Chapter 14 #3
“It’s okay!” I exclaimed as the thick plastic split in two and a cylinder of ice hit the table with a thunk.
“Let go of the field!” I added when a skin of frozen condensation spread across the dark wood and inched down the legs.
“Allow your attention to ease and bring your thoughts out of the stone.”
“I broke it!” Marty sat before me, clearly distressed, and I leaned across the table to take her hand—the one with the lodestone—and force her to look at me.
“You did good,” I said as the woman jumped at Benedict’s whoop, her breath catching as she stared at the table.
“But I broke it.”
She’d chosen to slow the molecules down.
Much better than sending hot water everywhere, and I silently thanked her for her foresight.
Beaming, I stood, giving her shoulder a thump of success before I gathered the broken plastic and ice.
It was cold in my hands, but nothing compared to Pluck, and I took everything to the kitchen and set it in the sink to thaw.
“Marty, that’s the coolest thing I’ve seen since Petra took out a drone,” Benedict said, and the woman flushed. “All you need now is a shadow to take up residence in it to keep the levels of dark matter high.”
Her confidence vanished. Her eyes shot to Pluck sitting on the couch, his ears flat against his skull as if he was displeased. I could have smacked Benedict.
“Or not,” Benedict added, clearly feeling my glare. “It’s just cool you can do magic.”
I was happy for her, but my own loss was almost too much to bear, and I took Pluck’s new, as-yet-untuned stone in hand.
The rise-and-fall roar of the universe was loud, and I studied it, wincing when my head began to throb.
And yet I inched my awareness deeper into the stone, searching for a twin echo as I tried to bring a field into existence…
Only to get that tangled knot of threads. I let them dissolve, disappointed as I went back into the living room.
Pluck lifted his head, little drifts of dark matter curling from him in interest. We will find a way, fizzed through me as I sat down, but I didn’t see how. Annoyed, disappointed, and not wanting to hear the universe anymore, I took his amulet from my neck and put it on the coffee table.
“Well, um, it’s going to be an early day tomorrow.” Marty stood, hesitating a moment before stuffing her new lodestone into a pocket and picking up her mug. “Thanks for the tea.” She edged past the couch, her expression sympathetic. “I’m sorry about what Thoth did to you.”
It was a soft whisper, and I forced myself to smile. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, quashing Pluck’s faint insistence twining through me that it was his. “Don’t stay up too late. If Herm calls, we are out of here.”
She bobbed her head, giving Benedict a little wave before going to my spare room and shutting the door. A roll of thunder echoed off the nearby mountains and the blinds shifted in a freshening wind, but still no rain.
“Herm will be pleased,” Benedict said softly. “You did good there, Petra.”
The bright red, knotted silk tie of Pluck’s new lodestone looked garishly optimistic arrayed on the coffee table. I should have chosen something darker. Shoulders slumped, I stood, taking the amulet in hand as I went to sit with him on the couch.
He sighed, shifting to put his arm behind my shoulder and tug me close.
“You okay?” he asked, and I nodded. Pluck had vanished, but I could sense him under the couch, his thoughts twining in mine a mix of concern, support, and hidden worry as I ran the tie through my fingers, enjoying the silken coolness of the fine cord.
Tomorrow was going to be rough, especially if I told Ryan what had happened. He needed to know, if not for his insight into perhaps finding a way around the damage, then to work to keep both sweeper and mage from coming in close enough contact with Thoth to become like me.
But that decision was for tomorrow, and I set the moldavite on the arm of the couch and let my head fall against Benedict as my eyes closed…
just for a moment. Cold cramped my ankle, then vanished, and I opened my eyes to see Pluck sitting beside the screened slider watching the rain like a giant cat—dog—thing.
Benedict was warm and comforting, and I could hear his heartbeat as I leaned against him. The click of the light going off in the spare room was obvious, and I snuggled deeper, trying to relax as his pulse slowed and his breathing became even. He was falling asleep.
I, however, was only becoming more awake.
What if there is no fix? I mused, and Pluck’s scintillating tip of a tail twitched at the slider.
Guilt prickled along my thoughts—not mine, but Pluck’s—and I wished I’d never thought it.
Pluck, I am alive. You are alive. If I had the chance again, I’d probably do the exact same thing.
I for one am glad we can talk now without contact.
Have there been weaver/shadow pairs in the past that could do that?
No. The vaporous dog’s definition blurred as he came closer until he puddled to nothing under the table. We have always needed direct contact to converse.
Then we are the first, I thought, remembering his pride that I could turn dross dust into energy. Perhaps it means something.
I quite like being able to feel you in my mind so clearly, Pluck fizzed. I’ve not had to modify my thoughts so as to not hurt you since Thoth—
His words vanished in a wave of remorse. Understanding, I put one of my hands out, palm up in invitation. “I didn’t realize you needed to do that,” I whispered, and Benedict frowned in his sleep.
It’s not a tedious task, he thought. Again the thunder rolled, and the wind pushed the scent of rain into the room.
The mockingbird had gone silent, hiding from the coming rain.
Nothing more than a hazy drift, Pluck flowed up the arm of the couch and settled a glinting tendril about the last untuned piece of moldavite.
“Perhaps…” I whispered, and Benedict snorted as he resettled himself.
Pluck was trying to tell me there might be something good here, but I still felt like crap.
That is, until I realized the airy feeling that was suffusing me was him calmly reorganizing the molecular structure of the moldavite.
He was tuning it. The feeling was almost a high, and I exhaled, letting the three-dimensional perfection chime through me.
Cheese and crackers, Pluck, I thought, and a flash of amusement from him lifted lightly through me. Why did you wait to tune it? That feels amazing.
You think that is amazing? Wait a moment.
For what? I thought, confused, and then I exhaled as Pluck’s presence seemed to expand, pulling me deeper into his psyche. A bewildering twin vision hit me when he went wispy and thin, moving like an octopus through the crack in the door and out onto the balcony.
He was outside, and my eyes closed at the sudden sensation of warmth suffusing us both.
The world was a dangerous fairyland of dark and light through his senses, and yet I relaxed against Benedict as Pluck wound his way to the roof, a sensation of anticipation and eagerness to show me something moving cleanly from him to me as he thinned himself to almost nothing.
With an effervescent hiss, an unexpected warmth dropped through him, tasting of lightning and ozone. Another followed, and then a third, until it was a veritable shower, the exhilarating sensation breath catching and pure.
Is that rain? I thought, and Pluck fizzed an affirmation, his own pleasure twining about my own.
It wasn’t a carnal sensation. It was something more, something deeper, something he’d never had the chance to share with anyone, not even his weavers of the past, and I drank it in as the feeling drummed into a mellow, hazy warmth of connection.
My worry melted away, and finally I could relax as I sat in Benedict’s arms, my soul on the roof with Pluck, slowly falling asleep and wondering if a weaver was still a weaver if all of what made her one was gone.