by Diana Nixon
“How do you know that a person possesses the power of masterminding?”
I looked at Tai, trying to understand why he would suddenly ask so many questions about the rarest gift ever. “Have you ever heard anyone talking about it here, in the pueblo?”
“Yes. Two days ago, I eavesdropped a conversation between my parents. They were arguing, and I wanted to know what that was about. I tiptoed to the door of their room and listened. It was right after you left the pueblo. My father was furious. He said he would never let my mom send me to Dever. And she said my grandfather would never let that happen until the guy who possesses the power of masterminding is there.”
“I see…” Songaa had said the same thing to me, and now I wondered why he was so worried about Tai’s meeting with Evan, but not with Will, who had the same gift.
“Did they say anything about the other Lord?”
“The other who?”
“Oh, the Lords of Mind – this is what we call those who can mastermind people.”
“No. They only talked about one Lord.”
That was more than just weird. I needed to figure out what was going on here, and why the topic of masterminding was so popular among Waroi people.
A few moments later, we heard a loud ringing coming from the outside.
“What’s that?” I asked, suddenly worried. I hoped it was not the sign of something bad happening.
“It’s time for dinner,” Tai said.
I felt relieved.
He stood up and headed for the door. “Let’s go to the fire. It’s where dinners take place.”
I smiled, watching Tai’s gloomy expression. “You don’t seem to be thrilled about the upcoming dinner.”
“I hate dinners. And songs. They make me feel angry.”
“Angry? Why?”
“Don’t know. I just have this feeling inside of me. I can’t control it.”
I frowned. “Do you feel like doing something like what you did when you got angry at your mom the other day?”
“No. I get angry because I feel scared and weak. Like after that tea my mother often makes for me.”
“Oh…” Now that started to make sense. Obviously, the songs weakened Tai’s powers, even though he didn’t know much about what he was really capable of, not yet anyway.
“I hope today, it will be different,” I said to Tai. I don’t think Songaa would invite me to the dinner, knowing that I would immediately feel if the tribe’s songs affected me.
“Thank you for staying,” Tai said, taking me by the hand. “No one here knows what it means to be me… But you do.”
Again, I thought about how grown-up the boy sounded. I felt so sorry for him. He didn’t belong here, that was obvious.
We came to the fire that was burning next to the hut where the council of elders gathered. There were five long benches around the fire.
“Eileen, come here,” Songaa said, motioning for me to sit between him and Elu.
“I want to sit with Eileen,” Tai said.
“No, you will sit with us,” Leno said, giving me one of his usual evil glances. He pulled Tai away from me and told him to sit next to Amitola. Her eyes were on me as well, but she didn’t say anything, she just kept watching me, probably still afraid I would kidnap her son or something.
The rest of the tribe took their seats, and two girls around twelve years old started to give everyone plates with food. I could see that every one of those present at the dinner was dressed in something red. The women had beautiful red scarfs around their necks, decorated with feathers and small shining crystals that looked like drops of water on the morning grass. All the men were wearing red shirts, with long sleeves. Each of their shirts was decorated with a different embroidered pattern.
“Why is everyone wearing something red?” I asked Elu.
“Red color is the symbol of festivity. Every dinner is a small celebration of another good day. We thank the powers of nature for helping and protecting us. It’s a tradition to dress up for dinner. Dinners are sacred. The entire tribe gathers together to celebrate the day and to share the latest news from each other’s lives.”
I took a plate from the girl who brought it to me and nodded, thanking her.
“This is one of our traditional meals,” Elu said. “Rabbit meat with rice, flavored with tomato and pepper sauce. It’s delicious. You will love it.”
I had no doubt I would. The smell was to die for. And I suddenly felt like I would eat three plates of food instead of one. I should have eaten well before leaving Dever.
No one paid any attention to me during the dinner. They were talking and laughing and everything seemed to be just fine, except for one thing…the mark on Tai’s neck, the one left from the amulet made by his grandfather. It got darker every time I noticed Tai’s expression saddening. What the hell? Was I the only person who noticed that? No one else seemed to care about what was happening to the mark. Or maybe no one else could see it?
Some time later, when everyone’s plates were empty, the girls who brought the food, took the plates away, and all the kids, except for Tai, gathered about the fire and started dancing.
“He never joins them,” Elu said, looking at her grandson. “Sometimes I wonder if it was the right decision to make him stay with us…”
“He would feel so much better in Dever,” I said. “He would be much happier there.”
Elu waited for her husband to leave, and then she said, “I told him many times that we need to send Tai to Dever. After all, we have already experienced the consequences of the wrong choice once.”
“What do you mean by the wrong choice?”
She suddenly tensed, obviously realizing that she had said too much.
“There was someone else who wanted to go to Dever before, right?”
My eyes followed hers, and then the realization hit me. “Amitola has seen Dever from the inside, hasn’t she?”
Elu nodded. “It was the day she turned eighteen. Songaa took her to the university. About three months later, your father sent us a letter saying that Ami got into trouble. One of her groupmates hurt her by using one of those spells that belong to the dark magic.”
“What? Someone used dark magic spell inside Dever?”
“Yes. The boy was expelled, but Ami lost a part of her power. She hates talking about what happened to her back in Dever, as well as she hates the university itself. She’s sure it’s a place where evil is being born.”
“Wow…I didn’t know anything about that.”
“No one, except for my husband, Leno and me do. We didn’t want anyone to think less of our daughter just because she failed to fit in into Dever’s world. Everyone thinks that she simply didn’t like staying there.”
“Is that why she refuses to practice magic that she was born with?”
“Yes. She said she’d better become a hermit than do the things that might hurt others. But the lack of powers upsets her; I know that, I can feel that. She lost her ability to see prophetic dreams as well.”
“At least now I know how she could see Dever when she was not supposed to.”
“When Tai was born, she knew he would be special, we all knew that. But Ami hoped he would be fine here, with the rest of the tribe. Now we all know it was a mistake to leave him here. We should have sent him to Dever a long time ago.”
“Then why didn’t you do that? Is that because of Evan?”
Elu didn’t respond.
“Tell me. I need to know why Songaa wants me to make Evan leave Dever.”
“It’s time to sing,” Elu said, instead of answering my question. “Isn’t it what you came here for? To hear the songs?” She gave me a knowing look.
But… How did she know?
She smiled, taking my hand in hers. “Songaa and I knew from the very beginning that you would be able to see through our magic; that you would be able to understand the songs that we sing with the wind, because the wind never lies to you. You can hear the songs it is singing to you.�
�
“But you still let me stay. Why?”
“Because we want you to see the other side of the world you live in. It is not just about magic or potions, or the abilities to rule over natural elements. There’s more to it.”
I didn’t know what Elu meant by that. I looked at Songaa, throwing different herbs and flowers into the burning fire, and then the tribe started to sing. One by one, their voices joined in one beautiful song, making the wind around us get stronger.
Once the first sounds of the song reached my ears, something unexpected happened… The surroundings started to blur, the picture in front of my eyes changed and I found myself standing in a hospital ward with my mom sitting on a bed, with a newborn child in her arms. And that child was me…
My grandmother Stephanie leaned over me, smiling and crying with happy tears.
“She’s so beautiful,” she said, touching my hand. “Like an angel.”
Then the picture vanished, making another one appear in my mind. This time I was watching my little self, running around our living room in Norfield. My mother was there too, reading a letter that she was holding in her hands. I walked closer to where she was standing and looked down at the letter written in my father’s handwriting.
“My dear Catherine,
I don’t know if you can forgive me, but I swear, I will do anything in my power to gain your forgiveness. Staying away from you and our daughter is a burden l have to live with until the day I will be able to see you again. Kiss her for me and tell her I’ll see her when the right time comes…
P.S. I never stopped loving you, not even for a second.
Yours Forever
Frederick
As soon as my mom read the last line, the letters disappeared, leaving nothing but a blank piece of paper in her hands. Obviously, my father charmed it, making her forget the words written there right after they were read. But there was one thing that she didn’t forget to do. She came up to where I was sitting on the carpet, playing with my toys, and kissed me on the cheek, saying how much she loved me.
The scene changed so fast, I didn’t immediately recognize the next place I saw. It was Nora’s house – the place where I found out about my kinship with the Fairey family and my future as a part of the world of supernatural. I could swear I could still feel the burning on my hand where Nora’s potion drops that were supposed to change my fate touched my palm. I rubbed my palm gently and the vision changed again.
This time I knew exactly what was going on around me. It was my first day in Dever. I was standing in the waiting room of Dever’s head. In a few moments, I would meet Christian and I would see the golden lines of our bond wrapping around our joined hands. I smiled, watching his surprised reaction to our handshaking from aside. Back then, I was as surprised as he was. I was a little scared as well, not sure if that was just my imagination messing with my head or something too beautiful to believe in. The look in Christian’s eyes was full of wonder. But there was something else that I didn’t notice that day – attraction. He was attracted to me from the very first second we met, and the feeling was mutual. Only now, months later did I see it was right there, flying in the air between us.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and letting the song of the tribe and the wind take me to another memory of mine. It was of the moment Christian revealed the tattoo on my shoulder. God, it was shining beautifully, spreading all over my back with the lacy pattern of pure fire and gold, symbolizing the love he and I had been bound with many years ago, even before we knew what was going on. Even through the memory, I could feel the warmth of Christian’s touch on my back where the tattoo was glowing. My heart raced beneath my skin, just like that day many months ago, when he kissed me for the very first time. The feeling was so familiar. I suddenly wished I could make Christian see that memory of mine and live through that moment all over again. It was too amazing to forget.
The next thing I knew it was the day of my eighteenth birthday – the day I was supposed to inherit my father’s powers. I saw the party organized by Amanda, and the magical fireworks created by Evan. It was one of the best memories from my life in Dever. Except for the fear I felt the moment I realized my life would never be the same again…
Chapter 12
More and more memories flew behind my closed eyes. I felt like I was back in my past, living through the best and the worst days of my life.
Everything felt surreal. It was one thing to know that I was travelling into Evan’s memories, but watching my own life from aside was something completely different.
I remembered every single day of those that I was seeing, until I got to the day I was sure I had never lived before…
“Eileen, is everything all right?” Amanda asked, touching my hand.
But I was not listening to her. My eyes were focused on the lake in front of us. And it was not Lake Tahoe… We were back in Britain, in the Cumbrian Mountains, where everything looked so familiar.
“Can you see it?” I asked in a small voice, watching the reflections of people behind us dancing on the water surface.
“See what?” Amanda asked in response.
“Are they fighting?” The reflections were moving so fast; I suddenly felt like I was too scared to look back and see what was going on there.
“Eileen, what are you talking about?”
I turned around and froze, terrified. Dever was on fire…
“Oh, my God…” Christian, Evan, our friends, my father - everyone was inside. “We need to take them out of there!” I ran to the gates leading to the campus, but Amanda stopped me half-way.
“Where are you going? Everyone’s asleep! It’s almost midnight, Eileen!”
“Don’t you understand?” I snapped back. “They will die there!”
She caught me by the hands, making me stop running. “Everyone is all right, in their rooms, in their beds. Everything is okay, Eileen. You must have been sleepwalking and talking in your dream.”
“What?” I blinked twice and looked at her as if she were speaking a different language.
“Look.” She pointed at the lake behind me, and then at the university. “I found you on the shore a couple of minutes ago. You were standing there, staring at the water, speaking nonsense. What were you doing there? Do you remember leaving the room?”
I shook my head, trying to understand what was going on with me. “No.” I looked at Dever again, but this time, there was no fire. Everything was all right, just like Amanda said. The only thing that wouldn’t let me go was the fear that I could still feel paralyzing me from the inside.
“Whatever you saw, it was just a dream,” Amanda said. “You are awake now.”
Was I? My eyes travelled to the lake again, but the water surface was as dark, as usual.
“Why don’t we go back to the room?” My friend said. “You need to sleep, Sweetheart. You don’t want to look like a walking zombie on your wedding day. Do you?”
“My wedding day?”
She laughed, taking off a long sweater she was wearing and wrapping it around my shoulders. “Just don’t tell me you have changed your mind about marrying my brother.”
Something was obviously wrong with me.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, only now noticing that Amanda’s hair was not as long as I remembered it. And mine – on the contrary – was much longer than the last time I had looked in a mirror. “How old are we?”
Amanda’s eyes widened, as if my question was the last thing she expected to hear from me.
“Did you practice too much magic last night? We are twenty-two, it’s our last year in Dever. We are the students of Wizardy faculty now. Tomorrow is your wedding and you still hate the idea of spending the next year as Evan’s aka Professor Murray’s student.”
“Evan is our teacher now?”
“Well, yeah. Which I hate almost as much as you do, considering he and I have been dating for more than three years now.”
“Wow…”
�
��Eileen, are you sure you haven’t taken any of those sleeping pills Will is so obsessed with?”
“Will’s taking sleeping pills?”
Amanda stopped talking and looked at me, carefully scanning every inch of me. “Oookay… I think it’s a pre-wedding syndrome. Why don’t we go back to our room and I make you a cup of hot chocolate?”
I didn’t argue with her this time. I let her take me back to the dorms and waited for her to bring me a cup of my favorite drink. Thank god, at least this one thing didn’t look weird to me. Unlike everything else that I still didn’t remember doing or saying, or seeing.
“Is that my wedding dress?” I asked, pointing to a soft-pink box, standing next to my wardrobe.
“What else could that be?” My friend asked, rolling her emerald eyes.
“Can I see it?”
“Jeez, Eileen, stop scaring me. You are being so weird tonight. Go get some sleep. We will talk tomorrow, okay?”
She helped me into my bed, put the pillow under my head and covered me with a blanket, wishing me a good night.
“Tomorrow is the big day. You must look and feel like never before. And for that, you need to rest.”
“Okay. I’ll try,” I muttered, still staring at the pink box.
Something about the whole night still felt off. As if I were a different person now, accidentally transported into this very moment from somewhere else I should have been at the moment.
“Amanda?”
“Yes?” She asked, sitting on her bed.
“How did things with the Waroi tribe go?”
“With who?”
“Never mind.” I turned away from her and closed my eyes, hoping I wouldn’t feel like a complete idiot when I wake up tomorrow.
But tomorrow never came…
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself sitting on the bench, with Songaa and Elu sitting on either side of me. The singing stopped, but the fire was still burning, with the kids laughing and dancing around it.
“What was that? The visions in my head… Were they real?”
“Which of them would you like to be real?” Songaa asked, giving me a glass of water. “Drink some. You will feel better.”
