Worldweavers: Gift of the Unmage

by Alma Alexander

  “I got all of that wrong?” Corey said, sounding honestly appalled.

  Thea could not help laughing. The Trickster sounded so wretched, so defeated.

  “All I can tell you is that there was something…different,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. If you could turn, for instance, into me, then I could tell you exactly how good your illusions are. But then, you probably couldn’t.”

  “You think I can’t change into your form?” Corey demanded. “Whatever makes you think that? You’re almost too easy!”

  He blinked again and when he resolidified, Thea saw herself, standing a touch awkwardly in the shadow of the boulder, her hair blowing about her shoulders.

  “Do I really slouch like that?” she said, caught by surprise.

  “Oh, yes,” Corey said, sounding smug. “And you’re always doing this….”

  He blew a stray strand of hair off his face…her face…and then reached to tuck it behind an ear. The gesture was warmly familiar, and it tugged at Thea’s heart. It was odd to be looking at her own likeness, and not in a mirror—a double that moved and talked and looked like her, but independently of her.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, for a start, you got that wrong.”

  Corey smirked, the expression strangely disturbing when nestled on her own features. “You think so? You’ve never watched yourself, then.”

  “That would be kind of hard to do,” Thea said.

  “But I know there are people in your own world who can,” Corey said. “Folks who can send out their spirits and see the world and themselves in the world—”

  “Then you also know that I was never one of those people,” Thea said abruptly, feeling the ache of an old hurt.

  But her response was instinctive and no longer quite true. Even as she flung up her old defenses, Thea was aware that Corey’s words didn’t sting as they might have done only a very short while ago. Thea was still struggling with the reasons behind I won’t rather than I can’t when it came to her doing magic, but the difference was clear, and it was one of choice. It was hard to feel quite as inadequate as she used to.

  Corey turned back into his young-man form. “It’s hot here,” he said, drawing a hand over his brow to wipe away a film of perspiration.

  “Yes,” Thea agreed. The sun was an almost solid presence now, beating down with the relentless white heat of the desert summer day.

  “You could be home, you know, through that door. In minutes. In seconds. Instantaneously. Really. You could.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He looked coy. “I know many things.”

  “Well, but I’d rather wait until she comes back,” Thea said.

  “But then it will be too…” Corey caught himself, and a new and different curiosity came into his eyes. “So, then,” he asked, as if he couldn’t help himself. “What did you see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you looked into it, just now,” Corey said. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” Thea said. “Mist.”

  “But even I can smell—” He shut up abruptly, looking down at where he was scuffing the dry earth with the toe of his boot, raising a small cloud of dust.

  “You don’t believe me?” Thea said. “Go look for yourself, then.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Thea shrugged. “You don’t need my permission. It’s an open gate.”

  “A-ha!” Corey pounced on her words. “If it’s an open gate, then it must lead somewhere.”

  “I’m sure it must,” Thea agreed placidly.

  “And I definitely smell something strange,” he said, his nose twitching, glancing at the gate with raw curiosity.

  “So look,” she said.

  “It won’t hurt me?”

  “How should I know? I told you, I didn’t see anything.”

  “Well…” Corey approached the gate warily, again giving himself away. It looked as if every sense he possessed was now concentrated in the quivering questing nose of a dog sniffing for danger. He lay a careful hand on the side of the door and turned in Thea’s direction again. “You sure?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Thea said sturdily, no less than the truth.

  Corey sniffed once more and then stood up against the Portal as Thea had done, and allowed his face to sink into it.

  The effect was curious, looking at it from the side. The doorway was just a frame, from nothing into nothing, only the shimmering veil of darkness in the middle giving an indication of something otherworldly. Had he chosen to, Corey could have walked right around the door and still remained in this world. It was almost wholly two-dimensional, its depth a handspan, measured in inches. If it had been a normal door, by the time Corey’s ears entered the doorway, his nose should have been emerging on the far side.

  But that was not what happened. He leaned into the Portal and buried his head and neck almost up to his shoulders into the veil, but nothing came out from beyond the door on the other side. The rather eerie effect was that the doorway was swallowing him whole.

  Corey sucked his head back into the same dimension as the rest of his body, and turned to Thea, blinking.

  “Are you certain you see nothing?” he said. “I could swear I see things…trees…mountains…a house…”

  “Really?” Thea said, making her eyes go round and wide. “Are you sure? What kind of house?”

  Corey made a series of sketchy gestures with both hands, shaping a house in the air before him. “Just a house. With a dark front door, I think. And so much damp.” He wrinkled his delicate desert-bred nose.

  “You’re obviously better at this than I am,” Thea said. Apparently oblivious of her flattery, Corey preened just a little.

  “I’ve been at it longer than you can dream,” he said.

  “Could you see it clearly?” Thea said, sounding wistful, almost plaintive. “If you could describe it, I can tell you if you’re looking at my house. But maybe…maybe you could…”

  “What?” Corey said.

  “Well,” Thea said slowly, “if you looked at it…as…well…as me…you know, through my eyes, maybe you’d know instantly, just as I would know—and if you can tell me that’s where it leads…” Thea sighed. “I do want to go home….”

  “You raise a good point,” Corey said. “It’s your gate, and it’s attuned to you. Which does make me wonder why you can’t see…”

  There were real tears in Thea’s eyes when she looked back at Corey. She had never been very good at guile, but perhaps it was just that this time she wasn’t wholly pretending; the fake self-pity that filled her gaze was leavened by genuine pathos and pain. “Tell me!” she said, and her voice broke on the words. “Tell me if you can see my home!”

  Corey hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged. “It can’t hurt,” he said.

  He changed into Thea again and stepped back up to the Portal, letting his face—her face—sink back into the veil.

  Thea crossed the space between them in two long strides and pushed as hard as she could with the palms of both hands flat between his shoulder blades, propelling him forward into the Portal. She thought she heard a startled yelp as though from a very long way away, as he stumbled forward, and the Portal took all of him, took him somewhere else.

  Her heart thumped painfully, Thea waited a span of long minutes and then carefully, very carefully, allowed her own face to sink back into the veil just enough for her to see through it.

  It was home, that was for certain. There was a commotion in the trees as something struggled there, and the door of the house in her vision opened to reveal her father, peering out in a puzzled manner. Then Thea saw the knot of shapes in the trees fall apart, resolve into three tall Alphiri looking up helplessly as a large black bird—a raven—flapped with graceless speed away from them and escaped, flying through the trees. Thea could hear its angry, raucous screech as it wheeled once above the treetops and then disappeared into the distance.

  The Alphiri were left
empty-handed in the woods. Thea thought she heard an angry hiss, could even make out a few words if she strained—It was he, it was the one we seek….

  Then one of the Alphiri looked over his shoulder, his gaze pointed inexorably in Thea’s direction. The expression on his face was one of cold fury.

  Thea pulled back quickly, stumbling back a couple of steps into the safety of the dry desert heat, gasping for air and shaking her head to clear the vision of those angry eyes.

  “Well done, child,” said a familiar voice. “You tricked the Trickster.”

  Grandmother Spider—the real Grandmother Spider—stood a few steps away, and the love that Thea remembered was in her eyes. Grandmother Spider opened her arms, and Thea ran into the safety and comfort of that embrace, her narrow shoulders suddenly heaving with sobs.

  “But I did want to go home,” she managed to get out. “I wanted to go back so badly….”

  “But not on someone else’s terms,” Grandmother Spider murmured. “You have enough wisdom to know that your road back does not lie through that gate, wondrous as your achievement was. The Alphiri would have counted the price of passage not paid, and would have taken you instead. You have to walk back. The long way.”

  Thea rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, wiping her tears away.

  “The Barefoot Road?” she asked quietly.

  “Not even that, although learning to control it is important,” Grandmother Spider said gently. “No, you have to go back the way you came. You have to keep the bargain.”

  “But it was through an Alphiri Portal that I—”

  “I know, and it is through one that you must return,” Grandmother Spider said. “Or the deal is broken. The Trade Codex is quite clear on these matters.”

  “Are your dreamcatchers…?” Thea gasped, lifting her head.

  “Oh, they are quite safe, although the Faele would have grabbed them if they could,” Grandmother Spider said reassuringly. “It was to deal with those little thieves that I stayed away for so long. I didn’t know he would come straight back for you—I am so sorry. I should never have left you alone.”

  “But who said,” a new voice interrupted, “that she was alone?”

  The voice was warm and pure, like liquid gold, like…like sunshine. Like that vivid presence of the sunlight that had been with Thea for hours out here in the desert.

  Thea raised her head, the tears drying on her cheeks. She caught a glimpse of Grandmother Spider’s face, and if there had been love there before it had been the love of a mother for her child, gentle and rich and nurturing. The expression that she wore now was full of a different kind of love, the kind given and received from heart to heart between two equals, between chosen soul mates.

  “Hello, Tawaha,” Grandmother Spider said, and there was glory in her voice.

  THUNDER MOON

  1.

  AS SHE TURNED, Thea saw what she first took to be a lion-headed man. A closer look revealed that this first impression was an illusion. Tawaha’s face, with its strong, chiseled features and great amber-colored eyes, was framed by a cloud, a mane of bright burnished hair that seemed to lift and float about his head as though alive. He was barefoot and wore nothing more than a simple loincloth made out of some tawny beast’s hide. His body was stockily muscular, solidly built in a manner that suggested raw strength, and possessed of a catlike grace that filled every movement.

  He reached out a hand and brushed Grandmother Spider’s cheek very gently, as though in passing; the movement continued almost uninterrupted until the extended hand stopped to hover barely above Thea’s shoulder. His fingers did not touch her, but even through her clothes she could feel the heat of his presence, her skin crisping into the redness of sunburn.

  “You’re right, my touch would burn you, my child, my far-kin, one born to my people so long after I first shared the sky of the First World with them,” Tawaha said. He was answering what had been mere feelings, barely formulated into thoughts—as though in his bright presence there were no shadows in Thea’s mind where he could not see if he chose.

  Tawaha, the Sun, the first light of the First World. Her many-times-removed ancestor, who set his hand and heart to a dream shared by Grandmother Spider when they sang the worlds into existence.

  “You couldn’t hurt me,” Thea said, raising her eyes to Tawaha’s face.

  He withdrew his hand, but only slowly with every appearance of reluctance. “I could,” he said, smiling, “but never would I want to.” He flicked his eyes back to Grandmother Spider. “Maia told me that now would be a good time for me to be here,” he said, and Thea had to think quickly before she remembered with almost a jolt that Maia had been the starwoman whom Grandmother Spider had summoned down from the sky. “Why did you not call me?”

  “Because I knew you would come,” Grandmother Spider said.

  Thea suddenly felt like an uninvited guest, a child who had blundered into a grown-up party. She stared, rapt, aware that she was watching something the likes of which she would probably never see again. The first love story ever, before worlds were spun to hold the love that these two beings shared long ago, shared still, would share forever. For all time.

  Grandmother Spider gave Thea’s shoulders one last squeeze and let her go.

  “Do you think,” she asked gently, “that you are ready to go back to Cheveyo now?”

  “Yes,” said Thea. Her voice was a cry of yearning to stay here instead, to be a part of whatever it was that these two shared.

  But she was not a part of it, except as a ghost from a distant future, a descendant many times removed from the glorious world shared by these, her sacred ancestors. She had been here for a reason, for a purpose. That was achieved—she had proved something here, something important. The gateway that stood and still shimmered behind Thea on the edge of the great canyon was a testament to that. Now it was time for her to go.

  “I wish I could stay,” Thea said, raising her eyes to meet Tawaha’s again. “But I am very happy to have had the chance to meet you, Father Tawaha.”

  The form of address was instinctive, born of something greater and older than herself. Tawaha inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “Only remember this, my child,” he said. “Where you are and where light is, I will always be at your side.”

  “And so will I, in spirit and in thought,” Grandmother Spider said, taking Thea’s hand again, her eyes again brimming with that love that Thea had missed in Corey’s impersonation of her. “We may meet again, somewhere, perhaps in the web of a dreamcatcher. In fact, I am sure we will. But for now, it’s time to say goodbye.”

  She turned Thea around, her arm slipping around Thea’s shoulders, until they faced the Portal again. “Through that is Cheveyo’s mesa,” Grandmother Spider said. “It’s only a step away.”

  Thea balked. “But I know that it goes to…I’ve looked inside and I’ve seen…”

  “Thea,” said Grandmother Spider, “look at me.”

  Thea turned to her companion.

  “You made that gate,” Grandmother Spider said. “But we are in the First World still, and here my word matters. When you are here by yourself, it may be that there is only one other place that this gate will lead you to, or that in the moment that you looked into the gate there was only one place where you wanted to be. But right now, in this moment, with me holding your hand, it will take you to where I command.”

  “I believe you,” Thea whispered, but then shivered despite herself. “But I remember seeing my father coming out of the door of my own home. I remember. It was clear and it was real and it was there….”

  “Sweet child of my spirit,” Grandmother Spider said, “remember, there are many worlds, and it was I who led the first people born of my spirit as they crossed from one realm to another, I who opened the gateways of sipapu for them as they slipped from the world of darkness to the world of twilight to the world of light. This gate will not take you home, but it will take you to a place that you might
have already started to think of as another home, a home for your spirit. Cheveyo is waiting for you.”

  “All right,” Thea said. The serenity of pure trust filled her. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin even as Grandmother Spider reached for her hand.

  “Come, then,” Grandmother Spider said.

  On the threshold of the gateway, Grandmother Spider released Thea’s fingers gently. Thea paused for a moment, turned; Grandmother Spider had stepped back and now stood beside Tawaha, her hair wheat-gold and her eyes the color of honey amber as though in an instinctive response to his own bright bronzed skin and tawny hair. Grandmother Spider raised a hand as though in farewell, and Thea lifted her own in response—and then, just as she stepped through the Portal, she reached out and hooked just one strand of the living light that hung in Tawaha’s presence and pulled it after her.

  She thought she heard an echo of laughter behind her, a delighted, indulgent laughter which suddenly and painfully reminded her of the way her father once laughed with her, when she was much, much younger and her flaws were still hidden, swept aside with the convenient excuse that she was still too young.

  A part of her had thought that she would return to the high mesa from which she gained Grandmother Spider’s house for the first time, that she would have to clamber down that steep and terrifying cliff—indeed, Cheveyo had left her at the foot of the mesa with the admonishment that he would be waiting when she returned. But obviously he had been doing his waiting somewhere else, because Grandmother Spider had set Thea down only a few steps from Cheveyo’s own house. She could clearly see the entrance from where she stood, clutching a thin ribbon of light that was starting to feel painfully warm, as if she had stuck her hand into a fire.

  As Thea watched, Cheveyo ducked out of his doorway and stood for a moment looking at her with his glittering obsidian eyes.

  “Your turn to make breakfast,” he said. “I will be back in an hour.”

  “But how…?”

  He raised a single eloquent eyebrow, shifted his grip on his staff, and then turned his head very slightly, his nostrils flaring as he tasted the air.