“Too late,” I mumble.
I take the stairs in the living room, hoping to find a space to myself. To think, to calm down. I’d love a shower, but I have no clothes to change into, so at this point it won’t do me much good.
Desks line the wall on one side of the basement, and several chairs are assembled here and there. At least four bedrooms spread from the main L-shaped room, and I grab a blank sheet of paper from the desk on my way to the room farthest back.
It’s hot—almost stifling in here. I have to open my mouth to breathe. Plant boxes fill the space, wooden and elevated, each with its own set of heated lamps providing artificial sunlight. I sink down next to what I think are tomatoes and place the paper on the concrete floor, doing my best to sketch a map around the base of Mt. Rhine, though my concentration skitters with the way my blood still races.
I take in a deep breath, forcing Shasa and Talon out of my thoughts. I begin with a few lines of what I remember about the area surrounding Mt. Rhine, the lake at its base, the tree line several hundred feet away.
“Sorry about her. I know she can be forceful.”
The pencil slips, streaking a wayward line across the page. Jomeini shuffles in at the door, her hands clasped before her.
“Jomeini,” I say, setting the pencil down. “Is everything okay?”
She smiles. “I came to ask you that.”
“Right.” What would have happened if Shasa attacked me after all? Would Zeke have intervened with his knife? Would Solomus or one of the others have tried to stop us? Either way, I don’t want to talk about it with Jomeini for some reason. It was embarrassing enough that it happened, let alone in front of an audience.
I fidget, trying to think of a way to steer the conversation away. So many questions wheedle around. What Jomeini Saw, what she thinks of the tears choosing me, what I need to be doing next instead of moping in the basement. I’ve longed to meet her, to speak with her, but now that I’m here I don’t have a clue how to start.
I need this, I tell myself. I need to know what she can tell me, what she Saw me do. And that thought is enough to send me running to find yet another basement. More responsibility? Where do I sign?
“Jomeini, I—”
Her dark eyes analyze me. “I have something for you.”
“You—you do?” I can’t fathom what this girl who has been holed up for years can possibly have for me. I should be helping her, not the other way around.
Jomeini’s black eyes glisten, and the corners of her mouth tug upward. Her face holds sorrow and wisdom beyond her years, and she pulls a folded piece of cloth from the sack around her shoulders.
“Can I sit with you?” she asks, not waiting for an answer to slide to the floor across from me. Heat from the lamps blazes in our direction. The floor is strangely cold in contrast.
“You were brave,” she says. “With Shasa, in that van. You could have left things alone and let me fail. I’ve seen the way you look at Talon. The way he looks at you. You had good reason to let her die.”
“There’s never a good reason to let anyone die,” I say.
Pain streaks across Jomeini’s face. Craven. His death had been the key to her freedom.
“Talon is my friend,” Jomeini goes on. “I want him to be happy. And Shasa too. I’m not sure how you fit into the scenario, but you do fit, Ambry. That’s why I came down here to give you this.”
She hands the bundle to me, nearly dropping it, her hands are shaking so badly. I catch it before she can, and she gives me a feeble smile, brushing hair from her face.
“You okay?” I ask.
She stares down, hands wrestling in her lap. Of course she’s not okay.
“Never mind,” I say. I open the flap of folded fabric. Inside is a small set of cards, textured like thick parchment. I rub my fingers over the wrinkled surface and press them between my hands.
“What is this?”
The cards lay face down. The paper’s bumpy texture teases my fingers, creating its own path to guide my touch. Angling my head to one side, I count. Three. Three cards.
Colored, pencil markings map their way across the first hand-sized card, streaking in lines and shading flowers of different sizes and shades. I recognize a few—the daffodil with its spire of petals and cuplike nose, the gladiolus, pink and staggered one above another while leaves peek their heads in between, daisies, simple and beautiful. Several others speckle the card like a small swatch of wallpaper; one a round pom of purple blossoms, and a single blue iris with its head raised.
I examine the detail in the images, watching, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
Vines drip down the surface of the second card, again penciled and sketched, but with such mouthwatering detail I’m certain the flowers blooming down like wisps will feel like velvet under my touch. The vines dangle like hair, apparently free-standing, attached to something I can’t see. Stupidly, I blow against the card, expecting them to flurry, but again, nothing happens.
A series of symbols scales the surface of the third card. Each is distinct and thorough, decorated with paisley and pointed tips, each intricate and disjointed all at once. One circular symbol reminds me of Ren’s magitat.
Jomeini tosses her hair back and tucks her feet beneath her. “You knew whose tears you carried.”
“You Saw me.”
Her mouth tucks into a line, and she begins to rock backward and forward, glancing from side to side as though afraid of being overheard. What did she See? What happened to her? I want to reach out, to hug her, but I’m not sure what to do.
“Ambry, can I tell you some secrets?”
I swallow, remembering her rage, the way she came unhinged and burned Craven’s body to a charred crisp. Here is a girl more powerful than I can imagine, a girl I’ve only just met, sitting on the floor with me and wanting to bare her soul for all I know. My heart rises in my throat. The only secrets she can possibly have are those I’ve been craving to know since I got through that archway after Nattie told me the tears were cried for me. I wanted to know why.
But now I’m not so sure. Jomeini needs help. She needs something else to focus on, she needs time to heal. Talking about this might only make her worse again.
“If you’d like,” I finally say.
“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken with anyone but Shasa. I apologize.”
I loosen up, suddenly aware of how rigidly I’m sitting, and how uncomfortable I must be making her right now. “No, please, I’m sorry. If I can help you—please, whatever you want to tell me is great.”
She shakes her head. “You won’t be helping me if I tell you. I’ll be helping you if I tell you.”
The bundle on my lap turns to bricks. “Does it have to do with these?” Tentatively, I lift the top card.
Jomeini flattens the stack down against my leg. “Be careful who you open this around. Other people can see it, but the viewer can alter the image by what’s in their mind. Only someone you trust, someone already in your future, should see this with you.”
“And you’re not in my future?”
“I am. I’ve studied these, extensively, trying to figure them out. I even painted them,” she adds with a smile. “But I’m giving you a fair warning. You don’t want to change what’s on those.” She points to the cards.
My mouth grows as dry as the paper in my hand. “And what are they?”
Jomeini inhales and pushes herself up from the cold ground. She prowls around the nearest box of plants, this one elevated on a table. The lamplight highlights her cheeks and soft mouth, casting shadows over her eyes. “When I have a vision, I See one thing. I draw another. It’s impossible to determine the meaning of one without the other.”
“Okay…?” I say, slightly confused. I rise as well, hugging the cards to my chest. “This is the drawing from the vision that made you shed my—er, those, tears?”
Jomeini purses her lips in response.
“How does it work?” I ask, itching to both look at the cards and toss them into the fire at once. “I talked to Nattie, the First maiden wizard. She said you Saw me. What did you See me doing?”
“That’s what Craven didn’t understand,” says the small girl, stroking the leaves of the plants. She pushes dirt with her fingers and pats it around the stem of a plant with wide leaves and tiny purple blossoms. “If I told you I Saw a battlefield with men, women, and children dying, with you at the driving point leading the carnage against the enemy, I wouldn’t draw that. The Sight and the Drawing are layered. And the real meaning behind them means something different to each person involved.”
“So you can show this,” I hold up her face-down cards, “to any number of people and we’ll all see something different.”
Disappointment climbs, one rung at a time. Sure, I only glanced at them, but the images on her cards didn’t spell out anything. There was no sign of tears, or teardrops, or the battle Jomeini mentioned. I don’t even know if she actually Saw that or if it was just an example she gave me.
“Craven thought I could just tell him whatever I saw and those exact details would be what came to pass. But it’s not so cut and dried. Just as our souls lie within our bodies unseen, there’s a deeper aspect than the physical result of a vision.”
She gestures to the cards plastered to my chest, her nails caked with dirt. “I Saw colors, Ambry. Each color was distinct on its own before it slowly started to blend into a different shade, then another, like a painter preparing his easel. I did See the battle I mentioned, though you were not in it. I saw the races converge and spill one another’s blood. I felt the dirt take a tally of every drop…” She pauses, her lower lip trembling. “That blood pained even the ground; it changed the face of the land. The very earth ripped apart in pain.”
Jomeini shudders, but continues. “The images burned straight into me. I Saw each person as they died, I viewed their lives in an instant, a blink, yet it was as though I knew them.”
She pauses, her lids fluttering in an unnatural way as though she’s seeing it all over again. I open my mouth, only to close it again.
“And then flowers,” she goes on. “I Saw fields of them. You were with the flowers, and the love that resonated from you was more than I knew a person could feel. You healed the aching ground, Ambry.”
Her words pierce the hidden parts of me, sweeping like a breeze. “Angels,” I breathe.
She releases a breath. Her lids open completely once more, and she gives me a soft smile. “I’ve done my part. Now you’ve got to determine what it means for you. You are the soul.”
“But you—you Saw me? I mean, how did I…heal the ground?” I have to be sure. If she’s saying this is completely separate from the vision, then what am I going to find when I study these cards—an image of my death? I wish she’d give me some clue, a hint—vreck, if she’d just come out and tell me that still wouldn’t be enough.
“Flower petals,” she says, staring into the lamplight.
“What? What does that mean?”
Her attention is completely focused on the beds of dirt, the vine-like plant coiling around a wire enclosure in the elevated box.
“Jomeini, please. The soul and the body are connected. I can’t fully understand the spiritual aspect of your vision if I don’t know the physical too. Did you see me with your tears? Did I use them somehow? With Tyrus? Did you see him—or Gwynn, what about my best friend? She has long blonde hair and is really prett—”
Her eyes squeeze shut and she backs away, pressing dirt-coated fingers to her ears. “I’ve told you all I know,” she says, her voice growing frantic. “I haven’t Seen anything!”
She knocks over the wire enclosure and begins tearing plants from their beds, tossing the pathetic exposed roots at the wall. “I haven’t Seen anything!”
The door bursts open, and Talon and Ayso crash into the room. “They’re in here!” Talon calls to someone behind him.
“My plants!” Ayso cries.
Talon rushes over, dodging through the maze of plant boxes. He takes a shrieking Jomeini by the shoulders.
“I can’t See on demand! He doesn’t get it—I’ve told him how they work!”
Talon takes her face in his hands, leveling his eyes to hers. “Shh,” he soothes. “Craven is gone, Jo. It’s all right. You’re safe with us.”
“My mind,” she says, sinking to the floor. “He wants my mind.”
Shame tingles like heat through my belly. Horrified, I press my hands to my cheeks, wondering what just happened. What did I do to her?
Talon sinks with her, holding her to his chest and rocking with her. His eyes travel to meet mine, questions flourishing in them. What happened?
Solomus and Shasa appear in the door, and the old man hobbles to his granddaughter. I hug the cards tighter against my chest.
“What did you do now?” Shasa curls her lip in my direction.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter to no one in particular, confusion still rattling through me. I asked too many questions. I pushed her too far.
All eyes stray to me and everything becomes suddenly clear. Talon, Shasa, Solomus, and Jomeini, they all belong together in some group that I was never a part of. I don’t belong here. I leave the room, eyes burning with unshed tears.
Jomeini isn’t sure if she should move. Talon has been holding her for minutes, maybe hours, maybe never. Maybe this is all in her head. It wouldn’t be the first time. The man holding her in her fantasies was always Miles though, not Talon.
She pictures it’s Miles now. Never having been held by him before, her imagination has to do quite a lot of work to make it real. Miles Odis, her neighbor, her friend, the boy she lived across the street from in Valadir before she was taken.
She closes her eyes and gives in to the illusion. Her mind turns hazy. It’s been doing that a lot lately, since Shasa left. Since she had that vision.
Ambry seemed to accept everything she said about those cards. That’s good, at least. It was hard to hand them over. She held onto them for so long—she supposes that’s what caused her to snap.
Talon peels her away from his chest. “How are you?”
“You know, you’re the first person to ask me that and really care about the answer.”
That’s not entirely true. Ambry sounded like she cared. And Shasa. But her grandfather…a dry sob rips from her throat. In this case, “everyone” just means Solomus Straylark.
Brimstone, why can’t she just go back to normal? She wasn’t always like this, this…fragmented. This needy. The plants bend toward her, offering their leaves in solace, but she isn’t sure that’s real either.
“I’m breaking apart at the seams,” Jomeini says, her voice cracking. “The vision, it’s all anyone wants to talk about, but no one seems to care about the effects that what I See have on me.”
“I’m sorry,” Talon says, concern etched on his forehead.
“I can’t blame Ambry for wanting to know more. I did give her the cards, after all. It’s only natural for her to ask questions. I just…I can’t handle questions, I guess.”
She hugs her bag, hoping Talon won’t figure it out, that there are cards in here for him as well. It’s not the time. And if it was, she’s not sure she can handle giving them all away at once.
“I had no idea.”
“Not many do. Craven—” Her voice breaks, shattering off another frail piece of her. She folds herself in, hugging her knees and cradling into Talon’s arms. They’re the only thing keeping her from completely splitting apart right now.
“He didn’t get that I’m a person too, behind it all.”
“Ambry’s not like that,” Talon says. “I don’t know what happened a few minutes ago, but I know her. She’s kind, Jo. She’s a good person. She won’t expect anything more than what you can give her.”
Jomeini nods into his chest. “The angels must be ruthless, to curse just one wizard with this. It’s supposed to be for the good of th
e races, but at what cost? What if I’m not helping anyone, Talon? What happens when I have no more answers to give, will anyone care what will happen to me?”
Even Baba won’t care—he’s too preoccupied with his study of history, of Ambry and who she is. That’s why he’s been scouring over that book since he got it. Jomeini knows he thinks she has something to do with the Firsts. Light, Ambry should never have shown him that teardrop. And healing Shasa only propelled his adamant search that much more. It should not have been possible. Only a wizard can restore life, and it’s clear Ambry is not a wizard.
Jomeini sniffs. “Look how much trouble my tears have already caused.”
Talon strokes her hair. “It seems like the angels have a way of twisting what should be, and ripping us away from where we think we belong,” he says. “But if there’s anything I learned with Tyrus, it’s that no matter what fate deals out to us, we still have a choice.”
“Easy for you to say,” she says. “Visions don’t invade your mind at their whim and make you a target for anyone and everyone.”
“No, but I was still wanted and used for what I could do. It was hard, Jo. See this?” She withdraws as he pulls at the strap of his gloves and removes one from his hand. Scars traipse along his skin with no rhyme or reason. Just marking him the warrior he is. And the purple—Jomeini remembers the day he showed up wearing those gloves. She had no idea this was why.
“This was the cost of what I had to go through, to finally realize I had that choice. Looks to me like you’ve already paid your price. It’s time to decide what you really want in your life and let the rest of it go.” He gives a small smile, pats her hand and lifts her from his lap.
Jomeini ambles back to the nearest elevated plant box. Baltine Poinsettias dot the square surface, enclosed in cozy patches of dirt. Their white fronds star out into happy buds, drawing a hollow space in her sternum.
She loved plants. This was what she wanted to do, to cultivate, to find cures and oversee greenhouses, to spend her days smelling the freshly clean dirt, helping things grow and become more than what they started as. She remembers first learning bleakfire, how the leaves withered and singed under her touch once the fire had taken residence in her fingers.
Such a Daring Endeavor Page 18
