Her words resonated with me. None of us ever knew what a day would bring. Some days were worse than most. Let this not be one of those days.
I sat on the floor, my legs crossed, and watched as one girl pulled a droplet out of the shallow bowl of water, without actually touching the surface. The droplet suspended, quivering in the air, but she only managed to suspend it a few inches before it popped and landed back in the bowl. We all sighed.
“Aunine,” one of the older girls said. “You are letting your mind wander.”
“I’m not.” Aunine pouted, but a brief smile told me her thoughts might have wandered a little.
“New girl, you try.”
It took a moment to understand the fact I was being spoken to. I’d only been here a couple of days. I guess that still made me the new girl—again. At least here I didn’t have to stand up and do the new kid speech.
I looked up at the group of expectant faces and shook my head. “I can’t do that.” I didn’t elaborate and tell them I couldn’t do anything by any will of my own; that it just happened.
“What do I need to do?” I asked. The water was surprisingly clear, considering it had been played with for hours.
The older girl, her red hair not dissimilar to mine, pushed the bowl towards me. “Just feel the water, wait and see how it responds to you.”
I knew what she was describing. It was the way the water had closed around my feet at the riverbank; the energy that flowed within its current reacted, moved almost. You think of water as a free-flowing thing, easy to part and separate. But that day at the river with Alana I’d sensed its entirety. It didn’t part because you told it to, it moved around you, it chose where to go.
I held my hand over the bowl. “I’ve never done this before.” I laughed nervously.
A smaller girl, her hair a strawberry-blonde nudged another and whispered, “Soon we shall see if she’s the one.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “I can assure you, I’m not.”
The girl, her pale-blue eyes wide, gasped. “You understand me. Only Nivra understands me. We come from the same place, far away with snow and ice; no one else can hear what we say.”
Her words muddled in my head while I stared at the bowl of water. I could sense it pushing back at me through the space that separated my hand from its surface.
I sat suspended as the girl’s words dislodged an enormous truth that I hadn’t acknowledged. Had been painfully blind to.
Holy shit.
I could understand everyone.
I hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t even thought about it, lurching as I had been from one crisis to another. In my dreams, back in Fire Stone I’d understood Tristram and Mae, and everyone else in the dreams. It made sense when thinking of them as dreams, but they hadn’t been, they’d been my repressed memories from a former life—this life. When I’d stepped through the stones, I’d understood everyone, but what must they have been talking? Celtish? Was there such a thing?
And the Mage? Where was she from?
Augustus? Was he talking… what did they talk in Ancient Rome?
The girls in my circle were watching and I could sense the weighted stares of a few in the next group, too.
“What’s your name?” I asked the girl with strawberry hair.
“Daiya.”
“Daiya and Nivra?” I glanced between the two fair-haired girls. I reckoned them to be about sixteen, possibly younger. What had they been through while the Emperor tried to find their power? They nodded in confirmation and I smiled. “I understand you. I might not be the one you are expecting, but I’ll try to help you all the same.”
They elbowed one another and nodded at my hand hovering over the bowl.
Closing my eyes, I settled down, trying to free my mind of all its many thoughts. The journey, Tristram, Phil. Alana and what would happen to her… what would happen to me while I was here.
The water resisted me, a gentle nudge shifted the air under my palm. I let it go, bringing my hand back to my lap. I needed to find the thread of gold in my veins. If I was going to achieve anything, I’d need that.
At first all I sensed was darkness, an empty void where before the gold had flowed free and strong.
I pressed a little deeper. It was in there, dormant, doing what I’d asked of it. Hiding.
Now I needed it. This was my chance to learn, but it resisted me.
“Come on,” I grumbled, and there was a ripple of laughter. I ignored it and pulled deep and deeper. I didn’t believe what Augustus had told me. It wasn’t true that my magic only responded to my desire. I couldn’t believe it.
I wouldn’t believe it.
My magic was my own. If I buried it, then I did it for my own reasons. If I bought it to life, like in the bubble of happiness Tristram had produced in either of my lives, then it was me who allowed it.
Me.
“What’s she doing?” I heard someone whisper, although I’d never know what language they were actually speaking in.
Come on. If I could understand multiple languages without even realising it, then I could sure as hell find some gold energy running within my veins.
Shutting out the whispering voices I tried again.
Deeper, harder, pushing until it actually hurt.
There! A glimmer of gold. I snagged it and pulled it tight. It lurked down within the depths of my chest. I could almost visualise it curling unsatisfied, locked up by my anger when I’d realised I’d been tricked.
Yep, gold buddy. Now it’s your time to take to the floor.
I relished the sensation of it unravelling and travelling through me, filling me with a power that I didn’t yet understand. Maybe down here in this prison would be my best chance at learning what others wanted from
