Eventually, at Seth’s prompt, he opened the door and walked to the house. I thought I would calm down when they entered, but instead losing sight of them just made me worry even more.
“Calm down,” Kian told me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I felt the tension ease under his touch.
“Can you believe you were haunting this guy?” Garrison chuckled.
The tension came back in an instant.
“I obviously didn’t mean to,” I retorted.
“But you’re sure you’ve never seen him before in the past?”
I thought about it. “I have seen him. I remember him from our memories of invading the Godelan, from being in front of the king, and things like that. Where we all were,” I said. As a man, he had been as hulking and imposing a figure as he was now. “He was always near, and I guess I remember seeing his face more often than others I didn’t recognize.” It could have been only perspective, though. I didn’t remember anything specific about him.
The amount I still didn’t know about the past bothered me and made me think that I would never know the whole story. Perhaps it was for the best. Maybe I wasn’t meant to live with two full lives in my head. Or maybe I’d never be as powerful since I chose to keep this life. Unlike Moira. Was she more powerful than us now?
Kian took my hand as I thought. I often wondered if he heard my thoughts, since he seemed to anticipate my need for moral support. His timing was impeccable.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I asked quietly.
He smiled at me. “I know your worried face.”
We sat for another half hour in silence. Finally, Seth and Michael came out of the house. Michael wore a huge, stuffed backpack that loomed over his head. I’d never seen a pack so big, and yet he carried it on his shoulders as if it weighed nothing. He struggled to get it into the trunk and then climbed in, folding over so that he’d fit in the tiny car.
“If I’m going to be travelling with you guys,” he said as he finally managed to shut the door, “can I request more size-appropriate transportation in the future?”
“You got it,” Garrison replied immediately. He was glued to the door on the other size and didn’t look very comfortable himself.
“How did it go?” I asked.
Michael tried to shrug in the small space. “I was going to move out anyway this fall to go to school,” he said. “This is a little different. But if the problem’s as bad as the guy up front said it was, I’d rather use my … ability … for some good.”
He had forgotten Kian’s name. I wondered how much had stuck, given the amount of information and shock he had absorbed in the last few hours.
“To be honest,” Michael continued, chattier now as the situation washed over him, “ever since that fall I took while climbing, I was expecting aliens or something to come get me. You guys are a relief. Sorry about your nose, mate,” he said to Garrison. “I felt something around the corner that just made my guts want to fly away.”
“It’s okay,” Garrison said, feeling his nose.
After the original panic subsided, Michael seemed determined. It was both good and bad. Good, because he needed that determination. A lot had happened since I myself was panicked upon seeing Kian in the rain. It was also bad because the rest of us were all exhausted. We only made it back to the hotel as the sun was setting, and Michael wouldn’t stop talking.
Questions would often punctuate his stories of his childhood and tales of all of his extracurricular activities. After missing a second question in a row directed at me, I finally had to interrupt him and tell him I was too tired after healing Garrison. Which led to a series of other questions. Michael eventually caught on that our attention was waning when we sat in the hotel room he’d share with Kian and kept eyeing the doors.
“I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”
We all rushed to say no. Even though the answer was yes.
“I’ve just always felt a bit different,” Michael confessed. “It’s nice to have people that are in the same situation. Feeling the same way.”
“Of course,” Seth said. “We’ll feel even more the same way, though, after we’ve had a little sleep.”
That night, I didn’t even bother finding pajamas as I got under the covers of my bed. Sleep wouldn’t last long, however. I woke up only an hour later to snores that seemed like they were shaking the hotel.
I couldn’t believe how loud Michael was. I was left staring at the hotel room ceiling, vowing to buy earplugs the next day, though I knew they could not stand up to his volume.
After a half hour or so, I heard a small knock on the door connecting my room to Kian and Michael’s. I opened it to find Kian, dishevelled and clutching a pillow.
“Can I sleep here tonight?” he said.
Training with Michael was far more exhausting than with Kian. Every day, we drove out in the cramped car to a section of a large park that turned into a forest. Michael led us on an hour-long hike to a place where he had never seen another soul, and we practised our magic. Archery. Grappling. Sword-fighting. It was all a blur.
Of course, none of these defences could ever be used against the Godelan, but it kept us on our toes, and Kian was right — the repetition that linked us so strongly to the activities of our past lives did bring up random memories, and thus increased our magic.
At least it was cooler in the forest than in the scorching sun everywhere else. We had been in Australia for over two weeks and I had barely seen a cloud. While that would usually be a good thing, signs of drought were everywhere.
As I immersed myself in the exhausting activities of my past, I received for the first time glimpses into my younger years. My parents. Horses. I even began to see Garrison, Seth, Moira, and the others as teenagers, much like we were now. Michael was ever-present in my earlier memories, and my theory of us being related somehow was reinforced by the fact that it appeared I had known him a long time.
Michael was very strong, and his magic leaned in the direction of Garrison’s and mine, versus the more mind-oriented like Seth and Moira’s. Even Garrison had to take timeouts from the training, struggling and out of breath. Michael relished the idea of moving trees and boulders, as if he had craved this power his whole life and simply hadn’t known.
During our exercises, between dodging Garrison and Michael’s physical magic, Seth also took time to teach me how to protect myself against a mental attack like Moira’s. He emphasized over and over that he had no idea what he was doing — but he would explain to me how he got into my mind and ways that I could force him out.
The forest was full of distractions. Upon Seth’s first attempts to get into my head, he was so delicate and careful that I could barely feel anything. He increased the magic he was forcing on me incrementally, until I began to feel like I had with Moira. He commented on how much power he needed just to replicate what she had done on a daily basis for weeks.
“That must really be a strong suit of hers,” he commented.
“Great.”
I had so far been wholly unable to push him out.
Nearby, an old trunk crashed to the ground as Michael turned to us, his eyes lit up as if he couldn’t believe what he had done. His expression was quite goofy and childlike, especially on such a large man. I smiled in return. At least he was having fun with it.
Kian had told him about the disasters worldwide and how the Godelan were trying to revive the past by destroying the present. I think he understood, but he had never stood face to face with a tsunami. He had never heard screams as people were swallowed up by waves. He had never had the enemy tell him it was entirely his fault.
“Gwen?” Seth called. “Come on back, Gwen. I can hear you thinking.”
“I don’t feel anything,” I told him.
“I’m not doing anything,” Seth replied. “But I can see it on your face. Come on — don’t give up. Let’s go again.”
At least having Seth dig through my brain wasn’t as invasive as having Moira do it.
Any romantic connection we might have had was fading, but I still trusted him completely. We had lived a whole life together, and now we were on our second. And having him in my mind felt more like someone leafing through a book versus Moira’s raking with claws.
After another afternoon of being unable to push him out even a little bit, I declared it impossible. “I can’t find you,” I complained. “It’s like you’re everywhere. And you go through memories too quickly.”
“Wow,” Seth laughed. “What is it with all this whining?”
“I’m serious!”
“Okay.”
He moved the hair out of his eyes, exactly like Kian. Or was it vice versa?
“How about instead of forcing me out, you try to trap me? It’s better than nothing, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you feel me in a memory,” Seth said. “Try to keep me there. When I see something from your mind, it’s just a surface impression. Like words or a picture on a page. But there’s so much more to it; I just choose to move on to the next thing. Why don’t you try to trap me in that memory?”
I hesitantly agreed, and immediately felt him pulling up things I wasn’t thinking about. Memories flashed by just as they had the previous dozen times we had done this exercise. I couldn’t grasp any single one because I couldn’t tell what Seth would pull up next. It was as if he had dived into the treasure chest of my mind and was throwing things out at random.
Just when I was about to be overwhelmed, I found some kind of pattern. Seth was going through my time in Oregon, chronologically from when I’d arrived with my parents. The images struck a nerve. I had been missing them more than ever because of the new memories of my past, when I had parents who were significantly less understanding and loving than my current ones. I felt guilty for not appreciating them when I had the chance.
As I began to think deeper about Oregon, I sank into the memory. And without realizing it, dragged Seth along with me. My parents’ faces beaming at me. The smell of the ocean, the grey sky, then tall trees as far as the eye could see. I remembered thinking that what I was looking at hadn’t changed in a thousand years, and being overwhelmed by the lasting power of it all.
I was their only child, and I had left. In the past few months I hadn’t let myself think about them, telling myself I was doing this for everyone’s good, but was I just being selfish? Was I putting myself first? I stayed in that moment, remembering their faces as they looked from the ocean to me, for several seconds.
Seth’s voice snapped me out of it.
“Whoa!”
He was sitting cross-legged in front of me and swayed as if a strong wind had nearly knocked him over.
“That was weird. But you did it!”
He smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. I doubted my success, though. I hadn’t felt his presence at all.
“Were you really there with me?” I asked.
“Of course,” Seth said. “And I couldn’t leave. It was like a rollercoaster ride. I just kind of hovered in the air like I didn’t exist. Good job, Gwen.”
My eyes widened with realization. I was an idiot. I put a hand over my eyes to block out the distractions, thinking my theory through before I voiced it aloud.
“Gwen?” Seth asked. “What’s up?”
“The burning ships,” I said.
I took the hand away from my face. He still looked confused.
“The burning ships I’ve been dreaming about every night until we met Michael aren’t a dream. They’re a memory. It must be his memory. That’s how I managed to connect with him. It felt exactly like how you just described.”
We both turned to watch Garrison try to wrestle with Michael. His efforts were futile. Though tall, Garrison was lanky and Michael was nearly twice as wide. Kian sat nearby on a tree stump and laughed at them.
“Remind me to ask him about that,” I said.
Getting back to our hotel was always an awkward experience. Kian would put his things in his room and come directly to mine, where everyone would gather to order dinner. We’d been too exhausted and busy to talk about the fact that he escaped Michael’s snores every night in here, and if the others noticed, they kept it to themselves.
That night as we ate, I asked Michael about the ships.
“I know, it’s weird, huh?” he asked between mouthfuls of chicken and fries. He ate more than all of us put together.
“Do you know what it means?” I asked.
He shook his head. “At this point, really, it’s hard to tell if I actually remember some things or if you guys just described it to me and so now I think I remember,” he said. “I know something I can actually picture, like battles and stuff. But I think the ships are different. I’ve been having that dream forever.”
“In the dream,” I prompted him, “I felt like everything was really big, or that I was small. Young, maybe?”
He nodded. “That sounds about right. But what you describe is everything I know. We’re sitting around a fire. Big bang. Everyone goes running. Find the ships washed ashore and they’re on fire. Everyone’s talking about how those Godelan are invading.”
“Wait, what?”
I think we all spoke at the same time.
“Yeah,” Michael said nonchalantly. “I never knew the name for them, but once you said it I knew it was right. The Godelan who we’ve been fighting for … well, forever, they’re not even from our lands. They came on those ships to get away from their own land. Set them on fire to avoid being sent back. I think they were under attack themselves.”
It was hard not to sigh. Michael had assumed we knew too much. This piece of information was important.
“That sounds right,” Garrison suddenly added. His eyes were staring into the distance as if looking at something else. While we were all the same age now, I often forgot we hadn’t been in the past. “I think Michael and I were older. I remember this vaguely, from when I was young. Stories about how the Godelan came to our land for magic. They didn’t have enough of it where they were from … or they were sent away for using it … something like that.”
Michael looked at us, most likely confused about our knowing grins. “What?”
Seth explained about the stone we found with information on how to leave the ritual without coming back, and how we had destroyed it.
“It makes sense,” he said. “It said we couldn’t use the knowledge against anyone from our own land. The Godelan don’t come from our land. Problem solved.”
While knowing how we could get rid of them was a bit of a comfort, the Godelan were not likely to go easily. They had all still sworn loyalty the king. Our immediate mission was the same. We had to learn their names in order to call in that loyalty.
As we parted ways for the night, Kian headed directly into my room. I felt guilty for enjoying his company so much, especially since it was so much better than having sullen Moira around. But after several weeks I was beginning to think we weren’t actually too busy to talk. We were both just avoiding it.
Despite the grins Garrison tended to throw my way over breakfast, we just slept at night, though during the day every touch seemed meaningful. We just were never alone.
As I riffled around for a clean shirt in my luggage, I came upon what I had bought Kian in the market in London, right before our fallout with Moira. His lack of belongings in this time made me want to give him something.
I stuffed it in my bag to give to him tomorrow since our daily routine of not speaking about the situation had begun. Kian brushed his teeth and turned out the light as soon as I got into bed. Before long, I could hear Michael’s room-shaking snores. We all wore earplugs by this point, and I was surprised no one at the hotel had complained yet.
The next day I practiced blocking mind attacks with Seth for less than an hour. After getting it right once, it seemed to come naturally, and he offered Garrison some training, too.
Garrison, usually unwilling to miss a second of fake fighting, happily joined him. Mic
hael had raised the bar for all of us when it came to feats of strength. Despite Kian’s agility and skill, without magic Michael had him on the ground, wincing in pain, even faster than Garrison. Despite this, I didn’t hate the drills, though Kian hovered like a mother hen. It made me smile when I remembered the gift I had for him.
Around noon we took a break and I seized the first moment the other three were busy with something else. I pulled the bundle out of my bag and unwrapped the newspaper around it.
“Here you go,” I said.
Kian looked from the wooden figurine to me, puzzled.
“I got you this,” I explained. “As a gift.”
He took it and turned it over in his hands. I couldn’t tell if he thought the idea was stupid or sentimental. I waited.
“Why a bird?” he said finally.
“It’s a heron,” I told him. “It reminded me of you. The way you hover.”
Finally, he smiled. The others were returning, so he tucked it into his jacket and wrapped an arm around me, giving me a tight squeeze.
“Thank you,” he whispered into my ear.
The gesture made me feel a blush creeping up until Garrison informed me it was still my turn to work with Michael. We walked to an open area he had cleared of trees while Kian climbed up into a branch. I wondered if he was playing with my bird comment, or if I was actually more right about it than I had known.
I dreaded fighting with Michael and told him so. What I thought were muscle aches really turned out to be bruised bones, and I couldn’t fight his strength.
“Brute strength isn’t everything,” Kian called from his tree when he heard me complaining. “It could never have fixed Garrison’s nose. He would have a hole in his head right now.”
“And delicate pressure can’t have done this,” I told him, waving my arms at the trunk graveyard around me. We had probably broken several dozen bylaws with our creative rearrangement of the forest.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” Michael said as we reached the centre of the cleared area.
Lives of Kings Page 21
