by Jen Crane
“Let’s eat,” Emelie said. “I made tabbouleh and kebabs.” She was an adventurous cook and prided herself on mastering new dishes. Sometimes her efforts were well received, sometimes not, but this one we all liked, and the mood lightened considerably.
“So,” Emelie asked minutes later when neither Gaspare nor I had spoken, “What did Abia teach you today?”
My lips pushed up at the thought. “Today was a good day. We worked on telepathy, and I was able to do it. I got into her head. I strongly suspect she took it easy on me, but that’s okay. For now.”
“Wonderful,” she exclaimed, a little too enthusiastically. “I’d let you practice on me, but that’s no real challenge. I’m a lightweight when it comes to innate abilities. Gaspare’s a tough nut to crack. You should give him a shot.”
“No,” I said, not really in the mood for further interaction with my uncle. It would have been rude to leave before eating Emelie’s meal or I’d have already left.
“Why not?” he asked and quirked an eyebrow. “Scared?”
“No.” I finished chewing the bite of juicy tomato.
“Well then, give it a go.” Gaspare extended his arms wide. He was unafraid and welcomed my attempt. His expression said he didn’t think for one second I’d ever get into his head. And that really pissed me off. It didn’t bother me when strangers underestimated me. Fine. I would continue to surpass expectations. I was a cute girl from the South, after all. My intellect and scientifically-geared brain had been taken for granted most of my life. I’d learned to use their miscalculations to my advantage. I could deal with that.
But my beloved uncle’s doubt hit me hard.
I sat up straighter with an infusion of false confidence. “All right. But just remember you asked for it.”
I put everything I had into seducing Gaspare Shaw’s powerful mind.
It was clear the moment he realized he’d misjudged me. The same eyebrows that mocked me moments before flew toward his hairline. He wheezed a breath as I slithered my way past his hasty and inadequate barrier.
Let’s see, I thought. What do I want to know?
For me, reading his mind was like flipping through a mental version of one of those hanging poster displays. Flip. No, not there. Flip. Not that one. Flip. Ah. There it is.
I could see Gaspare’s memory from earlier in the day like it was my own. It was as if I was looking through his eyes, but I knew I wasn’t. Ewan sat slumped in a corner booth at Sabre Bar. He was alone. Two fingers of whiskey sat in front of him. From Gaspare’s vantage point, through his eyes, I could see Ewan’s haggard face. He hadn’t shaved in days, maybe a week. His dark curls were messier than usual, too messy, and the neck of his black T-shirt was stretched and unkempt. He looked positively miserable. His brown eyes, usually playful but sharp, were now dull, the bags beneath them physical indicators of his sleeplessness.
I gasped at the pain so evident on his face and feared he’d heard me. Then I remembered I was only perusing a memory.
A slender girl in a flowing pink halter-top passed in front of me. She smelled of honeysuckle and sunshine, and her white blonde hair glinted as it swung across her back. Emrynne. She slinked toward Ewan and sat next to him in the booth. Too close. Much too close.
I moved toward them to tell her to find another seat, another man, but of course, I wasn’t really there. My heart pounded within my chest and sent a rush of blood straight to my head. I ground my teeth in frustration, and in jealous fury.
I felt a push on the peripheral of my consciousness. Gaspare was attempting to eject me from his mind, but I wasn’t finished. I dug deeper, pushed harder, and stayed within the memory.
When I returned my attention to them, Emrynne was speaking to Ewan. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “I’ll make it all go away.”
She took him by the hand and led him from Sabre Bar up the wide central staircase. My racing heart stopped as dread, disgust, and acute pain sent a signal that something was broken, something was about to blow.
“No!” I screamed, though Ewan couldn’t hear me. The two ascended the stairs, one of his hands in hers, the other trailing along the wooden banister as if at any moment he might cling to the railing and turn around. As if he might choose me. “No!” I crumbled to the floor, my hand flying to massage the crushing pain of my chest.
I released Gaspare’s memory and slammed the metaphorical poster display closed. Like a taut rubber band set free, I snapped out of his head and back into the couple’s dining room.
Neither of them said a word. Emelie watched my face for a reaction, her own etched with concern. Gaspare was furious. I expected steam to hiss from his ears at any moment. But I was the angrier of the two of us. This was all his fault. He’d injured Ewan that night in the forest and swept me away without revealing the essential details that I couldn’t return or let my friends know I was okay. Gaspare was the one to blame that Ewan was a heartbroken mess. It was Gaspare’s fault Ewan had slept with Emrynne. All of it lay at his feet, yet his blue eyes squinted in my direction.
“Oh, don’t you look at me like that,” I seethed. “You tricked me to get me here, you won’t let me leave, you’ve let my poor friends believe I’m dead, and now you’ve caused my Ewan to screw that celestial bitch. I hate you for what you’ve done to me.”
Gaspare scoffed, fists flying to his sides. “I had nothing to do with Ewan’s infidelity, and you know it.” But then his face softened as anger faded and was replaced by sympathy. “But I am sorry it happened. I’m sorry you’re hurting. I never want to see you unhappy, and I hate that this situation has made you so.”
I didn’t reply. An angry tear fell onto my cheek and I swiped it away.
“Perhaps this is a sign you two weren’t right for each other,” he continued. “Perhaps it’s a good time to move on. Make a fresh start here in Pearl.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I drew my lips together in an angry snarl. “We are meant for each other. I saw it in the well in Caliph.”
Gaspare’s eyebrows drew together before he tried to respond, but I cut him off. “No. I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say. I can’t stand to be here anymore.”
I traced away from Gaspare, from Emelie. But I couldn’t outrun my breaking heart.
Chapter 18
Since Gaspare and Emelie’s home had become my favorite place, I didn’t have many options for escape. I could go to the cottage Bay and I had been living in, but it belonged to Gaspare, and I didn’t want anything to do with him. Finding Bay at Forster’s wasn’t an option because they were way too into each other for my mood.
I was hurting, I was angry, and I was not very hopeful for the future. I’d never been one to curl in a ball and cry or to inhale a carton of rocky road. I was an angry “doer.” And right then I wanted to do something. I considered going for a run, but recalled my expanded options. I didn’t have to run out my frustration. I could fly.
Alone near the boathouse I removed my clothes, and with a breath I leaped into flight in dragon form. It was a mild night, a cloudless night, and the stars shimmered and danced so clearly it seemed I could fly right into them. I pulled in my arms/wings and arrowed straight up toward the luminous bodies I had always been drawn to, that I was named for. Stella in Latin and Italian. Star.
The temperature dropped quickly as I ascended, but my body was equipped for it. Thick scales protected me from the cold and wind. I closed my eyes as I went higher and higher. Speeding through the sky, knowing my whole body was a powerful weapon, a fearsome thing to behold, but capable, too, of delicacy, was cleansing. It was freeing. All was certainly not okay, but in the sky, I held out hope it could be. Someday. Maybe.
I’d never had a vision in my dragon form before. But experience had taught me the uptake in my heartbeat, the pounding within my chest I had once mistaken for panic attacks were what preceded my premonitions. I was prepared when the scratchy, opaque view flashed outside my peripheral and played like a staticky old
television.
In the vision, Abia leaned against a large rock rising up from the sandy beach. She wore diving gear, her mask pushed back onto the rubber covering her neck and hair. In the vision, she smiled and used the full force of her gaze to impart some great wisdom. “Love and light, baby,” she said. “Love and light.” Her eyes, deep blue like the sea around her, shone with those very things.
I didn’t know the meaning of the vision, but I knew not to discount its importance.
I untucked my leathery wings and tilted to change course. I flew toward the ocean, toward one of the most valuable treasures I’d acquired.
I landed between my grandmother’s modest house and the tool shed, shifted form, and then snagged a robe from a hook just inside the door. This was the norm in Thayer, I’d learned, necessitated by frequent changes of form and ruining of clothes.
Abia wasn’t in her house. After the vision, I hadn’t expected her to be. The only thing visible when I reached the beach was the large round buoy she used when diving for shellfish. The orange pouf bobbed in the waves. I located the rock from my vision and leaned against it. She had to come up for air sometime.
When Abia didn’t surface, I began to worry. I had been resting against the rock for a solid minute—I’d counted. I crept toward the water and called her name cautiously at first, but then with urgency when she didn’t answer. I threw off the robe and splashed artlessly into the water.
“Abia!” I called and swam toward the buoy. The waves fought against me and I struggled to reach it. One last stroke through the water and I reached the flotation. I looked down around me but couldn’t see her, so I dove in a desperate attempt to find her. The white length of a rope came into view below the buoy and I followed it down, swimming less than three feet when I met her under the water. She gave a funny little wave and passed me on her way to the surface.
When my head rose above the water, I could hear her high-pitched wheezing. It sounded like tortured hyperventilating and I feared the worst. I ran my arm around the front of her chest and began swimming for the shore like I’d seen so many lifeguards do in the movies. It was harder than I thought it would be, and I struggled to keep my head above water. Soon I realized it wasn’t Abia’s dead weight, but her live fighting that was causing me to drown.
“What the devil are you doing?” she shouted, throwing my arm from her chest and shoving her mask to the top of her head.
“Saving you. What are you doing?”
“I was diving for dinner until my newfound granddaughter thought to drown us both.”
“You mean you’re okay?” I asked as I treaded water, and belatedly noticed she was doing the same.
“I’m fairly certain I’m better than you,” she said, looking my flailing body up and down. Her eyes were drawn together in irritation, but then transformed into an expression of empathy, nearly sweet. Very uncharacteristic. “Did you receive any special designations when you were in school, child?”
“What?” I squinted one eye, attempting to force the stinging salt water from it. “What do you mean?”
“Did you face any particular challenges with your education? Do you learn differently than other children?”
“Are you asking if I have a learning disability?” My mouth hung open and although I tried to form more words, I couldn’t. I was flabbergasted.
“Everyone is different, sweet one,” she said kindly. “There is no shame in it.”
“I did very well in school, I’ll have you know. In math and science, particularly.” I pushed away from her in the water and swam to shore all the while mumbling, “‘Learning disability.’ Humph.”
“Where did you learn to dive like that?” Abia and I sat in her kitchen with cups of her notoriously stout tea.
“I told you about the natives who were already here when Talbot confined me to this island?”
I nodded and took another sip. What was at first repugnant had actually grown on me over the last few weeks. I no longer had to work to keep a straight face as it went down. Abia’s tea was sort of like sushi in the way that the first few tastes are so foreign they’re unpalatable. But after that first time you begin to crave the flavor and nothing else will sate the desire.
“The women of their tribe were the laborers, the rulers. They dove for shellfish and seaweed, they dove for pearls. Women were so important that when a girl child was born they would celebrate because the tradition, in fact the necessity, of diving could continue.”
“That’s a nice change,” I said. “How do you stay under so long? You must’ve been under for two solid minutes.”
“Probably. That sounds about right.” She shrugged and drank her tea.
“You wheezed so I thought you were hyperventilating. Or dying.”
She cackled, and her face scrunched into a smile. “More of a whistle. It’s a breathing technique I was taught to help between dives.”
I shook my head in wonder. “Is it terribly difficult? It seems impossible…and a little wild.”
“It takes practice, like anything else. But I’ll warn you: it’s addictive. I’m quite obsessed with it, actually. When I’m not offshore I yearn to be.”
“I always liked the water,” I said. “Your diving fascinates me.”
“Would you like to learn? It’s a dying art.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, after I knock out all of this magic stuff.”
“More tea?” she grinned.
“You bet.”
“Your grandfather always loved my tea. It’s how I won his heart. That, and my tits.”
As I laughed I thought about spending a lifetime with one person. I thought about tea and tits and love.
Without warning, my mind turned to Ewan. Everything around me disappeared—Abia, the tea, the soothing ocean waves. In their place was a dark and smothering sadness that made me feel I could never stand again. Seeping between the cracks in the wood floor and down into the mud was a more fitting action. I wasn’t just sad; I was in such anguish I felt physically ill. I tried not to think of the image burned into my brain of Ewan and Emrynne ascending the Sabre stairs hand-in-hand. I turned my head, but it did nothing to stop my imagination from creating images of the two of them tangled in his sheets.
Though I fought to think of something—anything—else, I could only think of Ewan’s slow and passionate kiss, my favorite thing in the whole world. Now it would be on Emrynne’s lips and not mine. I knew how his kiss could make even a cautious woman feel. I had zero faith that the more-than-willing Emrynne would be satisfied with a few kisses. No, she’d made her interest very clear. She would do anything to have him.
I shook my head when I felt Abia inside it and pushed her roughly out. I didn’t want her to see this, to know my pain. And even though he’d betrayed me, I didn’t want Abia to see Ewan in that light. She should know the selfless, brave, brilliant Ewan. The real Ewan, not this shell of a man.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “For your loss.”
The truth in her words wasn’t comforting. It made me angry. I hadn’t lost Ewan. He was mine, dammit, and no chiffon-clad hooker was going to take him from me. Ewan and I were separated indefinitely, sure. And he thought I was dead. We could get past those things. We had to.
“It’s rude to get in my head when I didn’t invite you,” I snapped. “Don’t do it again.”
Abia’s mouth fell open at my tone, but she nodded. “All right. You’re right.”
No one said anything for several minutes. I focused on my anger and a way forward instead of dwelling on my misery.
“Want to talk about it?” Abia asked.
“No,” I barked. Then I told her everything.
I told her how the chemistry between Ewan and I sizzled from the moment we met. I told her of our flirting and our fun, passionate moments. She oooh’ed when I described his thick curly hair and eyes so penetrating they saw right through me. I laughed when I told her about the well that night of the Caliph Square attack, and that it had
revealed Ewan Bristol as my mate.
She cocked her head in confusion, careful to withhold judgment, when I told her how I’d begun my affair with Gresham without a word to Ewan. And when I relayed how Ewan had given me space to make my own choices, but had been right there when things ended badly with Gresham.
“That’s called grace, Stella. Remember it, and return it if you ever get the chance.”
“Yes ma’am. I know others have had it worse than me,” I said. “Your life has been plagued with loss and cruelty. My mother, Bay—my whole family—even Gaspare and Emelie. Their lives have been so unfair. But it seems every time something good happens to me, something worse comes on its tail. I can’t believe life is supposed to be this hard.”
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” Abia said with a smirk. “Life’s not fair. We all suffer pain and loss. But we also experience moments of pure joy, of transcendent peace.” She looked wistfully out a small window toward the ocean. “No, life isn’t fair. It’s a scale. And if at the end of your days, the good outweighs the bad, if you’ve had even one more moment of joy than sadness, then good takes all. Simple as that.”
“Tell that to my aching heart.”
Abia covered my hand with hers. “I know it hurts. I felt your pain as if it was mine, and I’d take it if I could.”
“Thanks,” I said with a shrug. “Can I stay the night here, with you?”
There’s just something about sleeping near the sea that soothes the soul. I woke when the sun rose to the high-pitched call of gulls. I had slept in Abia’s bed, the only one in the house, and she was already gone. Probably diving, I thought, and went in search of her.
The sand was still cool from the overnight temperature. It squished between my toes as I made my way to the beach.
