“I miss those days, Jess.”
Jessica’s expression fell a little; sad again, it seemed, or maybe reminiscing. Or maybe a little of both.
“Me too.”
Bianca finished.
“There.”
And Jessica’s expression returned to the moment and now she was studying Egg with a mixture of awe and supreme approval. Bianca came around to take a look at her handiwork from the front.
“Oh yeah,” she reached to adjust a few braids. Stood back.
“Wow.”
“Let me see,” Egg searched impatiently for the mirror.
“You were made for this,” Bianca grabbed the polished metal slate and handed it to her. “You totally rock the braids, girlfriend.” Egg took the mirror eagerly and looked.
Wow was right.
Totally wow. She turned her head, loving that she rocked the braids. They made her look so … sophisticated.
“Thank you.” She held the mirror to the side, checking all angles. Looked up at Bianca. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Bianca gave a wide, beautiful smile. “I think you need to wear your hair like this all the time.”
Jess had stood and was checking her out. “They’re so perfect for you,” tentatively she touched the masterpiece. “You’re so pretty, Egg.” The direct compliment, especially from her, especially from Jess, so sincere, made her blush. Even more than Bianca’s earlier comments and now she knew she was turning red. Jess turned to Nani. “You next.”
Nani looked surprised to be included, then shook her head as if she’d never expected to be asked.
Jess persisted. “Why not?”
For a second Nani had no answer. Then: “My hair is too short.”
Bianca made a little pshaw noise and waved her over. “You’re not getting out of this that easy. Get over here.” Reluctantly Nani slid off the bed. Egg rose and relinquished her chair, went over and sat on the bed where Nani just was—holding the mirror so she could keep checking her appearance. So incredible. She turned her head side to side. Jess took a seat back in the other chair.
“I feel like we’re your entourage or something,” Bianca said to Jess as Nani sat. Nani looked equal parts nervous and, Egg almost thought, excited. Glad, Egg could tell, that Bianca insisted. Most of Nani wanted to do exactly what she was about to do; be a girl and let herself be pampered.
“You guys are my best friends,” Jess said and Egg thrilled to be included in that statement.
Bianca took some handfuls of Nani’s shorter hair, deciding how to begin. “This is exactly how I wanted this night to go. It’s like we’re all princesses. Doesn’t everyone feel like one?”
They all did.
“Is there a throne?” asked Egg. “Here in the castle?”
Jess nodded. “Yeah.”
“Did you get to sit in it? When you were here last time?”
“Cheops sits in it.”
“But you could if you wanted to, right? It’s your castle?”
Silence. At first Jess had no answer, and the silence became awkward. Then she said simply: “It’s a long story.”
Egg tried to recover the mood. “Cheops talks like it’s yours.”
Jess remained silent.
And the words popped out of Egg’s mouth, before she had a chance to think: “Is that why they keep calling you their priestess?” And she realized, in that icy moment, she’d veered unwittingly into the minefield they’d each been so studiously avoiding; the priestess thing, which brought with it so many other things, questions that needed answers and they’d been steering far away from that topic … A sort of unspoken agreement not to spoil the fun—at least not tonight—and as the blissful evening wore on and Egg and Bianca and Nani exchanged the occasional glance it was like they all understood, letting things progress without incident. But beneath that they each wanted answers, they really did, and as Egg’s innocent question ripped open the thing on all their minds she wished she could take it back and they could just, for now, continue what they were doing and pretend no one heard anything.
But they couldn’t. Not now.
Bianca was the one most about to pop, and as Egg’s bumbling comment flung the door open she dove right in. “Yes,” she put a hand on her hip. “Questions. Why do they call you their priestess? And what else is going on here? I mean, you speak their language, Jess. Were you even gone long enough for that? They idolize you. There’s a lot you need to explain. Arclyss and these bearded barbarians and this Cinderella castle and … what the hell, Jessica?”
Egg really regretted being the one to bring this up. She loved Jessica. She never wanted to see her in anguish, not like she looked right now.
“And how,” Bianca let go of Nani’s hair and was staring at Jess with fresh awe, filled suddenly with all the questions they’d been suppressing. “How …” she waved her arms, “how did you do that? How did you knock those guys down by just pointing at them? You did do that, right? We all saw that?” She looked to Egg and Nani. No disagreement there. She looked back to Jess. “What else did you pick up when you were here? Are you hiding something? Do you have some kind of fancy device?”
Nani sat straighter. “Like a wave generator, maybe?” She dove in too, failing to notice the dramatic shift in Jessica’s mood. “Maybe an arcane piece of technology. The people here wouldn’t have recognized it as such. This was a Kel world, after all. The natives might’ve dug something up, though it’s hard to believe anything would still be working. To them it would be like some sort of magic artifact, maybe even from the gods. An ancient device like that would—”
But Jess was shaking her head. Nani fell quiet. Everyone was quiet, all at once, and suddenly the gentle crackling of the various fires in the room was the only sound.
Jess took a deep breath. “Not a device.”
She looked between Nani and Bianca. Growing more pained.
“There are things,” she said, “I probably need to share. Difficult things.”
With a look of growing resolve she paused, appeared to mull a decision and …
Stood. She looked at each of them, then turned and walked away, a few steps across the room, toward the archway to the balcony. There she stopped. On the circular rug at the center of that space, standing quietly, back to them, posture like she was thinking. A solitary figure, and as the moment stretched it was as if … the space around her expanded. An illusion, Egg was sure, but it felt real, and though Jess was their friend, though she was with them and they were all in that cozy castle room together, having a great time, Jess seemed, all at once, alone.
Terribly, terribly alone.
Her next words were barely audible.
“I was afraid you saw that.”
Bianca scoffed. “Oh we saw it.” Her same, brash self. Egg wondered how Bianca, Jessica’s best friend, could not see she struggled in that moment? How could she not see Jess needed their support?
Egg saw it.
But Jess was silent. Egg swallowed the anticipation in the room. The licking flames in the fireplace; the torches. A cool, fragrant breeze wafted in from outside. Serenity wrapped in tension, it was; a slow build to whatever Jess was about to do.
And it was clear she was about to do something.
“I’m going to show you.” Her voice remained quiet, reserved, back to them, gaze out the open balcony, but Egg heard it like she’d never heard any voice ever before. Impossible. It was Jessica’s voice, definitely hers; a soft, even tentative voice. A girl’s voice. But it was the clearest voice Egg had ever heard.
And it was power.
Her skin began to prickle.
Jess turned. Yellow eyes flickering in the firelight.
“You’re my friends,” she said with that same, absolute clarity. “Each of you.” It was her, it was Jessica, Egg couldn’t understand why she had to keep cross-checking and affirming but she did, for when Jess made eye contact … those deep, yellow eyes, standing alone several paces away, body centered on that d
ecorative rug in the middle of that beautiful, archaic setting, stones and fire, red dress and braids ...
Egg could swear something incredible shimmered around her, like an aura.
“My best friends,” Jess told them, “and you have to know that nothing—nothing—changes that. Nothing changes who you are, nothing changes who I am, nothing changes who we are.”
By now her gaze was absolutely piercing.
“Nothing.”
And she was spreading her legs, just a little, taking up what looked to be a fighting stance, moving her arms in a slow circle in front of her. The prickling sensation accelerated. Egg wanted so desperately to see the expressions on Bianca and Nani’s faces, to know if they felt the same sense of the momentous, but she couldn’t look away. Not from this. Not ever from this. Held in thrall by whatever Jess was about to do.
“I am Jessica,” she said, twirled her arms in a blur and threw them out to the side as she stomped a foot …
“HA!!” the air rocked from her palms and …
K-CHUN! impacted the wall in the same instant. A thunderous strike; an invisible, impossible blow—as if she’d just propelled a tiny, stupefyingly powerful shot of air right at the stones and …
Cracked them to pieces. Egg’s vision warbled; dust and splintered shards snapped from the spot on the wall and Egg was shielding her eyes, suppressing a scream. One of the other girls did scream, maybe both. It was an abbreviated shriek, and in her peripheral she saw them ducking; Nani in the chair, Bianca standing behind. There they froze.
A pulsating silence gripped the room.
Pulsing.
Throbbing.
Nobody moving.
Jess spoke into it.
“And I am their priestess.”
Egg’s eyes flitted between Jess and the wall. The stones bore a deep gouge, mark of whatever extreme thing she’d just done; a lightning-shot of terrific force.
How … ?!
Her ears were ringing; no longer from the thunder of the display—that sound and its resonating crack were gone; dissipated, to the wind. Her ears rang from the unreality of what she’d just seen. The sharp echo of that incident … a brutal assault on mind. Like a hammer-blow to the very core of her being. Vaguely she was sure Nani and Bianca must be having the same reaction.
Jess resumed a normal stance, feet together and arms at her sides. Standing there as she had been before all this began. She looked at each of them, carefully. Jess, normal Jess, same as she always was, same as a moment ago, standing in her pretty red dress, same as she was the whole night, laughing and giggling and having fun, being girls. So the same as she’d always been.
So, so changed.
“Truth is truth,” she said, voice dull behind the roar in Egg’s mind. “Your reality is your own. I learned the truth of that when I was here. Believe me, it shocked me then as much as it’s shocking you now.” Egg stared at her, speechless. And saw that the commanding, the absolutely commanding expression on Jessica’s sweet face was …
Fading.
Jess was starting to look a little nervous.
“I came to grips with it,” she said, uncertainly. “I hope you can too.”
How can you be nervous?! Egg wanted to ask. How can you possibly?!
But Jess was. Suddenly and quite shockingly. Nervous, even after that unreal display of power.
And it got worse.
Egg saw her breaking, right before her eyes, and realized Jess was not just nervous.
She was terrified.
And when her lip trembled, and she said so very desperately, “I love you guys,” voice hitching, standing alone in the middle of that open room transformed, like a frightened child near tears, Egg was off the bed and to her, holding her—oh Jessica!—gripping her so tight; the angel—Jess truly was an angel, as they knew it all along—and she was with them, and she was scared, and she needed them, now more than ever, and Egg was there for her, so completely there for her, squeezing her with every ounce of her love.
We love you!
And the others were there too, shaking off the shock and arriving with their own support, their own tears, arms a jumble of friendship and understanding, belief, and they loved her too, no matter and the same and even more, as strong and above anything else.
A bond that could never be broken.
CHAPTER 45: THE MORNING AFTER
Jess rose early and found her way through the quiet of the waking castle. Rays of early morning sunshine filled the dark corners with pools of warmth. Not many were up and about, not yet, but those that were gave her bows of respect, some slight, others deep and effusive, all deferring to her passage. She still wore the red dress from last night, braids intact, in all ways as she was for the slumber party, and as she reached the courtyard and the numbers of people and their acknowledgments increased she hurried to be across the drawbridge and away from that place.
Last night had been a long one.
Despite the magnitude of what she’d shown her friends, she hadn’t told them anything of her true origins. Tempting though it was, the moment ripe for such a revelation, to talk in their heads and tell them she’d been on this quest for a thousand years and the reason these people called her their priestess was not because she could crack stones with her mind but because, get this, she was actually the priestess, the real priestess, to their ancestors—yes, she was the famous Kel priestess Aesha, from their history, and she was the same person and who they’d come to know was that person and also Jess and it could all be explained and …
But to say all that, to spring that truth, furthered no end, and so she said nothing. The simple explanation that during the time she was stuck on this world Galfar taught her impossible tricks of the mind and that she fit their interpretation of the Prophecy, was enough. Getting any deeper than that just seemed like too much. Much too much.
It was already too much.
And so as they all came down from the mind-blowing reality of her being able to exert invisible force, she elected to follow the military maxim spoken so eloquently at one point by Pete:
KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
She kept her story, and her explanation, as close to believable as possible, glossing over so many things that, simply, did not need to be said. As the tears dried last night and she collected more and more of herself she wondered how she could rise, as she had, to become such a badass when called for, yet be so weepy at other times, breaking down and needing the support of her friends. But she did, and she cherished them, and she hoped they could always be there and always be the same.
After that she kept their discussions as far from the depths of real philosophical musings as she could, but as the hours wore on and they all grew tired and the conversation meandered it was hard not to keep landing in the midst of those imponderables. Each time they did she made lighter and lighter comments until the group steered clear.
Bianca, good old Bianca, kept asking her to move things. No matter how diligently Jess tried to just put it behind. And after each time she did as requested Bianca marveled at the result with a hushed, “Wild.”
Each time. After each tentative request to “do it again”. Jess would do it, then Bianca would marvel:
“Wild.”
It was wild, and Jess had been most worried about Nani’s take on the whole thing. Of them all she was the most scientific. On the other side of it the most readily accepting, of course, was Egg. Egg already had a sense of the epic, having been raised on the Conclave’s version of the Prophecy, daughter of Darvon, one of its most ardent believers, and so once the initial shock for her passed she embraced it. For her it was just the final proof of what she’d always been taught. Bianca had already been through being forced to accept some pretty wild shit in short order, from Jess in a Skull Boy to a leap to another world and everything else that had happened. For her it became a sort of unreal novelty.
Nani, on the other hand, was a woman of facts. Jess was too, of course, and she and Nani were no di
fferent when it came to this sort of thing. And so how did someone like that take something like this? Where in the world was the science? Jess had to accept it because she was it. Very little choice where that was concerned. But how about Nani?
In the end Nani had the same take. She and Jess spoke privately in the wee hours, quietly on the balcony as the others finally slept. Nani told Jess of deep studies done by the Venatres, exploring things like psionics, trying to understand the Kazerai or develop their own super soldiers. No discoveries were made, but Nani knew of the theories and they were sound, and when it came to what Jess had done she, Nani, assumed that, because it clearly was real there must be a scientific explanation and, even if she didn’t know it, the answer was there. Somewhere.
And so it was accepted and they moved on.
By the time Jess fell asleep Nani was dozing and when she awoke Nani was gone. Aboard the Reaver, Jess assumed, and according to a few respectful people Jess passed on the way the blonde girl had, indeed, gone to the great Sky Ship waiting outside the castle walls.
Along the way this sunny morning she saw neither Galfar nor Arclyss nor Cheops nor Haz, the four most likely to slow her progress with idle conversation, and so by the time she reached the castle wall and was almost there she felt that tingling sense of imminent success, all the while braced for a last-second call that would hold her back.
She reached the pair of Fist guards standing easy watch at the gate.
“Ho, priestess,” they called as she approached. “Do you need escort?”
“No thanks,” she said and they signaled to other guards atop the ramparts. Chains clanked and went taut, the heavy iron portcullis notching methodically upward into its recess. When it was high enough she went through and it continued a bit further then stopped. After several more steps it stayed where it was and she figured they might just leave it up for the day. And why not? With the god-like Reaver on the field across the chasm and this new truce between Fist and Scourge, what really was there to shield against?
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 51
