My hand slid to my pocket, feeling the stone tucked away there. I still barely knew what I was doing with my magic. And it wasn’t easy to practice — I didn’t want to accidentally hurt Farida or Masika, plus we almost never had time for it. There was also the fact that any amount of practice left me twitchy and exhausted. I didn’t want to already be burnt out if we got ambushed again. But then how would I ever be able to fight for myself if I never learned how to muster more than the most basic of magic? How was I supposed to save my parents?
Holding the flashlight between my knees, I spread my hands and stared at my palms. I could picture the deadly black mist curling out of them. Again, I was struck by the realization that I could literally kill someone with this kind of power. I couldn’t see myself doing it. I didn’t want to have to. But I was wondering more and more if I would have a choice in the matter. Could I live with myself after something like that? Or was there a point where it was okay to kill someone to protect someone else? I wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept of doing something for the greater good. Still, who was I to decide something like that? I was just an overwhelmed and confused 23-year-old. For all my courses on exploitation and ethics and humanity, I wasn’t equipped to deal with this.
Maybe… Maybe I could just… hurt people, but not kill them. Drive them off, knock them unconscious, harm them in ways they could recover from. That would be okay. But then how did I do that when I barely knew how to control my magic?
‘It’s like boiling water…’ Masika’s lesson drifted back to me. Had she even been telling the truth? Farida had said Masika loved teaching, but what if she resented me more? What if she had deliberately misdirected me so I would stay useless and she would have more reason to try sending me home? Or, if not home, at least away from all this.
‘Isn’t that what I want, though? To go home? To be safe and normal?’
I did want that. Or, at least, part of me did. But another part of me — a new and small but not insignificant part of me — wanted to see this through. I had created havoc when I released the dragon at the museum and I wanted to take responsibility for that. I didn’t want my stone to fall into the wrong hands because I was weak or scared or sheltered.
But there was more to it than that. I didn’t want to leave these women. No — I didn’t want to leave Farida. I had seen the burden she carried: protecting her grandmother and the stones, fighting her cousin, and now protecting me and facing Arman. I didn’t want her to do all of that alone. I wanted to learn and get stronger so I could help her. I wanted to know someone was watching her back.
I wanted all of this to end for her so she wouldn’t have to sacrifice herself to Masika.
But I couldn’t do that if I was scared of my own shadow.
There was a sharp tap on my shoulder. I leapt to my feet with a yelp, throwing the flashlight in a pinwheeling arc of light.
“Oh, hush,” Masika whispered. “If you had been keeping watch properly, you would have heard me walk over.”
My face was on fire. “Sorry. I was just—”
“Just pay better attention in the future.”
She walked over to where the flashlight had fallen and picked it up. As she carried it back over to me, I asked, “What are you doing up?”
“I’m old, not useless. Even I can keep watch and scare off a bear.”
I frowned. “But I just started my watch.”
“You must have lost track of time. It’s been nearly two hours.”
That didn’t sound right, but I didn’t want to argue with the old woman. We were already on poor terms; I didn’t want to make things worse.
But… but it really wasn’t right. Okay, maybe she was right about me losing track of time (though I seriously doubted I had missed a whole two hours passing), but she wasn’t supposed to be taking over for me. Farida had specifically said for her and I to keep watch, not Masika.
“I’m not feeling very tired,” I said, settling back down onto the uncomfortable log. “Go back to sleep. I can wake Farida when I need—”
Masika waved the comment away, the glow of the flashlight making dramatic shadow puppets of her hand against the trees. “You both need rest to fight.”
“I’m still not tired.”
She stared at me for a long moment. I felt some of my resolve beginning to fade under her scrutiny (old and frail as she may have been, she was still intimidating). But, thankfully, she turned away. “Then I’ll keep you company.”
“You really don’t—”
“I am going to. No questions.”
I shut up, but only because I didn’t want to wake Farida with our arguing.
“I’ll make us both some tea,” she added.
Masika surprised me by managing to pull down the backpacks, retrieve supplies to make tea, and swing the bags back up over the branch. Then she set about boiling some of the bottled water in the Jetboil.
“Why do you need that thing?” I asked, gesturing to the Jetboil.
She shot me a look over her shoulder. “It lets me heat water without starting a fire.”
“But why would that matter? Farida can make fire with a snap of her fingers.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s always safe to do so. This boils faster, anyway.”
She was right — the water was hot in less than a minute. She poured it over packed leaves in two aluminum cups that had coffee sleeves to protect our hands. She handed mine to me with a thin smile. The heat from the cup radiated through the protective sleeve; it was welcome relief to my cold and stiff fingers. I sniffed it cautiously, but it just smelled like mint.
“I’m not going to poison you,” she snapped. I sensed an unspoken ‘unlike some people’ in her scowl.
I sipped the tea. The flavour was almost overpowering — astringent but minty. I kept sipping it out of politeness.
“I think you misinterpret my bitterness,” Masika said after taking a long drink from her own cup. She settled down beside me on the fallen tree.
I decided it was in my best interest not to respond.
There was a pause. Then: “You think I’m selfish and a coward.”
“Is it that obvious?”
She raised her eyebrows at me, revealing wrinkles all along her bald head.
“I just—” I broke off in a sigh. “You’re very… single minded. You don’t seem to care about mine or Farida’s needs and wants as much as your own.”
“What I want is in the best interest of everyone.”
“Even my parents?” I muttered before I could stop myself. It was a low blow, but I didn’t exactly regret it.
“I don’t want your parents to get hurt — I don’t want them to be involved in this at all — but their well-being is a short-term goal compared to our own safety.”
I nearly dropped my cup of tea in my outrage. “You’re so—”
“Listen,” she hissed. I bit back the rest of my comment but didn’t shy away from glaring at her. “If Farida or I die, it would spell disaster — especially now that we know Arman is out there. The safety of the stones is the safety of the world, Amber. Don’t forget that.”
How could there be a world worth living in if my parents ended up dead? And how could she be so fucking casual about it all? “I know. But I think you’ve been a little too desensitized to causing people’s deaths.”
Even in the dimness of the flashlight, I could see colour flood her cheeks. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and released it slowly. When she spoke again, her voice was almost inaudibly low. “I did not ask for this.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m not talking about your parents being in danger. I talking about this. All of it.” Her eyes were open again. She scowled at me over her cup as she took another drink of tea.
I followed suit, barely noticing the heat of the beverage through my anger. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
“I never asked anyone to sacrifice their lives to me.”
I stared at
her, slack-jawed, for a moment. “You designed the ritual!”
“Yes. But I never intended to use it for myself.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Masika heaved a sigh. “I developed a life-extending ritual that required others to sacrifice their lifeforce in order to allow another to live longer. But I didn’t plan to use it for myself. There was another magician I wanted to see carry on the memory of magic and protect the stones: Rashida. She was brave and wise and youthful. A far better fit than me, as I was already fifty and considered quite old. But I was the only one who chose her — everyone else in the Ivory Circle thought I was the better candidate. I refused when they told me. But… they were determined. And they joined together and performed the ritual against my will.”
A wave of cold swept over me as she spoke, my anger evaporating. When she finished, all I could say was a soft, “Oh…”
“’Oh,’ indeed.”
“I — I didn’t know.”
“I know. That’s why I told you.” She lifted her cup and downed the last of her tea. Then, wiping her mouth, she gestured toward my own cup. “Finish. I’ll clean up.”
I gulped down the rest of my drink, grimacing as I swallowed the dregs, then handed her the dirty cup. Everything felt strange — woozy with revelations. Masika was essentially a victim of her own immortality. She’d never wanted to live this long, but it would be wrong for her to waste the sacrifice of all those magicians. So she had to live on. She had to uphold the duty of protecting the stones.
And I’d treated her like an ass for it.
I felt oddly detached, the flood of emotions disorienting and unreal — fear and grief for my parents, shock and regret for Masika, too many other things to sort out. It was like the world had started spinning under me.
“You look tired,” Masika said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. Her hand was at my elbow, guiding me to my feet. It was hard to stand. I tried to turn to look at her, but my eyes couldn’t find her face; there were so many leaves, swaying, spinning, dancing, taunting. Where were the stars?
“Come, now. Go back to bed.”
“But you’re—” My tongue felt like liquid and cement all at once.
“I’ll be fine. You girls need your rest if you’re going to be in fighting shape tomorrow.”
It didn’t feel like my feet touched the ground, but I knew I must have walked. I collapsed onto the sleeping bag Masika had vacated, quickly cocooning myself within its warmth. I blinked once, twice, and then my eyelids were too heavy to hold open any longer.
Chapter Seventeen
“Amber! Amber, wake up! Hurry! I can’t find her! I can’t find Masika!”
I awoke with a jolt, groggy and bleary, the thin beams of early morning light that cut down through the trees incongruous with my memory. When had I fallen asleep? How long had I been asleep?
Masika…
“She… she took…” But I couldn’t finish. Now that I was awake — very, very awake — I realized how obvious it was that Masika wouldn’t have taken watch. She was all about keeping herself as far from danger as possible. That, combined with her insistence that I sleep and how quickly I fell asleep… “She must have given me drugged tea or something. I was fine, and then she was talking to me and getting me to drink tea, and the next thing I knew I could barely keep my eyes open.”
Farida swore profusely. She was pacing frantically, clutching at a handful of her braids.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pushing myself upright. As I did, I heard a crinkling noise underneath my elbow.
A sheet of paper had been tucked into my sleeping bag. It looked like it had been torn from a notebook and a message was scrawled across it in black ink. ‘I meant no harm, but I must keep safe. Know that I will never truly leave you. Be smart. Be focused. Be well.’
I read the note aloud to Farida, who slowly walked closer before sinking to her knees beside me. She had turned sickly pale.
“She can’t be far,” I said, getting to my feet. “Come on, if we hurry, we can—”
Farida caught my elbow, shaking her head. “We can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“What was my grandmother known for? During the Age of Magic? And even now?”
My stomach dropped with realization, but I still forced myself to say the words: “Gathering information and staying hidden.”
“Right. If Masika doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be.”
“So what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to keep her safe?”
“We don’t. We have to just… move forward.” I could tell from her expression that even suggesting that made her feel nauseas. She slowly started shaking her head. “This… this is my fault. I shouldn’t have — we’ve been taking too many risks. And I got so argumentative, and she was right. I should have listened. I should have…”
“No,” I said firmly. “That’s not what this is about. You guys have stuck by each other for years.”
We fell into silence for a moment. Farida was still pale, her lips pressed together so tightly they were almost white, but she was blinking rapidly and her breathing was shaky. After a long, uncertain pause, I gently put an arm over her shoulders. She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear rolling down her cheek as she released a sigh that was part sob.
“We’ll figure this out,” I whispered as I started rubbing her back.
She nodded. Drawing a tremulous breath, she wiped her tears with the back of her thumb and choked out, “I know. We have to. Somehow. But right now, we need to find your parents.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Masika can keep herself hidden and safe for quite a while. We know your parents are in danger. So we go to them while we still have a chance.”
“Do you think…” I hesitated. I didn’t want to bring up my own complaints with Masika when Farida was still grappling with her sudden disappearance. I didn’t want to upset her more. But the question demanded to be asked, and eventually I relented. “Do you think that’s why she left?”
“Saving your parents isn’t the first big risk we’ve taken. It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, but anything could have had that effect on her.”
She didn’t say it outright but I could hear it in her tone, see it in the spaces between her words: Don’t blame yourself. I met her gaze steadily with what I hoped was an expression of understanding. She shouldn’t have been blaming herself, either.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Well, let’s get this shitshow on the road.”
~
Walking with just the two of us was… strange. We were faster, to be sure, breaking once an hour instead of every twenty or thirty minutes (I did my best to keep my complaining to a minimum in spite of my aching feet). But it was also very, very quiet. It struck that I’d never spent much time alone with Farida and, anytime I had, the topic of conversation had always turned to Masika or magic. I wasn’t sure what else to talk about. I wasn’t sure anything else really mattered. And we didn’t exactly have a radio to blare music and distract ourselves.
The conversation I’d had with Masika the night before kept circling my head, repeating itself over and over. Masika had never wanted this. She had never wanted people to sacrifice their lives so she could keep living, but she saw it as disrespectful to those sacrifices if she was reckless with the prolonged life she had been given. Was that why she had vanished and gone into hiding? And did Farida know about this part of her grandmother’s past? I wanted to tell her and make sure she wasn’t somehow blaming herself for this whole mess. It might ease her mind, at least a little bit.
But I knew that constantly talking about Masika during our hike would only upset Farida more (especially if she did already know about Masika’s unwilling participation in the ritual). I didn’t want that. I wanted to make her happy, in whatever small way I could manage. So I kept my thoughts and my worries to myself.
When we stopped for the first break of the day, I turned on m
y phone to double check the text from Dad (or one of Arman’s minions using dad’s phone, more likely) that gave the specific address for the farmhouse. It had been sent to me a few hours after that horrific voicemail.
My phone immediately started dinging with missed texts.
“Someone’s popular,” Farida said around a mouthful of trail mix.
I shrugged. “Not really. They’re all from one person.” Emily. I knew it would make me feel worse if I looked at the messages and fully took in how worried and upset she was, but I couldn’t stop myself — I missed my best friend. I opened the texts.
“Other family?”
“No — I mean, not technically.”
She frowned in confusion and leaned closer, then hesitated and shot me a questioning look, silently asking permission. I turned the phone toward her.
Her eyes darted back and forth as she skimmed over the messages. “Wow. She’s really worried about you. And she swears quite creatively.”
“Yeah, her verbal filter goes out the window when she’s upset.” I turned the phone back toward myself, stared at the messages forlornly for a moment, then closed the conversation before I could do anything stupid like text back.
“Is… is that normal?”
“Swearing? Yeah, I mean, most people our age are—”
“No, I mean… I mean friends who are that close with you. Who text you twenty times a day when you won’t answer them.”
I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. It had never occurred to me before that exact moment that Farida probably hadn’t ever spent much time with people outside her family. “This is kind of a unique circumstance. If I was just busy or ignoring her or something, she wouldn’t text me this much.”
“But you talk like this everyday?”
She Who Rises Page 13
