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Castor takes no such precaution and plops down next to me. “What’s your idea?”
“Well, it isn’t so much an idea,” I say, “rather more like a topic of who I want to seek this time.”
Castor waits patiently like always, never too quick to interject and always listening.
“I want to see if I can find out more about my family.”
At that, Castor’s eyebrows raise in surprise.
“Well, not my blood family, I suppose, but Rosie, Bane, and Row. I need to know if they are okay. Sun knows I’m desperate enough to need this information; I’m hoping the stars will allow it.”
“Alright, let’s try it then.”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay,” I whisper again to myself in reassurance.
“Start like we always do. Lay back, and extend yourself to the sky…”
I practice for a while with no luck, and just when I’m about to give up, my corporeal fingers reach the web I link to the stars. Instantly, I’m sucked into their machinations, head filling with visions that flash so abruptly across my lids that I feel sick. I shift my intentions and sift through the eye of the world for my family. Rosie, Bane, Row, Marrow, anyone—
Two men crouch in the woods as dusk falls, peeking through the branches to something beyond.
“You sure this is the right place?” a man with curly blond hair asks the dark-haired man next to him.
It’s Bennidix and Lark. Two Watchers from decades ago that seem to keep reappearing in my visions from the stars. I don’t recognize the forest they are huddled in. The trunks are enormous, bigger than any of the oak trees I saw in Brown Oak in Northern Midland, and that’s saying something.
“Yes, this is it. They should be just beyond this tree line,” Lark says back, all confidence and no hesitation.
Bennidix mutters something about “may the stars watch over us” and digs around in his pack.
Lark notices his fidgeting and elbows him. “You already told me, the stone is safely tucked away. Right?” Lark puts an extra amount of emphasis on that last world.
“Yes, yes, I know. It is. Trust me, I hid it in the most unique of places,” Bennidix says, reassuring himself as much as his companion.
Both Watchers seem older now, wearing full battle leathers in shades of black with only a single stripe of cobalt Watcher-blue around their biceps.
“Good,” Lark says definitively. “So glad you hid it well and checked your bag for the hundredth time, but now I need you focused on the task.”
“Right!” Bennidix squeaks. “Retrieving the next stone.”
“Exactly.” Lark pats his friend on the back. “One out of three down. Now, let’s cross this border, shall we? We’ve got a moon stone to find.”
Bennidix sighs. “I better get a few more stories out of this adventure by the time we are done with it.”
Lark’s shoulders bounce with laughter. “Oh, you will.”
I gasp, returning from the vision, pawing around for purchase and find myself wrapped in warmth.
“What was it?” Castor asks, then remembers to release his grip over me. He didn’t have to hold me, but sometimes my visions cause me to shake uncontrollably.
He was probably holding me still so that my head didn’t crack on the stone balcony. Nothing more.
His hands steady me as I recall the memory. I hadn’t told Castor about any of the previous visions yet of Bennidix and Lark. For some reason—more like a gut feeling from the stars that I cannot explain—I need to keep this secret. There is something very important about these stones. Three total. They had at least one… I think Lark had just won in his Summit, and they were on their way to find another.
All roads seem to point to one thing. The Cebalrai Stone.
The reason I was kidnapped and taken to the Jord in the first place.
There are only two people that I confided my previous memories with, and one of them is deep within the earth’s crust in Terraguard. The other, however, is likely brainstorming ways to skip Goad Squad practice.
