The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

“That’s usually the case.” I felt very mature when I managed not to say, ‘I told you, you don’t have to worry about me.’ My headache was beginning to drill holes in my temples.

  Matthew looked at me. “You were hit by fireballs, there was exploding hail, and you, you didn’t do anything… and…”

  I shrugged, trying to appear indifferent. I poked around Matthew, searching for pride. His little brother had beaten elementalists right in front of him. But all I found was fear. “You think you can stop whoever comes after you,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “And if you’re wrong? If someone attacks you and you miss, just once, I’ll be an only child.” His whisper sounded like a whistle when he said, “You didn’t do anything,” he repeated. “There were explosions, and you just stood there.”

  I felt fear mounting inside the teens around me. I had to reassure not only Matthew but them as well.

  I placed my hand on his. “I had a damus on my side, who made sure we’d remain in a present in which nothing could hurt me. And I had a moody to empower me, and we both saw to it that none of the elementalists would want to hurt the damus.”

  “But you don’t always walk around with a seer by your side, and–”

  “Daphne has my back. And I have hers. I don’t go outside before she assures me that I’ll make it back in one piece.”

  “At the rallies they do hurt sorcerers,” Matthew said, his tone stern.

  “Only elementalists,” I said, and immediately felt Forrest recoiling behind us. Damn it. I tried to rephrase. “They can’t hurt–” I was going to say ‘moodies’ before I remembered how much Matthew loathed the term. “Empaths, or seers. We psychics know when they’re trying to hurt us, and we…” I stopped, and tried again. “No one can survive an attack by an empath or a seer. That’s why they never go after us head-on.”

  Matthew bit his lip. “If you die, I’ll kill you.”

  I smiled. “Even worse – if I die, Mom will kill me.”

  Matthew examined each elementalist, making sure none of them was severely injured. He offered one a pill to help relieve her nausea, and she thanked him. She was polite enough not to tell him that she’d feel better once her power of sorcery regenerated. Guy followed Matthew like a shadow, studying everything he was doing.

  I wrapped it up by shaking hands with the older sorcerers. Aurora had managed to convince two of them to start volunteering at Yoyo. She still hadn’t talked to me about Ivy.

  The splasher hesitated before telling me her name. “River,” she finally said.

  I smiled at her. “Nice to mee–” I stopped mid-sentence, my smile freezing. Then I noticed the color of her eyes. A deep green – identical to Lee’s, minus the brown specks. There was a resemblance in the nose and chin as well.

  “Yup, that River,” she said, and folded her arms across her chest in a defensive gesture. Her accent was much more subtle than Lee’s. “I wasn’t sure it was you. You looked different in the photo Blaze showed me.”

  I didn’t have to ask her what photo she was talking about. It was my seventeenth birthday. We were walking around Meir Center, and Blaze made me eat three chocolate-filled doughnuts. When we realized that both our faces were smeared with chocolate, we decided to hop into one of the photobooths that were scattered across the mall. We divided the four photos between us, and after he moved to the Confederacy, I hid mine in the bottom of my drawer and hadn’t looked at them since.

  “My brother thinks you’re very good at your job.”

  “Thanks.” I tried to smile. She looked like a Photoshopped model. I searched for the flaws, but other than a beauty mark on her chin and nearly translucent eyelashes, I couldn’t find any. And she was a splasher. That must have bothered Blaze. Their elements did clash, after all. I couldn’t help but notice that she was beautiful. She looked like an upgraded version of Lee.

  “It would be nice if you popped by for a visit sometime.” She smiled politely.

  I started phrasing a reply in my head, but before I could talk she continued: “You’ll come, we’ll talk for ten minutes, eat something, and Blaze will stop worrying about you and me killing each other the moment we meet.” She uncrossed her arms and let them drop to her sides. “I don’t want to be your friend. I have enough friends. I just want my boyfriend to feel comfortable about us meeting here.”

  “Fine,” I said and held out my hand. River shook it.

  Matthew finished his impromptu patient round and approached us.

  Gaia was walking alongside, her chin slightly protruding. “Where are you heading to?”

  I shrugged. “Back to the hospital dorms, I guess. My brother probably has two hundred pages to memorize by tomorrow.”

  Matthew let out a brief, joyless laugh. “Three papers on noninvasive approaches to cruciate ligament repair to present first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, feigning a yawn.

  Matthew poked me in the shoulder. “You’re right, hearing about moodifying posters for graphic design students is so much more interesting! And such an invaluable contribution to society!”

  I smiled. His anger at me had nearly disappeared. But the fear was still rooted deep inside. I assumed it was never going to fade. All the battle did was dull it a little.

  “Wow, senior citizens lead such fascinating lives.” Her voice was drier than the air had been when the pryos tried to dehydrate it during the battle. “We’re going to the beach, want to come?” she asked, her tone nearly as prickly as her gaze.

  Matthew moved uneasily, an almost imperceptible motion. “Sure,” I said before he could turn down the invitation. “But first I have to remember where I parked my wheelchair,” I added, parroting her sarcasm.

  Gaia popped another pink bubblegum bubble. “Awesome.”

  The we she was talking about turned out to be all the teens from the circle, as well as Forrest and Aurora, the latter deep in conversation with one of the other airheads about manipulating condensation in a closed vehicle during winter. We shuffled along the sidewalk in a group animated with chatter, and squeezed together into the rear of the bus. It was the first time I didn’t feel lonely standing on the white square. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed that feeling – being with others like me, with hopeful, passionate youngsters still unscathed by reality.

  Gaia glanced at Matthew as he stood beside me on a white square.

  “You can sit, like them,” she said in a slightly barbed tone.

  Matthew shrugged. “Reed can’t sit, so I won’t either.”

  She stopped chewing her bubblegum.

  “My dad always sits,” Guy muttered with his eyes to the floor.

  “Our parents don’t.”

  It was partially true. Since my mother’s knees had started acting up she stopped standing next to me on the bus, but she always made sure to sit in the seat closest to the white section.

  Gaia fixed her gaze on me and sent me a wave of admiration. It was too strong, its colors too bold. It was so full of awe, it almost hurt. I softened it and sent it back to her. She mimicked what I did and sent me another wave, one less painful this time. I sent her a subtle confirmation. She returned the confirmation in an even more delicate, almost feeble wave. I bolstered it and sent it back to her.

  “Did you take a first-aid training course?” Matthew asked Guy.

  Guy nodded. “Last summer.”

  “I could see you know what you’re doing,” Matthew said, smiling.

  “I wanted to take an advanced medics course, but they pushed my draft date forward. I’m enlisting in the winter. I’ll probably forget all my medical training by the time I get out.” He didn’t have to explain. Damuses were enlisted to the intelligence corps. Always.

  Matthew rubbed his chin, and his eyes suddenly twinkled. “I have an idea,” he said.

  By the time we made it to the beach, Matthew and Guy had already come up with an elaborate plan, according to which Guy would continue his studies during his military lea
ves, and even take courses that would help prepare him for his bachelor’s degree. Aurora and her group ran to the shoreline. Matthew, Guy, Gaia and I stayed together and strolled the beach. Gaia and I exchanged a few more emotional waves. She threw at me almost every emotion she managed to produce, and almost all them misfired in terms of intensity and color tone.

  We were working on polite indifference, and had almost managed to get to the accurate shade Gaia was trying to project – all while popping bubblegum bubbles in my face – when I noticed the sky flushing red. I glanced at my watch. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “My shift starts in an hour.”

  “Time flies when you’re having fun,” Matthew said, slapping me on the shoulder.

  “Or when you have Alzheimer’s,” Gaia remarked and giggled when I looked at her. Instead of saying anything I sent her a well-aimed feeling of a stifled sneeze. She sent it right back, more compressed.

  “Where do you work?” she asked.

  “In the Sinkhole,” Guy answered for me. “You know, that old café with the bad eighties’ music.”

  “Just don’t let my boss hear you say that,” I said. I didn’t tell him I’d rather he not peer into my other timelines. He wasn’t an experienced damus. He was just a teenager.

  Guy squinted at a point beyond my shoulder like damuses do when they’re skimming through futures, and said, “In the one scenario I actually do say that to Remy, he lectures me for an hour… no, two.” Guy smiled from ear to ear and turned to Gaia. “And you get annoyed that your omelet’s getting cold because he won’t take the dish out until he convinces me.”

  Gaia gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, “Then don’t argue with him.”

  They held each other’s hand. I stifled a snarky comment.

  Matthew patted me on my shoulder and asked, “Shall we?”

  I went to say goodbye to Aurora. She was wiping her glasses and looked at me, blinking. “Would you, maybe… at least consider it?”

  My head started pounding again. Damn it.

  Aurora gestured with her head at Guy and Gaia who were walking along the shoreline, arms linked. “They need you. I need you. Please.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Aurora smiled and put her glasses back on. “Thursday, in two weeks, half-past five, in the center.”

  I furrowed my brow. “I haven’t said yes yet.”

  “I didn’t say you did. Merely mentioning when the next meeting is,” she said, playing it coy. Then she lowered her voice and said, “Gaia would be in your group. If you decide to take on a group, that is.”

  I looked at the moody. Her hair was flowing in the wind, Guy gently brushing it off her face.

  “I’ll think about it,” I repeated quietly.

  Aurora nodded. I walked Matthew to his bus stop. As we pulled away, I felt a delicate, well-constructed arrow of gratitude from Gaia. I smiled to myself.

  7

  The sound of someone clearing his throat broke my concentration, and the feeling coiled back into the page. I swallowed my sigh. I had been working on that page for nearly half an hour, and had yet to pull apart the top layer of jealousy the previous moodifier had planted. The story was about a boy whose toy tractor was stolen by a girl, but with the amount of emotion that went into the pages one would have thought it was a Russian epic novel.

  I looked up from the book. Lee was standing on the other side of the desk in a light suit over a dark dress shirt. No one dressed that formally in Israel.

  “River told me you met yesterday,” he said with a hint of a smile. It was difficult to be mad at him when he looked like that. “It doesn’t bother you that I maneuvered your sister?”

  Lee shrugged. “If you’re going into a battle with an empath you should know there’s no getting out.” I wasn’t used to other sorcerers using the official term. The slang must be different in the Confederacy.

  I smiled and stood up. “Next time just tell me and I won’t go so easy on her.”

  Lee smiled. “She’s a tough cookie, she can hold her own.” A faint sluice of discomfort trickled out of him. Maybe from needing to express himself in a foreign language.

  “We don’t have to speak in Hebrew,” I said in my hesitant English. “We all study English at school here.” The delicate line forming between his eyebrows was the only sign of how grating he found my accent. Matthew’s was nearly perfect, while I could never master the different vowels.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s me. I don’t like to feel foreign. Being an empath is tough enough…” his voice trailed off, as if he realized he was divulging a lot more than he had intended.

  I sent him a small wave of commiseration instead of answering. He lowered his walls a bit, letting the wave wash over him.

  “A lot going on in there?” I asked quietly.

  “Here?” he said, pointing at his temple. “Always.”

  He shouldered his backpack, an old, frayed thing that clashed with his neatly pressed suit. “See you later,” he said, and walked away, leaving nothing but a faint trail of emotion and aftershave behind him.

  I sat back down behind the desk. His words lingered, echoing above me. I could imagine how he felt. In my post-military trip with Daphne, we learned that even in places where sorcerers were fully integrated into society, empaths were still considered personae non gratae. Daphne could walk among a crowd without even once being asked what she was, whereas I was exposed to everyone’s emotions the moment they figured me out.

  I stood up again and rushed after him. Lee was sitting in his chair, rummaging through one his desk drawers.

  “Want coffee?” The words came out of my mouth without thinking.

  Lee straightened his back and looked at me. He sent me an inquisitive wave.

  “Soy milk cappuccino with sweetener, right?” I said offhandedly before adding, “I’m a waiter, remember?”

  Lee considered me, running his eyes across me. I brushed my hand through my hair, my fingers getting caught in a mass of tangles. I was wearing a T-shirt and the only pair of clean jeans I had in my closet. At least I wasn’t in flip-flops today.

  “I’m sort of your boss. It’s not such a good idea…” Lee started to say.

  I felt Blaze’s consciousness before I heard his footsteps approaching. He placed his hand on my shoulder, saying, “I heard you ran into River yesterday.”

  I wanted to shake him off. I also wanted him to press closer against me. I couldn’t move. “I didn’t know it was her.”

  “She told me,” Blaze said, patting my shoulder and laughing. “So what are you two up to?”

  “Reed was asking me out for coffee,” Lee said, and got up. “And you need to finish the Sirkis report before I can review it.” He walked around his desk and gestured towards the door. “Shall we?”

  Blaze removed his hand from my shoulder, and I followed Lee without looking back. Once we were out in the corridor Lee turned around and said, “We don’t have to go for coffee. You looked like you needed an excuse to get out of there. We can just wait here a few minutes and–”

  “We don’t have to. I want to,” I interrupted him, and realized it was true. I did. “Even when you’re from here, you feel like a stranger most of the time.” I put my hand on his arm. “It’s good to meet someone who understands.”

  Lee placed his hand on mine and stood perfectly still. I didn’t have to read him to know what he felt.

  The coffee in the cafeteria on the ground floor of the ArtDot building turned out to be a murky, burnt concoction.

  Lee stirred in his sweetener. “It’s a real art,” he said, took a sip and grimaced, “to ruin a cup of coffee so…”

  “Methodically,” I mumbled. The foam decorating my cup looked dismal and lonely. I added another spoon of sugar and tried again, but it just made it too sweet.

  Lee pushed away his cup. “I’ll wait until it condenses. Then we can pretend it’s a mysterious field ration.”

  I laughed. Lee smiled
. “I meant what I said earlier,” I said.

  Lee fiddled with a packet of sweetener.

  “If you’d rather we spoke English, that’s fine,” I said in my horrendous accent.

  “There’s just one problem with your idea,” he said, holding up a finger. “I feel you don’t understand me quite as well when I speak English.”

  And all at once his mask came off, revealing the lonely person in need of another soul. I felt my expression soften in response. He touched my forehead with his finger and said, “Your walls keep leaking.”

  I brushed away his finger. “It’s intentional.”

  He kept his finger linked in mine, his warmth contrasting with the cold plastic table.

  “Here in Israel we let other empaths read us superficially. Whoever chooses to block himself entirely…” I searched for the right words to explain the complexity of recent years, “…probably has something to hide.”

  Lee nodded. “Like this?” he asked, and slightly opened his walls. Just enough to let me feel that he was embarrassed and excited at the same time. I nodded in approval, making sure my reaction remained buried deep down. He was excited, because of me! I also had to curb the smile blossoming inside me.

  “Back home we keep it all bottled up,” he said. “If you leak it means you’re not good enough, and people should keep their distance from you. You might accidentally flood others.”

  I gently caressed his consciousness through the opening he had left. “No one will take advantage of it. Don’t worry.”

  “It feels like…” he hesitated, and blurted out the words, “like the first time.”

  I blushed and immediately retreated. Lee burst into laughter. He leaned in, winked at me and said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be gentle.”

  I laughed, conscious of my reddening face, knowing that he was able to feel the trail of emotion I was trying to hide from him, and I didn’t care. Not one bit.

  8

  Dinner at Blaze and River’s meant I had to swap shifts at the café, giving up the fat Thursday night tips. Matthew managed to get out of it by saying he had to pull an all-nighter at the hospital. Daphne came with me instead, for moral support. For hours I thought about what to bring, and finally Daphne and I decided on two bottles of wine.