Chapter 3
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
I will never stop being transfixedby the way her freckles look in the moonlight. Not that she isn’t beautiful in daylight, too. But like this... under the shadow of the trees that line the pool, she is incredible. Perhaps because this is one of her favourite places; one of the few places she can be still and quiet without the clamour of other peoples’ feelings pressing down upon her.
“You know what amazes me about you?” I speak before I can stop myself, aware I sound like a soppy, lovesick young fae but unable to make myself care because tonight I have to tell her how I feel or I fear I might never be able to speak to her ever again. Even though I’m sure she knows – she’s an empath, how could she not know? – I have to say it. I have to speak the words out loud, so I am not in any doubt about whether she reciprocates or not.
Alana stops, wriggling her toes into the gaps between the smooth pebbles on the shore. “My talent for skimming rocks?” She picks one up and throws it with perfect aim and skill so it skips and hops across the surface before disappearing a few feet in front of the falls.
I tilt my head and try to stifle a smile. So many in our village see her as weak, but I know the truth. She is strong – physically and mentally – and she has so much more power than she realises. “Well, there is that.” I try to skim a stone and fail miserably. As it falters partway across the pond, I feel my wings flicker and the familiar swell of cool, tingling energy swirling in my veins – water inside my blood. Stepping stones of water bubble up to help my pebble all the way to the other side of the water.
“That’s cheating.” Alana frowns at me and folds her arms in front of her stomach.
“What amazes me,” I say, scuffing my foot on the ground as I tuck my hands into my pockets, “is that I still feel like I’m finding out new things about you even after all this time.” I look up, meeting her eyes. “We’ve known each other our entire lives. But you still surprise me, Alana.”
For a moment, she holds my gaze, but then she tucks a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and turns away. Focusing her attention on the lake, she says, “I wish I could surprise everyone else.”
A sigh makes her shoulders ripple. I want to reach out, put my arm around her, and pull her into a tight embrace. But I can’t. That’s not what we do.
Brushing the skirt of her dress, she sits down on the overturned tree stump near the water’s edge and braces her hands on her knees. “I’ve been trying to learn to control my magic,” she says. “So I can choose when to read people and when not to.”
I quirk an eyebrow at her. She has never spoken of her empathy as magic before. In fact, she has rarely spoken of it at all.
“The elders don’t trust me,” she says, a sigh making her shoulders droop. “Maura, especially, thinks empaths are bad news. I heard her saying as much to my father.”
My jaw twitches. It’s true, the elders are suspicious of Alana. They feel uncomfortable around her. As do many others.
“But if I can learn to control it – shut it off properly – then perhaps they’ll feel more able to be around me.”
There is a note of childlike desperation in Alana’s voice that makes my gut twist with sadness. “Have you had any luck?”
She shakes her head. “I tried searching the books in my mother’s library, but there isn’t a single one that talks about how an empath can learn to channel their power or harness it. In fact, we’re not really mentioned at all.”
I tilt my head from side to side. “That kind of makes sense. You’re the first empath in three hundred years to be born in the Leafborne community.”
At this, Alana sighs and snaps, “I know. But surely, someone must know something that can help me?”
I sit down next to her and stretch out my feet, allowing the water to lap my toes. She’s right, someone should help her. “Okay, look, I don’t know anything about empaths. But I attended the academy for four years. I did my training. Maybe I can help.”
Alana frowns at me for a moment, and then her frown turns into a smile. “You’d do that?”
I want to whisper, I’d do anything for you. But I don’t. “Of course.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes. Sometimes, her freckles are so vibrant I’m convinced they’ll smudge, like makeup, if she rubs them too hard.
“Maybe we just start with what they told us on our first day?” I think back to my first day at the academy. I remember missing Alana so deeply I thought I might quit, and run home, and be satisfied with never getting acquainted with my water affinity.
But I didn’t.
“All right,” she says, smiling and turning towards me as if I’m about to teach her the greatest lesson of all time.
“They told us magic comes from within. It’s a part of who we are, intertwined with our very essence. It’s powered by our emotions. So, we take the emotion we’re feeling, latch onto it, and channel it –”
“I’m aware,” she says. “You don’t need to fae-splain it to me, Kayan.”
I offer her an apologetic smile and swipe my fingers through my hair. “Sorry.”
Alana shakes her head, laughing a little, although it’s not a happy laugh. Even I know that, and I have no empathic abilities whatsoever.
She bites her lower lip and looks down at her fingers, which are fiddling with the fabric of her deep-burgundy-coloured skirt.
“What if it’s different for me? What if my magic comes from everyone else’s essence? Because honestly, Kayan, I don’t feel it. When you all talk about your magic, you talk about the way it feels deep inside. As if it’s a tangible, physical sensation. For me... it’s just always there. Washing over me like waves. Sometimes calm and tranquil, sometimes tsunamis. But always there.”
A little speechless, I stare out at the water and think about whether I can relate to what Alana’s saying. As much as I try, I can’t. My magic is part of me but separate from me. It’s as if I’m a conduit for it. I feel it surging up inside me when I call to it, and at other times it lies dormant. Waiting to be used.
“Show me how you do it.” Alana stands and moves towards the water.
“You’ve seen me do my party tricks a hundred times before,” I tell her, even though part of me is dying to show off a little.
“Yes, but I’m not usually studying you,” she says playfully. “This time, I’ll watch carefully.”
The twinkle in her eyes when she speaks makes my throat constrict, and knowing that she probably feels exactly how much I want her right now makes the sensation even harder to control. “Well,” I shrug, “I do have one trick I haven’t shown you. It took a long time to master. I haven’t even shown the elders yet.”
Alana’s smile brightens. “I love a secret,” she says.
Without speaking, I flex my wings and bend down to hitch up my pants so they’re folded just below my knees. I stride into the water, allowing it to lap at my skin, welcoming me into its depths.
Alana remains in the shallows, the bottom of her dress damp from caressing the tops of the pebbles and the water that nestles between them.
I keep going until the water reaches the folded-up part of my pants, then stop and turn to face Alana. I tilt my head from side to side and stare at her.
What she doesn’t know is that thinking of her is how I finally learned to master the most difficult aspect of my water magic; changing its form. Manipulating it into something else instead of simply moving it.
She meets my eyes, and the sensation that skids down my spine brings with it a surge of power. It settles in my legs, then spreads all the way back up to my fingertips. My wings flutter, and their powerful blue glow paints the surface of the water in glimmering shadows that stretch out like tendrils of light.
Tilting her head, Alana calls, “Tell me what you’re doing. Talk me through it.”
I inhale slowly, and try to vocalise what I’m feeling. “I’m focusing on happy thoughts,” I tell her. “Happy feelings.”
She nods in response.
“Latching on to the spark that lights in my belly, and willing it to intensify.” I inhale sharply as my fingers twitch with the need to cast.
Alana looks down at her own fingers. Did she feel the same thing? If she is searching my emotions, then maybe...
“And now, I use it.” I hold out my palm. A small, swirling bundle of blue light appears. I cast it into the air in front of me, then blow. Immediately, it turns from light to dust. A sparkling, brilliant blue dust that settles on the surface of the water.
As it meets the surface, there is a crackling sound. And another. And another.
I search deep down into the water below my feet, and use a cushion of it to bring me to the surface. As the rest of the lake turns to ice around me, I fly up into the air, hover, then land gently on the ice.
It meets the soles of my feet with a fierceness that takes my breath away.
I reach out to Alana and gesture for her to come to me.
The ice stops just in front of her feet. She hesitates, but then steps forward. When it holds her, and does not crack, she grins. Then she runs towards me, grabs my arms, and twirls around – the way we used to when we were kids and ice skating here in winter.
“Kayan, that’s incredible.” She is holding on to my elbows. “Incredible,” she breathes, looking up at me.
I smile softly, and brush her cheek with my thumb. I am staring into her eyes, and she looks as though she’s about to pull away. This is the moment. It has to be. “Alana... there’s something I need to tell you. I think you know already, but I have to –”
She closes her eyes, and laces her fingers with mine. I have no idea if she’s about to tell me she feels the same or that she’s repulsed by the idea.
“I know,” she whispers. “Of course, I know. I just always thought...” She trails off.
“Thought?”
Alana shakes her head and sighs. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.”
This time, I slip my arm around her waist and, with a graceful wave of my hand, snatch a piece of ice from the surface, return it to liquid in front of us, then catch the swirling droplets in mid-air and craft them into a delicate ice rose.
Alana looks at me and I nod for her to take it.
“It’s yours.”
Gently, with her thumb and forefinger, she takes hold of the stem and plucks the rose from the air. Studying it, she grins, and laughs joyfully. “Kayan...”
I step forward, trying to stride confidently, but skid on the ice and end up grabbing hold of her to steady myself.
Still holding her rose, she does not let go even when I have found my feet again.
I look into her eyes, and hers widen as if they are absorbing the rush of emotion that is surging through my body. “I love you, Alana. Always have. Always will.”
Alana sighs a little. A content sigh, I think. Then brushes her thumb over the icy rose petals. She smiles up at me, then touches her thumb to my lips. It is cold, but that’s not why my entire body is shivering. “Then kiss me,” she breathes.