by Hanna Peach
“Elder Michael sent me.”
Mayrekk grunts. He turns and disappears back into the hut, leaving the door open behind him. Her invitation to come inside, she guessed.
The smell hits her first. Spicy and sweet and pungent, all at the same time. Then her eyes adjust to the dim.
The dome is larger than it appears from the outside. Extra space has been carved out of the side of the mountain. It is like being inside a cavern. Mismatched shelves are stacked in no apparent order, all juts and awkward angles. Shelves are crammed with an assortment of vials and bottles and jars. Contained in them are colored liquids, chalky pastel powders, flowers and herbs, dried and crinkled in their glass prisons, animal teeth, and what looks like tiny bones.
A pale blue light emits from a rounded black pot sitting on a bench near the centre of the room, the small flame underneath it lit seemingly from nothing. Alyx wonders what is in the pot and what mysterious thing keeps the flame alive.
Amidst it all she can hear something hissing and an erratic dripping.
Something rattles. It’s a small wooden chest sitting at eye level on a shelf. Alyx blinks. It is still. For a moment she thinks she is imagining things. Then it shakes again as if a small creature is inside it. Alyx moves towards it reaching out with her hand.
“Don’t touch it,” Mayrekk’s voice, gruff, causes Alyx to jerk back.
“What’s in there?”
“None of yer business.”
Alyx stares longingly at the small chest as it rattles again, a taunt.
Another bottle catches her eye as she passes. A clear bottle with azure smoke that shifts like clouds from image to image. It changes from a pirate ship into fireworks into a horned skull squirming with maggots. Alyx shudders.
At the back of the room next to a large blank rock wall is a long table covered in various objects, twisted pieces of metal, glass beakers and odd-shaped mechanical instruments with cogs and levers and buttons. Alyx stares at the empty wall. There is something odd about the back of this room...
She walks up to the wall and runs her hand across it. The uneven rock is surprisingly cool to the touch. “What’s behind here?”
Mayrekk doesn’t speak.
“The dimensions of your hut don’t make sense. Is there a room behind this wall?”
“Observant. But again, none of yer business.” Mayrekk’s speaking voice is low and grounded, but his words are stilted and jerky as if he doesn’t get much practice speaking and is forgetting how to.
He points to the lone chair positioned in front of the table. “Sit.”
Alyx does so.
Mayrekk picks up one of the empty tubes from a wire basket on the table. His sleeve slips and she sees what looks like a flash of silver around his wrist. He catches her staring and shakes down his forearm so his sleeve falls over it again.
Mayrekk chooses one of the needles from an open wooden box, screws the needle to the open end of the tube.
Alyx sits very still as he inserts the needle into her arm and the tube fills up with her blood. When he pulls the needle away the tiny hole closes up immediately. He turns to his bench and unscrews the needle from the tube.
Alyx begins to stand.
“I ain’t done with you yet.”
She sits back down.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asks.
Mayrekk doesn’t reply. Alyx can hear him clinking around. He keeps the tube in one hand. With his other he picks up an empty glass vial from another basket. A bloodink vial. It looks delicate like an eggshell against his bearish palm.
Alyx feels the room heat and ripples of power run across her skin causing her hairs to rise on end. Powerful magic. Mayrekk is using his magic. He is distilling her blood right here.
She tries to see what he is doing but she can’t see around his broad back.
The heat in the air fades. Mayrekk lifts the vial to the light. It is still empty. He grunts. Then spins around so quickly it startles her. “Tell me ‘bout your vision. What did you see exactly? And don’t leave nothin’ out.”
“It’s like... I become him.”
Mayrekk’s eyes narrows. “Go on.”
Alyx describes her vision to him. When she finishes she expects another grunt but instead he just stares at her. His wild eyes grow calm and focused.
Finally he asks, “How many winters have you seen?”
Alyx isn’t expecting this question. “Eighteen last winter.”
Mayrekk grumbles under his breath and he stares at the ceiling as if he is trying to figure something out. Then he jolts and his eyes dart towards her again.
“Is… is there something wrong?”
“I’m gonna teach you a different technique. Don’t mention it to anyone if you know what’s good for yer.”
Apprehension coils in her stomach. What is he going to make her do? Who shouldn’t she tell? What would happen if she did? Should she refuse?
Her curiosity wins out. “Okay. I won’t say anything.”
“Close your eyes. Now focus on your breath. Imagine that you’re weightless, floating in air. With each breath your body becomes lighter.”
Alyx closes her eyes. She tries focusing on her own breath.
She frowns. Focus on what? Her breath doesn’t sound like anything so there isn’t much to focus on. This seems silly.
She opens one eye, “Why are we doing this again?”
“Don’t question me child, just do it.”
Alyx shuts her eye and tries to refocus. She shifts in her seat, trying to get comfortable.
“It won’t work if you keep moving.”
She stops squirming. Now her knee is itchy.
It goes on like this for another few minutes until Mayrekk throws his hands in the air. “That’s enough. It’s ain’t gonna to happen today.”
“I can get it, I just—.”
“I said enough. I’m sick of yer.” He turns his back to her and starts tinkering at his desk. “Come back later.”
Alyx makes her way to the front door, cursing under her breath. She was going to get it. She just needed more time. He didn’t give her enough time.
She almost doesn’t notice the wedge-tail eagle with the Animale bracelet on its wrist, sitting on a low branch just outside Mayrekk’s door. It’s head swivels to watch her as she moves past it.
Emptiness. Wisps of cold come from the cracks of the Regent. He rubs his arms and rolls onto his back. Across the ceiling, through his lashes, there is a painted angel flying across the stars.
Soon his eyes shut.
He is in a white room. White, everything white. No windows. No doors. Only noises. Noises all around him. Banging.
There is someone trying to get at him. Not someone. Something. The scratching sound like claws.
He spins round and round, following the noises, round and round the outside of his cell.
The stench of his fear is crowding up the small room. It chokes him. There is nowhere for him to hide. Nowhere to hide as the sounds of the thing after him travels around and around.
It starts to tear at the walls which have become thin like sheets of paper. Black claws. White walls.
He screams.
And wakes up sweating.
Alyx sits up, breathing hard, her heart racing. Her fingers probe for the kris under her pillow. Still there. Just a dream.
Just a silly nightmare.
But she knows it wasn’t her nightmare. It was his.
Chapter 14
Alyx is in a daze as she drifts through the city the next morning on her way to class. Groups of other Seraphim laugh and jostle around her on their way about the city. She feels separate from them like a ghost moving through them. Storekeepers are flinging open their doors and fixing up their displays. Alyx feels separate from them too. Only the wind seems to understand her as it shakes the bones of the trees making uneasy shushing noises.
“Alyx, wait up.”
Alyx glances up. Daniel is across the pathway through the
main part of the city, waving. Waving at her. She stops moving more out of surprise rather than to wait for him.
He grins as he reaches her. “So, planning anymore acts of defiance against the Elders today?” Her face must have shown her horror because he touches the small of her back. “I’m kidding.”
Daniel keeps his hand on her as they float together towards the lecture hall in which they have Inter-city Relations together. Alyx remains silent.
“Are you coming to the Announcement Festival tomorrow?” he asks.
“Sure. You?”
“Of course. My father has asked me to attend the Elders’ conference with him.” Daniel puffs out his chest. “Finally. I have been asking him for years to let me get involved.”
“That’s great.” Alyx can’t think of anything worse than sitting all day in the Elders chambers talking politics with other Elders.
“What about you?” he asks. “What are you looking forward to?”
“The competitions. My favorites are the ultimate leader combats. I get to watch Symon under pressure for a change.”
“What’s he like?”
“Symon? Tough, but fair. He works us hard though. Expects a lot.”
“I means as a father.”
Alyx smiles. “Tough but fair. Expects a lot.”
He laughs.
“What about Mic—, I mean, Elder Michael. What’s he like as a father?”
“Tough but fair. Expects a lot.” He grins. “Perhaps they take the same class in parenting?”
Alyx laughs but more because she feels that she should. By now they have reached the lecture pod. She can see her flock grouped up at the back of the stands.
“Well, see you later,” Alyx says as she turns to float away from him.
“Wait,” he calls after her. “Do you want to sit with me? With us?”
Is he serious? Alyx looks up at the stands. His Castus friends are grouped near the centre of the pod. Constantine is glaring at her. “I don’t think your friends will appreciate that. We...” How does she say ‘we don’t mix’ without actually saying it?
“Maybe things can be different?” Daniel closes the gap between them, a sudden intensity in his voice. “Would you sit with me if things were different?”
“I don’t understand,” Alyx says, shaking her head. The lecture pod seems to still.
Daniel brushes one of the strands of her hair from her cheek, his fingertips trailing on her skin. Without another word he turns and floats up to his waiting group of friends. All of their eyes are on Alyx.
“Try again,” Mayrekk demands.
Alyx swallows back the biting remark she wants to make and shuts her eyes. She is back at Mayrekk’s hut but it isn’t going any better this time.
She takes a deep breath and refocuses on her breathing, in and out and, she scratches at an itch on her arm, hears Mayrekk grumble. Oops. That’s right. Refocusing back to breath. In and…
“This is hard,” she says, opening her eyes and frowning at Mayrekk.
“It is what you think it is.”
Why does he have to speak in riddles? “I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand? Try again.”
“Isn’t there an easier way?”
“Sometimes the struggle is part of getting to where you want to go.”
Damn riddles. “So, you’re saying there isn’t another way?”
Mayrekk sighs. “Stop talking. Close your eyes. Just let go, okay. Don’t think about anything. Just let go.”
Alyx sits in the darkness behind her closed eyelids. Just let go.
Her skin begins to tingle ever so slightly. She gasps. The tingle disappears. “I think I got it.”
“Again. This time don’t stop.”
Alyx nods, feeling encouraged by the first sign of success. She closes her eyes again, focuses on her breath. Just
let
go.
The tingles come again, slowly, then building until she is submerged in them. The lines between where her skin ends and the air begins start to blur. She becomes like fog, mist.
Mayrekk's voice comes as if from far away. It isn’t so much as a voice, but a thought… Now open your mind and see.
Suddenly everything expands. Alyx is everywhere, rushing against the turn of the earth. She is threading between mountains, skipping across islands, tickling the upturned belly of the oceans. Below her the earth begins to light up, one by one, with tiny golden orbs of melted gold. A landscape of burning stars.
Find him.
Somehow Alyx doesn’t think to ask Mayrekk, how or who, she just knows. She scans the field of lights below her.
A single ball of flame.
She doesn’t know what it is about that ball of flame that makes it so different from the rest but it is different. She feels herself pull towards it like a compass to its north. Her whole everythingness wants to curl around it, around its light.
Mine to protect.
The thought comes to her out of nowhere.
Then she is falling. No, not falling, being pulled, being pulled towards the orb, rushing, flying towards the orb until its warmth covers her, the shear brightness blinding her.
He doesn’t know why he’s back here again. He doesn’t know why he’s doing a lot of things lately.
He walks under the twisted metal entrance and follows the path through Remembrance Park, brittle leaves crushing under his feet. Weeds are growing up through the gaps between the stones.
He doesn’t know why he is back here. The ring is gone.
Alyx draws back into her body and blinks with her own eyes again. “It worked. I saw him.”
“Finally.”
Alyx ignores this comment. “What does this mean?”
“Means that it worked.”
Yet again, he has answered her by telling her nothing. Alyx squashes an urge to retort back at him. She tries a different approach. “You knew Raphael didn’t you?”
“I knew him.”
“You were... friends?”
“You could say that.”
“And he spoke to you about his sight?”
“Sometimes we would talk.”
“They say that my sight is different. Different than Raphael’s.”
“It is.”
“How is that?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Alyx chews her lip. She catches Mayrekk looking at her out of the corner of his eyes.
“I didn’t say that was a bad thing,” he says, a small sly smile crawling across his mouth. “Raphael’s gift was uncontrollable, unlike yours as you have just proven. He didn’t view things through the eyes of another as you do. Raphael saw images, heard voices or sometimes he would get an overwhelming feeling of just knowing what would happen.”
“So, what does this mean? Why is my gift different?”
“It is…” Alyx can see him studying her. “…perhaps too early to say.”
Alyx’s shoulders drop a little. She was sure that he would know.
“There’s another difference,” he continues. “I can’t distil your blood. No bloodink.”
No bloodink. Alyx remembers the empty vial from yesterday. “What does that mean?”
“Your visions, this magic, it isn’t part of you.”
“If it’s not a part of me than what is it?”
“Show yourself out. I’m done with yer for today.”
Alyx stands, stunned for a moment. “If it’s not a part of me than what is it?”
“I said, get out.” He sounds angry now. “Go on.”
Chapter 15
The Announcement Festival starts at dawn. The clearing outside the Heart had been turned into a vertical fairground overnight. Of hanging stalls and covered platforms awash with bright colors and banners and wheels.
Alyx and her friends are there early. They want to make sure they get to see and sample everything. They wander through the stalls and past the performers on hanging platforms.
On one platform
an air-capella singer stands in a dress of icy blue lace that cascades over the sides of her small stage. She uses her Air magic to affect the singing coming from her mouth, splitting and twisting the notes out in the air, folding them back on each other to create different melodies. The result is an eerie and haunting opera.
On another platform a young girl, an Animale, is directing a cloud of royal blue butterflies into swarms of vibrating sculptures that melt and change into other things, like clouds across a sky. As Alyx and her friends pass the butterflies create the moving images of a seraph chasing a seraphelle. He catches her and the two lovers kiss. The performer acknowledges the round of applause with a slight tilt of her head.
There are roaming performers too. A WaterBearer juggler dressed in jungle greens is spinning half a dozen undulating balls of water in the air.
Sometimes he would combine the balls. Sometimes he would burst the balls into smaller and smaller ones. Sometimes he would coax the apricot nectar or fizzy dragonflower juice from the cup of a nearby seraph. The juggler would incorporate the stolen liquid into his juggling balls before returning it back to its cup or into the gaping mouth of its owner.
Everywhere the air is rich with the smell of delicacies from each of the Seraphim cities. Candied pearls, chocolate shells and crab-cakes from Urielos. Daffodil-floss, red-lily cupcakes, and little bowls of moss and wild mushroom soup from Gabriela. Sugared snow-flowers, nut brittle, and wild berry salad from the surrounding forests of Michaelea.
Alyx and her friends eat until they are stuffed and their fingers are sticky. Then they eat some more.
They make their way to the centre of the festival grounds where the Seraphim have gathered to watch the annual fashion parade. The models appear from the curtains above which billow like a strange flowers giving birth. As the models float down, the air catches in the folds of the latest Castus fashions from the most celebrated designers of each city.
