We’d decided to do both things at the same time, instead of sequentially, partly to minimize our time and exposure out here, but also to provide each group a form of potential help, in the event one of us needed backup. For the same reason, Wreg and Jon planned to patrol the waters offshore in the boat after they saw Loki and the others off...just in case anything went wrong with our team.
Not that we expected anything to go wrong.
I fought to keep my light and focus off Revik, but it was hard when I felt his nerves abruptly worsen, hitting his light with enough charge that I looked up at him again, in spite of myself. He didn’t return my gaze exactly, but I felt him react to my stare, too, so eventually I looked away. Fighting to focus on the meeting itself, I shoved my reactions to him out of my mind.
Even so, I still had to bite my lip and tell myself not to read too much into whatever the hell was going on with him.
When I felt the group of aleimic lights approaching, my own nerves worsened.
I fought that out of my light, too, throwing on a harder, more leadership-type cloak, along with a somewhat less friendly expression on my face.
I didn’t know what to expect when the Children of the Bridge finally emerged from the trees, but the sheer number of them took me aback.
I counted at least forty seers with my eyes, most of them well-shielded.
Infiltrators.
Well, not all of them. But most of them.
I picked Dalejem out of the line, and frowned a little, in spite of myself. That frown deepened when I saw him looking at Revik, his green and violet eyes reflecting sunlight.
Jerking my eyes off his dark hair and high-cheekboned face, I forced my gaze over the rest of the group, noting they covered a pretty broad age span, but the majority were probably somewhere in the two-hundred to three-hundred year range.
In the middle I saw a woman, who might have been even older.
She didn’t feel like an infiltrator, though.
I didn’t really have a basis for knowing either of those things, really.
It was more a feeling. She looked young, like most seers tended to look young...I would have pegged her at early forties, if she’d been human, maybe even younger. She had an Asian cast to her features, like a lot of seers, and bright green eyes that were a few shades darker than mine. They were actually closer to Dalejem’s in color, although without the violet ring that made his stand out so intensely.
As for the not being an infiltrator thing, well...I was more certain about that, but it was harder to put into words. She just didn’t feel like an infiltrator. Her light had a different quality. It wasn’t soft exactly, but it didn’t have that charged aggression I associated with infiltrators, either. It also felt more open...maybe even more transparent...than that of most infiltrators.
She looked familiar to me somehow.
I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, what it was or who it was she reminded me of. I knew I’d never actually met her before, at least not since I’d known myself as a seer and had learned how to directly access a seer’s photographic memory.
A man stood next to her, too.
After a few seconds, I found myself staring at him, as well.
He had blue eyes, like a really light, turquoise blue, that seemed to shine with their own inner glow. He was handsome, and his light brown hair was bleached almost full blond in the sun. The blond color alone was unusual enough on a seer that I couldn’t help but stare at him, and at his tanned features, that almost reminded me of Balidor’s, they were so human-like.
But his eyes betrayed him as seer, even more than his height. That, and the way he moved, even apart from the heavier stillness I could feel around his light.
He didn’t feel very young, either.
He might have been older than the woman or younger, but I still didn’t understand seer aging well enough to be able to guess either of their ages with any certainty.
Next to me, I felt another spark of reaction off of Revik’s light, a denser, more complicated one that time. I fought not to look at him, but felt an apology in that somewhere, too, what might have been guilt, strong enough that it felt tinged with fear...what might even have been panic. He reached for my hand then and I finally looked up at him, half-expecting to find him staring at Dalejem again. But he wasn’t.
Instead, he was staring at the woman standing in the middle of the group, the one with the green eyes and the long, straight, black hair.
Revik gripped my hand tightly in his, even as his mind opened to mine suddenly, blurting words, a string that came out so fast it was almost unintelligible.
Gods, Allie, he sent, that panic rising in his light. Allie...honey. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t...I couldn’t tell you. She made me vow it. When you were fucking born they made me vow it...before I knew you at all. I’m so sorry, Allie. Please forgive me...
I stared up at him, my mouth curling into a frown, confused.
Sorry? What the hell was he sorry about? Tell me what?
My confusion only deepened as I sorted through his words, then followed his eyes back to where he was staring at the green-eyed woman again.
That time, though, I paused on her face.
When I did, something clicked.
Once it had, I couldn’t unsee it, even as I found myself understanding suddenly why her narrow face looked so familiar.
She looked like me.
Replaying Revik’s words, I stared at her, then at the taller, blond-haired and blue-eyed seer who stood next to her, smiling at me. I realized then, that both of them looked like me, albeit in different ways. I saw myself in those faces...and even in their bodies, especially hers.
It hit me then, that both of them were looking at me, too.
As in, they were looking only at me, ignoring everyone else in our party, including Revik.
I also realized both of them had tears in their eyes.
Pain ripped through my light in that bare whisper of a half-second. Some part of me reacted before my brain had time to catch up, igniting a fire in some fucked-up, broken-down, shadowed, hidden crack in my heart that I hadn’t even known existed.
Then I did exactly what Lily had done, when she first recognized me.
I burst into tears.
17
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS
I’M NOT SURE how we ended up where we ended up.
I felt like I got led around in a daze, like people were talking to me but I couldn’t comprehend any of their words.
I don’t know if I blacked out, exactly...or even lost time.
When I could finally focus my brain again, though, I found myself sitting on a blanket on the grass. Other blankets were spread around me, also holding seers sitting cross-legged and kneeling, sharing drinks and even eating.
I heard them talking about the Displacement Lists.
I heard them talking about the seer we’d learned about in Macau, the one who was collecting seers and humans from those same Displacement Lists, and bringing them to Dubai.
The Displacement Lists that apparently my mother...as in my biological mother, who until now I hadn’t known existed...had put in a bank vault in New York for me to find.
That information kept looping in my mind. It looped and looped, meaningless in a way, yet somehow tangible enough that my mind couldn’t help but fixate on it as the most important thing. My mother had created or found or stolen the original Displacement Lists. She’d put them in a security deposit box in a bank in New York. That meant she’d put the book there, too. The book no one could read. The book that disappeared sometime during the tsunami, when Cass kidnapped me. The book filled with all of those weird symbols.
I stared down at the sand, fighting to think through this, to make it mean something.
I felt Revik’s fingers on my skin and looked up at him, unable to comprehend his presence next to me, too. We more or less filled a clearing I didn’t remember entering, one that stood just beh
ind a row of half-broken palm trees. Some of those trees still managed to remain standing, following whatever series of ecological disasters happened here. When I looked down the row of tree trunks, however, I could see that many had not, and lay like broken kindling or chopsticks, pointing down the beach and sometimes, up into the jungle itself.
I could see the ocean from between the curved, graceful trunks that remained standing.
Everything else felt unreal to me.
Revik sat next to me on the blanket, his hand still holding mine, almost too tight, the fingers of his other hand stroking my bare arm. I didn’t try to free myself, but I found myself staring at our locked hands, almost confused by those, too, and by the hand of his that stroked me, wearing my human father’s ring.
On my other side and slightly in front of me, the woman with the dark green eyes sat, drinking in my face in a way that made it hard to look at her. She and the blond-haired man stared at me like they didn’t know what to do with me precisely, either. The emotion coming off the two of them was almost more than I could bear.
Unlike Lily, I had trouble doing this purely from my light and heart.
I found myself trying to think instead, to make sense of this.
The Lists. She left the Lists there for me to find.
I shoved that out of my mind, too, fighting to understand how I actually felt.
I felt weird flickers of irrationality in there, too...like I was betraying my human parents somehow, by even sitting here with these people.
Revik knew them. He’d met them before. That much was clear, too.
I didn’t know how I felt about that, honestly. It was too soon to feel anything about it, I guess, but I could feel that panic in his light, and still, yeah, a lot of guilt that he hadn’t told me. Even as I thought it, I watched the woman who had introduced herself to me as my mother, and also as Kali, lean over towards Revik, touching his arm and saying something to him in a language I didn’t know, that sounded Asian, but not like anything I’d heard in China.
I fought not to flinch when I saw the man who’d introduced himself to me as Uye and also as my father stiffen, watching his wife with Revik.
I saw the wariness rise to his blue eyes; I couldn’t help but feel the aggression there, too.
When he caught me looking at him, though, he smiled. The smile touched his light blue eyes, making them dance.
“Vietnamese,” he said then.
I stared at him blankly, trying to ignore the conversation still going on between my mother and Revik, even though Revik was squeezing my hand tighter again, and sounded almost angry as he spoke to the female seer.
Uye motioned between Kali and Revik with his fingers, smiling again as he offered me a plate full of what looked like pieces of fried fish.
“The language,” he explained. “They’re speaking Vietnamese.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure what to say to that.
“They met in Saigon,” he added.
I nodded to that, too, still unable to think of much to say.
“Gotcha,” I said.
The man, Uye, leaned over towards me, clasping my arm in his hand, sending a furnace blast of heat at my chest. So much love lived in that, and coursed through his light, that I felt my chest fight to keep up, my heart stuttering as I both fought to keep it out and to let it in in the same breath. When I looked up at him again, I fought not to cry, even as I saw tears in his eyes. He didn’t let go of my arm, and as he held it, I found myself remembering him again.
I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to. Remember, that is.
He sent me another dense pulse of heat.
I’m so sorry, daughter, he murmured in my mind.
When I looked up again, he still had tears in his eyes, but he smiled at me, even as he seemed to be at somewhat of a loss. I could tell he wanted to hold me, but he didn’t know if he should do that, either, so he just continued to grip my arm, holding out the plate of fish towards me with his free hand.
“You should eat something,” he said, still smiling at me.
Something about the absurdity of that made me snort a laugh. When I did, he laughed too, but when I looked up, he was crying again.
I could feel that grief on him, and that time, I closed my eyes, looking away.
I was wiping my own face with the back of my hand, when I realized that Revik and the woman who’d called herself my mother weren’t talking anymore. Instead, I could feel both of them looking at me, worry rippling in different currents off both of their lights.
Then Kali reached for me tenatively, clasping my other arm, meaning the one her husband wasn’t already holding on to, the one Revik had been stroking with his fingers.
“I hope you will not be angry with Revik,” she said to me, speaking English.
Somehow, in all of that, the main thing I noticed was that she had a perfect, West Coast, American accent. She could have been from California.
“...I hope you know I made him vow to me,” she added. “That he would not tell you that he and I had met...or anything about who I am. Or about your father.”
I nodded to that, but I didn’t look up at Revik. He still held the hand attached to the arm Kali now held, too, I realized. All three of them held me now, even as all three of them wrapped me in their light, as if afraid I might explode...or maybe run away.
“Run away, yes,” Kali said, laughing a little as she wiped her own eyes. She smiled at me, once more clasping my forearm in both of her hands. “I think that is probably more accurate...more than exploding.”
I just looked at her, numb.
I knew I hadn’t said much. I didn’t know what they expected me to say, truthfully.
You don’t have to say anything, Uye sent to me, his thoughts firm.
You really do not, Kali added, gripping me tighter in her long fingers.
Only Revik remained silent.
I realized that in some ways, it was harder to look at him or to feel anything from him than it was with these two seers that I knew but didn’t know.
I could feel Kali wanting to tell me things.
I felt pieces of that in her light, images of her and Uye in the periphery of my vision. I felt them watching feeds with my face in them. I felt them watching the Barrier and working with infiltrators...meeting with Vash in Asia, even as Revik watched over me on the other side of the world. I felt them before that, walking a beach I recognized from my own childhood. I saw the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, and a long pier where they gazed out at the ocean.
Somehow, feeling them there, even just in that brief glimpse, choked off my breath a second time, even as the image whispered away, disappearing into the darkness behind my eyes.
They’d been close.
All of this time, they’d been close, but they’d never come near me.
I could feel them wanting to explain that, too. I felt the inadequacy of words, mostly from my father, even more than Kali. I felt him wanting to try anyway.
But somehow, it wasn’t him I wanted the explanation from.
It was her.
Balidor had said “her” when he talked about the leader of these people. I knew now, without a doubt, that he had to mean Kali herself.
When I looked back at her that time, realizing only then that I’d been staring at Dalejem in the pause, watching him look at our strange foursome sitting apart from all of the others, Kali’s eyes held even more grief than before. That joy I’d seen in them seemed to have dimmed somewhat in the pause, too, and even the teasing glint I’d seen in her eyes when she’d been talking to Revik in that other language.
Seeing the sadness in her eyes intensify, the longer she looked at me, I shook my head, clearing my throat even as I realized a part of me did want to run away.
I didn’t even know where I wanted to go, but something about all of this felt like too much, too fast, and yet not enough, too.
Not nearly enough.
“Will you walk with me?” Kali said then, still gripping my arm.<
br />
I felt reluctance from Uye, and a flush of protectiveness from Revik, too, but I only nodded, still not quite meeting her eyes.
“Okay,” I said, still feeling weirdly numb.
She rose fluidly to her feet, and I found myself looking at the long, green-tinted dress she wore. Conscious suddenly of the black combat pants and shirt I wore myself, and of the fact that sweat stuck to the back of my neck under my long hair, which I had in a pretty non-feminine combat-type braid, I stood up a lot less gracefully, releasing Revik’s hand as I joined her. She motioned me forward with a hand, smiling at me as she invited me to walk ahead of her, and I glanced at Revik in spite of myself, watching him look at Kali with narrowed eyes.
Remembering how Uye had been staring at him when he’d been talking to his wife...my mom, my mind muttered, softer...I felt my light close down even more.
Revik glanced at me in that same pause, almost like he felt that, too.
I couldn’t really hold his gaze, though.
At that point, my head and chest hurt from so many different directions, I couldn’t really think at all. I was still standing there, when Kali seemed to realize I didn’t know where to go, and she reached out to take my hand.
I let her, without thinking about that much, either. I looked down at our entwined fingers after she grasped mine carefully, and when she tugged on me, I followed her wordlessly away from the clearing where everyone sat, down past the half-broken line of damaged palm trees towards the beach and the jagged coast below a high ridge of sand.
I knew that ridge probably marked the high water level after the last tsunami’s waves started to recede. Even so, it baffled me a little, how some of the trees still stood and others had been leveled like so many toothpicks.
Looking out over the debris-strewn beach, with its white sand showing in streaks where it wasn’t covered over in plant bracken and pieces of plywood and trash, I felt even stranger, like I wasn’t really there at all. I took my hand back from Kali after we’d walked about a dozen paces more, shoving both of my hands into the front pockets of my pants.
Allie's War Season Four Page 98