired by her own Tarot mythology and linguistic symbology. Your mother didn’t simply translate messages she received from the Tarot. Sheinterpretedthem—put her own personal stamp on them. You’re reading prophecies influenced by her deepest feelings, her beliefs, her hopes and dreams, her wishes, her fears, all of it. Writers—all writers—they leave something of themselves on every page, Stevie. I don’t believe it gets any more personal than that.”
Warmth rises in my chest as I take in Kirin’s words. He’s right. I feel Mom with me even now, walking by my side through the strange, otherworldly landscape of Breath and Blade.
There was a time when the very thought of my parents would send me to my knees, unable to shoulder the weight of grief. But every day I spend at the Academy, every day I get closer to my own magick, I feel that weight shift. Lessen. Before I enrolled here, I never imagined that the heaviness of loss would one day fade, even a little. That a smile over a happy memory could turn my tears of loss into tears of gratitude—gratitude that for all the souls in the universe, across all the eons of existence, I was blessed with even a single moment with my parents.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and Kirin nods, a new understanding passing between us. Through his work on the prophecies, Kirin brought my mother back to life. Back tomylife. That will always connect us.
We find a flat, dry patch of rock at the base of a thick spire and take a break, sitting down next to each other to share a bottle of water and some trail mix.
“I understand what you’re saying about the light and dark aspects of Arcana energies,” I say, popping a handful of peanuts and M&Ms into my mouth. “And sure, maybe there’s always a little danger inherent in the darkness. But still… You called it acurse, Kirin. None of this sounds like a curse.”
“The curse isn’t that the light and the dark exist within us—that’s just our nature. The curse is that we will always be drawn to both, and anything can happen—at any point—to flip the switch. Humans in general have a hard time staying on the right side of morality—even deciding what the right sideis. Add magick to the mix—especially magick as powerful as that of Arcana witches and mages—and each of us is a walking time bomb. The Dark Arcana are playing out our own worst-case scenarios right now.” He turns to face me, his eyes turning serious behind his fogged-up glasses. “Here’s the most terrifying part about them. It’s not that the Dark Magician wants the objects so he can control magick, or that Dark Judgment may be trying to raise the dead. It’s that they represent what each of us has the potential to become. The very things that made them go dark exist in all Arcana witches and mages, Stevie.”
“But I don’t understand. If we’re all such walking nukes, one sleepless night or bad hair day away from a total meltdown, why does it fall to us to protect magick?”
“If you believe the legends, we can thank the original elemental beings.”
“Sounds like the elemental beings needed better hiring practices.”
