I hung up and put my phone away. More Wardens were on the street, just standing around doing nothing—but as I thought that, I realized the familiars’ bodies had sagged like deflated basketballs, and patches of bright blue goo showed on their skin. Some of those Wardens were no doubt paper magi, skilled at illusions and more than capable of concealing what had happened there on the sidewalk. And the others would dispose of the bodies. Not that that took much doing, since the bodies of dead invaders, which is what the familiars really were, broke down quickly once they were destroyed.
“All right, form a line again,” I said, drawing the attention of the dozen or so people staring at their phones. “Your auguries might be even more important now, and you can’t help the familiars or the people in Sheffield by standing around doing nothing.” Taking up space in my store was what I wanted to say, but the Nicolliens looked devastated enough I didn’t want to be harsh with them.
Half of them left without auguries. I thought, from observing them, they were ones who’d left their familiars at home and either wanted to check on them or had gotten word that they, too, were destroyed. We finished the rest of the auguries in glum silence, me speaking only to tell someone how much their augury would cost. By noon, the store was empty, and so was the street outside. Just a couple of blue blotches showed where the familiars’ bodies had lain, and I assumed those were hidden by illusion.
“This is awful,” Judy said. “Everyone’s reporting their familiars dead. One hundred percent fatality. The Nicolliens won’t recover from this.”
“And it won’t even prompt the Ambrosites to make common cause with them, want to bet?” I stood in front of the crystal door and admired the rainbows. They calmed me.
“I wouldn’t take that bet.” Judy headed for the break room. “Let’s eat before some other disaster strikes.”
But nothing happened. I refrained from looking at any news feeds, afraid to learn the extent of the disaster at Sheffield or what the news thought was the cause of all that death. Bioterrorism, Malcolm had said, and I could see how that would be a compelling explanation. The press would go nuts trying to find similarities between the three incidents they knew about. Probably about as nuts as the Wardens were going as they tried to work out why the invaders had chosen those targets. The named Neutralities were obvious, but why the other two nodes? I had no ideas, other than my feeling that the oracle knew more than it was saying.
Inspired, I slipped into the oracle’s space about ten minutes until two, when a few Ambrosites had lined up outside. The oracle paid me no attention. “I have a question,” I said, “and I don’t know if you’ll answer it, but…do you know why the invaders chose the targets they did? I mean, it seems obvious that they wanted to destroy the Fountain and the Labyrinth, and us, of course, but why the other three? Or were they just a distraction? Because if they were—if they were meant to conceal the invaders’ interest in the named Neutralities—it didn’t work.”
I waited. After a few seconds, I thought, Gaps. Leaks. Seal the cracks.
That was where I’d heard that phrasing before. “You’ve said that before,” I said aloud. “I don’t understand what it means.”
The oracle’s attention became oppressive, and I had to force myself to stand upright against the pressure. Force increases. Seal the cracks. Many holes, few holes, one hole. They fall. The guardians remain.
“Force increases…many holes…” It still didn’t make any sense, unless… “What comes through the cracks?”
Power. The oracle’s voice thundered through my body, blurring my vision. Seal the cracks. Then it was gone.
I clung to the nearest bookcase until my vision cleared and my knees stopped wobbling. “Thanks,” I said, though I hadn’t gotten anything to be thankful for except, possibly, not being crushed.
I left the oracle and went to let the Ambrosites in. “Great day, huh?” the woman at the head of the line said. “Those Nicolliens finally got what they deserved.”
My head still ached from the oracle thinking through me, and I remembered the devastated face of a woman kneeling beside her fallen familiar. “Excuse me?” I said icily.
The Ambrosite didn’t react to my sharp tone. “They should have destroyed their familiars a long time ago. This just proves how wrong they were. They ought to be grateful the creatures just died and didn’t turn on them the way they did two years ago.”
I snatched the augury slip out of her hand. “That’s right,” I said. “Because they’re all idiots who don’t actually care about winning the Long War. Not the way you sainted Ambrosites do.”
“What?” The woman sounded puzzled. It made me angrier.
“Look,” I said, pitching my voice so the whole store could hear me, “I hate familiars. If it turns out they really are all destroyed, I won’t be sad. But at least I’m not so full of self-righteousness that I take pleasure in other people’s pain. And unlike the lot of you, I’m not so obsessed with defeating other humans that I can’t see who the real enemy is!”
The woman had gone totally still. Everyone had their eyes on me. “You people have serious problems, you and the Nicolliens alike,” I said. “At what point did you all decide it mattered more to put one over on your fellow humans than to work together? It’s disgusting. And I’m sick of it.” I waved the augury slip in the woman’s face. “I swore to be impartial. So I’m impartially declaring Abernathy’s a faction-free zone. You do whatever the hell you want when you’re out there, but in here, I’d better not hear anything against either faction. And yes, I’ll tell the Nicolliens the same thing. Now, get your augury slips ready, and I’ll be back.” I turned on my heel and stomped away into the oracle.
As if it had been waiting for me, the oracle’s attention bore down on me instantly. “I’m in a bad mood, so whatever you have in mind had better not be cryptic,” I snarled.
Guardians fall. Guardians remain. Seal the cracks.
“See, that’s exactly what I didn’t want to hear. Who is sealing what cracks, and how?”
There was a pause. There is an ending. I will end. Helena will end.
I bit back a furious shriek and closed my eyes, practicing my calming breathing. “All right,” I said when I finally felt capable of speaking in a normal tone. “You and I are going to end. I don’t understand why you keep telling me this when you won’t say anything else. I don’t know if it’s something we can prevent, or if it’s inevitable, and either way I don’t know how to prepare for it. Can’t you please give me something else? Some hint?”
Nothing happened, but the oracle’s attention was still present. Finally, I thought, Lose the battle. Win the war, and the oracle retreated.
I did some more calming breathing as I thought about this. Losing battles did not seem the way to win a war, and even if it was, I still had no context for the cryptic remark. We’d already lost battles—was that the key? Losing the right battles?
I rubbed the bridge of my nose against the headache forming behind my eyes and looked around for the woman’s augury. I hoped it was a book called Stop Being Stupid. Probably there wasn’t any such book, but I could hope.
It was actually a book titled Driven to Distraction, which was almost as good. I certainly felt the factional nonsense had driven me to distraction. I handed her the book with a narrow-eyed stare. “$650. Judy will take payment.”
The woman had the decency to look embarrassed. I accepted the next augury slip and walked away.
When I returned, there were more Ambrosites, and all of them were whispering as if they were in church. The whispering increased when I appeared. With luck, that meant all of the ones who’d been present for my angry speech were telling the others about it.
After the fourth augury, I came back to find Viv and Wallach waiting near the counter. “Hi!” I said, feeling much more cheerful. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn.”
“We’re in no hurry,” Wallach said. He looked awfully relaxed, as did Viv. She wasn’t bouncing the w
ay she had yesterday, though she still looked as chipper as always.
She still looked chipper when I finally reached their augury, despite how bored she must be at waiting. I unfolded the paper. Where can we find the right joints? “Interesting,” I said.
“It’s starting to come together,” Wallach said. “Faster than I expected, actually.”
I nodded and went into the oracle. The bright blue light of an augury glowed very nearby, bright enough that it made the rest of the room look dim. I edged through the narrow aisles until I came to the shelf where the augury lay.
Except it was two auguries. A year ago, that would have sent me into a panic. Now I knew it was just the oracle being helpful. I took the first, a fat, oversized hardcover titled…I blushed. The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra. I hoped Wallach was as hard to embarrass as Viv. I opened the cover to see Darius Wallach, $2250 written inside in silver ink. I closed the book and tucked it securely under my arm. There wasn’t anything salacious on the cover, but I still felt its contents would be visible to everyone in the store.
Then I reached for the second augury, which was on a higher shelf and required me to stretch. Most likely, this meant Lucia was on her way. The oracle seemed to anticipate her requests more than most people.
The book was a slim paperback with a colorful cover depicting a transforming teen. Animorphs. The title was The Warning. “I guess you never know,” I said, flipping the book open.
Inside, the silver ink spelled out the words Helena Davies, No Charge.
12
I riffled through the pages as if more information might leap out at me. “A warning,” I said. “Why do I need a warning? I’m already prepared for the worst.”
The oracle didn’t respond. “And maybe it’s not that. Maybe it means something else.” It reminded me that I had yet to interpret the Old Tin Sorrows augury, though I’d finished reading the book last night. It had been intense, and disturbing, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Now I had two auguries to deal with, and no guarantee that they were related. “All right. Thanks.”
I handed the big book to Wallach, whose eyebrows went up. Viv giggled. “I don’t see what this has to do with our question,” she said.
“I do,” Wallach said, but he didn’t elaborate. He paid for the book, and he and Viv left without any more conversation. I felt a little forlorn. Usually Viv chatted with me when she came into the store…but now she had a job, and chatting probably wasn’t allowed.
It took until almost five o’clock for the last Ambrosites to clear out, by which time I felt frazzled and headachy and a little embarrassed at my outburst. But when I mentioned that last to Judy, she said, “They deserved it, and you know it. I wish I’d recorded it so I could play it for everyone who comes to the store. And put it on permanent loop for my father. You’d think he would see the importance of not building tension, but no. Maybe this thing with the familiars will change his mind.”
“Maybe.” I picked up my Animorphs book and flipped through it. “Did you ever read these?”
“Nope. Why? I thought they looked dumb, honestly.”
“They’re not dumb. I read a few when I was young and liked them okay. I just don’t remember any details that might help interpret this augury. Except the kids are fighting alien invaders that can take over human hosts, so there’s that similarity.”
“Well, it’s short,” Judy said. “It shouldn’t take you long to go through it.”
“I hope not.” I set it aside and stretched, making my spine crackle with a series of tiny pops. “I have another therapy session tonight.”
“What’s your therapist like?”
I yawned and covered it with my hand. “She’s very matter-of-fact. Doesn’t try to comfort me when something upsets me, which is nice. I like her in a distant way—like, we’re never going to be buddies, and that’s okay.”
“Interesting.” Judy headed past me toward the break room. “I’m going to sweep, and then if you don’t mind I want to leave early. I need a shower before tonight. Party at Father’s house, and they’ll almost certainly be talking about the familiars crisis.”
“Sounds fun. I’m glad I’m not you.”
“Yeah, you just have to face your personal demons,” Judy said.
The corridor to Green 1 felt shorter this time, possibly because I knew what to expect at the end of it. Also, at that time of evening, the node was at its busiest, and a lot of people nodded or waved to me as I passed. It was all so friendly I almost forgot why I was there. My grip on my notebook, though, kept me from becoming complacent. I was nervous about showing my list to Sydney. She’d said it would be revelatory, and that was true, but what if she’d meant revelatory to her? I couldn’t imagine what a trained psychologist, or whatever a LCSW was, might make of my recitation of traumas. It felt like she’d asked me to strip naked so she could criticize my posture.
The Wardens at the central desk were, again, unfamiliar to me. It made me wonder how many bone magi Lucia employed that I knew so few of them. “Ms. Campbell,” the woman hailed me. She was tiny and looked younger than me, but her smile was confident. “You can wait right over there, and Sydney will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks.” I took a seat in the indicated direction and positioned my notebook on my lap.
Almost immediately, the nearest door opened, and Sydney emerged. She was wearing another shapeless, flowing dress, this one turquoise blue. My favorite color. “Hi, Helena. Come this way, please.”
The hall and the office hadn’t changed except for there being a dark blotch on the wall farther down the hallway where a bulb had burned out. Sydney saw me looking at it and said, “It takes Maintenance time to get to all the little things. Personally, I think they should give us a box of lightbulbs so we can handle it ourselves, but that would make too much sense.”
I sat in the chair I’d used last time and again set my notebook on my lap. Sydney seated herself opposite me and said, “Well. How have you been?”
“Okay, I guess. You heard about the familiars? And the Bridgerton Node?”
“I did. I admit I’m more frightened by the deaths of the familiars than by the attack. If the invaders can reach that far, who knows what else they might be capable of?”
I shook my head. “I bet they took advantage of some link they have to all invaders, even the bound familiars. If they could do that to humans, they would have already.”
“I hope you’re right.” Sydney held out a hand. “Is that your list?”
I opened the notebook to the right page and handed it over. Sydney took it and read down the page, slowly enough that I became nervous again. If she thought I was unhinged…or if I wasn’t unhinged, but should be…
“This is thorough,” Sydney finally said. “I admit I’m surprised at how much you’ve been through. How did you feel, writing all this out?”
I considered that. “At times, I felt relieved, like I’d lost a burden I’d carried for so long it felt like part of me. Other times, though, it felt like living through it again. Like—” I swallowed. “When the Mercy were actually in the store, and Mr. Santiago held a knife to my throat to get me to do what he wanted…I don’t think I’ll ever forget how that felt.”
“Understandable.” Sydney interlaced her fingers and rested them on her knee. “Does that memory bother you often?”
“Sometimes. It’s always unexpected, though. I’ll be doing something completely unrelated—I won’t even be in the store—and that memory springs up and I have to stop what I’m doing and calm myself.”
“I see. It’s that realistic a memory?”
“Very.” I realized my breathing was ragged and took a deep breath to slow it down.
Sydney looked at me as if she knew what I was doing, though I was sure I hadn’t been obvious. “Sometimes, when our memories of something traumatic are powerful,” she said, “it’s because our minds are trying to make those events turn out differently. As if dealing with them differently now
will alter the original event.”
I thought about this. It was certainly true that all my most terrible memories, the ones I had trouble shaking, were of things I wished had happened differently. “That makes sense,” I said. “But I know I can’t change the past, so why does it happen?”
“Your head knows you can’t change the past, but your heart doesn’t.” Sydney leaned forward as if to give her words greater emphasis. “And you’ll go on doing it until you’ve accepted those events as part of who you are now. Particularly the ones that have changed you in ways you don’t like.”
The eye of memory immediately threw up an image of Santiago the way he’d looked just after I shot him, that horrible look of pain and bewilderment, and I closed my eyes against it. “How do I do that?” I said.
“We’ll start by working on those distressing thoughts,” Sydney said. “Do you know what mindfulness is?”
“I’ve heard people talk about it, but I don’t know more than that.”
“Mindfulness is about living in the moment. Being fully present and aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not being overwhelmed by what’s going on around us or our distracting thoughts. Everything you’ve endured is in the past, but you’ve been reliving it as if it were the present. You know that’s not true. Practicing mindfulness will help anchor you in the actual present, and allow you to eventually leave those memories where they belong—in your past.”
“That sounds difficult.” Actually, it sounded kind of New-Agey, not something I could ever see myself doing, but I’d committed to this, and I could give it a try.
“It takes practice. I’ll teach you some meditation techniques, but the rest is up to you.” Sydney sat back in her chair. “The other thing I’d like you to do is more difficult. I want you to choose three events from this list you feel are most disturbing. Maybe the ones you remember most often, or the ones that hurt the most—you decide how you want to go about it. Then for each of those events, I want you to write a detailed description of what happened and how you felt at the time. You should be as open as you can—I won’t read these.”
The Book of Destiny Page 13