Maren #2
“You can’t. You are a water-caller. Electricity is not water.
You do not wield the stars by calling to plasma in the atmosphere.
You wield them by finding points of electricity already around you and connecting them with water.
One mote of plasma alone won’t give you a charge.
You need to bridge it with a mate. And this”—he indicated to the foamy rain around him—“is the perfect time to practice. When you aren’t angry. ”
Aegir leaned forward then, rolling his weight onto his knees, reaching out a hand and waiting for me to take it.
Kye grew very still, and I was reluctant to leave his heat under the fur pelt we’d shared.
But I steeled myself against the cold, twisting my hair away from my shoulders and taking Aegir’s hand, letting him hoist me upright.
“Can you feel it?” Aegir asked.
I pursed my mouth, trying to search for what he claimed surrounded me. Water pressed back, billowing and blowing like smoke over a wet fire, unwilling to stay still unless I summoned it.
The Venusian gazed patiently at me. “Sometimes it helps if you close your eyes.”
I licked a bead of rain from my lip and shut the world away, trapping the moon and river and all my friends behind the curtain of my eyelids. Darkness landed over the top of me, and I shook the cold away from my arms.
I let it fade away. The snap and pop of campfire, the ash inside my nose, the rhythm of Kye’s heartbeat behind my back.
One slow breath at a time, I shrank it down, put it away, folded it into nothing, and tucked it into my pocket, so that the world was as simple and deep and quiet as the house of shadow.
And there, stitched into the shroud of air, were the tiny shreds of water I’d seen only twice before, when Naiad oxygen spilled into my lungs.
They sparkled and shifted, twisting and dancing and floating around me.
I traced them with my finger, collecting them one at a time, until I reached a liquid drop of metal, though I knew that wasn’t right.
This was not steel or iron or silver. It was volatile, hot-tempered and fickle, a volcano in the shape of a tear, shaking to break loose of its own skin.
I searched for a second one; everything seemed miles apart. But I finally found it, a tiny mote of liquid silver begging to explode. My focus igniting, I dragged water between the two, a long string of liquid from one end to the other—
SNAP.
It startled me more than anything else, a sharp shock in my palm like a bright crack, there and gone, pulling me back to myself. I worked my tongue, the taste in my mouth like metallic salt. Ahead, green eyes smiled. “I knew you’d find it if you tried.”
We followed the rivers east, bracing against cold under the sun and warming ourselves by flame at night while Kolibri flounced and frolicked in the water below until she wore herself out, climbing to the riverbank to drop and snore like a hound.
The following evenings were clear of rain, drizzling or otherwise, but I took to learning the music of the stars.
Lightning was slippery. Once the connection was made between two charges, my control vanished.
White fire surged, angled and hungry, and I learned to train at a distance from my team.
Or more accurately, they learned to move away the minute I grew warm enough to let my furs drop to Kye’s knees and stood, a lesson after one of my bolts of light had singed the rock between Aren’s feet.
The blasts, when they did happen, were so erratic they caught me unaware every time—even though I was the one to coax them.
They were bright, blinding, hot. They lifted not just the fine hair at the back of my neck but the strands framing my crown, and the crack of them in the deadened air was like a tree splitting in my ears, an afterburn of sound almost numbing to my senses.
Nori and Olinne watched, pride in their eyes.
Aitne watched Hadrian when he coughed, a quiet knowing in her eye, though she never voiced her thoughts.
Hadrian cleared his throat, a rosy stain at the tops of his ears, especially when Diara loomed nearby.
My healer watched this in curious amusement, drinking in human dynamics but unwilling to step fully inside.
We joked and swapped stories, curled together on the frozen banks under the icy stars, groaning with pleasure at the warmth of the flames when we dragged our wet bodies from the water.
In the evenings, I listened to their voices, blending and humming as I trained.
The melody of Olinne’s cadence or the peal of Aren’s laughter, the loudest I’d ever heard.
I faltered only once, lightning half-spun in my hands.
It was our last night on the mainland. In the morning we’d dive into the ocean, free of the twists and turns of the wild river, liberated to open water and speed.
A small confidence had settled over us. We’d traveled within our estimated time, maybe even slightly ahead, a feat with the encumbrance of four humans.
I stood just beyond the foam in dry sand.
A wet floor, Aegir said, was dangerous. Starfire used water as a highway for travel, and Naiads had electrocuted themselves by wielding it carelessly.
That was when the first bird landed, staring without blinking its beady black eyes. And then a second crow, and a third.
But they weren’t looking at me, nor Aegir, nor any of the Naiads who hissed as they surged to their feet.
They stared at Kye. Our beach fire spat as we kicked sand into the bright flames.
The confused humans followed our lead, aware of a danger but unsure what it was.
The gentle whoosh of the salty tide became a hammer in my ears, or perhaps that was the sound of my own blood, the breath I held deep in my chest.
More of them flocked around us. They drew a curtain of ink across the sky, dappling the moon’s radiance as they flew, carving a generous arc under the clouds and landing on the shore between us and the water.
I suddenly wished I’d brought my own colony instead.
Fear latched its grip around my throat, the kind of fear that blooms from forgetting for a moment that nightmares exist only to walk right into one. It bloomed—but only for an instant.
Then I snuffed it out.
My hand beckoned to the waves behind the crows, and I drew the sea over the murder like a boot over a thick patch of ants, hard and fast, armoring our small stake of beach against the lashing flood that followed.
The crows tried to disperse. They rose, retreating into dusk, but weren’t fast enough to evade my strike.
Small bodies tumbled, feathers ripped from wings, tiny talons and squawks that pierced the coming night.
Some of them managed to break from my grasp, fleeing toward the stars.
Most of them surfaced, unmoving, legs curled over their bellies.
Only one approached us a second time. It twisted from between the waves as easily as a drop of oil carves through water, emerging glossy and proud, its small beak and shining gaze aimed directly at me.
“Why do you hide?” I asked, raising my chin as I glared down at it. “Why do you always use something to hide within? If you have something to say to us, by all means, return to your true form and say it.”
A shadow skimmed my right side; Aegir was standing at my shoulder. He’d been beside me, leading my star-wielding, when the crows appeared. Now his lips peeled from his teeth, his brows so low and ruffled I couldn’t see his eyes.
Warmth sank into my left as Kye covered my opposite shoulder, and I felt the others move closer to us. We stared down at it, eight against one small bird, the ocean wind sweeping brine and frosty mist over our skin.
The crow took one small step toward Kye.
And a whistle lanced the quiet.
A dull metal clink jolted the bird backward; the shaft of a long arrow embedded in its throat. Its small talons flinched once, then stilled over its round belly, the green and silver arrow fletching reaching directly toward the sky like a flag had been staked to the ground.
Diara lowered her bow, strawberry strands of hair veiling her cheeks.
“Sorry,” the Pirou beauty said, stowing the wooden arch back onto its brace at her back. “I didn’t see the point in waiting to see if anything would happen.”