Chapter Seven
I pull on leggings and a tank top, rehearsing how I want this practice session with Vik to go.
My success in the screening was three-quarters luck.
Better lucky than good, Dad says. But to pass the trials, I’ll need to be good too.
So. All business with Vik, Norah. Brush off his abrasive personality. Ignore his pretty, pretty eyes.
When I reach the basketball courts, I tap on my phone flashlight.
Hoops, line-painted asphalt, and a strip of lawn separate the campus from the forest. A thin white beam floats through the trees: Vik, holding his own phone flashlight.
This morning he’s wearing a T-shirt that reads DAN he’ll know I mean beasts—“that needs more than one navigator to banish, but there’s only one trained navigator around.
The person with training could siphon any untrained navigators in reach. ”
“You could handle that problem better by teaching new students to channel first.”
“But after graduation, most navigators we meet won’t be Academy alums. They’ll be small-timers taught by local nav departments. Half of those only teach occlusion. Hell, by the time Secretary Tully gets done cutting public nav funding, half will probably be closed.”
“Then maybe Langmore should call up the Academy alums on Capitol Hill and get them to lobby Tully for a funding bump instead. Do you actually believe the objections you’re raising, or are you…” He trails off, apparently unsure what my motive might be.
“I see your point,” I admit. “But I wanted to know what you’d say.”
“Ah.” He sounds pleased, not offended. Maybe he’s used to people dismissing him, not bothering to engage.
“Why do you think Dr. Langmore and the others designed the curriculum how they did?”
He pulls a wry face. “Langmore designed it. The others swallowed it. And I don’t understand why.
The curriculum screws transfers. We spent all junior year learning the basics of channeling, and you guys are supposed to figure it out in three weeks?
No wonder a transfer or two drops out before winter break every year. ”
Transfers drop out every year? I flinch at the thought. Not me. No way. “Well, here I am, figuring out how to channel in three weeks. What do I do? Push my nav at you?”
“I thought I’d channel to you first. Demonstrate how it’s done.”
I didn’t consider that Vik might volunteer to give first, not take. I’ve already tensed my stomach against nausea, against that agonizing yank like an evil umbilical cord. I exhale in a whoosh, ashamed of how suspicious I am—but suspicious anyway. Why’s he being generous?
He’s not, not really. He wants to league. He needs an accomplice. This is a trade.
Remembering that it’s a trade helps me relax. I can control a trade. I can’t control what other people choose to give me.
“Sounds good. What’s step one?” I’m aiming for businesslike, but I sound a tad high-pitched.
He shifts on his rock till inches separate our arms. If I shifted right a fraction, we’d be pressed together shoulder to knee. “Touch makes channeling and siphoning easier. Give me your hand?” He holds out his own: square palm, long fingers.
I stare. Then, tensing my middle against more flutters, I grab his hand. His skin is warm, his grip strong.
He drops the dice into my free palm. “With siphoning, your partner steals your nav, right? With channeling, your partner offers you nav. You’ll see my nav…approach you. Take it gently. Steady, controlled. If you pull too much, too fast, I’ll resist on instinct and break the channel. Make sense?”
“Yeah.” I roll my eyes. “If nav ever makes sense. It’s a vibes-based science.”
“Unfortunately true. Okay, take my nav. Use it to roll six sixes in a row. Ready?”
Rocks and trees are the only witnesses. If I fail, no one will know but Vik. “Sure.”
In flickerstate, the clearing pulses with color. Angry reds quiver out of me. The dice in my hand become black coals in seething flames. And Vik—
Vik is gold filigree balustrading skyward. He shines. Each glint is a future. As he breathes, intricate networks ripple and spark.
A gold strand twines from his chest toward mine.
I reach for the strand. It’s warm to the touch, pliable. Slowly, I loop it around my knuckles.
I tug the gold strand. Overhead, ghostly futures burn brighter.
Each roll splits into more futures as the flames ascend, until I’m seeing thousands of paths.
I can perceive thousands distinctly. Vik’s nav clarifies my vision.
I wind the strand around my knuckles, tighter and tighter, preparing to collapse these possibilities into a single reality, six-six-six-six-six-six.
My fist clenches, my skin whitens, and I pull—hard.
Choking noises snap me away from the possibilities.
“Stop,” Vik rasps, sounding like a strangulation victim. He wrenches his hand from mine.
I swallow a growl and drop out of flickerstate. “What?”
Flickerstate light shows aren’t real, strictly speaking, but my eyes need to adjust to the dim clearing. Where Vik’s filigree shone, a white smear sears the black trees. I blink. When I can make him out, he’s bent like I sucker punched him, wiping blood from his nose, staining his fingers.
“Not ideal,” he says, detached. “As I mentioned, channeling fails if you wreck the people channeling to you.”
I stare at the dark blood glazing his knuckles. “I thought—I thought I couldn’t hurt you if you gave me your nav on purpose.”
“You can hurt a willing giver. When we started channeling last year, we all rotated between our clinics and the nurse’s office for months. Give it another try.”
“It looks like I stamped on your face. I won’t do the same thing again.”
“Then do it differently next time.”
“How does the Academy get away with telling students to beat on each other?”
“Waivers.”
Crap. Yeah, over the summer, Mom and I did e-sign about fifteen different documents that the Academy emailed me, and I can’t claim we read the six-point font. “Be that as it may, I won’t whale on you now just ’cause I missed my chance last year.”
“I got the sense you wouldn’t mind whaling on me.”
I’m dismayed—does he really think I enjoyed hurting him?—until I see the laughter in his eyes. “I wouldn’t mind whaling on you on purpose. Doing it by accident feels cheap.”
He grins. “Noted. What do you propose instead?”
I want to snap that he’s the Academy wunderkind, so he should tell me.
But that wouldn’t be fair. He’s willing to let me blunder around and hurt him.
I’m not, so I’m the one who has to find a workable alternative.
“What if… What if I channel to you? Maybe seeing it from the other side will help me learn faster.”
“We can try.” He holds out his hand, the unbloodied one, palm up.
Gingerly, I take it.
Flickerstate blooms around me: wrathful red, bright gold, and laminate translucency. It’s getting easier for me, I notice, to slip into this half-real place.
Lend Vik my nav. Lend it. For a little while.
I imagine a fiery rope, one end knotted around my heart. I imagine tossing the other end to Vik, where he laces the air with precious metal.
The rope tautens, pulsing as energy flows from me, a sensation like giving blood.
Then I remember how it was with Mirabel, less like giving blood than like lying paralyzed while she cut out my kidneys. Vik said lend, but how do I know he’ll give it back?
I grab the rope and pull. There’s no resistance. When my nav snaps back to me, I fall out of flickerstate and off my rock.
I sprawl in the grass and blink up at Vik. The trees behind him are regaining their green, the sky shifting from black to vibrant navy.
“What happened?” he asks. “Did I hurt you?”