18. Chapter Eighteen
And she knew all of Emeris was connected by the threads of creation just as she was connected to Syndeth. She saw the threads with her eyes when she used the key, and with her heart when she flew astride her friend’s back.
I made my way to the hidden closet, though I had more trouble opening the door than Aaron had. I climbed up the ladder and into the attic, then reached for my hiking pack. At long last, I sat down and dumped the contents out on the floor into a pile.
An extra pair of socks and underwear landed on my knee, which made me laugh. I also found the bear spray, which I had forgotten about, and which also made me laugh. I attached it to the quick-release strap, where I’d had it for two years. There was a small ziplock bag with cords, one of which had the solar charger and cord that were meant to connect to my phone. The attachment for my watch was also in there. I didn’t remember packing that. I found the watch and attached it to the charger, then set it in the little sunny patch in the middle of the floor.
The water bottle was empty, but there were five granola bars left. My keys were in there, a credit card with a twenty-dollar bill wrapped around it and secured with a rubber band, the first aid kit, the useless satellite GPS, extra batteries, the leash and collar, and the book. Still no freaking toothpaste.
I stuck my hand into the bottom of the pack to see if anything was left in there that hadn’t fallen out. I wrapped my hand around a piece of cloth and yanked on it, pulling out a windbreaker scrunched up into a ball. It was my waterproof, fleece-lined Columbia jacket.
I could have used this last night. I wish I’d known it was in there.
I poked my nose into the bag again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything else, and to my surprise, I found a small survival kit stuffed in the very bottom. It had a lighter, a silver emergency blanket, a windup radio with a compass, an orange whistle, a small bottle of sunscreen, a LifeStraw, and a Leatherman multitool. I didn’t remember putting any of that in there either. It was almost as if I hadn’t been the one to pack the bag at all.
“What the hell?” I said. “Spirit, are you here?”
“Yeah,” she said. She appeared across from the pile of belongings, sitting cross-legged. “So, you finally found the treasure hoard.”
“What? You knew this was in here the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Spirit snort-laughed. “It’s your own fault you never listen to me.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not true. I value your opinion.”
Spirit shot me a dubious expression. “No, you don’t. You just like me for my body.”
I smiled at her. “Can you blame me? You’re pretty much the hottest girl I’ve ever been with. By, like, a lot.”
“Really?” she asked, seeming genuinely surprised.
I gave her the look. “Are you kidding? Please. You’re the hottest girl anyone has ever been with. I was so jealous of those Jermez twins that I ran out of the house and jumped into an interdimensional portal.”
Spirit grinned. “Not interdimensional. As far as I know, there’s only one interdimensional portal around here, and you have to be dead to go through it.”
“Right,” I said. “The death bridge. That’s so interesting. How far away are we from Earth right now?”
Spirit responded in her best McCoy voice: “Dammit, Lina, I’m a ghost, not an astronomer!”
I laughed. “You know, Bones never actually said the word ‘damn’ on that show, right? That phrase is a myth.”
“Okay, Grandma, tell me some more ancient TV trivia.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘classic.’ It’s classic TV trivia,” I said.
“Whatever. Unlike you, I was born this century. Keep searching through your mess of stuff. There’s one more thing under there,” she said.
“Oh, the survival kit wasn’t the surprise? By the way, how did you know that was in there?” I asked.
Spirit smirked but didn’t answer.
“Oh, it’s like that? Okay.” I didn’t see anything, so I picked everything up one more time, shaking it. When I shook the socks, a beaded bracelet fell out. It had a mix of what looked like pea-sized stones. “What’s this?” I asked.
“I made that for you, but I wasn’t sure why at the time, especially since you don’t really wear jewelry. But you know how crazy accurate my intuition has always been. It turns out I had actual magical powers, which I always suspected, of course. So, I made it anyway, and now I think Aaron is the one who needs it. You should give it to him.”
“Why?” I asked.
“The stones are mostly Mexican fire agate, the real kind. See the iridescence?”
I nodded, holding the bracelet up to the light. They were a deep orange red, almost brown, with subtle little bubbles of rainbow that shone out when the light reflected off them.
“Fragments are never perfectly contained in a reservoir,” Spirit explained. “They have a tendency to bleed out a little. The fire agate will absorb some of the ambient Evocation fragment that’s causing Aaron to lose control of his emotions, but he can also pull that back out and use it if he needs to. It’s kind of like an external reservoir for him. The blue ones are rough aquamarine,” she continued. “Not the clear kind you see in jewelry, but the kind with inclusions, which is why they’re more like stones than crystals. Those will bolster his Protection reservoir and calm him down a little.”
“Wow, Spirit. This is perfect. Thank you so much.” I looked up at her. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“You’re welcome,” she said, staring down at her hands. I gave her a minute to collect her thoughts.
“What’s it like, Spirit?” I asked. “Being dead?”
“It’s not that bad,” she said, then bit her bottom lip. “It’s kind of nice, actually. Sort of worry-free in a way, but instead of feeling things, you have to know things. Knowledge is its own kind of magic, you know. Once you know something, it changes you. Everything you discover while you’re on that side will come over with you to this side because it becomes a part of you, a part of your . . . spirit, I guess.”
“Knowledge changes your spirit,” I repeated. “Like what Aaron learned when he looked into me.”
“He looked into you?”
“Oh, so you don’t know everything then?”
Spirit smiled. “Of course not. I observe. I listen. I experience, but I am not God, at least not all of God.”
“Is there one, Spirit? A god, or maybe a goddess?” I turned back to her in anticipation of some kind of profound knowledge. Spirit had always had a way of dropping truth bombs on me, and it usually left me a better person.
She narrowed her eyes at me, debating. “Yes and no.”
I groaned. “Okay, when you paused to think, were you trying to decide what would be the most frustrating answer? Because you nailed it.”
She laughed. “Lina, it’s not as simple as yes or no. God is an idea born in the minds of humans, as is the idea of the spirit. Are they what people think? Not exactly, except in that the idea itself, which is a form of knowledge or awareness, exists. So, is there something? Sort of, but it’s not one thing, or at least not only one thing. It is at once whole and fragmented.”
I’m sure I was giving her a blank stare, but I had nothing else to offer to what she’d just said, so that’s what I went with. It was a valid choice.
“Look,” she continued. “It’s not like there’s a ghost manual or something, but from what I can tell, your spirit is the part of you that exists over time. It is the you that was, is, and will be. It’s like, a person can only die at a single point in time, but existence itself is not a single point in time. It isn’t a line or even three-dimensional or four-dimensional.”
Four-dimensional? You lost me.
Spirit rolled her eyes, then continued as if she hadn’t heard my thoughts. “Existence is infinite. Your spirit stretches into the past and future simultaneously because time isn’t linear as we experience it while alive. The spirit isn’t time-locked like the body. It is infinite in all directions, just like existence. In fact, from over here, it almost seems like time and existence are the same thing. Therefore, there is a part of you that exists now, but that part is connected to the part that stretches to infinity through time.
“That is what God is too. God is everything that is, has been, will be, could be, and couldn’t be. It is all things, all existence at every point in time and outside of it. At least, that’s what I think. Like I said, no manual.” She sniffed. “I could be wrong, of course.”
“Holy shit, Spirit,” I said. “You are blowing my mind as always. So unfair that you were both hotter and smarter than me.”
“Still am,” she said, winking at me.
I laughed. “True, but that’s not really much to brag about.” I turned back to examining the beaded bracelet.
“Not true,” she said. “I think, if I had made it a little further, you and I could have been something.”
I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist and turned my full attention to her.
“Me too,” I said.
She gave me another sad smile. “The twins were my second choice, you know,” she said. “I waited for you, but you had things to do with Drew, so I settled. Even after we left, I still hoped that you would knock on my door.”
“I wanted to, believe me,” I said. “I didn’t even invite her.”
“Freaking Marti,” Spirit said, and we both laughed.
“That totally sucks they were killed,” I said.
Spirit tilted her head, her brows drawn together. “The twins? No, they weren’t. They’re alive and well and—” Spirit stopped speaking abruptly, her face suddenly stricken. I heard someone squeaking up the ladder and turned.
“Lina?” Ward called out.
“I’m here. Come on up,” I said. “Hey, I found the rest of my toothbrush, but no toothpaste.” I turned back to Spirit, but she had vanished. That’s weird.
“Oh, my mother used to use dried mint leaves and salt,” Ward said, popping his head up. “She ground them up into a fine powder and mixed a little with water and had us rub it on our teeth. It’s not that bad unless you don’t grind it well enough.”
He crossed the attic and sat in the corner reading chair. He was so tall that he had to hunch over at the slope in the ceiling. I wondered if his thin frame would fill out now that he wasn’t stuck in a dog body. It looked like he had transformed back into the body he might have had as a teenager. He had those same beautiful amber eyes, and they roamed all over the room, probably searching for the ghost I’m sure he’d heard me talking to.
“Salt, huh?” I said. I was glad to see him. Now that I could actually talk to him, there was a little more awkwardness, but I still adored him. I opened a granola bar for myself and tossed him one.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Did Aaron spank you or what?”
“I wish,” Ward said.
I smiled hesitantly. “Yeah, he’s pretty, uh—”
“Pretty,” Ward finished.
“Yeah.”
“That’s an understatement,” Ward said. “I applaud your restraint.”
“My restraint? Is that a joke?”
“Not at all. You waited much longer than I would have. And now you need to break up with him because I saw him first. It’s really not fair.”
“Sorry, Roogy, but I can’t do that. I’m planning to drag him kicking and screaming back to my castle. I’ll just have to pay you a wergild or something.”
Ward smiled at my use of his nickname, and I relaxed, relieved that he wasn’t mad at me. We were still friends. We’d be okay. “What’s he doing now?” I asked.
“He went outside. Not sure why. It looks like it might rain.” Ward’s eyes still bounced around the room.
“She’s gone,” I said.
“Who?”
“Spirit. She disappeared for some reason. It was kind of weird, actually.”
“Oh,” he said, visibly relaxing. He didn’t ask any follow-up questions about the weirdness with Spirit. As Rogue, he’d always perked up when he saw Spirit, but I guess the whole ghost thing disturbed him. He opened his granola bar and took a bite. The snack was dainty between his thumb and long, thin fingers.
“So, Ward, I was wondering if you would tutor me,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked, stuffing the rest of the granola bar in his mouth.
“I mean, as a human, it appears that you might be kind of a nerd, and you are the only one in this house who finished fragment school,” I said. Ward smiled at that. “I need to know what you know,” I continued. “I am going to have to face Seleca again. Maybe soon. And I need to prepare.”
“It’s not fragment school,” Ward said. “It’s the School of Noble Arts, or SONA, and they teach everything there, not just fragment theory. What do you want to know?” he asked.
“First, I need you to teach me everything you know about Protection, Absorption, and Connection. I need to learn how to pull up a shield faster. Preferably instantaneously. I need to practice absorbing, and I need to know what things transmit Connection. I know I can connect through dirt, but wood doesn’t work.”
“Okay,” he said. “I can tell you what I know from theory, but I’m not sure it will help you with the shield. That just requires practice. Fragmentation is like a sport. Just because you have the equipment doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at it.”
“Oh, so it’s like sex too,” I said.
He snorted. “I guess. Anyway, it took me years to fully shift into Rogue. Transforming yourself is much harder than transforming an object. And it’s painful too. At first, I could barely make any fur grow. My skin would burn like crazy. I learned how to suppress that and got the fur coat down, then I moved on to reshaping my arms and legs. Believe me, I looked like a crazy mutant for at least two years before I even remotely resembled a dog. Luckily, I already had the amber eyes.”
“Why? Can’t you transform your eyes?” I asked.
“You can, but if you don’t have Protection, which most transformers don’t, it’s dangerous. If you have Protection, that fragment easily transforms you back to your original self. Otherwise, you have to use Transformation to not only change into something but also to change back. That requires you to visualize and intimately understand the desired form. If you transform your eyes and don’t do it correctly, you could end up blind, perhaps permanently. I foolishly tried it once, and never got my eyes back to normal. I still see in the dark, but everything is blurry.”
“Maybe you need glasses,” I said. “My nerd hypothesis is gaining more and more traction.”
Ward ignored the remark. “The same principle applies with the organs, especially the brain. Transforming the brain is nearly impossible anyway, but if you managed to do it, you could easily make yourself too stupid to change back. The heart is also very delicate. When I changed into Rogue, I changed the outer shape, the bones, the shape of my face, and the amount of hair on my skin. My eyes, brain, and organs were all essentially the same, just shifted into different positions. Fitting my brain into that dog skull was the hardest part. It took me three years to figure it out.”
“And when you finally did, your reward was imprisonment.”
“Yes,” he said, “but it was minimum security, and the guards were really nice. They fed me french fries and rubbed my belly.”
I smiled. “Oh, it doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that.”
“It was hard at first,” he said, “but I got used to it. Then I liked it. It was less painful than being at SONA.”
“So, just practice, that’s all I can do?”
“Practice and read. I recognize a few standard textbooks on the bookshelf. I suggest you start with those. Read as much as you can, and practice as much as you can. I can sit with you and try to answer questions. I can’t help you practice Absorption, but you can practice that with Aaron. It will be easier with him, anyway, because you’ve already done it.”
“I have? When?”
“When you made the shield, it seemed like Aaron supported you. Did you see a red-orange color added to your shield?”
“Yes. You couldn’t see the colors?” I asked.
“No, you can’t see those from outside the shield. It just makes you appear a little distorted, like looking through heated air. I would love to see it, though,” he said wistfully.
“I think we can make that happen. I didn’t keep Aaron’s Evocation, though,” I said.
Ward shrugged. “You weren’t trying to take it. He gave it to you, but it was still connected to him, so it returned to him when you were finished.” He dropped his eyes, frowning. “He probably absorbed some of your reservoir, actually. That happens sometimes when you have a deep Connectionlink with someone. They call it ‘mixing reservoirs.’ There’s a kind of residue left on both of you from the other. Aaron can probably pull you in with Connection now, and your resonance will increase.”
“That’s true. He does pull me in now,” I said.
Ward leaned over to me and whispered, “Now that you’ve had sex, you’ll be all mixed up, especially if it was as good as that sounded.”
I cringed. “Sorry, Ward. I know we were kind of loud. I didn’t expect it to be so intense.”
Ward waved it off. “It’s okay. I’ve been living vicariously through you for years. Do you remember the time you brought home that Lebanese guy?”
“Not really,” I said. “Wait, you mean Jasar?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to his name,” Ward said.
“Yeah, I met him at the Kinetic Grand Championship. His sculpture flipped over and sank. I gave him a towel and he was extremely grateful. That was a great night.”
“I remember,” he said, getting up. He crouched in front of the bookshelf and skimmed the titles, his face absurdly close to the spines. So much for Monashi supervision. “Start with this one,” he said, pulling a book off the shelf and handing it to me.
I read the cover. “Beginning Fragment Theory: Uses, Synergy, and Side Effects of the Noble Six, by Nikos Galanis.”
“Yes, that textbook will answer your basic questions about Protection and Connection, which are both Noble. It will also teach you about how to create a blended link, which is the use of multiple fragments together with Connection. You’ll need to learn that.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Since you have Connection, you can use that fragment to expand the range of your other reservoirs, like expanding your shield farther out from your body, or healing through a Connection substrate, like dirt or water.”
“Oh, that sounds useful,” I said, a smile settling on my face. The textbook looked handmade and old, as if it had already been through a thousand hands before reaching mine. It had no dust cover, just a cloth-covered binding with yellowing paper and asymmetrically printed block letters. It reminded me of some of the antique books my parents had in their house. My parents loved old books. And old television shows, for that matter. They were the ones to make me sit down and watch the original Star Trek episodes.
The smile faded from my lips as I thought about them. I had been dependent upon them for so long. This was the first time I’d ever had to completely figure things out on my own.
I’ve been so spoiled, I thought. The people here have to fight to live a normal life. I’ve just been mooching off my parents, riding around on a pony that my daddy bought me. I spent so much time agonizing over my lack of friends and completely missed how lucky I am to have two stable, loving parents. I need to do better. Give more. If I ever get back, that is.
“This library is extraordinary,” Ward said, pulling me out of my self-flagellation. He squinted as he scanned the books on the shelf, choosing one that looked even older than the one he’d handed me. “Ascension: Twelve Worlds, Twelve Bridges, by Gerhelm Meriweather,” he read. “Wow, if the Ministry knew this was up here, they would definitely burn this house down. It’s forbidden to even talk about the other fragments. They call them the ‘Unspeakables,’ and they never mention the other worlds at all. I didn’t know they existed until Seleca pulled me onto the bridge to Earth.”
“Why do you think that is?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said, sitting down again in the reading chair, “but it probably has something to do with control. Eve controls everything, down to who gets to mix reservoirs, if you know what I mean.” Ward held the book comically close to his face, closing one eye.
I played with the beads on my wrist. The fire agate beads had a slight warmth to them while the aquamarine crystals felt cool.
Spirit?
It took her a moment to appear, but when she did, she had a strange expression on her face.
“What is it?” I asked. Ward looked up from his book and saw I wasn’t talking to him. His eyes flicked around the room again, then down at the book.
“You should go outside and find Aaron,” Spirit said. “He’s out there on a big rock, staring out at the sea.”
“Okay. Thank you, Spirit. Will you please go find out what our enemies are doing?” I asked.
Spirit nodded, then blinked out. I felt bad for ordering her around. She was my friend, not my servant, but what else was I supposed to do? She was my top rope, so to speak. I needed her to make sure I didn’t fall to my death from this giant cliff I was trying to climb.
I glanced at Ward. He seemed as if he wanted to appear relaxed. I found my socks and shoes and sat to put them on.
“Spirit says Aaron is out by the sea. I didn’t even know we were by the sea,” I said.
“Yes, the Meriweather Sea. Neesee, the capital of this province, sits on the sea as well, just northwest of here, up the coast.”
“Do you want to come with me?”
“No, I’ll stay here. This book is all about bridges and their effect on your reservoirs. I think this could be useful. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Okay,” I said. I finished tying my shoes, but I didn’t get up. Was it safe to leave him alone? I sat there, trying to decide whether to press the issue with Ward. He appeared engaged now, not withdrawn, as I’d seen him before.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, ignoring my stare.
I stood but still didn’t move toward the trapdoor. Ward finally looked up from the book, then rose and came over to me, taking my hand. “What is it?” he asked.
I eyed the hand-shaped burn on the left side of his face. I could have lifted my right hand up and fit it right into that handprint. I wondered why it hadn’t healed when I brought him back.
“When I drifted out of my body yesterday,” I said, “I experienced a feeling of almost giddy well-being. It was really nice, and I didn’t want to come back. Now Spirit tells me that being dead is worry-free. I’m just afraid that you might prefer that feeling over being here with me. I hope you know that when I couldn’t find you before, I was distraught. You’re my family, Ward. I need you here, and I would miss you if you . . . decided to leave again.”
Ward pulled me into a hug. My head barely came up to his rib cage, and I could smell his armpits a little, but I didn’t care. I clung to him.
“I’m not going anywhere, Lina,” he said. “At least not yet. I’ve decided that I need to search for my brother at some point, but I won’t do anything drastic.”
“Promise?” I asked, looking up into his face.
“I promise,” he said.
I relaxed a little. “Good. I still have your leash and collar, you know.”
“Not even a little funny,” he said.
“Too soon?”
He smiled at that. “You’re not as funny as you think you are, Lina. Most of the time, it’s just you laughing at your own jokes.”
“Good enough for me,” I said, grinning up at him. “I don’t need validation. I know I’m hilarious.”
He shook his head. “You know what I miss?” he asked.
“What?”
“Our bed.”
I nodded. “Yeah, me too,” I said. “Don’t tell Aaron.” I hugged him one more time, then let go and turned around to head toward the trapdoor. “I’m gonna go find him.”
“Be careful.”
“I will. The last thing I need is a ladder injury. I’d never live that down.” I stepped onto the first rung of the ladder, peering down with slight trepidation. I’m only technically an athlete. In real life, I’ve been known to trip over air. Marti once suggested that I wear a helmet to my ultramarathon.
“No, I mean be careful with Aaron,” he clarified.
I stopped, looking back up. “Why?” I asked.
“Fragments all have a downside, Lina,” he said. “Some people overcome them, and some don’t. I don’t know that much about Evocation since it’s an Unspeakable, but I have a feeling it might be one of the harder ones to transcend. I think he accidentally Connection-spiked you yesterday. It’s something even those with lesser Protection can do. It’s basically a recoil from a broken Connection link that flies back and strikes the connector. If you didn’t have Protection yourself, it might have killed you. I doubt he knew about it, and I doubt he intends to do it again, but his good intentions won’t mean anything when your heart stops and you fall over dead.”
Ward lifted his hand to the scars on his face in what I guessed was an unconscious gesture.
“I don’t think he can hurt me in that way, Ward. I’m pretty sure I’m impervious to that sort of thing. He’d probably have to cut my head off like a zombie.”
Ward didn’t smile at my light tone. “I was with him once when two men attacked the cottage. He and I went out for firewood, and when we got back, they were hiding inside. He burned one of the men alive and slit the other one’s throat with his heated dagger. It nearly cut the man’s head off. They took him by surprise, and he still slaughtered them in under ten seconds. Now, I’m not saying that he would do that to you, I’m just saying that he’s capable of extreme violence at a moment’s notice. He’s dangerous. Beautiful, but dangerous. Just . . . be aware.”
I nodded. “Okay, I’ll be careful.” I climbed down the ladder. I appreciated Ward’s warning, but I knew Aaron would be more careful with me now. If we stayed together, he would need time to work through his jealousy, but I was confident he would eventually grow more secure in his attachment. A few more nights like this last one and how could he not? It had felt like he’d connected his very soul to mine.
“Jeez, two days as a man and you’re already telling me what to do,” I said lightheartedly, knowing it would echo up the ladder to him.
“Once again, not funny,” he called after me.
“You never complained before,” I called back. I heard a loud sigh, then the squeak of the reading chair. Pretty sure I won that one.