by Laura Legend
Cass couldn’t quite remember how she had originally found this place, but it had been a godsend. She’d needed what it offered. She’d thrown herself into training and fighting. She did both with ferocity and dedication. She loved the way the focus and pain of the fight could cut clean through the emotional fog that, in the normal course of her day, kept her feelings at arm’s length. She didn’t mind feeling the pain of being hit—in fact, she almost liked it. She just liked being able to feel something, even if that something hurt. In all, Cass had spent more than a decade down here. She knew what she was doing.
“Better,” Miranda grunted, holding the heavy bag as Cass unleashed a flurry of punches. “You look better. You look comfortable, at home.”
Cass smiled and threw a wicked roundhouse into the bag that rocked Miranda backward.
“But you can’t be comfortable anymore,” Miranda continued, her voice taking on an ominous tone, “because this isn’t a game anymore. You can’t be comfortable because the world isn’t what you thought it was. And, especially, you can’t be comfortable because you are not who you thought you were.”
Cass stopped, head bowed, sweat dripping, and tried to catch her breath.
“You are the Seer, a once in a century gift. And Seers, by definition, don’t get to be comfortable.”
Miranda took a deep breath, braced herself against the bag, and pressed her point.
“I’ve known for years that this day would come for you, though I didn’t think it would arrive as explosively as it did. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to prepare you.”
Miranda paused, searching for words.
“I’ve known for a long time about how the world was, about Judas and the Lost, and I trained for decades in the magic arts to be prepared for terrible moments like that. Your mother and I trained together. And during those years we took a solemn vow to do everything in our power to shield the world from the worst of that terror. Your mother was better than me, stronger than me. I’ve done the best I could, but I haven’t always fulfilled that vow. And I definitely haven’t always fulfilled that vow in the way my superiors wanted.”
Cass glanced up, hungry for more of this backstory, but Miranda quickly brought the conversation back to Cass.
“But at least some of this wasn’t my fault. Your situation is complicated in ways that my bosses don’t appreciate. And it’s also complicated in ways that you are not yet in a position to understand and appreciate. And, so—especially given your father’s insistence that I keep my distance—I erred on the side of patience and caution with you. I kept it simple. I mostly kept quiet. And I mostly stayed on the sidelines of your life. That may not have been the right approach. We won, last year, but barely. And look how much it cost us.”
Cass couldn’t help but think of Richard. At the same time, something bothered her. This wasn’t the Miranda she thought she knew. Her Miranda was filled with a quick energy and sharp wit; her Miranda would have apologized by taking her out for a night filled with irresponsible drinking. Or irresponsible anything. This Miranda, however, seemed to bend, burdened by an unknown weight. Who was she?
“We almost lost everything. We almost all died.” Miranda’s voice trailed off. “So, again, I’m sorry.”
Then again, near death can change people, Cass reasoned. But she didn’t know what to do with that kind of apology.
Complicated? she thought to herself, reflecting on the tangled ball of yarn that was now her life. Ya think?
But she didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she launched into another flurry of punches, a spark of dark anger and black hopelessness fueling her blows. She hit the heavy bag faster and harder, faster and harder, until the dark leather split down the side and a blizzard of white stuffing flew out.
Miranda let go of the bag, coughing as she waved away the gently floating cloud of debris and picked bits of stuffing out of her hair.
Just as fast, all that black energy drained back into Cass’s feet. “I’m sorry, too,” she said sheepishly.
“I can see that,” Miranda replied, then looked over her shoulder for Zach. “Let’s go, Riviera. We’re ready for you.”
Zach raised an eyebrow at the split heavy bag and the swirl of stuffing floating to ground.
Miranda had them gear up for some friendly sparring and ushered them into a hexagonal MMA ring. “Let’s go,” she said, “let’s see what you’ve got.”
Cass and Zach circled each other. Zach shuffled his feet, playful. Cass just tried to stay on her toes, quiet the thousand questions in her mind, and recapture at least a modest amount of focus before Zach tagged her with a punch to the face.
“You know how to fight,” Miranda said. “You’ve always been good at that. But this is different now. As the Seer, your powers run much deeper than you know. It’s not just about the body anymore. And it will take years of training and experience before you can bring many of your powers into play. Beyond your natural athleticism, your powers as a Seer are grounded in your ability to be truthful. As the Seer, you can ‘see’ the truth in a given situation and, if you can respond truthfully, if you can accept the truth, then your actions will be rooted in a power that is much deeper than the strength of your own muscles and bones.”
Zach took advantage of the fact that Cass’s attention was divided between himself and Miranda. He playfully tagged her once in the side of her face and then swept her leg out from under her, sending her tumbling to the mat.
Zach smiled his crooked smile, ready to tease her about it. But before he could say anything, Cass had already popped up from the mat with a dark look in her eyes.
“Whoa, tiger,” Zach said, his gloved hand outstretched, “easy. We’re just playing here.”
Cass shook her head, trying to clear the fog.
Miranda continued. “It will take time to explain how this works and even longer for you to feel your way into actually understanding it with both your mind and your body. And, to be honest, there may be much of it that can’t be taught and that you’ll just have to figure out on your own as you learn how to trust yourself and see the truth about yourself.”
Cass feinted a punch and Zach danced away to the left.
“But, for the moment, take this as a guiding thread: at bottom, the truth about the world is that everything with a beginning has an end. The truth about the world is that everything passes. The rock bottom truth about reality is time. And, as a result, all of your powers are grounded in learning how to deal truthfully with time, with both the costs of time and, especially, the power and potential of time.”
Cass could feel her weak eye twitching into focus in response to what Miranda was saying. She had noticed already that, when her powers kicked in, they depended on her being truthful and, more, that they tended to involve time slowing down. When this happened, it felt like time, normally closed and inevitable, had relaxed, opened up, and offered her space to act.
In response to her dark look, Zach had backed off a bit, waiting for Cass to make the next move. Feeling time open up a bit in this same way, Cass feinted a punch to Zach’s ribs and then, before he could recover, caught him with a roundhouse kick that clocked him in the nose, sent a spray of blood across the mat, and knocked him flat on his back.
Cass felt a surge of power. And she liked how it felt. Or, at least part of her did. Because, at the sight of Zach’s blood, the other part of her felt ashamed.
She was tempted to bury the first feeling beneath the second, to bury the joy of that power beneath her shame, but sensed that this would be the wrong thing to do. She sensed that, if she did that, she’d make things worse. She would, in a real way, be lying to herself.
She dropped to her knees next to Zach. He was already pinching his nose and trying to make a joke about how he really needed to stop hitting her foot so hard with his face. In her heart, Cass tried to acknowledge the truth of both feelings—both the power and the shame. She tried, in light of them, to bring Zach himself into focus.
&n
bsp; Miranda watched with keen interest from the side of the ring. She looked like she was watching both the fight between Zach and Cass and the fight inside of Cass herself.
“That’s right,” Miranda said. “Don’t run from it, Cass. Let the truth be whatever it is. Let your feelings be whatever they are. Don’t bury them. See the truth of them. Your feelings don’t have to stay locked up behind those heavy doors. You weren’t the one who put them there in the first place.”
I wasn’t the one who put those doors there in the first place? Cass thought with alarm. What is Miranda talking about? Who put them there?
When she thought this, time slowed to a crawl for Cass. Sound dropped out altogether and a profound silence took hold.
Cass looked at Miranda. Then she looked at Zach. Everything came into incredibly sharp focus. She looked at the spray of cherry red blood on the mat. The blood came into focus as the outline of a flower, as several flowers—as a spray of cherry blossoms.
A memory of cherry blossoms welled up from somewhere deep inside her and bloomed in her mind. Her muscles went slack and Cass slumped onto Zach’s chest.
The room went fuzzy. The sharp scent of blossoms filled the air.
Cass was seven years old. She was holding her mother’s hand. In Japan.
Chapter Five
Cass was seven years old. She was holding her mother’s hand. Her hand was dry and warm and strong. Rose Jones was wearing a white blouse and pink pedal pushers. The breeze was warm. The sun was high in the bright morning sky. Rose smiled at Cass and gave her small hand a squeeze.
They were in Nagano, Japan, at a cherry blossom festival.
Cass’s dad was there too. In relation to little Cass, Gary Jones seemed impossibly tall and impossibly young. He was wearing brown chinos and a dark blue polo. Cass was standing between her parents. Pulling Cass close, Gary leaned over her head, whispered something in Rose’s ear, and kissed her mother on the check. Rose laughed and smiled. Though he was raised mostly in the U.S., Cass’s father was deeply Japanese in appearance and demeanor. Here, in Nagano, with Cass’s mother, he seemed happy and at home in way that Cass couldn’t remember ever seeing.
A warm breeze stirred and blossoms fell like snow around them. Cass pulled free of Rose’s hand and joined their dance, twirling like she was a flower spinning through the air, until she, like the blossoms, fell to the earth, dizzy and giddy.
When she looked up from the ground, Cass noticed that someone else was with them, too. A tiny, older woman in a kimono-like jacket with white hair pulled back into a bun and held in place with a pin: Gary’s aunt.
The white haired woman pointed out some auspicious features of the blossoms, commented on the weather, and gave Rose’s bicep a friendly squeeze. It was clear that, though she was Gary’s family, she was here for Rose. Her bond with Rose was obvious, substantial, and grounded in something deeper than the coincidence of a family connection.
The morning was perfect in its simplicity.
Cass was filled with a rush of simple, uncomplicated joy at the scent of the cherry blossoms, the feel of the dark soil between her fingers, the sun filtered through the tree branches, and the presence of family. She popped back up from the ground, twirled again, and started to weave her way in and out of the trees, her arms outstretched.
She realized, with a jolt, that, in this memory, her feelings were entirely her own. Nothing was held at arm’s length. There were no heavy doors with imposing locks. She just felt, simply and directly, whatever she was feeling. People made sense. She made sense. She let out a “whoop” and her mother, pausing mid-conversation with the older woman, laughed out loud at the sound of it.
Cass felt free, unbounded. She ran and ran, in and out of trees, in circles and figure eights, in widening gyres around her family until she lost track of exactly where they were. She stopped to listen for the sound of their voices. She was breathing hard and leaned against a tree.
A cloud passed in front of the sun and a shadow slanted across the ground toward her. She could see it coming. When it arrived, the shadow was cold and her skin, glistening with sweat, grew clammy. Goosebumps crawled up her arms, across her shoulders, and up the back of her neck.
Cass shivered. A creeping fear grabbed her.
The cloud darkened and spread and the sun was more firmly blotted out by its passing. Cass spun in a panicked circle, looking for some sign of her parents. She ran from tree to tree, looking for the light.
“Mom!” she called. “Mom!”
The black shadow followed her through the trees. The warm breeze died. The air grew colder still. The tree branches stopped swaying. The leaves stopped rustling. The birds stopped singing.
Cass started to run. Faster and faster. As fast as her little legs could take her.
The shadow was still coming.
She tripped over a tree root and fell. She skinned her hands and knees. The shadow was gliding across the earth, swallowing everything in its path. Cass tried to call out again, but she couldn’t find her voice.
The shadow swallowed her.
All the color drained out of the day. And then the anger and fear drained out of her, too. A heavy door slammed shut inside of her and the blessed sense of emotional intensity that had saturated the memory was gone. Instead of feeling like a seven year-old, bubbling over with the hope and promise of life, she now felt almost thirty, bruised by life, barely hanging on to her second-hand emotions by a thin thread.
“Mom,” Cass croaked, her voice weak.
Silence.
“Mom!” Cass cried.
A voice from behind her responded. “I’m here, sweetie,” Rose said.
Cass looked up. Rose took Cass into her arms, pulled her into her lap. She wiped away Cass’s tears and smoothed her hair.
“Shhhh,” Rose said. “It’s okay, now. It’s okay.”
Cass circled her arms around her mother’s neck and squeezed hard, pulling her close.
“Cass, I need to tell you something. We don’t have a lot of time. And I need you to remember what I say. Can you promise to remember?”
Cass sniffed back more tears and nodded her head against her mother’s shoulder.
“I’m going to give you a magic word. Remember it. Keep it safe. And you can use it whenever you feel afraid. Just this whisper this word to yourself. Think of me and then say it three times.”
Cass nodded again.
“Are you ready? The word is kibo.”
“Kibo,” Cass repeated to herself, pressing it into her mind like a stamp into wax. “Kibo.”
“That’s right,” Rose said, her eyes flashing green. “You’ve got it. Now hang on to it. It’s an old Japanese word. It means hope.”
Hope, Cass thought as the word cut through the fog of that memory, drawing her out of the past and back toward the present. Cass, though, didn’t want to leave the memory just yet. She couldn’t bear to let go of her mother again already. She squeezed harder and hung on to her mother for dear life.
“But what if I don’t feel any hope. What if all I feel is . . . hopeless?” Cass asked, breathless. “What do I do, Mom?”
Rose pulled back and took a look at Cass. She held Cass’s head between her hands and took her measure, looking deep into her eyes, like she knew that she wasn’t talking to a seven year-old anymore.
“Hope isn’t something you can have by yourself,” Rose said. “Hope isn’t something you can have all alone. It’s something that can only be shared. That’s why, when you say the word three times, you have to also think of me.”
The cloud was gone. The sun was out. The warm breeze stirred again.
