Burnt (Blood and Fire Book 1)
Page 7
was a detached surprise. “I would be exiled. Driven off into the woods for the Finders to take away.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you going to tell the family what you’ve seen for me? If I let them do what Sojun wants?”
She sighed and sank back away from the light a little ways. “No. Your destiny is your own to do with as you like. If you choose to conceal it, I will not stop you.”
“You think I should tell them?”
“I think it does not matter.”
That got a bit more than surprise. “How can it not matter? It is my family, and I have to decide whether I’d rather lie to them for the rest of my life or lose them all in one moment!”
“In the end, what must be will be. Whether you lie or leave will not change that.”
“Then I guess you’re right. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters if I can’t change anything about anything.” It was an immature statement. He knew it but he didn’t care. This was his life, his family, and she was spouting out stupid comments that said little and meant less.
She sighed again, the same sad sound as before. “What you decide matters, Kaie. Some things are written by Fate and cannot be altered. But that doesn’t make your actions meaningless. You will remember this moment someday and remember the decision you made. It might not change the here and now, but it will change how you see yourself then. That matters.”
Kaie scowled. She was the Lemme. It wasn’t his place to doubt her. But it was all so convenient. It was a great way to convince him to do what she wanted without telling him what to do, to make him obey with nothing better than a promise of some vague reward ‘someday.’ It was manipulative. He wasn’t a fan.
The fire cracked. It startled Kaie out of the languid state he was starting to float in. Alarmed, fear raced down his spine as he recalled the other reason he was here. The more important one. The one he would really rather forget.
“Am I a seer, Lemme?”
Her head shifted forward into the light again. It made her look like she ended at the neck, just a head levitating. It was disconcerting. “Can you see the flames? How about the rocks? Me? What does that make you, if not a seer?”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”
“You mean do you share my ability.” She considered him a moment with the same appraising gaze from earlier in the day. “It’s possible. You share my blood. And your mother was quite good at perceiving possible futures. That’s part of the reason she was destined to lead the tribe. It takes someone who thinks several steps ahead to keep us safe from our enemies in this age. So yes. It is possible.”
Kaie scowled at the fire, not daring to turn the expression on her. “I need to know better than possible. I saw it. What you spoke of before. When you spoke the words, I saw them in my head. Does that mean I’m a seer?”
She stood and it took so much effort that Kaie knew it pained her a great deal. Slowly, she waddled over to his side. He wanted to get up, to help her, to run away. But he was rooted in place. Transfixed.
When she was beside him she took his head between her hands. He tried not to think about the way her skin felt pressed against his own. He tried not to notice the smell of her, powerful enough at this distance to overpower the scents that made his mind float loose. Like sweat and refuse boiling beneath a surface of cloves and smoke.
She stared down into his eyes for a long time. Kaie managed to hold himself still. Mostly. He wanted to run from the hut. He wanted to submerge himself in the icy waters of the stream that ran just outside the village until all trace of her smell was gone. Then slink back into his new home and wake up Jun. They could come up with some new plan, one that didn’t involve lies and schemes, and greet Amorette with grins and jokes in the morning.
“You have your mother’s eyes. Brightest green I’ve ever seen.”
He didn’t know what he was supposed to say that, so he said nothing. The Lemme didn’t seem to notice.
“I had forgotten how young you are. How small and weak.”
Kaie’s grimace hit her with full force that time. He was the smallest boy his age. There weren’t even that many girls his age that couldn’t peer over top his dark red hair. Most of the kids kept the comments and giggles about it down to a polite whisper, but not always. There were one or two who took no small amount of pleasure in pointing out just how tiny he was at every opportunity. Sojun kept things from getting out of hand. Sojun was the great strong protector who kept Kaie and Amorette safe, whether they wanted him to or not. Whether it made things worse or not. “My father says he was as short as I am when he was my age. He says he didn’t grow into his height until he was nearly at his eighteenth birthing day.”
“His twentieth, more like. How he won your mother, scrawny and useless as he was in those days, was a mystery to everyone.”
Kaie’s indignation grew with his discomfort. “I’m stronger than I look.”
“You’d have to be, wouldn’t you?”
He thrust his chin out, giving no thought to how childish the gesture would look. “I’m fast. No one in the village is faster than me. And Sojun and I wrestle all the time. I beat him almost half the time.”
“Oh? Half the time, is it?”
“Almost,” he admitted grudgingly. Of course, that wasn’t true either. Sojun worked hard to hide it but Kaie knew his friend held back with him. He watched him wrestle every other boy in the village at one point or another and knew what Jun’s best was. That wasn’t what he brought out in his friend. But Jun wanted him to think he was strong, and Kaie didn’t want his heart’s brother to know it was useless.
The Lemme saw that. Her eyes, which he thought were blue once too, said it all. He could fool so many people. Sometimes even himself. But he couldn’t fool her.
“You will be given the choice between sacrificing yourself or the ones you love over and over again. You draw pain to yourself like a magnet draws metal. It is the nature of your soul.”
“So it’s true,” he whispered, his eyes dropping down to the dirt and staying there. He couldn’t stand to see the truth in her gaze. “I am a seer. Cursed.”
“Cursed? I imagine you would call it that. But just as you draw the pain, you will draw joy such as the rest of us only dream about. You cannot have one without the other. It is a balance.”
“I don’t understand.” Kaie was reaching now, looking for some way to keep it from being the truth, any reason. “How can I be a seer? I’ve never had a single vision before! And the ones I had… they weren’t direct. There won’t really be a sea of blood. There can’t be, right?”
She sighed. “You are untrained. Your glimpses have always been haphazard and insignificant. Still, your mother recognized them for what they were early. She came to me demanding the truth. A mother should never know her son’s destiny, but because I loved her I spoke it anyway. I was young and did not really understand how such a small thing could change so much.”
“You… my parents knew? This whole time?”
The Lemme nodded. “Because they begged, I worked with Lodan to find a way to keep it hidden from you. Scent was the key. Just as they help enhance the visions, they can dull the memory of them, until they can be mistaken for dreams. Lavender, sage and weir wood.”
Kaie screwed his eyes shut against the stinging tears that burned a path down his cheeks. How long? When did his mother start cooking with lavender and sage? When did they replace the wood of their home, saying the old was damaged by a storm and insects? How many times did they convince him to bring Sojun over for dinner with them, instead of eating with his friend’s family? How many years did his family hide the truth from him?
“You asked if I thought you should tell the tribe of your destiny,” the Lemme continued. “How should I answer? Your parents tried to protect you, and so built for you a cage to hold back what you are. Should I advise you to hold the bars of your prison tight around you as long as you can? I know better than any that you will always feel displaced ther
e. No contentment will find you with part of yourself locked away. So should I tell you to break free? It will bring down so much more suffering than any soul should have to endure.”
“What then?” Kaie croaked. “Tell me something. You have to give me something.”
“I did,” she said softly. “I shared pieces of my vision with you, let you see what I have seen, knowing it would bring something of your own forward. I gave you the truth. That is all I have to give.”
“It’s not enough,” he murmured.
She dropped her head into her hands, as if to cry. “Oh Kaie, you do not know me. I realize this. But I know every facet of your soul better than if you were my own. I would spare you all of this if it were in my power to do so. Even knowing the good, I would protect you from the bad.”
“Why?” He was not asking for her reasons. He was asking for the gods’ reasons. Why would they permit him to be born with the power inside him, knowing what it would cost? Why curse him when they were the ones responsible for his existence? Why was he being punished for something he would never choose?
She didn’t hear the depth of his question, though. She took it at face value. “Because you will have both incredible joy and unimaginable pain. But always in unequal amounts.”
Bitter words were poised on Kaie’s tongue, ready to spill past his lips, but they were lost in an instant as a blood-chilling scream sliced through the silence of