10. Practical Concerns #3
“They came with knowledge Mytharo needed,” she said. “Or capability. Or a way of seeing a problem that this world could not produce from within itself.”
I went still.
“And?”
“And they were not whole where they came from.” Her voice softened, but did not become gentle. Caen did not seem like a woman who confused gentleness with kindness. “They were burning, and with nowhere to put the flame.”
The room seemed to tilt slightly around that sentence.
I thought of Philadelphia. My thesis. My expired engagement. My list hidden under the world’s most boring file name. The strange, shameful ache of wanting a life larger than the one everyone had agreed was perfectly adequate.
“You are saying Mytharo needed them,” I said. “And they needed Mytharo?”
“Yes.”
“That is very convenient.”
“It is,” she said. “But the bridge is not random. It answers need. You did not arrive in some unknown place, Meghan. You arrived somewhere that needs you.” Her voice lowered. “And Mytharo has something you need.”
“More on that,” I said. “Now.”
Caen’s pendant pulsed once. A steady blue-white glow, as if the thing itself had decided to pay attention.
“The mages at Sanctumspire have been working to strengthen the connection between our worlds for three generations,” she said.
My stomach tightened.
“Define strengthen.”
“Make the crossing more possible.”
I waited.
“They cannot summon a specific woman. The bridge does not work that way. And if it did, the theology would not permit it.”
“That is very comforting, except for all the remaining parts.”
Caen gave me a look that suggested she agreed.
“What they have done is make the door more permeable. Create conditions under which certain women may find their way through.”
“Certain women?”
“Women with a true unmet wanting,” Caen said. “Women with capabilities Mytharo needs. Women whose lives have no room for what they are. The mages believe the bridge does not merely take them—it answers them. It brings them somewhere their wanting can become purpose.”
She paused.
“They also believe Mytharo benefits in return. Every woman who came before you proved useful. Some as healers. Some as scholars. Some as strategists, makers, witnesses.”
I could hear my own heartbeat.
“The mechanism is not targeted,” she said. “It is receptive. A net cast into the space between worlds, woven from Yravel’s principle. It catches what the principle recognizes.”
“A net?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“For women?”
Her jaw tightened.
“So I was not summoned?” I asked.
“No.”
“But I was made easier to catch.”
Caen did not answer immediately. That was answer enough.
“You were findable,” she said at last. “In a way many women are not.”
I turned back to her.
Caen looked down at her cup.
“And do mages know when and where these women arrive?”
“The mechanism does not announce itself,” she said. “Not precisely. We can feel when someone has crossed the bridge, but only as a disturbance in the living arts. A shift. A pressure change in the world.”
“So, when I arrived in the field, you already knew someone had arrived?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you have to scan me?”
“The High Commander of this outpost asked me to,” Caen said. “And I preferred to verify rather than assume the disturbance I felt earlier that day was you.”
As a student of the scientific method, I respected that. Deeply inconvenient, but sound.
“And Morvanna?” I asked.
Something tightened around Caen’s eyes.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” I asked.
Caen nodded.
“And she knows that women from Earth usually bring useful skills with them?” I asked. “Knowledge this world does not have? Capabilities it cannot produce for itself?”
“She knows that, too,” Caen said.
Caen’s expression tightened, concern beginning to break through her composure.
“How much does she know?”
“She has known for decades that women from Earth arrive at critical moments. She knows the pattern. She knows they bring capabilities Mytharo cannot produce for itself.”
“And now she knows about me?”
“Yes.”
The word was quiet. It landed like a blade set carefully on a table.
“You unmade her siege in two days. She did not need a mage to read that signature,” Caen said.
The conclusion assembled itself with clean, cold, and terrifying precision.
“She is not only looking for me,” I said. “She is watching for the pattern.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
“Every Earth woman who arrives in Mytharo is a strategic asset.”
“An asset that can have a historical impact on this world,” Caen said.
“And Morvanna knows that?”
“She is intimately familiar with this knowledge.”
“Which means every woman who crosses is also a target.”
Caen did not answer. She did not need to. The weight of it sat between us, heavy and ugly.
“Sanctumspire is still comfortable bringing women from Earth here,” I asked, “knowing they may be hunted by an immortal vampire queen?”
“The mages of Sanctumspire believe Mytharo needs these women.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” Caen said. “It is an argument.”
“And do you agree with it?”
She looked at her pendant. The blue-white glow caught in the lines of her face, making her look older for a moment.
“There are those of us who have questions about this reasoning,” she said.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“And that is why you are here instead of Sanctumspire?”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“That is one reason.”
I thought about what it meant that the most dangerous force in this world had considered a PhD student from Philadelphia significant enough to watch.
I thought about all the other women. Hannah from Earth, or something close to it. Women pulled by wanting and usefulness into a world that needed them badly enough to make a net and call it theology.
Then I looked at Caen.
“Do you understand,” I said, “that I have several objections?”
“That is understandable.”
Caen went quiet.
“Now that I am being fully transparent,” she said, “there is something else you should know.”
I waited.
“The women who cross are not only dissatisfied with Earth. That would not be enough. The barrier does not open for ordinary unhappiness.” Her eyes stayed on mine. “It opens for women who are finished with Earth and whom Earth has, in some way, finished with.”
The room seemed to go very still.
I thought about Philadelphia. The seminar room. The sweat. The pressure closing around my chest from the inside. The pain radiating down my arm and into my jaw. My notes falling from my hand. Calloway moving toward me. The floor coming up hard.
“Are you saying,” I asked carefully, “that I died on Earth?”
Caen looked down.
“I am saying it is possible.”
Possible.
A clean word. A terrible word.
“Every account I have read describes an experience like death before arrival.”
I sat very still. I might have died in that room in Philadelphia. Literally.
Earth was no longer a door I could count on opening. Going back was not possible.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
I looked down at the deeproot in my cup.
“Well,” I said. “This makes my concerns about getting a tenure-track professor job somewhat less pressing.”
That earned the smallest possible smile from her. Then she reached across the table and took my hand.
I looked toward the window.
The sun had shifted while we were talking. The morning brightness had softened into late gold, pouring across the tower floor at a lower angle.
Skip had told me to be in my quarters before nightfall. Preferably well before. I still had time.
My thoughts returned to the ring. The claiming. Permanent. Empathic. Sacred. Terrifying. A bond with no quiet exit, no careful separation.
I was afraid. Of course I was afraid. Fear was not the same thing as doubt. I set the cup down.
“I need to go,” I said.
Caen looked at me as if she already knew where.
I stood.
“I need to tell Skip.”
Caen nodded in approval.