When You Believe

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  Sariel? Sariel? It’s me, Miranda. I know I shouldn’t be calling—I mean thinking—you, but I made a mistake. I’m here in some woman’s house. Not some woman—Kallisto’s house, you know, the one who almost killed you. I don’t know where the house is. I got really upset tonight, and I wanted you, even though you wanted me to forget everything. I’ve been able lately to conjure the gray. I don’t know why. But I was so crazy mad at my mom, my sister, Dan, that I decided to go find you. I know it was stupid. But I did it, and I’m here. She has me all tied up but with nothing I can see, and I can’t seem to bring back the matter. You have to find me. Look at my thoughts—see the room. I know I’m in a basement because there are no windows. Nothing. Find me. Sariel, please.

  Miranda opened her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling her tears about ready to start again. For a few moments, she waited for a message back, but there was nothing but her own thoughts, her fear racing back and forth in her head like a top.

  There had to be someone else she could call. Maybe there was a way to put out a telepathic all-points bulletin, a memory 911. But that would mean Kallisto and Quain would hear it, too. Who else? Brennus? He wouldn’t come find her because he probably still thought she was a spy. But then she thought of the soft air of Hilo, the sweet tang of pina colada. Felix.

  She closed her eyes. Felix, it’s me, Miranda. I did something stupid, and I can’t find Sariel. Not that he wants me to find him. He tried to take away all my memories, but it didn’t work. Anyway, his horrible ex has me trapped. Kallisto has me. I’m in this basement. If you get this message, please try to find me. I don’t know where I am. Please!

  Letting the message out into the air, Miranda began to cry for real, her sobs echoing as her words had. The basement seemed to grow colder, the air thicker, the walls pressing closer.

  She should have known better. What had she imagined? That because she saw a tiny bit of Sariel’s life and world she could merge into it? Miranda had never fit in, not with her family, not with anyone. Hadn’t Jack taught her that she was ordinary, average, not worth the effort?

  “You’re so pedestrian,” Jack had said a week before he’d left. “All this feeling in your poems, when the focus should be on language. The image. Not the body. What kind of poet do you think you are, anyway?”

  He had taken a hit off his joint. “It’s embarrassing. You’re embarrassing.”

  So he’d left, taking her pedestrian poems with him. Jack had left, as Sariel had.

  And now, she was locked in a basement. No one was coming to rescue her, just like always.

  Miranda cried for a long time, liking the way her sobs felt, her insides active even if her body couldn’t move. She cried for herself all alone and unsaved in this room, but also for herself in Viv’s bedroom, listening to the story she still couldn’t believe. She cried for the parents she would never know. She cried for the image of Sariel hanging like a rag doll in the air, pathetic and hopeless. She wept as she remembered the feeling of Sariel’s fingers on her forehead. She cried for whatever terrible thing Quain was going to do to the world. She cried for Dan loving her when she couldn’t love him back. She cried until there was nothing left inside her but fear, and somehow, she managed to fall asleep.

  When she woke up, the room was light again, the same sick yellow it had been before. Licking her dry lips, Miranda looked around, her eyes watering from the sudden vision.

  Kallisto stood before her, smiling her terrible smile.

  “Nice rest?”

  Miranda swallowed, not knowing what to say. She’d cried out all her tears, but now her nose was running, and she couldn’t move her hand to wipe it.

  “Nothing to say? No last words? Just a little snotty sniveling?” Kallisto stared at her and then turned away, shaking her head. “Pathetic.”

  “I’m not pathetic,” Miranda croaked, her throat raw from sobbing.

  “Oh, no? You give me the information that keeps us about five steps ahead of Adalbert’s pathetic ‘army,’ and then I get to get rid of you. How is that not pathetic?”

  “At least I haven’t betrayed anyone,” Miranda said quietly. “I saw how much Sariel loved you and then what you did to him. And I know that you are going to do something that will hurt us all. The entire world. That’s pathetic. If I’m going to die, at least I’m dying honorably.”

  Kallisto stared at her, her lush mouth pressed tight, her eyes sharp. But then, like magic, she lightened, let out a little laugh, her eyes shining. “Nice try. But no, it won’t work. And truth? You don’t even know who you are. Yes, I know—the adoption. I saw it all. You’re going to die a mystery. You won’t have a moment to even write about it, little Miss Pathetic Poet.”

  More tears gathered in Miranda’s throat. Kallisto was right. She would never know who she was or how she was able to travel through matter. She would never get to know Viv’s new baby, Colin. She would never find out how Sariel really felt about her or why he thought he needed to erase everything.

  “Oh, he’s smitten,” Kallisto said. “I can tell. You don’t know Sariel like I do, but I can see how much he truly loves you. What a life you could have had together. But, alas. A war interrupted your little love affair. Say good-bye, Miranda.”

  “No!”

  “No good-byes? Well, think good-bye anyway.”

  As Miranda watched, Kallisto raised her arm and held her hand toward Miranda, palm out. “Quain says thank you for the information and wants you to know your death helped bring him to kingship.”

  As Kallisto stood before her, palm raised, Miranda closed her eyes. Good-bye, Viv, she thought. Good-bye, Mom. Sariel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make trouble.

  “Good-bye, Miranda,” Kallisto said, her voice smooth, almost soothing. “See you in the next life.”

  Miranda clenched her teeth, waiting, the air between her and Kallisto still and thick and sharp.

  But then there was a sound like a tear, the room slashed jagged with sound. Miranda opened her eyes, her vision full of people in swirling robes.

  There! someone yelled, or at least Miranda thought someone yelled, the sound ringing in her head. The people turned, moving around, looking up into flashes of light. One person was pounded against a wall, another thrown down on the floor. Miranda heard the sounds of blows to bodies, soft flesh thuds, cracks of bone and skull. She smelled a flash of fire, heat, something scorched.

  “Cesser,” someone cried out, arms flung wide, a flash of harsh quick light in the room. “Geler!”

  Miranda turned her head as far as she could, looking for Kallisto, breathing in when she found the woman’s thoughts but not her body. What a waste, Kallisto thought. Look at him. Look at how marvelous he is, still. What a pitiful waste.

  Was Sariel here? Did he hear her call? Miranda wanted to shout for him, but she knew her voice would drown in the explosions of sound in the room.

  Then Miranda heard another voice crawling in her head, a low murmur as a man whispered with Kallisto. As he spoke, Miranda felt the room vibrate, heat up, and she realized that she could barely breathe. The people began to crowd around her, and she noticed that they were looking upward, so she did as well. There was Kallisto hovering over them, a reddish gold light around her. From the ground, one of the people shot out a ball of what looked like fire, but Kallisto deflected it with a wall of black energy. Someone else shot out something silver, but it bounced off the energy, too. Another person was chanting something in French.

  But nothing they did seemed to matter. Kallisto laughed behind her black energy and then, in a brief electric blast, disappeared.

  “Follow her, Lutalo. Baris!” a woman’s voice cried, and in a whoosh, two of the robed people disappeared.

  The room was suddenly silent, everyone, including Miranda, staring up at the ceiling where Kallisto had hung just seconds before. But then the robed people looked down, taking off their hoods, and stared at her. In front of her, just as she had hoped, was Sariel. And Felix, both of them flushed from exer
tion, their eyes dark and on her.

  “Sariel!” Miranda cried. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe you got here. I’ve been calling and calling. And Felix. Oh, I can’t believe it.” She swallowed, trying to keep herself from crying. Finally, this was going to end. She smiled at Sariel and then looked at the other people with relief. But no one said a word. A man standing next to Sariel and Felix was glaring at her with eyes the same shape as Sariel’s. The rest of the group was quiet, too quiet, and Miranda couldn’t find her breath, suddenly feeling like she was in as bad a predicament as she had been minutes before with Kallisto.

  Sariel pushed away a cautioning hand and walked forward, staring down at her. She wished she weren’t trapped in the chair. All she wanted was to have him pick her up and take her home.

  “I’m stuck. Can’t move a thing. She put some kind of, like, rope spell on me. Can you get me out?” Miranda asked.

  “Don’t touch that spell, lad,” the big man next to Felix said. “You don’t know what Kallisto did to it.”

  A woman in yellow robes walked closer, standing next to Sariel. She was dark and imperious and almost as frightening as Kallisto. “Do you know her? Was Labaan correct?”

  Miranda looked from the woman’s face to Sariel’s. Did he know her? Did he know her? “Holy cow! Of course he knows me! Sariel, tell her!”

  Sariel was silent, a strange look on his face, confused and tense. He crossed his arms, his lips pressed tight. Miranda needed her hands, her arms, her legs. She needed to stand up and shake him. Turning to Felix, she almost yelled, “Felix, tell her! I went to your house. In Hilo. You made your special drinks. Why don’t you tell her?”

  Startled, Felix looked at the big man and then joined Sariel in front of Miranda. Another, younger woman walked closer, as did a man with wild gray hair and slightly spacey eyes. She felt their minds working their way toward hers and she tried to close down, shut off her mind from their questions about her. How dare they do this to her! It was Sariel’s fault she was here.

  But no one said a thing, and they moved even closer to her, their robes forming a curtain around Miranda.

  The room fell silent. All of them stared down at her and then, finally, Sariel said something.

  “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The woman—Miranda—stared up at him, puffy-eyed, amazed, and on the verge of anger. In contrast to her pale, lightly freckled face, her red curls were vibrant and almost uncontrolled. She was shivering, unable to warm herself, bound by an esclavage spell Kallisto must have put on her.

  “Why are you lying?” she said, trying, he could see, to avoid tears. “Of course you’ve seen me. You’ve—you’ve done more than that.”

  Rufus almost snorted, and Sariel heard Nala think, This isn’t funny.

  “Listen,” Sariel said, “I don’t know who you are, except that your name is supposedly Miranda and you called out to me and to my brother Felix, your thoughts making it through Kallisto’s protections. But whoever you are or whatever your name is, you were quite clearly important to Kallisto—or maybe you are part of Kallisto’s plan.”

  Nala pushed past him a bit and stood directly in front of Miranda. “What did Kallisto want with you?”

  Miranda bowed her head, her shoulders shaking. For a moment, Sariel felt a wave of overwhelming sadness pulse from her, and he wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, free her of the magic that kept her on the chair. But then, as quickly as the feeling came, it passed, and he felt Felix grabbing his arm.

  Tears on her face and dripping down her neck, Miranda took in a deep breath and raised her eyes to his. “I was trying to find you,” she said, looking at Sariel. “So I did what you taught me. I know I shouldn’t be able to do it because I’m Moyenne—”

  “Moyenne?” Nala said. “It can’t be.”

  Miranda nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a big surprise to everyone lately. Talk of the town.”

  Sariel almost smiled, liking how even in this cold, ugly room where she was bound, exhausted, frightened and surrounded by strangers, this woman, Miranda, had been able to joke.

  “Go on,” Nala said.

  “So I thought about the gray just like you told me. And I tried to find you, keeping your face in my mind. I heard a voice I thought was yours calling me, and I went toward it. But it wasn’t you, obviously. It was Kallisto.” She paused, shaking her head. “You never told me about her. She wasn’t so shy. She showed me what she did to you before she left. How she—how she tortured you.”

  “Where do I know you from?” Sariel said harshly, backing away slightly. “How do you know so much about me? How do you know Felix?”

  She stared up at him, her eyes full. “Are you serious?”

  “Never more so.”

  Shaking her head, Miranda lowered her eyes. “Just read my mind. I know you can do it. You tried to take away my memories, but it didn’t work for some reason. I woke up the next morning, and they were all still there. Go on, read them.”

  Nala pushed Sariel closer, eager, he could tell, to find out more about Miranda. But Rufus put a hand on his arm.

  “Be careful, lad,” Rufus said. “You don’t know what’s she’s got in there. She’s probably as safe as a land mine.”

  “What do you see, Mazi?” Sariel asked.

  Mazi closed his eyes and then seemed to squint, as if his vision was slipping just out of sight.

  “I don’t know,” he said, opening his eyes. “I can’t see much. A definite block from Kallisto, but it’s not dangerous, just solid. But I don’t see a spell that can hurt you. I don’t feel anything about this one, either, that connects her to Quain.”

  Sariel nodded and kneeled in front of Miranda. Her knees were shaking, and he had that same desire to touch her again, and his mind burst with brief memory of—what? Wings? Flight? A dark enclosed space? A tiny voice?

  “Lad,” Rufus said. “Just read her mind.”

  “I need to touch your head,” Sariel said to Miranda. “Usually I don’t have to, but I’m not sure what little surprise Kallisto might have left behind.”

  Biting her lip, Miranda looked at him, anger and fear strung through the lines of fatigue on her face. He could tell she wanted to look fierce, but there were tears in her eyes and her bottom lip quivered.

  “I don’t know why you are pretending, Sariel,” she whispered. “Even if you thought it was safest for me not to know about you, about the Croyant, I thought—I thought…”

  “Shhh,” he said, more gently than he wanted to. He lifted a hand and placed it on the side of her head, her soft curls under his fingertips. Closing his eyes, he tried to discover a path into her memory. But all he could find were the moments that had just transpired. Kallisto in the air, the Croyant fighting back, the group hovering around her, staring down. He felt the way her body felt trapped in the chair, her discomfort, the throbbing skin at her ankles and wrists. And then there were her feelings. Regret, anger, fear, resentment, grief, and—and love. For him. But he was walled off from the rest, as if Kallisto had shut down the woman’s mind with steel.

  He opened his eyes and then slowly took his hand away from her head. Standing slowly, he breathed out.

  “There’s a block. A big one. I can’t get to anything past the time we got here.”

  Nala shook her head. “That is unfortunate.”

  “Great,” Miranda said, almost yelling. “What now? Are you going to kill me, too? You shouldn’t do that because Kallisto said some things before she disappeared. You need me. And I can tell you what she took from me. She went into my mind and took a lot of information. Things you couldn’t take away, Sariel. She’s going to use them against you all. Everyone. All of us. God! Why can’t you believe me?”

  “Lassie,” Rufus said, his voice calmer now. “We don’t know you. None of us has ever seen you before in our lives. Not only that, you say you’re Moyenne and that’s not possible if you traveled through the matter. As far as I know, you’d b
e the first Moyenne ever in history to figure it out. So how would you feel in our position? Would you be keen to free us and let us go about our business?”

  Miranda stared at Rufus as he spoke, cocking her head. “Are you Sariel’s brother Rufus?”

  Rufus nodded. “Exactly my point. How, by God, could you possibly know that?”

  “What did Kallisto say?” Nala said, ignoring Rufus’s question. “You must tell us.”

  “Can you let me out of this chair?” Miranda asked. “Or at least take off this rope spell? I have no powers. I barely got myself here. I can’t make fire come out of my hand. And I’m not a land mine.”

  Sariel bent down again and looked at Miranda. Even cold and shivering and angry as hell, she was beautiful. He couldn’t read her mind and he didn’t know her at all, but he was sure she wouldn’t hurt him, other than to give him a slap or two. Maybe he deserved the punishment, but he didn’t know that either.

  “I think we can let you go,” Sariel said. “But please don’t try any magic you don’t know how to do.”

  She nodded, and Sariel closed his eyes, found the spell and cracked it open. He heard Miranda sigh. He opened his eyes and saw her rubbing her tender wrists, which were red and slightly swollen. Even with simple spells, Kallisto was mean-spirited.

  “So who are you?” Sariel stood up and crossed his arms.

  “God, that question. With your magic, all you people ever do is ask me who I am. Why don’t you just do some kind of magic and figure it out for yourselves?”

  “You’ve been around a group of us before?”

  Closing her eyes, Miranda shook her head and sighed, still rubbing her wrists.

  Sariel looked at Nala and thought, Can I heal her?

  Nala nodded, and Sariel said, “Here, give me your hands.”

  Miranda almost jumped and pulled her hands back. “No. No healing this time. Stay away from me. I don’t want you to touch me ever again. Just let me tell you what I know, and I’ll take the bus home.”