I notice that she’s sweating lightly. But I still can’t let it go.
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me, Ingrid.”
“I know.” She inhales slowly, as if gathering strength, then reaches over to tuck a stray lock of my hair behind my ear as she exhales. “But it doesn’t really matter, little one. The fact is that the Order of Keepers did bring their discipline to the magic of this world, containing and directing the power of the trueborn to such an extent that, for thousands of years, the true nature of your kind remained deeply hidden or carefully harnessed, before it finally faded away into folklore and myth.”
She twists her fingers together in a gesture that looks almost nervous. “The truth, I’m afraid, is that the direct descendants of the Ten often did not flourish under the Order’s care. By the time the pyramids were built, one of the bloodlines had already withered and died, and this number grew to three by the time the Roman empire fell. We lost another two bloodlines during the early Middle Ages, and by the time the Industrial Revolution ground its dirty gears over our world, there were only three bloodlines left.”
I’m getting a strange tightness in my chest again, not unlike the one I got when Gunn talked about ancient civilizations and the history of the universe. Thinking about how old the world is somehow makes my own life seem petty and suffocating. Unbearably small.
“But I digress,” she continues. “The point I’m trying to make is that the Order has always prescribed very specific methods and processes for dealing with girls like you— processes I refused to follow, in spite of all the promises I made when I became a Black keeper. At the time, I justified my actions by saying that those methods were old-fashioned and harmful and wrong. But I’ve since come to fear that…” Her voice wavers and her eyes glisten with suppressed tears. “That I simply might have… loved her too much… to remember my duties.”
She pours me a cup of tea while she composes herself.
“Bella grew up headstrong and wild, but the magic inside her was powerful and true. So powerful, in fact, that she was merely a girl of seven when the ocean first started calling out to her. Oh, what can I say? I didn’t want her to go. I couldn’t bear the thought. I told her that she wasn’t ready for such a powerful initiation into magic, but the truth might be that I was selfish. I wanted her to remain my sweet little girl a bit longer; I didn’t want to let her go.” Ingrid shakes her head as her eyes dim, remembering. “She was such an intense little thing, your mother. She felt everything so passionately, so desperately. We tried to appease her with a lake at first, but that only made her hunger for the ocean more intense, until she almost went mad with it.”
I sip my tea, suppressing a shudder at its bitterness.
“In the summer of her tenth year, I finally relented and took your mother to the ocean. Oh, and it was beautiful, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Bella shimmered with happiness, so pure and so free and so clearly of the water that all my fears began to seem ridiculous. To see that graceful little body dive through the waves like a sleek sea otter, to see her lose herself so completely in that vast, pure lifemagic, was a privilege—more moving than anything I’ve experienced before or since. It seemed terribly wrongheaded, then, to have deprived my miraculous little sea creature of that astonishing blue power for so long.”
She stares into the distance, her eyes unfocused, lost in the memory.
“After Bella’s first exposure to the raw power of the sea, she was illuminated: filled with magic, bristling with it, charged with a force that was almost painful to witness. Looking at her was like looking at the sun—beautiful, intense, and dangerous enough to be blinding.”
She leans over to take the framed photograph of my mother from the table beside me and holds it as she continues her story, one finger tracing the outlines of my mother’s face over and over again.
“The Seakeepers flocked to her, drawn by the miracle of such abundant magic. Nobody had wielded Seamagic so powerfully in centuries. The Blue Lord, Deron’s father, took us into his Keep, a private island in the Caribbean, and we stayed in that turquoise-and-gold paradise for a long time, watching Bella grow stronger every day. In the end they called her Seamaster, and she was honored far above the Lord and Lady of the Blue Clan; I am not exaggerating when I say that the Seakeepers would have died for her, each and every one of them.”
I gaze at the picture of my mom on Ingrid’s lap. The girl smiling at the camera doesn’t look like a powerful magician, someone people would die for. She looks like a younger version of my mom: pretty and nice and funny. A normal person.
“But then one day, out of the blue, Bella decided we had to leave.” She gives a disbelieving laugh. “She wanted to come back here, of all places. I told her we didn’t need the Pendragons any longer, that the Blue Keep was the safest place on earth for her. I told her she was being ridiculous: she would suffer so far from the ocean now that she had truly become its creature. But she wouldn’t listen.” A bitter smile. “By then she was so strong that nothing could stand against her. I certainly couldn’t. She was a force that could not be denied, a power that would not yield to anyone.”
“So you came back here.”
She nods. “When we left the Blue Keep, your mother was thirteen years old. She greeted her friends—you’ve met Deron; there were others too—and went for one last swim in the ocean. I’ll never forget the picture of her power-filled body melting into that blue water! She swam deeper and deeper, until she disappeared completely, and she stayed away so long we thought she would never return to us.”
“But she did.”
“Yes. Three full days later. But she came back changed—cold and distant and quiet. Nothing could get through to her; she didn’t smile anymore, hardly spoke to anyone.” Ingrid’s fingers start tracing my mother’s face inside the picture frame again. “It took me years to understand that she’d been heartbroken, lost in a terrible and profound grief. She’d used those last days not to revel in her power, as we’d thought, but to say her final farewell to the ocean.”
She rubs her eyes, then leans her head back against the sofa, as if suddenly overcome by exhaustion. “I never even suspected that her plan was never to return. How could I? By the time we came back to this town, the sea was so much a part of her that she suffered the most terrible withdrawal symptoms—she’d wake up screaming and then spend hours shivering in pain, her body sleek with sweat, yet icy cold.”
I frown. “Withdrawal symptoms?”
“That’s what she called it. I only realized later it was a misleading term—meant to mislead me.” A bitter look crosses her face. “She compared her situation to that of an addict without access to a drug, but in reality she was more like a fish without access to water. It was a suffering I could not comprehend even as I witnessed it.”
I glance at the pretty young woman smiling so widely in Ingrid’s photo.
“Why did she do it?”
“Because she’d become afraid of her own magic,” Ingrid says quietly, her eyes hollow. “The more time she spent in the ocean, the more powerful she became, and she didn’t want any more power. She was scared of what she might become.”
She looks down at the photo on her lap, her gray hair falling like a curtain around her face so I can’t read her expression.
“Deep in the heart of the beautiful blue magic of the sea, Bella told me, she’d found a dark center, a hidden, ugly core that frightened her deeply. There was an evil there, she said, something far older than us, and colder, and unmoved by any human feeling. It was powerful and irresistible and pitiless, and she feared it would eventually consume her.”
I feel my heart starting to beat faster.
“She told me that for all her love of the sea, for all her joy, her appreciation of the power and the beauty of the ocean, the seamagic inside her was beginning to frighten her. She suspected that the Order might’ve been right in thinking that it’s dangerous for anyone to wield so much power; she found it almost i
mpossible to stand against its great malevolent force. She feared that she was losing her humanity, that the deepest, most secret heart of her power was evil. Corrosive and destructive. Hungry.”
When she looks at me, her face is bleak.
“We are eager to see the good in the magic that is life; we celebrate its beauty and its bright, creative energy, but we forget too easily that life on this earth is also terrible and cruel and viciously destructive. Bella knew that life on this world needed to be protected, but she didn’t believe any longer that she should be the one to step into the void. She was afraid of herself, afraid of what the power had done to her. Of what she might do to others.”
Beneath the low timber of Ingrid’s voice, I slowly become aware of certain unfamiliar sounds. There is a soft cough coming from the direction of the dining room, a shuffle of feet in the hallway outside, whispers drifting from downstairs.
I don’t ask. Whoever they are, they can wait.
“She told me that, with the wisdom of hindsight, she understood that she should never have been exposed to the power of raw, undiluted seamagic at such a young age. She believed that she’d lost herself within its force, that part of her humanity had been taken from her and that this was why she couldn’t fight the dark forces she’d found lurking in the heart of that power.”
She leans over toward the coffee table and places my mom’s picture on it, face down.
“She was determined not to give in to the darkness, and she vowed to fight for her humanity, to repel that shadowy force for as long as she could. But it wasn’t easy. When the time came, your mother could not resist the call to bloodmagic—none of your line ever could—and she was as gifted at wielding that rich, complex, fleshy magic as she’d been in mastering the watery magic of the sea.”
“Like the Seakeepers before them, the Bloodkeepers could not deny her: they called her bloodmaster and came from all over the world, offering their protection and their blessing, and what was left of their hope. But Bella resisted the power of blood just as firmly as she’d resisted the power of the sea.”
Ingrid presses her fingers against her eyes, as if to soothe a headache or prevent further tears. “I know it hurt her deeply—perhaps even more than her rejection of the ocean. But by that time you’d been born, and she was so determined to keep you away from all sources of power that she did the impossible.”
When Ingrid opens her blue eyes again, they’re filled with so much emotion they look almost black. “Bella wanted you to grow into a fully mature human before you came into contact with any magic. She believed that this would keep you safe, so that when the time came for you to claim your magic, you’d be strong enough to remain yourself even as the darkest power swept through you. She believed in your humanity, Jess. She believed in it so strongly that she sacrificed everything—her magic, her health, her love, her life—to keep you human. It was all to protect you. To isolate you from the dark power that called to her so insistently, so painfully, so relentlessly.”
It’s too much to take in. I shake my head, can’t bring myself to speak.
“She knew it would cost her life eventually.” Ingrid doesn’t flinch as she speaks the words, clearly determined to tell the truth at last. “Both bloodmagic and seamagic had become a part of your mother by the time you were born—nothing could change that—and by turning her back on it she knew she was damaging her deepest being, wounding her spirit and sacrificing her health. She had no illusions about what the consequences would be. And yet she did it. She did it for you.”
“I don’t understand.” My brain is slow and numb with shock and sadness. “If she’d wanted me to stay away from the ocean, or whatever, why didn’t she just go there without me? Couldn’t she have left me in the desert with a… I don’t know, a babysitter or something, and come back when she felt better? When she’d had her … her fix? There was no need for her to get so sick just to protect me!”
“Oh, Jess.” Ingrid grabs both my hands in hers. “She could have kept you from white skies and deep water and green growth and blood passion as long as she liked—it wouldn’t have made a difference. Don’t you see? By that time the greatest source of magic on this world was your mother herself! In order to raise you as a pure, unskilled human child, growing up without any sources of power to spark the magic inside you, she had no choice but to destroy her own magic.”
She raises a hand to my cheek, wipes away my tears with her fingers.
“She had to drain herself of every last remnant of her power in order to keep you innocent and free, little one, and she did. She did.”
Chapter 18
… for this reason I believe that I have unearthed a secret; one closely kept by the devious Black Clan until this very moment. My own observations have shown that there is an undeniable association and a vile interdependence between the Keepers and the Kept, which produces a most unnatural correlation between the magic of those parties. If a Ward grows in strength, so does her Keepers’ power, and if a Ward weakens, so does the power of her Keepers …
Extract from a letter of Skykeeper spy, Wilhelm van der Berg, to the White Lord (1655); translated from the original Dutch
Clap … Clap … Clap …
At the sound of slow applause coming from behind me, I spin around. The man leaning in the doorway is middle-aged, expensively dressed and mainstream attractive: square jaw, straight nose, thick, dark hair, green eyes.
I know who he is; everyone does. It’s Jonathan’s father—the great Jack Pendragon himself.
“Miss Sarkany,” he says, giving a mocking bow. “We meet again.”
I shoot Ingrid a quick, uncertain look, but her face gives nothing away. I can’t remember having ever met him before.
“Hi,” I say.
“So, this is the little kitten that has the world in such an uproar,” he says as he slowly walks toward me. “I must say I’m rather disappointed. Without the shine on you, you look almost ordinary.” He looks me up and down, slowly and insultingly. “At least you have the hair. Quite magnificent, for one so young.” He holds out a hand to me. “I don’t suppose you remember talking to me last night. I’m Jack Pendragon.”
I automatically reach out my hand, but Ingrid swats it away, her face livid.
“Don’t you dare touch her! Get away from her right now or I swear—”
“You’ll do what?” he sneers. “Leave this town? Now that every Skykeeper in the world is howling for her blood? Oh, I don’t think so. Her only chance of survival is staying right here, under my protection, and you know it.”
“I know we have an agreement. And that agreement states very clearly that you will keep your distance from her at all times.”
“And if I’d kept my distance last night? What do you think would’ve happened then? Oh, no. If you think you can dismiss me so easily now, after everything that happened, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“That was never the deal.”
“The deal is off.”
“I’m contacting your father right now.” She reaches for her phone, swipes at the screen. “He made a promise to me and I will not have you trample all over it.”
“My father is old; his time is over. I run things now. You know that as well as I do.”
Ingrid tightens her lips, but after a few seconds she reluctantly puts down the phone. He takes a step closer to us.
“Get away from her!”’
“Nobody orders me around, old woman. Least of all you.” He takes another step. “She must be her mother’s daughter after all, with hair like this.” He reaches out a hand to touch my hair.
The next moment there’s a—I don’t know how to describe it—a pulse, a disturbance in the air around us, and then he’s lying on the floor outside the room and Ingrid is standing between us, her right hand open and raised against him. I have no idea how she got there; I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.
“I said stay away from her,” Ingrid grates through clenched teeth, her eyes flashing cold-blue
fire.
Jack Pendragon struggles upright, then comes to his feet so gracefully that I’m reminded of the way his son got out of the swimming pool that day. He stands outside the room, glaring at Ingrid, and I can almost see the synapses firing in his brain as he reevaluates the situation. Then he raises his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Okay. You win. I’ll stay away from your little pet for now.” Under his mocking tone, I pick up a note of reluctant respect. “So, you really are still a Black keeper, and a powerful one at that.”
“Damn right I’m still a Black keeper.” Ingrid’s voice is icy, and despite her gray hair and her frail body, she suddenly looks intimidating, as hard as a marble statue. “So you’d better listen to me, Jack Pendragon, and you’d better listen well. You will not approach the little one. You will not touch her. You will not come near her. Do you understand me?”
He flinches slightly—a man so used to power he’s clearly forgotten how to take orders. But eventually he nods, his posture relaxing as if he’s come to some inner decision. “I misjudged you, Ingrid of the Waemundings. Please forgive my earlier attitude. I had no idea that the last keeper of the Black Clan still wielded such power.”
“I am not the last. My grandnephew still lives, as you might remember.”
“I didn’t know he’d claimed Black.” He raises both eyebrows. “The information at my disposal must have been inaccurate. I apologize.”
Ingrid narrows her eyes, but she doesn’t say anything.
Jack Pendragon steps to one side so he can see me better past Ingrid’s unmoving form, but he doesn’t try to enter the room again.
“Let’s start over, shall we?” The smile he gives me is an insanely charming, bordering-on-creepy, Tom Cruise-like grin. “We met last night, but you were so drunk on power that I suspect you don’t remember a word of our conversation.”
Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1) Page 18