“And if you can’t learn to control it?”
Opal drifted farther into the room. “When the Magistra returned to us,” she said, “she was very much like you. Her Affinities were vast but she was untrained. When she found her mother and father, the previous Magister and Magistra, dead at the hands of Merrin Farrick, her anger and grief were so great that she couldn’t keep the voices at bay. They warped her into what she is now.”
“What is she?”
“A monster,” Opal said. “Even after she crushed Farrick’s
revolution she saw traitors everywhere. She decided that to keep the peace there could be no power in the Magisterium but her. She imprisoned the Miel Pan. She destroyed the guilds and the royal houses.
In the end, when the people turned to their gods for relief, she burned the temples and unleashed the Menagerie to slaughter anyone with an Affinity. Only a very few of us survived and we’re scattered.
Impotent.”
“You said the Magistra returned,” Glenn said. “Where was she?”
Opal hesitated. “When Farrick’s revolution seemed about to
succeed,” she said. “Aamon Marta fought his way out of the
Magisterium to bring the Magistra back from across the border.”
The room, the house, the wind outside, fell into stillness.
“She was in the Colloquium.”
“Yes,” Opal said quietly. “For many years.”
The room seemed to grow dimmer around her. Glenn felt it again
— that feeling of being stalked from out in the darkness. Faint voices whispered in her ear. Glenn hefted the bracelet in one hand. Once again, she felt herself standing in front of a closed door, only this time she couldn’t stop herself from turning the handle and stepping through.
“When did she return?”
Glenn turned at Opal’s silence. In her gray dress, standing half in and half out of the thin light, the old woman seemed like an apparition.
“The Magistra returned to us ten years ago.”
The shadow that had been pursuing Glenn all these years fell upon her, its cold weight sinking into her bones.
Ten years.
The bed shifted beside Glenn as Opal sat down.
“An amazing thing,” she said, drawing one thin finger across the bracelet’s jewel. “Until you took it off I had no idea that you were her daughter.”
Glenn closed her eyes, but when she did all she saw was a boy lying dead in Haymarket and another mounting a gallows with his two friends.
“I’m not,” Glenn said. “She can’t be …”
Opal’s hand, dry and warm, fell on Glenn’s arm.
“I’d like to be alone.”
“Glenn,” Opal said. “If that piece of metal was on her wrist rather than yours … you could free a world from madness.”
Glenn pulled her arm out of the old woman’s grasp. “It’s not my world,” she said.
The air between them seemed to go thick and oppressive. There was a pause and the mattress lifted beside Glenn. Opal’s hand brushed Glenn’s shoulder as she walked to the door.
“Some people aren’t separate from us,” Opal said. “No matter how much we might like them to be. Over time, we merge. When Cort died, I sat there drinking my tea and building my fire, but I was an outline. A sketch in the sand. I can’t be whole without him.”
“I don’t need anyone else to be whole.”
“Yes,” Opal said. “Of course.”
The hush of her footsteps disappeared into the darkness down the hall, and Glenn was alone. The house settled with small aching sighs.
Glenn shut her eyes and draped her arm over them, but it was useless.
She wouldn’t sleep. Not that night. Glenn tore herself off the bed and went outside to stand in the chilly air.
Above the trees a billion stars sparkled, so many of them and so clear that Glenn’s eyes ached as she went from one to the next. She hunted through the clutter of light until she was able to find Orion.
Alnitak. Alnilam. Mintaka.
Glenn savored the words’ rounded tones in her head, even though she could hardly make out their namesakes amongst the bright noise of the Magisterium’s sky.
As Glenn stood there, the rush of the river near her became the gentle swish of a lake’s tide in her ears. She almost thought she could hear the sound of the summer crickets chirping far out on a distant shore.
It was April. Glenn was five and her mother had planned a girls-only getaway to a nearby lake.
When they arrived, the sun was casting bright stitches along the lake’s surface. Its waters were packed with swimmers and, farther out, the crisscrossing wakes of motorboats and skiers. The beach was alive with families, their winter bodies spread out on the sand to soak up the warmth. Storm fronts of teenagers roamed about, laughing and screeching. Glenn flinched at all the bustle and noise. Her mom set her hand on Glenn’s shoulder and led her to a shady and quiet spot out at the edge of the beach.
Mom stripped off her shorts and T-shirt, leaving her in a red two-piece that stood out against her pale skin and black hair. Mom would be covered in freckles by the end of the day, but she didn’t seem to care. She leaned forward into the day as if she was trying to open up every part of herself and take it all in.
But as beautiful as the day was, it was only prelude to their secret plans. Glenn and her mother waited until long after the sun went down, when everyone had gone and the rippled lake became a pane of black glass. A frogs’ chorus began in the trees, and the fireflies flitted here and there.
“Okay,” Mom said. “Ready?”
Glenn nodded and, shivering a little, stepped into the water.
Together they swam out to the center of the lake and, once there, they eased over onto their backs, paddling gently to stay afloat. The water lapped at their ears so one moment they could hear the night birds and the thin sounds of the city that drifted in over the treetops, and the next there was the deep echoey silence far below the water’s surface. At first Glenn was terrified that she’d sink into the depths, but her mother’s hand was always there at the small of her back, holding her up.
Above were the few stars that escaped the glare of the city lights.
The way they were reflected in the glassy black water that surrounded Glenn and her mom, it seemed like there were stars above and below and all around them. Glenn and her mother floated in their pale light and in the emptiness that filled the spaces between.
“Pretty,” her mom said, her voice a hush spreading over the surface of the water. “Isn’t it, Glenny?”
“Did you go to the beach like this when you were little?”
“No,” she said. “My parents were always too busy to take me.”
“Why?”
“They were very important people.”
“How?”
Her mother flipped over and swam grandly around Glenn in a
circle. “Together they ruled a vast kingdom.”
Glenn splashed at her. “Mom! They did not!”
“How do you know?”
“Because there aren’t kingdoms anymore,” Glenn instructed.
“Those are just in stories.”
Glenn’s mom went quiet, only her head and shoulders bobbing out of the water, then with two clean strokes, she returned to Glenn’s side and rose up onto her back again. The water stilled and it was quiet except for the faint clap of the tide meeting the beach far away. Glenn felt a rising pressure below her palm and then there was her mother’s hand easing into hers, locking them together.
“You’re right,” she said. “Just in stories.”
Glenn stood with the warmth of that memory wrapped around her like a cloak. She tried to wish away everything that Opal had said, but as much as Glenn wanted to she couldn’t tolerate such a comforting lie.
Too many pieces had fallen into place over the last few days to deny the picture they created. Aamon hadn’t come across the border and stumbled onto their property. He had come to find the Magistra and bring her back. As soon as Aamon was well again it was time for her to return. That was the moment Glenn had seen out beyond the border the night her mother disappeared. It was no dream.