The Heart of the Circle

by Keren Landsman

  I poked around after the Sons of Simeon.

  Whenever we talked about them, I pictured isolated sorcerers sitting in a dim cave, rubbing their hands together. Or a few armed sorcerers standing on a roof overlooking the square, peering down their scopes, choosing their victims. I never thought there would be dozens at the square wishing us dead.

  The center of the square started emptying out. On one side stood the sorcerers that were with us, on the other, the Sons of Simeon, getting ready to cast circles of their own. There were two cops with them. I felt Sherry’s hatred when she recognized them through me.

  We needed more force. More sorcerers. But these were all those who could make it on such short notice.

  The timelines Daphne was showing me were starting to jumble. If she couldn’t see what was happening, they couldn’t either. Reed’s Moronic Plan in action. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I might have been able to smile.

  The Sons of Simeon started casting one circle after the other; first on their leader, then on members of the first circle, and so on until they were all protected. In order to strike the members of the circle, we had to get past everyone standing in the way. Their one weakness was that they didn’t have enough sorcerers. They used a few of them for casting. The advantage was the protection of every circle participant. The disadvantage was that the elements weren’t combined, which prevented them from creating a significant striking force. I was thinking like Dimitri.

  It was the best way to protect the people in the middle of the circles. That’s what we would have done had our goal been to protect me or Sherry. But Sherry and I didn’t want to guarantee our own safety. We wanted people not to have to be afraid anymore. That’s all. And for that, we were both willing to sacrifice each other.

  I was missing something. I closed my eyes, ignoring the elements hitting me, ignoring the intensifying pain.

  “Reed,” Blaze said, his voice almost drowning in the blaring waves that surrounded us from the circle of elements. I looked to my left, blinded by the fire engulfing him. “Show me where to aim.”

  “We can feel you looking,” River said from my other direction. “Show us where. We can steer the power of everyone who’s with us.”

  Daniel had joked that I drew from his sorcery. The tempest in her red dress and on neutral. The pill I had been given at the police station, which kept me from touching my power.

  That’s it!

  I opened my eyes. Sorcerers merely steered the power. It wasn’t ours. We were standing in the middle of the biggest city in Israel, surrounded by normies full of sorcery. I remembered how it felt being depleted at the hospital. And how it felt to be slowly replenished from the people living around me.

  I searched for the exact feeling, tracing it back to its source. Through the circle, I could do it voluntarily. I could draw the sorcery from the normies living around the square. Thousands of them, and all I had to do was maneuver the sorcerers around me to draw their power. I groped into the consciousnesses of the normies. One formless mass. A reservoir waiting to be utilized. I pulled instead of pushed. I felt a knot uncoiling, followed by a flooding turbulence of power. I maneuvered all the sorcerers around me that I could feel. The moodies were first. They understood what I was trying to do, and helped me squeeze out the rest of the sorcery from the normies around and transfer it to our elementalists.

  There hadn’t been so many sorcerers gathered in one place to crush an enemy army since Joffre and Falkenhayn in the Battle of Verdun. They were the first to try to bring normies to the battlefield in order to exploit them. And even they didn’t dare completely deplete the normies.

  I blinked. It wasn’t my knowledge. It was Lee’s, who was still connected to me in some distant form, still immersed in me enough for his knowledge to seep into me.

  I focused on Blaze’s fire, searching for its matching fire on the opposite side. It was a tall female sorcerer with a buzzcut. She was standing next to a pair of short twins, both pebbles.

  “They’re mine,” Sherry croaked behind me. I felt her stability, the steady connection on the ground we stood on, echoing in the pebbles on our side. A fire flared next to me. Daphne’s hands almost slipped from mine. I squeezed them tightly. She was sweating more than me. I could feel her pain. The clumps of earth in our circle attached themselves to small stones. The flames rose higher. The air condensed. I could barely breathe.

  I needed to steady myself. Daphne and I were standing in the center, carrying the entire circle. If we collapsed, the circle wouldn’t hold. I searched inside me for that small part of Lee. The one that remembered the dates of battles and number of casualties on both sides during World War I. I traced it back to its source, a thin thread that still bound us together. Lee was protected inside the enveloping sorcery of the circle. He couldn’t support me or dismantle my emotions, but he could absorb them into himself. I started steering my own and Daphne’s pain towards him. I kept her rage for myself. I could use it.

  I felt Lee on the other end of the small tunnel connecting us, pulling into him everything I had sent him, helping me.

  I tightened my grip on Daphne. Now. Because later it would be too late.

  I pushed all the fear, insecurity and self-doubt on to Lee. I pulled in Daphne’s anger, the anger of everyone around me, of everyone who knew I was planning on killing myself today. I felt the elements in the circle spiraling into a frenzy. But they were focused. I dumped it all on the moodies on the other side.

  A single flooding wave of pain and helplessness. I needed to flood them until they collapsed. I showed our moodies how to go about it and, bolstered by the sorcery of all the normies around us, we extracted all the doubt and fear still left on our side, and hurled it at the other side.

  They threw up barricades, walls, fortifications. But they couldn’t handle hundreds of raging sorcerers, enhanced by thousands of normies.

  The current was picking up. I heard battle cries, roars I didn’t recognize.

  On our side of the square, dozens of sorcerers caught fire. Some of them were pyros who managed to extinguish themselves, others airheads and splashers. The pyros managed to put out the flames, but not fast enough, not before they burned and scarred their flesh. I gathered the pain of the sorcerers on our side and steered it to the other side’s sorcerers, bolstering the attack on their walls.

  Blaze was busy cursing every branch of the family tree that led to the inception of the pyros on the other side. I was about to scold him, until I noticed that swearing helped him focus. He was steering all the pyros’ powers. Like for us moodies, small changes necessitated less power than the creation of a big propellant wave. Instead of setting only a few chosen enemy sorcerers on fire, he preferred attacking them all. One after the other, the clothes on their backs started to melt. Their shoes turned into puddles of plastic and rubber. Those wearing canvas shoes screamed when they caught fire. Their pants were glued to their skin, blisters rapidly forming and popping. I felt their empaths trying to alleviate their pain.

  River didn’t curse. She didn’t make a sound. She merely smiled, and I recognized that smile. It was Lee’s thin, sardonic smile.

  A sharp pain shot through me. From my legs to the back of my neck. I felt my spine catching fire. I clenched my jaw, to avoid screaming and diverting River’s attention. Daphne’s fingernails pierced my hand, and I felt her pain. No one else felt the pain. It was a well-aimed attack on both of us. I tugged on Lee’s consciousness. He noticed our pain and took it into himself, releasing me from it. Daphne loosened her grip on my hand. I felt her and the other damuses garbling the possible timelines, preventing the other side’s damuses from seeing us. The pain abated.

  When I regained my bearings, I noticed lakes had formed on our side. We were all standing in puddles, some of them frozen. I was drenched. My feet became numb.

  River’s smile tightened. “Now,” she whispered, and our splashers launched a synchronized attack. She had grown up in a world of barbwires and sorcerers who learn
ed to focus their sorcery from the moment they were born. Her effect on the other side was dazzling. She didn’t bother creating puddles or downpours. She steered the collective power of all the splashers to freeze the water in the cells of the lower body, and boil the water in the cells of the upper body. She evaporated the urine of the sorcerers who were participating in several protective circles, turning it into steam and causing them to double over in paralyzing pain. She made the blood thicken on their heart valves, and the sorcerers dropped like flies. She was effective and deadly.

  Our side was flooded with a stuporous daze; a long, dizzying wave of lightheartedness and affection. I recognized the feeling from the emotions Lee had planted in Sherry’s cops. Someone on the other side had duplicated the substance and was using it against us. The attack from our side weakened as our sorcerers’ concentration muddled. I had no choice. I put out my feelers and reached into Daphne, pulling out the emotion that was buried deep, the pain I had never touched, and I hurled it at the moodies on the other side. The feeling of lightheadedness faded, and the other side was filled with guilt, pain and shame. Daphne groaned as the pain left her. It would be back, I had no doubt of that. But at least she would be free of it for a short while.

  Aurora and Sherry launched a coordinated strike, crumbling the earth beneath the people in the main circle, creating gaping holes. They were protected by the sorcery of the circles around them, and I felt their disparaging contempt. Their pebbles opened cracks on our side of the square, which soon deepened into pits under our feet. A few sorcerers on our side fell.

  I suddenly realized that the small holes Sherry and Aurora had created were merely an experiment. Now they crumbled the facades of the buildings on the other side of the square. People began fleeing from the shattering walls. Rocks and bricks fell on the sorcerers who were already on the ground. Their airheads suspended a few of the flying rocks midair, but not all of them. The rest crashed onto the sorcerers who were holding the main circle, followed by an outpour of blood and shrieks. Their defense collapsed, and the man standing in the middle of their main circle was exposed.

  I was about to rally our side. To strike him. This was our opportunity. But I was flooded with a vision. Crystal clear down to the last detail.

  Children playing with fireballs in a playground. Two girls skipping in the fountain in Meir Square, splashing water all around them. Moodies sitting in a circle, smiling at each other.

  Freedom. We’re all free. It wasn’t the freedom Sherry had suggested. Freedom from the mountains of restrictions. From using neutrals so normies wouldn’t fear us. No. This was true freedom. I could see the moodies floating feelings into each other. Damuses sharing a vision in the middle of the street. A pyro and a splasher pushing a double stroller with two babies inside it, creating a rainbow above them. Water created from the air itself. It wasn’t just any pyro. My sight sharpened. It was Blaze, with River. And no one was afraid. No one was hiding. No one was apprehensive about using his powers in public.

  It was so clear, within arm’s reach. No fences, no restrictions. I just had to make it in time. That’s all. I had to break the circle. I knew, deep inside the vision, that they wouldn’t hurt me. I would talk about how I helped them. How thanks to me, we were all free. I just had to let go of Daphne’s hand, and I’d never have to pay the price for what I was about to do.

  “No,” Daphne said. “Look closer.”

  She led me to other places. Buried bodies. Timelines severed to prevent the birth of those who might undermine the government. Moodies sedated into a stupor in mental institutions, their minds too fogged up to rally their powers. Damuses tied in small rooms, calling out to people who weren’t there, unable to move to timelines in which they’d be free. Elementalists forced to establish the new government, and tossed aside once they’d been drained of their powers.

  I returned to our present. The world was exploding around me. The wounded’s shrieks of pain filled the square. I focused on a man on the other side of the square. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I felt his pain seeping into me, the sudden fear from when it all came crashing down. The pain, the wounded soul marred by failed suicide attempts, the trademark loneliness of every psychic I’d ever met. With no sharp and shiny teeth or menacing tentacle-like arms trying to grab me. Walls crumbling under the force of our attack.

  I dug deeper and recognized the psyche in front of us. The sense of omnipotence mixed with mounting despair, so incredibly familiar.

  Oleander.

  “No.” The wail trapped inside Daphne burst out. “No!”

  I didn’t understand what Oleander was doing on their side. Why was he with the Sons of Simeon? We had to get him out of there. He must have been pushed across the square by the mob.

  Daphne pulled me into her. I gazed through her at the intersecting timelines.

  He had used my anger at Ivy to hide himself from me. From all of us. He was a true believer. I could see his meetings with Linden, timed so that none of the damuses could see them. Timelines that had been set years ago and now intersected. He had pulled one over on all of us. From the moment Ivy met me, Oleander saw the current timeline and did everything he could to preserve it.

  I saw Sherry saying no one could see into our apartment. That a damus had to be next to me to see what was about to happen. I saw Oleander offering Daphne to go out with him, so she wouldn’t be beside me when I fought the pyros at the bar. Suddenly it dawned on me that all the flooding visions Daphne had had were in his presence. He was trying to make her lose her mind. “Blasted be the bones of those who foretell the endtimes.” The Sons of Simeon were targeting damuses more than any other type of sorcerer, and none of us thought it was possible.

  Because of him Daphne hadn’t warned me before I met Lee.

  He had used us to get to the ditch. That’s how he knew how Lee intended to protect Sherry’s cops.

  He had prevented Daphne from protecting the Yoyo kids, and Guy from…

  Gaia. He had gotten Gaia killed.

  “No,” Daphne said again, and I was blinded by the rage inside her. She grabbed my empathy and steered it herself, flooding Oleander with the mounting misery, her fear and sense of abandonment.

  “Now.” Daphne’s voice sounded cold and detached.

  One small stone was hurled directly at Oleander. The first damus who joined us found the right timeline and showed it to Aurora. She followed it, combining her power with Sherry’s. Blaze set it on fire. There was no way to get a stone to burn, but Blaze wrapped it in fire. River added a barrage of hail, resistant to Blaze’s spellbound fire.

  “No!” I yelled. It was too late. They were overcome with revenge, and wouldn’t stop. I felt the stone hitting him. The shooting pain of a cracking skull, the brief moment of relief, and the silence that immediately followed.

  The damuses screamed together, their pain echoing from every timeline, flooding all of us. Daphne’s hands dropped to her sides. The circle broke the moment she let go of my hand. Aurora caught her, and they both fell to the ground, stumbling into the pit behind them. I felt Aurora’s wound, the gash in her ankle. The protection from Lee faded with a slight rustling sound. I looked at him.

  “I’m not dead yet,” I said, and passed out.

  42

  I woke to the sound of sirens and honks. People were yelling and running in every direction. I was more depleted of sorcery than ever before. For a fleeting moment, I wondered whether this had been the last time I would be able to harness my power, but the thought evaporated when the pain surged through every part of my body. I couldn’t trace its sources, couldn’t isolate the pain or alleviate it. I heard medics and doctors passing instructions. Sherry was barking orders. I couldn’t understand how she was still standing.

  I lay on my back. The stench filtered into my nostrils. Burnt flesh, ash and melted rubber. I managed to open my eyes. Green with brown flecks. So close he was a blur. Lee’s tears trickled down on me. I blinked.

  “It burns,” I whis
pered.

  Someone squeezed my arm. I felt hands all over my body and tried to push them off.

  Lee stepped back and put his hand on my forehead. “Don’t move.” Another teardrop slid down his face.

  “Where’s Daphne?” I didn’t feel anything other than myself.

  “She’s fine.” Lee wiped his tears. “Everything’s fine.” He smiled at me. I couldn’t read his expression, and I couldn’t feel him.

  Something was pressing against my neck, keeping me from moving. Matthew’s face filled my vision. I saw the edge of his neon vest, yellow and green stripes under the Red Star of David emblem.

  “Since when are you a medic?” My voice came out hoarse, strange.

  Matthew ignored me and looked at Lee. “Can you maneuver him a little more? I have to set his leg.”

  Lee nodded. “Just give me a heads up.”

  “Wait,” I managed to raise my voice.

  Matthew looked at me. “Your leg’s shattered, and you have serious contusions on both your hands. You have second degree burns covering half your body, and I don’t think you’ll be able to avoid an exploratory laparotomy. The only reason you still haven’t been evacuated to the hospital is because there are people here in worse condition, and you’ve got a brother who can keep you alive until an ambulance frees up. Shut up and let me treat you.”

  I kept quiet. My pain subsided. Matthew disappeared from my field of vision. Above me was cloudless sky and Lee’s hair falling on his forehead. He had long, thin hair. I knew how he felt when I ran my fingers through it. I saw every hair separately. Some were lighter than others, almost blond. I wanted to brush them off his forehead.

  “Matthew,” Lee said, his voice strained, turning his head. “You want more?”

  “Knock him out. It’s more complicated than–”

  And everything went dark.