Family

by Emily Thompson

  “All right,” Jonas said, clearly far from convinced. “So, you can see these things?”

  Twist smiled, remembering that Jonas had frequently shown his disbelief in fairies, his dismissal of the odd notion that fairies were the source of all Sights, and his scorn for those who did believe in them. Twist knew just how polite Jonas was being not to say so now.

  “Every Sighted person carries one of these creatures’ souls inside of them,” Mama said, nodding. “I can see them inside of Sighted people. I knew you and Bell had Sights the first time I laid eyes on you.”

  Jonas’s placid smile melted away. “Yes, you did. You knew before we said anything. You never told us how you knew.”

  “Yes,” Mama said, taking another heavy breath. “And I knew that while Bell’s Sight is perfectly normal, your Sight is far from ordinary, Jonny. It’s broken, torn, and far more powerful than it should be. No normal Sight torments its owner the way yours does.”

  Jonas’s expression—trained safely on the tabletop—grew cold while he listened to this, and Twist felt the buzz in his neck chill as well. Twist recalled meeting other Sighted people at a Sight circle in San Francisco. He’d been surprised to find that in a room full of Sighted people, only he and Jonas had ever tried to limit the effects of their own Sights.

  “I know you go to great lengths not to use it,” Mama went on. “And by the look of it, I’m not surprised that you do. But as rare as is it, I have seen a Sight like yours once before. But only once.” As she spoke, she turned to look at Twist. “I saw exactly the same damage and strength in the Sight of a newborn, twenty-seven years ago.”

  Jonas and Twist looked to each other, sharing the same growing dread. Twist was somewhat reassured to see that he wasn’t the only one unnerved by this bizarre conversation. When Twist looked back to her, he found an odd softness in Mama’s cold, blue-gray eyes.

  “What is your Sight?” she asked Twist. “What sense does it affect?”

  “Touch,” Twist answered. “I can see damage in what I touch. And I can understand mechanical devices.”

  Mama nodded, thinking for a moment. “Jonny, you see the future, don’t you?”

  “Well, sometimes,” Jonas muttered.

  “Then,” she said, looking to Twist, “you must sometimes see the past. Memories, perhaps.”

  Twist looked back at her, startled not only that she had guessed so accurately but that she thought his Sight would have anything directly to do with Jonas’s. “Not always,” he answered. “But sometimes I get a glimpse of other people’s memories off of things.”

  “What about your own memories?” Mama asked.

  “I don’t usually see memories, at all,” Twist said, shaking his head. “I just see the way things are made. And how they’re broken, if they are.”

  Mama nodded thoughtfully again. She then took off one of her bracelets—a simple one of blue glass beads on a black string—and held it out to Twist. “Take this.”

  “That’s not mechanical,” Twist mentioned, not moving. “If you want me to see a vision, I might not get anything from that. I only would if there is a strong emotional residue on it.”

  “Just take it,” Mama said, still holding it out to him.

  Twist glanced to Jonas again. Jonas gave a silent shrug. Twist paused for a moment longer before he mastered his courage and took the bracelet, careful not to touch Mama’s fingers in the process. He held the slightly warm glass in his hand and rolled the beads in his fingers for a moment, prodding gently at his Sight to catch anything that might be there for him to see. His vision clouded softly with a new image, much more gently than his Sight usually did.

  He saw a beautiful, fine-featured, pale young woman leaning down over him, as if he were lying on his back. Her long, black hair tumbled around her face in billowing curls as she smiled down at him with sparkling, steel-blue eyes. She held the same bracelet of blue glass beads before his face, as if toyingly, and she spoke in soft, bubbly French. Twist saw a tiny, pale hand reach up awkwardly to the bracelet, and the young woman’s smile grew into a breathtakingly beautiful sight.

  Twist marveled silently at the vision his Sight was giving him and at how gently it touched his mind. It was clearly the memory of the infant that the young woman was tending to, and not her memory, that he was seeing. Somehow, her voice sounded deeply familiar to Twist, as if he knew it well. In a sudden rush, his mind snapped into understanding, and he dropped the bracelet onto the table before him, staring at it in pure panic as the vision continued to echo behind his eyes.

  He only occasionally ever saw a vision of his own memory, and usually only when he knew to expect it. This time, however, the memory was buried so deeply in his mind that he hadn’t even recognized it as his own at first. He struggled to think of some other explanation—anything that would prove that the infant in the vision hadn’t been himself—but he simply couldn’t deny that he knew the lovely young woman’s voice. Aden had told him that he’d seen his mother’s face, even if it had only been once.

  Twist snapped his stinging eyes closed as he realized that his breath had grown short. His emotions tumbled around, and his head began to swim. He felt Jonas’s hands fall onto him, but the fog couldn’t push away the thought that he’d just seen his own mother’s face for the second time in his entire life. He pushed himself to his feet and began to move. Where he went didn’t matter. He couldn’t be in that place any more.

  Twist moved swiftly, hardly seeing which way he went. When a hand caught at his arm, he jerked to a stop in surprise, turning to see Jonas. The other man’s eyes were a dusty purple, but in all of his inner turmoil, Twist hardly noticed the pressure of Jonas’s Sight against his own. The chilly calm in his touch couldn’t begin to quell the tumbling chaos in Twist’s heart. With every breath, he saw her face for another flashing instant, heard her soft voice, or felt a sharp pang of regret at never seeing her again, before his mind recoiled into any other thought.

  “Mama made me promise not to let you walk past the line,” Jonas said stiffly, still holding on to Twist’s arm.

  “What?” Twist muttered, his attention too shattered to find any meaning in that.

  Jonas pointed to the ground, where Twist saw the deeply drawn line that truly must ring the entire camp. They had stopped a mere few steps away. Twist snapped his eyes closed as the memory of the strangeness of the symbol painted on the banner at the entrance joined his already overwrought mind. The urge to flee stung at his limbs, making it nearly impossible to remain still.

  “Come over here and sit,” Jonas said gently, pulling him back into the shelter of the tall trees inside the circle.

  Before Twist could protest, Jonas made him sit on a patch of mossy earth beside one of the thin, gray-barked trees and then knelt before him. Twist tried to complain, to demand to be left alone or allowed to flee, but Jonas lost no time in reaching for the back of Twist’s neck. As Jonas’s palm pressed against the source of the buzzing in Twist’s neck, Twist’s mind finally fell silent. Thick, cool, calm, white fog rushed in like an ocean wave, washing all of Twist’s chaotic thoughts away.

  Twist felt himself relax into the new silence and calm, taking in a deep and full breath as his thundering heart began to slow. Jonas waited for a long, silent moment, letting Twist relax as deeply as he pleased. When Jonas moved the hand away from his neck and placed both hands on his arms, Twist felt his emotions hold steady on their own once again. The fog thinned but remained at the edges of his thoughts.

  “Can you tell me what you saw?” Jonas asked softly.

  Twist glanced up to meet his purple gaze. The thought of speaking the words terrified him, as if doing so would make them real. But remaining silent seemed somehow even worse. Twist gathered the shattered splinters of his courage.

  “I saw one of my own memories. One I’d forgotten entirely.”

  Jonas seemed surprised by this but remained quiet as Twist’s words, now freed, began to flow more quickly.

  “Aden told
me that I had one memory of my mother’s face but that I had forgotten it. I hardly knew him when he told me that. He could have been lying as easily as telling the truth. But somehow…I believed him. Maybe I knew all along, somewhere too deep in my own mind to find, that I did remember.”

  “And that’s what you just saw?” Jonas asked, astonished.

  Twist nodded slowly, seeing her smiling eyes before him again.

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Jonas mentioned. “Why does Mama have something that can give you that kind of vision?”

  “I saw the bracelet in my vision,” Twist said, shaking his head. “My…” His words stilled for an instant as he marveled at them. “My mother was showing it to me, making it flash in the light. She was playing with me. God, I must have been just days old. And she looked so very young. Younger than I am now.”

  Jonas took a deep, thoughtful breath as he watched Twist carefully. “Mama knew what you would see. That much was clear by the way she spoke to you. Twist, that means that, regardless of all that weirdness about seeing Sights in people, she knows who you are.”

  Twist met his gaze, astonished by the concept. He’d been too caught up in the memory itself to even consider how Mama had known he’d see it.

  “Twist, she might know your mother or what happened to her. Maybe even why she gave you up.”

  The urge to flee returned to Twist with a shudder. “How can that be? How can your grandmother know anything about me or my family?”

  “Mama’s mysterious,” Jonas said with a sigh. “She keeps more secrets than anyone I’ve ever met. Hell, I grew up around her, and I didn’t even know she had a damned Sight until tonight. But the fact remains that she knew exactly what she was doing, making you touch that bracelet.”

  Twist snapped his eyes closed and moaned as the chaos began to build in his mind again.

  “You deserve to know what happened, Twist,” Jonas said more gently. “We need to ask her what she knows.”

  Twist looked back at him again as the word “we” stuck in his mind. Jonas fully intended to unravel this unsettling mystery with him. The details of Twist’s past had no bearing at all on Jonas’s life, and yet Jonas was taking on the same quest. His friend’s unwavering loyalty calmed Twist’s emotions even more effectively than the calm white fog in his touch, allowing his thoughts to begin to put themselves into order.

  “I’ve been an orphan for my entire life,” Twist said, clinging to the first clear thought that came to him. “I don’t need to know what happened before that.”

  Neither was he in a hurry to put his sense of identity in jeopardy. There was no reason to believe that knowing any more about his past would bring him peace.

  “Don’t be a coward,” Jonas said, his tone taking on a hint of mirth.

  “Steady on,” Twist grumbled, desperate to take offense before Jonas could show him any wisdom.

  “Twist, you’re an adventurer,” Jonas said with a light smile. “A slayer of vampires and dragons. You’ve been to every continent on the Earth, and even into outer space for a couple of minutes. You’ve mended clockwork for the Hawaiian queen, and an ancient sea monster, and a whole slew of dragons. Your fiancee is a fairy tale, and you spend most of your time with pirates. You are anything but a simple little forgotten orphan. And finding out where you come from might just show you that you’re closer now to your true identity than you realize. Not to mention it might give you a bit of closure.”

  Twist did his best to glare at him. “I don’t need any closure.”

  “If you don’t ask her, I will.”

  Twist sighed and shook his head. “Fine, fine, just stop being bloody right.”

  Jonas laughed lightly and got to his feet, offering a hand to help Twist up as well. “Shall we, then? Or do you need another minute?”

  “I’m fine,” Twist muttered, taking Jonas’s hand and getting back to his feet.

  “Fine? Should I be worried?” Jonas asked hesitantly.

  “Shut up, you damned brigand,” Twist grumbled.

  Jonas laughed again and gave him a hearty pat on the back. “That’s the Twist I know.”

  Twist couldn’t help but smile at the complete lack of offense that Jonas took at the insult. As they turned back toward the interior of the gypsy camp, Twist felt himself brace as if for battle. Just like with so many battles he had fought before, Twist could sense Jonas’s taut awareness as well. No matter what Mama might have to say to him, Twist could at least take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t going to face her alone.

  They found Mama sitting on the log beside the central campfire once again, staring into the listless flames in the stone circle with thoughtful eyes. Myra sat across the fire from her, silent and clearly worried, but it appeared as if everyone else in the camp had fled into their tents and carriages, leaving the two relatively alone with the slowly dying fire. As he and Jonas approached, Twist noticed the loop of blue glass beads spinning slowly in Mama’s fingers.

  Myra saw them approaching and rose to her feet, coming closer to Twist, wearing a mask of concern. “Is everything all right, darling?” she asked, reaching out to him with cool copper hands. “We saw you hurry off, but Jonas and Mama said to leave you be. And then Mama told everyone to go to bed, but I wanted to wait for you to come back.”

  Twist took the hot wave of worry in her touch and let it pass as he offered her a smile.

  “I saw something I wasn’t expecting,” he said to Myra, glancing to Mama.

  The gypsy’s wolfish eyes looked fully gray in the low light when she looked back at him.

  “I’m sorry for running off like that,” he said to the gypsy.

  “I wasn’t sure if it was really you or not,” she said, smiling gently. “I suppose I could have given you some kind of warning, though.”

  Twist held his ground, despite another sudden desire to flee, hearing her speak as if she knew him. “I’d like to talk with you, if I may.”

  “Have a seat,” Mama said with a gesture to the chairs and cut logs that lay about the fire. “We’ve got all night. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  Twist sat across the fire from her, while Myra sat close on his right, and Jonas stood to his left, all of them facing the gypsy. She looked on Twist in a thoughtful silence, waiting for him to speak. Twist took a moment to put his multitude of questions into order. The fire creaked softly over the occasional tick of the glass beads in her hand.

  “You know what I saw?” he asked her finally.

  She nodded. “I can guess.”

  “Where did you get that?” he asked with a nod to the bracelet.

  Mama looked down to the beads with a silent but heavy sigh. “I was given this as a memento, to remember her by.”

  Twist’s chest tightened, already guessing the answer to his next question. “Is she still alive?”

  Mama looked up to him and shook her head slightly.

  Twist felt Jonas’s eyes fall on him and the dull weight of his sympathy in the buzz at his neck. Twist was surprised by how cold the news felt in his mind. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as he had feared it might. Perhaps he really had grown accustomed to the idea long ago.

  “Why would you want to remember her?” Twist asked. “Who was she to you?”

  Mama smiled at him softly. “She was my youngest child. My little girl.”

  Shock rippled over Twist’s skin in a shiver, echoing in the buzz at his neck. “But just a moment,” Twist said, clambering for clarity. “Jonas told me you are a mother to everyone in the camp. Do you mean that metaphorically, or…”

  “I mean that I gave birth to her,” Mama said, shaking her head. “She was my flesh and blood. And so are you.”

  Myra gasped, looking to Twist.

  Twist’s heart began to beat quickly as he stared back at the gypsy, utterly astonished. His thoughts of family had only ever reached as far as his parents. He’d never considered meeting any other relations. Now his mind rushed to fit this new information into place. Ha
rman must have been his mother’s brother, Twist’s uncle, and Luca Twist’s own cousin. In the space of an instant, his known and living family had grown from no one at all to three—four, if he counted the father that Jonas said he would one day meet. Clearly realizing the effect her words had had on him, Mama moved to speak again.

  “Before you ask me,” she said gently, “I want you to know that I could never have taken you in as a child, no matter what I wanted. You had to be lost.”

  Twist’s mind reeled wildly onto a new train of thought: he had grown up bullied and alone in a dreary orphanage, been made to find his own way in life, and never been cared for by anyone until very recently, but he had had a family all along. If his mother had to go and get herself killed by whatever, she could have at least left him in the care of family. She hadn’t even done that much for him.

  “Your parents were forced to flee,” Mama went on, apparently seeing that what she’d said hadn’t helped. “They had to run from France very quickly, so that no one could follow them, not even me. I never knew where they took you. I thought maybe Spain, but by your accent I can now guess that I was wrong about that as well. I didn’t dare go looking for you, either, for fear that doing so would draw too much attention.”

  Twist held up a hand to stop her from saying any more ridiculous things. “Wait, wait, what do you mean, they ran from France? First you tell me that my mother was a gypsy, and now you are telling me that I wasn’t even born in England?”

  “No, you were born in Paris,” Mama said, clearly surprised that he would ask.

  “You’re French?” Jonas asked him, astonished.

  “You must be wrong,” Twist said, shaking his head as that thought failed to find a place in his mind. “I can’t be French. I don’t even speak French! I’m British, damn it!”

  Mama’s eyes went wide. “You may call yourself British if you like,” she said gently. “You were clearly raised there. That’s fine. But I can assure you that your mother was French and that you were born in Paris. I was there. I held you before your father did.”