Reborn (The Awakening Volume 1)

by Dean Murray

  Chapter 26

  While Dad and Ari were out on the lake I took the opportunity to practice trying to maintain multiple effects at once for longer blocks of time. I hadn't expected it to be easy, but I also hadn't expected it to be quite so exhausting.

  It wasn't just physically tiring, it was emotionally exhausting. Summoning my default emotion with enough strength to weave in more than one effect and then sustaining that depth of emotion wore me out in ways that it was hard to describe.

  Kat happened on me a few minutes after I finally managed to sustain a strength-, circulatory- and skin-strengthening effect for an entire sixty seconds. She looked at me and shook her head.

  "Jace told me that you were some kind of savant, but I had to see it to believe it. You really are something."

  "Thanks, but I'm having a harder and harder time making stuff work. This last time it was like pulling teeth to get my emotions strong enough to start working effects."

  "So take a break. It's not like you're behind schedule or anything. Most people don't realize how much work it is to build up emotional muscle because they are so much more focused on trying to get the effects working in the first place. You're in the opposite situation, you're making effects work left and right, but it's going to take some time before your emotional reservoir gets big enough to spend the whole day working effects like this."

  "I guess that makes sense."

  "Of course it does, everything I say always makes sense."

  That earned her an eye roll, which just made her laugh, but she'd succeeded in making me feel like it was okay to call it a night. I ended up going into the RV for my backpack and then put a camp chair out next to Jace and worked on my homework while he wrote in his journal.

  I was way past understanding why Jace and Kat spent so much time writing in their journals, but I'd been reluctant to start myself because it just felt like such a big task. I was starting to realize though that I couldn't afford to put the task off, even if it was incredibly intimidating. I'd already lost a couple of hours' worth of my life after just my first day as a full Awakened.

  Jace caught me staring. "Does that mean you're ready to start one of your own?"

  "Yeah. I'm just not sure where to start even if I had a journal to start writing in."

  "Well, there's a blank journal and your favorite brand of pen waiting for you inside the RV."

  Jace looked out onto the water as though trying to make out the details of what was happening with my dad and Ari before finally shrugging.

  "As for the other part of your challenge, that's something you'll have to figure out on your own, but a lot of us do one journal that is just the high points of our lives, the most important things that you would want yourself to know if the worst happened and you ended up losing all of your memories. Then once that is done we tend to start two more journals. The first one is a daily record of our lives from the time we start journaling, the second picks up from our earliest memory and works its way forward until it matches up with the other detailed journal."

  My mouth went dry as I realized what he was telling me. "Is that what's back in that box that I asked you to give me? Is that the high-point narrative of my life?"

  "I don't know—it's been hard not to look at it, but I promised you that I wouldn't. It might be the high-point journal, or it might be your final research journal. I know you're probably hoping for the former, but we never found anything in writing concerning your last set of discoveries, the stuff that you were working on just before you died."

  "But you found some of my research…"

  "Yeah, like I said earlier, it was so far beyond us that frankly I'm surprised that you decided to continue running with Kat and me. You could have used even just your earlier stuff to bargain your way into almost any pantheon in the world. I can only imagine what must have been in the last journal."

  I wasn't sure what to say, so I just nodded and returned to my homework as I made a mental note to grab the spare journal later and get started on the highlights version that Jace had suggested.

  A few minutes later Ari and I got the biggest surprise of our day when Dad came back from his time on the lake and told us that we could stay there for another night if we wanted. It happened after a twenty-minute discussion between Dad, Jace, and Kat while Ari was refueling the jet skis and I was inside putting the dishes away from lunch, so there was no way to know what the three of them had talked about, but as I came outside with my new journal tucked under my arm, Dad walked up and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

  "I need to go if I'm going to make it home in time for work, but if you and Ari want to stay here for one more night that's okay. Just make sure you're home by two o'clock tomorrow so I can say hi to you both before work."

  I wrapped my arms around my dad's chest and gave him a hug. "Thanks, Dad. That sounds like fun, but I don't want to miss our Sunday together."

  "It's okay, sweetie. I think that I'll actually get next weekend off for a change and we'll spend both days together then. Jace says that there's a tent and sleeping bag in the SUV he drove up this morning, so he'll be sleeping in that. No spending the night together—you or Ari either one. I want your word."

  I nodded. "Of course, Daddy."

  "Okay, there will be plenty of time for that kind of stuff later."

  I'd already let go of him, but he pulled me back in and gave me a hug that made my ribs creak, just like he'd done when I was little, back before he started treating Ari and me like we were made out of spun glass, before he started worrying that we would disappear on him like Mom had.

  "Let's go tell your sister."