Chapter Eight #2
His gaze softened, and a gentle smile created a shallow dimple on one side of his mouth. “That’s fair. Would it help if I showed you some of those things? I’d hate for you to fear this place.”
A small flutter of warmth made itself known under my skin. No one had ever taught me anything but how to advance Progress. “Yes, that would help. Thank you.”
We walked more slowly, and he touched plants here and there, pointing out wild berries I hadn’t noticed and mushrooms he recommended I avoid.
Without a notebook to keep my thoughts organized, I’d never recall everything he told me, but I found comfort in the confidence in his voice and in the healing properties he recognized in what had looked like merely a mass of trees and bushes.
He quieted when we reached a rocky place. Massive boulders rose from the ground like the knobby fists of giants. There was something as hallowed about this place as there was in our cavernous workroom at the House of Industry.
It was old. Impossibly old.
“Why did you think I was asking if you were afraid of me?” Ezra asked, startling me out of my hushed reverence.
“It would make sense for me to fear you. You’re little more than a stranger.
You’re … well, you do have wild magic, after all.
And we’re alone in an unfamiliar place. But I’m not afraid of you.
” I could feel myself babbling, yet I was no more able to stop it than I was able to stop the flow of the river.
“And Ainsley doesn’t seem to think you’re dangerous, if that makes you feel better. ”
“It was foolish of her to say that,” he said, abruptly brittle.
A small frustrated knot formed in my throat. “Well, which is it? Should I be afraid of you?” I found myself cross with him—and cross with myself for letting the tone of his voice hurt me.
“All magic is wild, Josephine. Yours. Mine. We’d be fools to think we can control anything, let alone the magic within us.”
“Radiance isn’t magic,” I spat, shaken by how he’d articulated my greatest fear as if he could see directly into my heart. What if, at the true core of me, I was ungovernable?
“So the bolts of lightning that shoot out of your hands are what, exactly?”
“I—I don’t … shoot lightning,” I sputtered. “Using radiance like a weapon is forbidden unless you’re a highly trained Transistor. And it’s still not lightning!”
He crossed his arms, looking oddly smug, and I had a feeling I was missing something—which only made me angrier. I wondered how he’d feel if I snapped a branch off the sapling beside us and thwacked him on the head with it.
“Let me see if I understand all this.” I felt prickly and let my voice show it.
“I should be afraid of you because you’re an Animator, and that’s dangerous.
But I shouldn’t really be afraid of you because you know which plants are good and you saved my life and Ainsley said you’re not dangerous.
And we’re both exactly the same. And we’re both terribly dangerous.
So maybe I should be afraid of myself, too. Is that all of it?”
His lips twisted into something between a scowl and a grin. “You don’t have to make it so complicated.”
I wasn’t ready for him to make a face like that. A face that made me want to touch his mouth.
Those kinds of thoughts wouldn’t do me any good when bigger, more terrible thoughts were creeping through me like marching ants. I tried to tell myself I was capable of learning self-control. I’d spent over a decade practicing discipline. Rigor. Compliance.
But that word.
Wild.
It kindled something in me. Something that didn’t want to be caged. I’d wanted Ezra to teach me how to control my radiance, but being near him made me feel as if I’d never be tamed. It made me wonder how it would feel to stop trying to contain myself. My curiosity. My anger.
My … the part of me that wanted to touch him.
“Why are we here?” I demanded, eager for anything to make me stop thinking. Anything to make me stop wondering if I knew myself at all.
“So we won’t be seen,” Ezra said, as if I’d asked an ignorant question.
“That’s exactly what a person who was about to murder me in the woods would say.”
His gaze raked over my hands. “I believe you’d stop me, with great efficacy, if I attempted to murder you.”
“Then what do you want to do in such great secrecy?” I snapped, shoving my hands into my pockets.
A smile lit his face like the sunrise. “This.”
His magic smelled like jasmine.
When he finally finished, my cheeks were wet with tears. I breathed raggedly and found myself on my knees in the mossy soil with no idea when I’d fallen.
Flowers of every kind circled me—vivid-yellow and dusty-pink and sky-blue petals formed a curtain around me finer than any silk.
I touched newborn leaves, shocked at how green and delicate they were.
Vines wound around my feet, not grasping but nudging, as if the plants themselves wanted to say hello.
As if, I thought foolishly, they cared about me.
A broken sob tore through the silence. I realized I’d been the origin of the sound and felt my cheeks heat.
Ezra crouched, concern and confusion written across his face. He handed me a kerchief with a hole in it. “Josephine. Take a slow breath. I didn’t think it would frighten you.”
“I’m not frightened!” My voice indicated otherwise. I dried my cheeks with shaky dabs. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what I’m feeling.”
He let out a soft, nervous sort of laugh. “I’m getting that impression. What can I do to help?”
There was something weary about him again. Something deeper than exhaustion from staying up all night with the midwife. Despite that, a glow of pride lit his cheeks. I knew that expression.
I’d felt it myself, many times.
I handed him back his kerchief and wiped my nose with my sleeve before I adjusted myself to sit in somewhat less of an overwhelmed heap. “I asked you to teach me how you control your magic, not to construct an arbor.”
He grinned. “Yeah, but it’s a really nice arbor.”
I wrinkled my nose, though I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Is this what you do when you’re not working with the midwife?”
“Decorative gardening? No. But sometimes I come out here and make things grow. It feels good.”
“Does it? You look … tired. Like it was difficult.”
He was quiet for too long, too many calculations going on behind his eyes for my liking. “It’s harder when I’m near you.”
“What?” My voice cut through the silence around us like a bark.
He flinched. “It is what it is. I don’t mean to insult you.”
“I’m not insulted. I’m worried.”
“You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you. I’ve seen it twice now. I can see what’s plain in front of me.”
His dubious expression made me want to tear a few flowers down and throw them at him. “Can you really?”
“Are you mocking me?” I asked, quiet.
“It’s only that there’s so much you don’t see. That you don’t believe. I can’t fix that for you. I can only show you this.”
“Flowers.” I snorted, my heart beating fast. It felt like he was insulting my intelligence, and I hated the way it squeezed my organs.
“Possibilities,” he corrected gently.
“Radiance is possibility. It’s jobs. It’s convenience. It’s light, Ezra. Light in the darkness. This is beautiful, but you’re right—I can’t see the same possibilities in a decorative garden.”
“That’s because you don’t respect life.”
I surged to my feet, fingertips sparking. “How dare you!”
He huffed with frustration and gestured at me as if I’d just illustrated his point. “Are you going to hurt me, Josephine?”
Stumbling back, I wondered if I would have if his words hadn’t struck me like a knife to my guts. “If you’re so peaceful and perfect,” I asked with a snarl, “why did the Animators have to be killed?”
A ragged sound of disbelief shook out of him. He remained on his knees, staring up at me. “Because Animators were not so easily charmed by talk of birthright and destiny. They were killed because they wouldn’t do what they were told.”
A flower brushed my cheek. I swatted at it. What he was saying couldn’t be true. The Animators had attacked Children of Industry before either of us had been born. They’d forced the House’s hand. “And you think I do what I’m told?”
“Of course you do. It’s all you do.” His eyes held pity as he added softly, “It’s all you can do.”
I felt as if his wild magic had squeezed the air out of my lungs. But the pain I felt wasn’t because of magic. “You think I’m a fool.”
He heaved a breath so weary, it made my bones ache. “You’re not a fool.”
I glanced away with a sharp sigh. Ezra was charming, but he wasn’t a good liar. Tilting my head back, I watched the dappled sunlight that broke through the canopy of trees high above. “I am,” I whispered, adding it to the list of my failings.
When I looked back, Ezra was watching me, his eyes bright. “Josephine. Don’t you wonder why nothing will grow near the radiance lines? The dead trees along the railways. The—”
“That’s enough,” I snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not a little child you can frighten with stories.”
“Don’t do that.” With that same terrible pitying expression, Ezra pushed up on his knees and reached for my wrist.
I flinched away, warning him off with an outstretched hand.
He sank back onto his heels and stared at my palm—and didn’t try to touch me again. In the silence, I could hear the way his breathing coarsened.
“Tell me. Am I hurting you right now?” I steeled myself for the answer.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Discounting when you’re actively trying to fry me like an egg, it only hurts when you’re startled by my magic. I think your wariness … opposes it.” He scrubbed his hand down his face and laughed softly to himself. “Certainly a development worth documenting.”
I wanted to know what he meant by that, but I had a more pressing concern than his cryptic muttering: He’d let me hurt him.
“It causes you pain when you startle me with wild magic,” I said, my voice rising with every word. “So you decided to do a great show of it without warning me? Who’s the fool now?!”
A bird fluttered out of the brush, driven away by my shouting.
He swallowed and didn’t respond for a long time. “To be quite honest, I don’t feel particularly reasonable around you.”
My anger sapped out of me, leaving me weak-kneed and nauseated. The flowers around me were starting to brown and wilt, as if they felt my exhaustion. “That’s comforting, actually.” I tried to catch my breath, but the air felt thin. My thoughts were a buzzing hive of bees.
He looked away, running his hand back through his hair until it stood tall like reeds in the wind. “This wasn’t supposed to go like this,” he muttered.
“Oh? How was it supposed to go?”
When he met my gaze, I hated the frustration I saw in his eyes. He rose to his feet slowly, as if it took great care to move his absurdly tall body. “It doesn’t matter. All I’ve done is upset you.”
“How could it not upset me to hurt you?” My voice broke. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Not when I wasn’t trying to, anyway.
His shoulders rose and fell with a heavy sigh, and he pushed his messy hair out of his eyes. “Maybe if I learn more about your radiance and the Mission, I can figure out exactly why it hurts me sometimes, and then we can fix it,” he said, something off about his tone.
I didn’t question his reluctance. After all, I’d only caused him pain and frustration since we’d met.
If he let me try, I’d find a way to help him and not hurt him.
I wanted to do something that would ease the hollowness in his gaze.
Even if that meant sharing things that weren’t meant to be shared with anyone—let alone an Animator.
“I’ll show you what I can about Progress,” I promised.
I owed him that much for the tension around his eyes, the dullness to his skin that hadn’t been there before he’d made the flowers grow around me.
And maybe once he truly understood what we were trying to do, he’d see the good in what I—what the House—was doing. “We’ll figure this out together.”
He turned his face away, his fingers brushing through the grass that formed a soft bed where we sat. “I’d like that,” he said quietly.
It didn’t sound like he meant it.