by Mima
She passed not one car on the entire way there. Eventually, she came to the loch. It wasn’t very developed, ringed by pastures mixed with woods. She left the Schwinn by a fence. Following the fine Scottish tradition of tramping wherever she damn well pleased, she walked down to the water. It wasn’t as boldly challenging as going to the beach in the village, but it was still a rebellion that had her jutting her chin as she scanned the wide, landlocked pocket of water. Sitting in a grassy section where a gap in the reeds let her see a good bit of the length, she put her basket in her lap and unwrapped the strawberries.
The burst of tart sweetness in her mouth made her lips pucker. She stared at the picturesque islands in the middle of the lake. It looked like even she, plump and sedentary, could swim from one side to the other, or out to the pine-covered island. The sky was bright blue, the light gray clouds low and skidding on their flat bottoms. The lake shone deep blue in the sun, darker blue-black in the center. It was a positively idyllic place to live, and die.
Xia sat in the grass and considered the coming night. Markos’s letter that she had refused to read had held a Chamber order to undergo one of the most rigorous of all rituals. They wanted her to undertake the ghosting. Again. There would be pain and fear. There would be danger, real, deadly danger, to her power and life. The ritual, like most, was simple, more of a framework for the mind to build on, while the real magic unfolded internally.
Two nights ago, Xia had tried to slip and trace into understanding Aqua’s rising power. And failed. Last night, Xia had ridden Aer on an ethereal journey, sharing odd but fresh information with Markos. And she’d had help and done fine. Both of those tasks were mental. The wear and tear on her body wasn’t real, the effort mostly on the psychic plane. The trip to Majorca that had taken hours of mental concentration had in fact been approximately five minutes.
Flicking the stem of the strawberry into the water, she watched it whirl, floating. It wasn’t an easy thing, what she’d done, but it wasn’t nearly as advanced as what she knew had been sent in Markos’s letter. Subsumation. The witches could call it communing, sinking, or ghosting. But what it meant was total erasure of yourself.
You disappeared into an element, learned its secrets, and you came back through force of will and psychic focus. Then the witch knew the element better than anyone in the world, along with key secrets, but the witch was also never really herself again. Xia had survived it twice before. Once, as part of her morphi trials, she’d gone into Ignis, with Markos as her anchor. She’d woken screaming every night for months and still had a shiny burn scar on the side of her right foot. From what, she’d never remembered.
About twenty years ago, she’d performed the ritual again, with Aqua, when one of the Chamber members had disappeared through foul play. She’d asked a long-time lover to be her anchor. Ry had barely pulled her out, and her fear of water was born. Xia knew what it felt like to drown, because she had, in her own bed. Their relationship hadn’t survived the strain of the ritual even though she’d been one of a handful of successful witches who retained her sanity, and had contributed to pinpointing the Chamberman’s body.
This time, Xia would go into earth. Deep, enigmatic and slow earth. The only element that had historically been able to stop water from destroying the world. Not that earth hadn’t exacted its own terrible price on the planet. The western world didn’t pay much attention to Krakatoa, but all witches were taught about the most modern of earth’s sleepy moments of awareness. Every element was dangerous, but earth was commonly thought to be more benign because it preferred to sleep and worked so slowly it rarely outmaneuvered the Chamber. That didn’t mean she wanted to commune with it.
The seeds of the strawberries caught at her teeth. She worried at them with her tongue. Last time Xia had been subsumed, the person she’d entrusted to anchor her soul had been a man she’d known for years. She’d known his likes and fears, his habits and dreams. She’d known his body and he’d known hers, and they’d cared for each other. Ry hadn’t quite been able to pull her back, and she hadn’t quite been able to remember him when she’d begun to re-form. It had been bad. It had been ugly and awful and a failure most personal.
In a few hours, she’d give herself to a man she didn’t know from…Adam. The thought made her snort. And yet, looking across the deepest water in Scotland, she wasn’t as afraid as she’d expected to be. Adam had no frills. No graces, no charm. But he knew how to get things done. Like cleansing a tainted psychic wound, guarding her body while her mind was in the ether, and smacking Aer into submission. And buying her pretty teapots for no apparent reason.
In theory, an anchor merely needed the psychic strength to pull her soul’s etheric force back to her body. Most magicals had the power to be a simple tugboat. In theory, he simply had to recognize her psychic signature and hold up a metaphorical mirror that said, “Hey, you. You’re Xia.” In theory, a total stranger could do this job.
In practice, no morphi came out of a ritual of subsumation without some psychic damage and often some physical as well. The weaker the anchor, the more the damage. Unlike being a rampart, there was no danger for the anchor. Yet very few ramparts ever volunteered to be anchors, because there was nothing for them to fight. The clarity of an anchor’s ability to help a morphi re-form him or herself was brutally clear: either you supported the morphi and she still functioned, or you failed and she sat in a pretty garden and drooled for the rest of her long witchy life. There was no way to practice and no way to tell how well an anchor would perform with a specific morphi until it was too late.
Shivering, Xia banished the vision of failure. She would make this sacrifice, and she would re-form. She would take meaning from the horror of losing herself, and she would recover. And she would damn well make Adam tell her who her advocate was, and she’d demand a vacation, soon. Preferably in a nice resort in the middle of the Sahara, far from Aqua’s taint. A Bedouin tent with some cardamom tea sounded lovely. She heard you could visit the sets of Star Wars in Tunisia. She’d always liked those movies.
Tossing the last of the granola into her mouth, she crunched determinedly as she tidied up. She stood to go. But she left one perfect strawberry on the banks of Loch Mhòrair. “For you, Meg. He misses you.”
Xia hadn’t been home long before Adam drove up. He had what looked to be an overnight bag and a bulging cloth grocery sack. He was solid, strong, and strange to her, blond hair glittering as he came in the door with the scent of fresh grass and the sea.
He toed off his shoes at the door, set his things on the floor by the couch, and tossed the tiny packet of herbs on the counter. She noticed he didn’t return the note that accompanied the spelled herbs. Suddenly, she was dying of curiosity to know what Markos had written. Looking at the teabag-size plastic Ziploc bag, she thought it was the little things that could kill you.
“Are we doing this tonight?”
His question was so casual. Are we gambling your life tonight? Xia fiddled with her honey spoon, her chest tight. “Are you willing to be my anchor?”
“Aye.” No reassurance. No elaboration. No declaration of duty or honor.
“No, not tonight. I want to train with you first.”
He came up and stood opposite her against the bar. He just stood there, big and male and unknown.
She poured more tea from her lovely pot. “I don’t know you. I need to run through some tests. Would you like some tea?”
“Thank you, no. You have the right to request any anchor you choose.”
She shrugged, feeling sad and defensive. “Markos would have come if he could. There’s no one else.”
Pulling out a stool that looked like it would break under him, he sat across from her. Sort of. His legs didn’t fit under the counter’s edge. “You want to test me?”
Shoulders beginning to ache from tension, she shrugged again. “Us, Adam. I want to test us. And with each success, we’ll build a more intimate bond.” She fiddled with the honey, but didn’t pour it
. Suddenly, her throat was tight with tears and she was angry about it. “I’ve done this before. Survived it before. Twice.”
“I can only understand the task intellectually. It is not something anyone would ever fault you for fearing.”
She nodded, a rush of emotion gathering with his matter-of-fact words. “I won’t go into it so stupidly again. The first time I was overconfident. The second time I was sentimental, believing success was based in emotion.” She’d thought her relationship with Markos had been the secret of her first ghosting’s success, and had thought Ry would be an even stronger partner in her second subsumation due to their relationship. She’d been mistaken about them as a couple, but worse, she’d discovered that emotion had no place in the function of an anchor. “I was wrong. This is magic. This is…” Insanity. Suicide. Blasphemy. “…a skill. If it is a skill, then it can, to an extent, be practiced.”
“You want a night to increase your confidence.”
She played with the honey, tipping it and letting the golden slide coat the jar.
“What would you have us do?”
Standing, she went to the fridge and took off the little pad of paper that hung there on its convenient magnet. It had the name of the local Indian restaurant on the bottom. It seemed every village in Scotland had its own Indian restaurant. She got a pencil and sat.
Without letting herself think, she wrote out the three acts she’d thought of over the years, on the long nights when she’d relived the horror that was her trip into water with Ry as her anchor. They were hard tests, all of them, and all directly applicable to what an anchor might have to do. She ached to know if Ry would have succeeded in any of these tests if he’d had to perform them before their ritual. Water under the bridge. She shivered.
Integration in meditation
Hide and Seek/Tug of War
Forced orgasm
She put the pencil down with a click and slid the pad into the middle of the Formica. Adam reached over and tapped the last item on the paper.
“This.”
Tension coiled in Xia’s stomach, curling tight around anticipation. “Yeah.” Her voice was throaty.
He looked at her steadily, putting his hand back in his lap, out of sight where he sat behind the counter. “You think it will be an exercise in trust, a bonding experience. In the end, I will master you and you will fear me. I would not go into the ghosting with this between us. It is something only longtime lovers or partners might be able to handle. I would have your regard, not your resentment. With a forced orgasm between us, you might try to even subconsciously avoid me, instead of being drawn to me.”
Her nascent sexual need withered abruptly. “Why are elementals so universally, astoundingly arrogant?”
“I’m not sure why you’d even consider this. You’re not submissive. This would be a humbling bond you’d come to resent.”
“If the psychology 101 lesson is over—based, I might add, on colossal assumptions from a few casual interchanges—I’d like to know if you’re willing to accept the terms.”
He continued to stare at her with those flat, black eyes. “This is an ultimatum?”
She breathed deep. “I need this. I need to know my anchor can handle this, before I can…” Swallowing, she fought the sudden churning in her gut. She petted the cooling china of her mug. There was a chip at the base she hadn’t seen. Kind of like how it had been with Ry.
“You will take a stranger to be your anchor. If I do not do this.”
She gave him a hard look. With his sun-and-sea crinkled eyes and thick, waving golden hair. “You are a stranger.”
He put both of his hands on the counter and folded them. “I want the order reversed. If I sense any fear or resentment from mastering your body, I will help you seek another anchor. I fear you are wrong, and that test will instead weaken us, but you are experienced in this, and we will see.”
Abruptly, Xia tossed back a big gulp of tepid, unsweetened tea. It was bitter and she shuddered.
He pushed the list back toward her. “The first is a good idea. The second is useless. You want to complete these tests tonight?”
She ignored his dig at the other test she deemed important. “Did Markos order a date for the ritual?”
“By the new moon.”
They had two nights. No time to waste. If Adam failed, she’d have to do this again with someone new. Her stomach almost revolted. She swallowed grimly. “Yes, tonight.”
Thoughtfully, he rubbed his chin. “And the dreamtime?”
Oh, Lord. She wanted to whimper. She wanted to rage. Being a soldier sucked. “I don’t know. Markos wanted me on duty…” She looked at him sharply, drawing her brows down and trying to be as commanding as possible. “Whose team am I assigned to?”
Adam tipped his head in acknowledgment of her ire. “His. I’m a…free agent.”
Free, her ass. He was the Chamber’s man. For all she knew, Markos was on Adam’s team. She avoided discussing his Chamber connection. “If we do these tests first, I may not be able to patrol. I suppose we’ll patrol first.”
Standing, Adam turned to his gym bag. “I need sleep. Wake me ten minutes before sunset.”
Yet another touching, revealing conversation concluded. He went into the bathroom. The irony of having a rampart was that a morphi rarely got to see them. They were either on opposite sleep cycles or in the dreamtime. Taking her cell out to the apple tree, Xia called Markos.
He answered immediately. “Just a moment.” She heard voices, doors, traffic and then “Xia.”
“You put me in his territory on purpose, didn’t you? You’ve known about the subsumation order from the first. This is your attempt at psychic matchmaker.”
“I delayed sending you the order as long as I could, hoping you’d gather something in the dreamtime to avoid it. He’s powerful, honorable and experienced.”
Silence. Xia chewed her lip.
“I want to be your anchor, Xia.” The words came heavily, reluctantly from him, in his lovely, accented, deep voice.
Please. It was an ache in her throat, a pulse on the tip of her tongue. Come to me.
“You’ve read my letter?”
“No.”
He sighed, a familiar exasperated sound. “Read it. Now. I’ll wait.”
“I don’t have it. I gave it to Adam.”
Silence. “Without reading it?”
“Yup.”
To her surprise, she read hurt in the silence this time. She frowned. “Why, what did it say?”
“Apparently, you do not care to know.”
Oh, Lady. Now he was all stiff-necked. She didn’t have the energy to talk him out of it. She got defensive. “I knew it was a Chamber order of subsumation. I’ve known it was coming for weeks. You shouldn’t have put something personal in it.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry, Markos.” She was.
“So am I.”
Silence. She felt small. She tore at the grass.
“You can do this, Xia. You need to believe that. I know you can.”
“I already have.” Heat, and agonizing light. Cold, and agonizing pressure. “Twice.”
“Yes. I pray that earth is…aware enough for you to seek its knowledge.”
“How many of us are going in?”
“At least five.”
“One of us will find something. Earth knows water’s secrets. We’ll find them.” She talked a good game because she had to. She wouldn’t believe she was risking a suicide mission in vain. The odds were that she’d live, and if she did they were even better that she’d glean something to stop Aqua’s awakening. And if not her, then one of the others. That the odds also said this would alter her magic was beside the point. The five morphis subsuming into earth were a game changer for the planet’s enemies toying with Aqua. The Chamber wouldn’t have let it go too late.
“You will.” There was no false bravado at all in Markos. “But I am sorry for the task.”
She nodded. “Thanks,�
� she whispered.
“Your message has been passed on. It was extraordinary.”
“Good.” Pride and satisfaction radiated through her bones. She leaned her head against the trunk. “Good.”
“Lord above, water is a bitch. I’m so glad you’re no longer alone. Patrol tonight. I wish you hadn’t been off last night.”
She ground her teeth together.
“Xia.” His voice was tired now. “Give me credit. You are bait, dream dancer. I want them uneasy and focused on you, because you can handle them.”
She heard Adam’s accusing voice in her head. “Bait. And you didn’t assign me a rampart?”
“You wouldn’t have accepted one until you were faced with proof that you need one. And you do much better work when you’re not pissed off.”
The thought of all the terrified afternoons she’d spent in Scotland, of the lonely, shaking nights…
“It is my fondest hope that you will learn to swallow your pride and ask for help sooner, before it is a necessity. I think you are close to realizing this skill.”
“You pompous, patronizing asshole.”
“You cannot deny it, Xia. If I’d sent a rampart to you in the beginning, your patrols would have been stiff and cautious. You probably would still be giving me the silent treatment.”
“Manipulative, cruel, cud-chewing jerkwad.” Her fingers cramped around the phone. She wanted to transfer the choking hold to Markos’s thick neck.
“I love you.”
Whaaa? “Whaaa?”
“I love you, Xia. I’ve been worried sick for weeks. He will keep you safe on patrols now. And he will call you back from earth, a sure anchor. You will return, and you will be Xia.”
They had never said it. They knew it. They gave it euphemisms. But the words were never said. She was speechless, still stuck on those all-important three words.
“I remember putting you over me, and you took me inside you, tight and hot. Your face was strained, and your eyes like polished pewter. My hands covered your soft hips, and you danced on me. Because I was inside you, I learned how to dance through you. I am yours, Xia.”
