When You Believe

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  For a moment, Sariel couldn’t breathe, only feeling the memory that had floated in his head the past weeks, the small voice in the tiny warm space, a memory that came from the time he knew Laelia Barton.

  “Laelia? My father’s friend?” Sariel turned to her, his body humming with memory. “I knew her.”

  Miranda nodded, her eyes full. “She knew you, too. She told me to follow you. To go to you, as if she trusted you. As if she’d been waiting for you to find me.”

  She pressed her face on his chest, absently running her fingers through the hair on his chest, circling a nipple, and then letting her hand rest on his tight, firm stomach.

  “After I gave Quain all the messages, I was twirling in the white, and she came to me. I didn’t remember who she was, even though some of the memories I’d passed to Quain were hers,” she said. “And then today, I realized I’d known her before that time in the light. Recognized her body. Knew her from the memories in my head.”

  Sariel breathed in, watching the ceiling. He knew Laelia’s touch, the way she’d passed a bubble of memory to him when he was only four years old, a memory that didn’t open until he was sixteen and could understand what had happened to his father.

  “What do you remember about her?” Miranda asked, pushing herself up.

  Stroking her hair, he nodded. “Now I can see how much you look like her. In a weird way, when I first saw you fall into the bar, I thought of her. Connected you two together. The face. The hair.”

  “But you were so little.” Miranda stared down at him.

  Sariel pulled her back down to his body, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Just before my father died, she came to the house. After that visit, I only saw her once more, at my father’s funeral. I can still see her sitting in this big green chair we used to have, laughing. I didn’t know about my gifts then or much about magic except for what my parents had taught me. My life was playing with my brothers outside, doing little tiny bits of magic with toy soldiers, making them move on their own. Creating little funnel clouds in the dust and pretending they were tornadoes the soldiers had to survive. That kind of thing. But when she came to visit that time, I felt something when I saw Laelia. As I walked up to her, I heard her voice and then her thoughts and I heard something else. A beating from inside her. A small river of thoughts coming from a warm, wet, dark place. Something like, Life. Life. Move. Warm.”

  Closing his eyes, he let his memory seep into Miranda’s mind, brought her to the living room, let her see Laelia’s surprised face as she felt Sariel find what she had hidden. There was Laelia’s hand on his head, her quick thought, It’s my secret. Please don’t tell. The way she turned back to Zosime and Hadrian as if nothing were amiss. And because Sariel had been four, nothing was amiss, Laelia’s secret disappeared into the next moment of play and food and rough-and-tumble with Rufus and Felix.

  Miranda gasped, holding him close. “You knew me? You heard me?”

  Sariel nodded because he could barely speak, knowing now what he had felt before, that Miranda’s and his story was older than two weeks—that it had begun long before. He couldn’t believe how connected he and Miranda were even before the night she fell into the meeting. It was as if what the ancients said was true: There are no accidents. No coincidences.

  At the bar that night, when he’d heard Miranda’s thoughts before she had fallen through the door and onto the floor, he’d recognized her. Known her. Remembered the way she wanted to live even when she was too tiny to even be noticed.

  “I didn’t really know that I did, but I remembered you,” he said, his body alive again with nerves and warmth, his hands moving on her body. “That first night, it was like I was searching for a clue, an answer for why you seemed so familiar. Otherwise, I don’t think I would have been so…”

  Miranda lifted her head, smiling even though there were tears on her cheeks. “Fresh? I felt you rubbing my leg, you dog.”

  “And I remember you liking it,” Sariel said. He pulled her to him, taking her face in his hands, looking at her.

  “We’re connected, Miranda. Our stories are connected.”

  He brought her to him, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her lips, her chin. Then she kissed him back, lying down on him, her hand reaching for him, bringing him into her body.

  “Now we’re connected even more,” she said, laughing for a moment, stopping as the laugh turned to breath and feeling as she moved on top of him.

  Sariel watched her, her wild red hair, the curls falling around her shoulders, her breasts swaying over him. And again, like before, he could hear her thoughts. Life. Life. Move. Warm.

  When Sariel woke up in the morning, he felt for Miranda, but she wasn’t in bed. He sat up, alert and almost panicked. Still partly asleep, his thoughts flew to Quain and Kallisto, even though Kallisto was now imprisoned and Quain had vanished. In a partial panic, he imagined that they’d taken her again. He’d never be able to find her this time.

  He sat up, rubbing his face with his hands, ready to tear the blankets off himself and search for her, but there she was, sitting in the stuffed chair by the fireplace dressed in the nightgown she’d thrown off last night, looking through the box he’d brought back from her apartment.

  Hearing his movements, she looked at him, her face wet. She held up a photograph, gently shaking it. “He saved this for me.”

  Sariel got out of bed and put on his jeans, walking over to her and sitting down on the armrest. Miranda handed him the photo, and he held it carefully. There was Laelia just as Sariel remembered her, her hair the same cranberry as Miranda’s, her eyes as blue, but darker, less air and more ocean. Laelia was holding a man around the neck, the man Sariel had first seen in the photograph in Miranda’s bedroom. Steve. Miranda’s father.

  Letting his hand slide onto the image and then into it, Sariel could still pick up the feelings: Laelia’s great love and total fear; Steve’s desire and lust and affection and guilt. His thoughts about his family back home, his split, his feelings of responsibility, his amazement that someone as lovely as Laelia would want him. But at that moment, at the tiny sliver of time that—yes, his father had taken the photo—Hadrian had seen through the camera’s lense, they were happy. In love. A couple completely in love.

  “They loved each other very much,” Sariel said, handing the photograph back to Miranda, who took it, staring a moment longer at her parents’ faces before carefully moving her hands through the box. She pulled out another piece of paper, read it, and then shook her head, sighing, and handed it to Sariel. He took it and read the poem.

  When I think of you, tiny and curled in water,

  It’s hard to imagine that you will come to land

  one day, breathe air, look at me with human eyes.

  So I’ll have to name you, give you permission to

  change

  from sea creature to mammal, name you for the

  world.

  When you rest, bloody and stark on my stomach,

  I’ll name

  you Mirabelle, give you the name that tells you

  what you must

  do, always. Look at Beauty.

  Miranda was crying, her face in her hands. Sariel put the poem on the table and got down on his knees, moving the box from her lap and taking her hands away from her face so he could see her eyes.

  Miranda shook her head, tears hitting his hands and face. “She couldn’t.”

  “What, love? What, my Mirabelle? What couldn’t she do?”

  “She couldn’t look at beauty. She saw only the pain,” Miranda said, her voice filled with sorrow.

  Sariel thought to argue, to tell her that Laelia saw the beauty in her daughter’s eyes, in Steve’s occasional visits, in Hadrian’s friendship, in magic. But Miranda was right. At the end, Laelia had turned from the light, stayed in the same dark swirl of darkness Sariel had run around as a rat, sniffing the wall, finding only dust.

  He bent his head to her thighs, kissing the exposed
flesh, feeling her pulse under his lips. Looking up, he nodded. “Sometimes darkness is comfortable. Easier. After Kallisto left, I could have stayed there. I almost did. But I had my brothers and mother. And now I have you. Laelia turned away from everyone who could have helped her. Her despair took over her life. It wasn’t about you or how much you were worth. It was how much she imagined she didn’t matter.”

  Bending down over him, hugging his neck, her hands on his back, Miranda cried. She was shivering, so he put his arms under hers, began to stand, and picked her up, carrying her to the bed. He put her on the mattress, lay down with her, and covered them up, holding her tightly until she stopped crying and her shivering stopped.

  Finally, she exhaled and kissed his forehead. “I feel like I had that saved up for a long time.”

  “Probably,” Sariel said, “since you felt her absence. You had her for three months. She was your whole world, and then she was gone.”

  Miranda leaned up on an elbow and wiped her eyes. Then she looked at him. “I might have to cry a lot for a while. Are you prepared?”

  Laughing, Sariel reached over to the nightstand and picked up the box of tissues, placing them in front of her. “Like a Boy Scout.”

  She sat up and blew her nose. They were quiet for a while, listening to finches chet-chet-chet outside the window. He slid his hand up and down her leg, memorizing the landscape of ankle, shin, knee, thigh. Slowly, she smoothed his hair, her fingernails zigging lightly over his scalp.

  “What did Adalbert mean?” she said finally.

  “Hmm?” he murmured, pressing a shot of heat into a sore spot he found under her knee. “About what?”

  “About us. Choosing each other over death.”

  At her words, Sariel was back again at the wall, feeling his rat body scrabbling around and around and then turning to face the light, running toward it, changing as he went, his only thought saving Miranda.

  He sat up, pulling her to his side. “Just as Quain took you, he slammed me with an etre tombe curse. It’s like being in, well, limbo. Not dead, not alive. But I couldn’t be dead. I knew I had to find you, so I managed to pull myself out of it. It’s not something I want to try again.”

  She put a hand on his chest, pressing her fingers on his skin like a starfish. “And the light I was in? With Laelia?”

  “That wasn’t a curse,” Sariel said. “You’d been hit with two derangement du matiere spells and then pushed all your energy into Quain. You were—”

  “Dying?” she asked, her voice low.

  He nodded slightly, trying not to relive his feelings when he’d found her on the floor of Adalbert’s house, so still, so pale, her breath the slightest of movements. As he’d bent over her, trying to assess her injuries, he’d felt insane, not caring about anything but filling her body with quick, hot energy, needing her back, alive, with him. It wasn’t until Miranda was conscious and in his arms that he realized he hadn’t heard a thing Felix or Rufus had said. He hadn’t noticed Adalbert, Zosime, and the rest of the group standing around him, sending out all their energy to help bring her back.

  “Laelia told me to listen to you. To go back to you. To choose as she hadn’t,” Miranda said.

  Sariel couldn’t speak. If he’d come a moment later, if Quain hadn’t disappeared, Sariel might have been too late. He’d almost lost her before even having the chance to know her completely.

  “Laelia chose life,” he said, catching his breath. “She gave you what she couldn’t give herself.”

  Again, they were silent. The house was waking, sounds of laughter and the clanking of pots whirling up the stairs. Sariel heard his mother’s voice, a light tease directed toward one of his brothers.

  “Well,” Miranda said. “Today is the day I get to really talk to your mother about your childhood. Hopefully, there will be a lot of embarrassing photos to show me. Maybe you wearing her high heels and a wig or something? And she can tell me about all your boyhood crushes. She can just funnel me a load of memories that I can savor for years to come.”

  Sariel pulled her down on the bed, leaning over her. “You play your cards right, missy. Soon enough, we’ll be at Viv’s house. I know your sister could give me an earful.”

  He kissed her to keep her from saying anything else, her smile of protest under his mouth. But then she was kissing him back, her arms around his neck. He slid his hands under her nightgown, her nipples hard under his fingertips.

  “If you touch me the way you did the night you healed my ankle,” she said in his ear, “I’ll tell you anything you want.”

  Sariel remembered her moan in the air that night, the way she’d sat bolt upright, assuring him she was fine, just fine, her face flushed. Smiling, he took off her nightgown, and his own jeans, and then slid to her feet, holding both in his hands.

  “You mean like this?” He pushed energy through his palms and fingers into her skin, finding her veins, slowly stroking upward. They were connected now in their minds, and he could sense her growing excitement, feel the way his energy already pulsed at her thighs.

  “Yes. Yes,” she said. She threw her arms out beside her, breathing hard. “Please don’t stop this time.”

  Sariel sent more energy through his hands, slowly gliding up her shins, her soft skin radiant to the touch. He stopped moving, feeling his energy lapping just far enough away from her center.

  “Oh, God, Sariel,” she said, breathless. “You’re killing me.”

  She moved a hand to his, urging him upward. So he focused his energy and moved on, almost to her knee.

  Miranda began to pant, her back arching at the energy inside her, and Sariel closed his eyes, thought of nothing else but heat and motion and Miranda, sending up a streak of light directly inside her.

  Her hands dropped away from his, and he couldn’t hear her thoughts as much as he could feel her body, a strong shimmer of nerves and blood and energy radiating from her center in wave upon wave, expanding into her body, rushing underneath him as he lay on top of her legs.

  “Oh,” she whispered, her eyes closed, her body limp. “Sariel.”

  He kept climbing, kissing her on his way, up, pressing his mouth on her wetness, parting her legs with his knee as he lowered himself on top of her, slipping inside her, holding her tight and rocking into her, this woman he loved.

  At breakfast, Sariel sat next to Miranda and across from Fabia at Adalbert’s table. Zosime helped serve up eggs, toast, and ham, while Adalbert fussed at the hob over his oatmeal again. Baris, Lutalo, and Mazi—healed from exhaustion and minor injuries—had departed the day before to meet with the Council and form another plan. Sayblee had just left, kissing Miranda on the cheek and promising to see her soon. From the corner of her eye, Miranda noticed Felix following Sayblee with his eyes, blushing when he saw Miranda’s smile.

  As soon as she disappeared into matter, Sariel put an arm around Miranda. “She means that literally. Sayblee has a habit of just appearing when you least expect her.”

  His blush almost gone, Felix said, “Yeah, like that time in the boys’ bathroom. She got a great loo—”

  “Exactly my point,” Sariel said, shooting Felix a look and a sharp, one-word thought. “But I don’t think I was the Valasay brother she was really looking for.”

  “Really?” Fabia said, smiling. “Do tell.”

  “Sayblee says—” Miranda began.

  “Adalbert,” Felix interrupted, fiddling with his napkin and looking at Adalbert hovering over the steaming pot. “I think he’s a bit crazy about oats,” he whispered. “Wonder what spell he’s invented for them now.”

  “I’ll have you know,” Adalbert said, “that it’s a secret I’ll never share with you!”

  They laughed, and then Rufus sat down next to Fabia, squeezing her hard and kissing her on the cheek.

  “So you two will be off tomorrow,” Rufus said. “Can’t Fabia and I tempt you to Edinburgh for a day or two? With Quain on the run, we’ll have some time off.”

  “I would l
ove to,” Miranda said. “I’ve never been to Scotland, and I have a secret addiction to reading romance novels at night about magic Highland men. But even though I’ve talked with my mother, I know she still thinks I’ve been kidnapped. It was a miracle that my family called off the search.”

  Felix nodded. “You’ll just have to claim you were swept off your feet by my brother here, and you forgot about everything else. That explanation just might work if he weren’t so ugly.”

  “Felix,” Zosime said. “I’m going to have to send you to your room.”

  Zosime put down the platters of food in front of them. “I tell you, Miranda, they haven’t changed. They still seem like they’re ten, eight, and six, no matter what magic they can do.”

  Everyone began to eat, but Sariel found himself unable to lift his hand or even do more than stare at Miranda as she spooned eggs onto her plate and laughed at something Rufus said. How had this happened? How had he gone from being alone and lonely and angry to sitting with his entire family at this safe table at Adalbert’s house? How had he managed to forget about Kallisto and her betrayal? Why did he feel so full in his body, so content? Nothing was bothering him, and it was as if nothing ever would. Not even Felix’s teasing. Not even Brennus’s dictatorial commands. Not even Quain.

  Sariel wanted nothing more than to sit here forever, listening to the words and laughter, feeling nothing but the slim, strong weight of Miranda’s leg against his. If he never went out searching for a sorcier gone bad again he wouldn’t care. How had this come to be?

  Amid the clatter of plate noise and the whistle of the teakettle on the range, he felt Zosime thinking to him.

  Don’t ask how, she thought to him. Just be.

  She smiled and then asked Adalbert the secret to his delicious oatmeal.

  “If you think you’re going to get something better than this at my house,” Miranda said, indicating Zosime’s fluffy scrambled eggs, “think again. I’m a poet, not a chef. Eat up now.”

  Sariel turned to her, lifting a finger to her cheek, all of his feeling just on his tongue, but he couldn’t find the words to express them, no sentence or phrase big enough to hold them all.