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“No, not yet,” Rodhi said confidently. “But one day.” He winked, and Gileon resumed his trek upward with slightly flushed cheeks.
He seemed to be in higher spirits after eventually getting the hang of the quicksand a few hours ago, and for that I was grateful. I hoped he’d be able to relax when we got home. Hell, I wanted to relax, too, but…
As we emerged into the open air of the Wild Whisperer sector, I paused with a glance toward the jungle.
“Hey, you guys go on ahead,” I muttered at Emelle. “I’ll be just a moment.”
Emelle nodded, catching on, and I waited until the din of my class had faded into distant, echoing footsteps before I turned and hightailed it toward the trees.
Finally, after a whole days’ worth of classes from an institute I’d surely never graduate anyway, I had some alone time to start phase one of our plan.
Within minutes, the hum of the jungle swelled around me. Waxy leaves grazed my face, branches swaying like slow waves and ferns tickling my ankles. It wasn’t raining tonight, but dew slithered down the trunks as I finally rested my forehead against one of my favorite kapok trees behind the last abandoned classroom.
“Do you know where Jagaros is?” I breathed.
The kapok’s humming intensified, springing into a chaotic melody. Yes, it knew where Jagaros was.
“Can you take me to him?” I asked, fully expecting to feel a branch curl around my abdomen and haul me up immediately.
The humming fell into a slow, low tune.
No.
No? Where the hell was he?
“Can you bring Jagaros to me?” I asked.
No, the kapok said again.
My heart dropped. I surveyed my surroundings, part of me hoping to find the tiger’s slitted eyes glowing through the foliage despite the tree’s answer.
Panic began to climb up my throat when only darkness stared back.
I hadn’t heard from Coen all day, and wished with a desperate kind of ache that he would materialize before me right now… in person. I needed to feel his arms tighten around me just this once, because I didn’t know how to hold myself together as the possibility of failure settled deep into my marrow for the first time.
What if we couldn’t find Jagaros? What if Dyonisia kept her throne? What if every branded citizen on this island actually ended up dead by the end of the year? What if I never got to kiss Coen again, never got to see Fabian and Don again, never got to find my mother or see what lay past the horizon beyond the dome?
“Please,” I said to Coen, who couldn’t hear me. To Jagaros, wherever he was. To no one and to the entire world all at once. Against my will, tears welled in my eyes as I placed a palm against the kapok. “Tell me what to do. Please.”
“You could always try playing dead.”
I shrieked and blinked at the red-coated creature that scampered into view on a branch above my head.
“Billy?”
“It works wonders for the nervous system,” the opossum continued. His rounded ears twitched, eyes wide and glassy as he stared down at me. “One minute you’re scared. The next you’re unconscious and the danger’s passed. You should try it.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I laughed, wiping at my eyes hastily, “but I don’t think…” At the expression on Billy’s face, his pink nose quivering, I shook my head. Might as well appease the little guy. “You know what? Alright.” I lay down between two colossal surface roots of the kapok tree. “I’ll play dead.”
As soon as I closed my eyes, a voice from my memory wafted to the surface.
Focus on your outermost thought.
It was the first lesson Garvis had given me, and for a moment, I felt like I was back there: at the lighthouse, holding his hands next to the crackling fire as a newly-branded Mind Manipulator. He’d taught me how to view my own mind and build my own mental blockade within a matter of hours, always with gentle, patient persistence.
But after a year of juggling two magics, I was tired. So tired of holding everything up and together. Maybe, for just this one moment on the jungle floor, with nobody around besides Billy the opossum, I could rest.
Breathing deeply, I let my blockade dissolve.
