The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

  “River and Blaze were busy in the kitchen, and I tripped on my way back to the living room, and she just left, walked out of the house, and when I ran after her she was gone. I think she chose the future in which we can’t track her down. I can’t pick up the trail of her feelings, and I don’t know where she is.”

  I heard cars honking in the background. Lee was still standing out on the street. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think…” he said.

  “It’s OK.” A long crack snaked along the wall in front of me. I focused on it. It started between two floor tiles and curved to the left, emerging under the peeling green paint. Daphne hadn’t told me how she would die, only how she wouldn’t, and she promised it wouldn’t happen while we were still sharing a house. There were worse things than sudden death, and all the possibilities that could make her run out of a house full of people who could keep her safe were popping into my mind one by one.

  “If Daphne doesn’t want to be found, we won’t find her. She’ll come home eventually, don’t worry.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” His voice was brittle, cracked with concern.

  You can come over. Help me dissipate my anxiety and sadness. No. We weren’t close enough, and I didn’t want that invasive feeling that accompanies the touch of another moody inside me.

  “Go home. Get on River’s nerves for me.”

  “If you change your mind…”

  I hung up and leaned my head back against the wall.

  I felt the wall pressing against my skull. The pain in my neck. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  9

  Daniel was taken out of the trauma ward two hours later. I went in to see him. He was asleep; the machines next to him beeped incessantly. The nurses hovered around him, letting me hold his hand and cry on the inside, without a single tear creeping out.

  Matthew made me take a sedative and called me a taxi home. He said I looked like I was about to uproot the bench from the floor, and promised to update me if there was any news.

  I returned to a dark, empty house. I switched on the kitchen light. I was hungry, even though the sandwich from the hospital was still giving me heartburn. I remembered only vaguely how the evening had begun, that it was fun, and entertaining, and cozy. My phone beeped with a message from Aurora. I answered as briefly as possible.

  I needed to take a shower and go to sleep, but the distance between the kitchen and shower seemed untraversable. I shuffled to the living room and plopped myself onto the couch, burying my face in the pillow. The tears I had been choking back for hours wouldn’t come out. I felt the pill fogging up my mind.

  Psychiatric medication worked differently on moodies. I was entirely conscious of the chemicals breaking down in my system, detected every altering effect. It didn’t prevent anxiety. Not for me. It suppressed all feelings, dialed them down. Matthew once explained to me the neurological aspect, saying that studies have shown that we don’t actually feel the effect of the drug, but merely imagine it. He used big words and was so patient I didn’t have the heart to disabuse him of that notion. In all the studies he talked about, empaths were asked about their feelings. I knew I was incapable of accurately describing my emotions. Every moody I knew spoke with words too crude and basic to describe the many tendrils of emotions we felt. Of course the studies would be wrong, they were based on our inaccurate answers.

  The sound of the door opening woke me up.

  Oleander walked into the apartment, supporting Daphne. “Some help?” he said.

  I rushed to them. Daphne was flooded. I couldn’t distinguish between her many emotions, and they were all pouring out of her in such a strong current that they covered Oleander.

  I reached my hand out to Daphne, and she leaned on me. “What happened?”

  “She had too much to drink. You know alcohol can do that to us.” He sounded worried, but it was too dark to see his expression, and the deluge from Daphne made him unreadable.

  He said us, and meant him and Daphne, but I immediately thought of Ivy, when she told me that their father used to yell at them that if they could both see everything, how is it that they couldn’t prepare a decent meal, or tidy up their room like he had wanted them to, or succeed at school by his standards.

  Daphne put her hand on my cheek and asked, “Where’s the blood?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I said, trying to smile. I looked at Oleander. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “No, no,” Daphne said, hanging onto me. “Oleander’s here. He needs… he…” She crinkled her brow, as if trying to remember.

  “Oleander is leaving,” I said assertively, “and you’re going to bed.”

  “No!” Daphne yelled, digging her fingernails into my arm.

  I instinctively flinched, taking a step back, and Oleander caught her before she fell. “You want me to help you get her into bed?”

  “No, no, Reed and I don’t…” Daphne’s voice trailed off and her gaze wandered somewhere past my shoulder. All at once her feelings condensed. The sadness gushing out of her made my eyes well up. “I need to get to Matthew, I have to–”

  I felt a knot twisting in my stomach. “Matthew?” I made Daphne look me in the eye. “What’s going to happen to Matthew?”

  “The same as everyone else,” she replied, stroking my cheek. “You die. And Matthew dies. You all die. I’m left all alone. Just me.”

  The pit in my stomach grew wider, darker, sinking deeper with every word she uttered. I hated her death prophecies. They always attacked her when she was already rattled. It was probably brought on by the evening at Blaze and River’s and my disappearance. Had I been there, I would have disarmed it in time and prevented the prophecy from being issued. It was my fault she was having a vision. “She’s always like this when she’s drunk,” I said, managing to hide the pain her words had inflicted. “She becomes a terrible pessimist. Tomorrow morning she’ll wake up with a vision about cats running out of yarn to play with.”

  Daphne stared at me, saying, “Where’s the blood? There should have been blood on your face.”

  That was a new one. She’d never prophesized that I’d get injured before I died. Her consciousness was blanketed with mist. I couldn’t penetrate it with the pill still in my bloodstream, wreaking havoc on my powers.

  “Come, Daphs, let’s get you into bed,” I pleaded.

  Daphne turned to Oleander and mumbled slowly, “You’re dead. I told you I loved you, and you died. Poof.” She flung her hand up, snapping her fingers.

  Oleander looked at me and said, “Let me help, please.” Without waiting for me to answer, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go to bed now, OK?”

  Daphne nodded and rested her head on his shoulder. “I miss you so much, and I can’t die, and you’re already dead.”

  “I’m here now,” Oleander whispered to her.

  We supported Daphne to her room, Oleander on one side, me on the other. When we lowered her onto the bed, she moaned and closed her eyes, drifting away from me.

  I looked up at Oleander, his face awash with the yellow glow of the street lamps outside. The deeper she fell into sleep, the more Oleander’s feelings disentangled from hers, and I could finally read him. Pain and guilt.

  “When do you die?”

  Oleander jolted, staring at me. “It’s impolite to ask a seer about his death.”

  I shrugged. “It’s impolite to let your girlfriend get hammered.”

  “We’re not…” he started saying, then shifted his gaze back to Daphne. “We’re not that close yet.”

  “But you will be?”

  “If she wants. There are a few possible timelines. I let her choose which one we’ll travel.” He kept staring at Daphne, and I got the feeling he was taking in an image already deeply imprinted in his memory, not a woman he had met only a few days ago. “It’s just… I didn’t want you to kick me out of the house.”

  “We’ve had some bad experience with your family,” I said, trying to keep my voice flat.
<
br />   “I’m not my sister,” he replied quietly. “I would never hurt Daphne.”

  I gave him my nicest smile. “Of course not. If you did, I’d turn your brains into mashed potatoes.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt me,” he said, returning the smile, “she would.” He touched his forehead and left.

  10

  Before I was entirely awake, I felt Daphne’s hangover. It poured over and touched the edge of my consciousness. I fortified myself before it could affect me, and got out of bed only after making sure she was completely blocked. I had received a text from Lee asking if everything was OK. I texted back a reassuring message.

  Daphne was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I sat down beside her on the edge of the bed.

  “Was I horrible last night?”

  “Don’t worry. Oleander helped me get you into bed.”

  Daphne covered her eyes. “Oh no. Oh god.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “That bad?”

  She moaned, and I giggled quietly. She lowered her hands from her eyes and said, “What did I say?”

  “You can see for yourself.”

  She shook her head. “I hate looking at myself drunk. It’s so embarrassing.”

  I recounted as much of last night as I could. Daphne cringed, practically shrinking into a ball as I spoke.

  “I can’t believe you let me behave that way.” She scooted over to make more room for me on the bed. “Some friend you are.”

  “I didn’t make you drink.” I lay down on my side. “It was an awful night.”

  Daphne stroked my cheek. “Daniel will be OK. At least you didn’t make an ass of yourself’cause you saw…”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t see it clearly, just fragmented images. People injured. A lot of blood. I think it happens at a rally.”

  The grief seeping out of her was almost unbearable. I raised my inner walls. “All of us?”

  Daphne brushed her hand through her hair, her black curls spilling from between her fingers. “Everyone I know. Lying on the ground.” A wave of guilt flooded Daphne and poured over to me. That’s why she ran away from Blaze’s house. That’s why she went and drank herself into a stupor. I would have done the same had I gotten a vision of her bleeding on the ground.

  “Do we all die?”

  “I’m not sure.” She wiped her tears. “Everyone’s hurt real bad, and I see graves. But I don’t always see…”

  “The same certainty as last time?” I asked quietly.

  She nodded.

  Back then I was sure I was alone, feeling lost and confused, and she found me when I was aiming my gun; she was so quick the bullet didn’t even graze me. After leaping to such a faraway edge, the visions stirred up a storm in her mind rendering her nearly dysfunctional, and I spent weeks restoring her equilibrium. The following morning I asked our commander to forbid everyone from touching their weapons, without confessing I distributed Daphne’s pain among all the soldiers in our company. The company commander had us running laps all day instead, and everyone hated me for it. But since no one shot themselves, I decided it was worth it.

  “So do the same thing now,” I said, keeping my voice from trembling.

  “I can’t. All I see just makes things worse,” Daphne whispered, and the wave coming out of her drowned me. Her tears welled up in my eyes. “They changed something. Damuses, I think. It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” her voice petered out.

  “There has to be something we can do,” I said after clearing my throat, sounding almost normal. “If you see it, the damuses on the police force see it as well. Or maybe you’re the first to see it, and if that’s the case we have to alert them, say something.”

  “Anything we do might have an unexpected effect.” Her grief overwhelmed me. She was mourning a future I hadn’t experienced, hadn’t known.

  I sniffled. “Think, Daphs, you can solve this. There has to be something. Even just a clue. We don’t have to find the entire solution now, just make things a little better.”

  “Maybe…” Daphne stared past my shoulder. “No, wait,” she said, biting her lip, her eyes fluttering over futures I couldn’t see. “Matthew’s new friend.”

  “Sherry.”

  Daphne nodded, the cogs in her mind working towards a decision. “Talk to her.”

  “And say what?”

  “Whatever you can.”

  My mind was racing. Daphne’s focus on a single future would attract the attention of the other seers. “Are they looking at us?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet, but…”

  “You don’t want to attract attention.” My decade-long relationship with Daphne boiled down to that one sentence. Whatever plan we devised would immediately be known to every damus. Not only the seers that worked for the police, but also those who shifted reality to a present in which we all got hurt in a rally.

  Daphne nodded.

  I put my hand on her hip. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Daphne smiled, her eyes shining with pent-up tears. “You want to talk about Ivy?”

  “No. I think we talked about her enough. Want to talk about Oleander?”

  “No,” she said, smiling. “I think you don’t want to hear about what we really do. We and all our reflections.” She winked.

  I rolled my eyes, and she laughed. She’s a damus. If she saw something dangerous, she’d stop it. I had to trust her. I kissed her forehead. She recoiled and held her aching head. “Want some help with that?” I asked.

  “You have bigger problems.” Just as she finished the sentence, my phone rang in the next room. I rushed to answer.

  It was my mother. “You forgot about us?”

  A phone can’t transmit emotions, and yet my mother was able to make my insides turn to stone all the way from a different city. I took a deep breath. Exhaled. Slowly. “No.”

  “Good.” Her tone sent shivers down my spine. “So you’re coming?”

  Friday. Lunch. Of course I was supposed to go. I could cancel, but that would entail an explanation, which meant lying to my mom. She wasn’t an empath, but she could spot a lie from a mile away.

  “Half an hour,” I said.

  She hung up. I put the phone back on the dresser, on top of two splayed-open books. I went back to Daphne’s room. She sat up in bed and gave me a once-over. “Oh no.”

  “What?” I asked, shaken.

  “I’m sorry,” she groaned. “You won’t die before you get to your parents.” She smiled and I started laughing, which made her burst into giggles.

  11

  The table on my parents’ balcony was covered with pots, serving plates and beverages. There was enough food there for a busy shift at the Sinkhole, even though it was just the four of us.

  We sat on the balcony, disjointed fragments of conversation filtering in from the nearby buildings. A baby started crying in the apartment above us. His feelings were primal, hunger and frustration. At the same time, I was picking up his parents – helplessness tinged with anger. I stared at the cold tomato soup my mom had made. Gazpacho, she called it. It tasted distinctly of cucumbers, even though she swore there was nothing in it but tomatoes. I could relate to the baby.

  “We need to make a decision about Rosh Hashanah,” my mom said while plopping another spoonful of steaming potatoes on Matthew’s plate.

  “I’m on call,” he said, taking a schnitzel from the serving plate. “You couldn’t possibly know that so far in advance,” my dad muttered under his breath.

  Matthew raised his eyebrow. “On holidays, the army requires round-the-clock availability from doctors. It’s the busiest time of the year in terms of car accidents, and…”

  “OK, OK,” my mom interjected, waving her spoon and silencing him. “And what about you, Reedy? You’re also busy on the holidays?”

  Drawing my attention away from the grumpy baby, I met her gaze. The sun shone brightly behind her, making her hair glow auburn, a shade darker than her usual color. “When did you start dyin
g your hair?”

  My mom looked at my dad, then back at me and said, “That has nothing to do with my question.”

  A small gloating wave hit me from Matthew’s direction. I shot him a look. He was hiding a thin smile. “Mom! It’s really nice that you’re spiffing yourself up.”

  I nodded enthusiastically. “That color looks good on you.” Pointing at me, Matthew said, “See? Even the family artist thinks so.”

  A stifled laugh came from Dad’s direction. Mom stared daggers at him. He cleared his throat and straightened his back. “Reed, Mom’s asking whether you have plans for the holidays, not what you think about her hair, which happens to look perfectly natural. I hadn’t even noticed she did anything to it,” he said. I could feel the slight anger inside him, mixed with resignation. Had they let me, I would have read them both in depth, just to understand how the convoluted relationship between them worked. I couldn’t imagine myself in such a long relationship, with such complex feelings.

  I shrugged. “Depends on Daphne. You know what her family is like.”

  “Excellent,” Mom said and smiled, piling another spoonful of salad next the pallid drumstick on her plate. “Then come with us to Heather’s.”

  I shot up. “No.”

  Mom rested her hand on the table. “Why not?”

  “Mom…” Matthew said in a low voice.

  She turned to him and said, “Heather is a very nice woman, always going out of her way to make you feel welcome. And whenever I mention her name–”

  I pounded my fist on the table. “I’m not going to spend an entire evening with someone who insists on pouring a glass of wine for Elijah the prophet every Passover. I have no intention of bringing my best friend there only to have Heather explain to her that it’s just a myth.”

  “But–”

  “No!” I raised my voice. “She might as well put out a glass full of blood. That murderer butchered dozens of sorcerers…”

  “It’s just a myth,” Mom shrilled, “no one actually thinks–”

  “I’m never going back there!”