Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  32

  MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS, PART 1

  I’M NOT SURE how we ended up where we ended up.

  It felt like I got led around in a daze, like people were talking to me but I couldn’t comprehend their words. Hands tugged on me gently, touching my arms, my shoulders, steering me along with the group. I felt Revik’s fingers wrapped around mine.

  I don’t know if I blacked out, exactly––or even lost time, in a real sense.

  Some part of me definitely wasn’t there, though.

  When I could finally focus enough to listen or remember anything I saw, I was sitting on a blanket on the grass. Other blankets were spread around me, with seers sitting cross-legged and kneeling, sharing drinks and eating.

  I heard them talking about Dubai.

  I heard them talk about the buyer in Dubai, the one collecting seers from the Displacement Lists. I heard them talk about the Lists themselves––Lists that apparently my mother, as in my biological mother, who until now I hadn’t known existed, 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 put them in a security deposit box in a bank in New York, knowing at some point, I’d dream about them and find them.

  That meant she’d put the book there, too––the book no one could read.

  I hadn’t thought about that book in a long time. I didn’t even know where it was.

  For all I knew, it’d been destroyed in one of the tsunamis that hit the hotel in New York, or got lost during the evacuations.

  I stared at the sand, fighting to think through this, to make it mean something.

  I felt Revik’s fingers on my skin and looked at him, unable to comprehend his presence next to me. We more or less filled a clearing I didn’t remember entering, one that stood just behind a broken row of palm trees separating us from the beach.

  I could see the ocean between the curved, graceful trunks.

  It could have been one of my dreams, sitting here, staring at a roiling ocean.

  Revik sat beside me on the blanket, out legs touching, 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 them, 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 man with the blond-streaked, wavy hair, stared at me like they didn’t know what to do with me, either.

  The emotion coming off the two of them was 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 Displacement Lists for me to find.

  I shoved that out of my mind, knowing it was meaningless. My head hurt. I felt sad. I felt flickers of grief, guilt and irrationality, like I was betraying my human parents somehow, by even sitting here with these people.

  Revik knew them.

  I didn’t know how I felt about that, either. It was too soon to feel anything about it, I guess, but I could feel that panic in his light, coupled with a debilitating guilt that he hadn’t told me.

  I watched the woman who introduced herself to me as my mother, and also as Kali, lean towards Revik. She touched his arm, saying something to him in a language I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it sounded Asian, but not like anything I’d heard in China.

  The man who’d introduced himself as my father stiffened, watching his wife with Revik. I saw him look at Revik with an open distrust, and felt my muscles grow taut.

  Uye. He said his name was Uye.

  I saw wariness rise to his blue eyes as Revik and his wife spoke. I felt aggression there, unmistakeable, along with that denser scrutiny.

  When he caught me watching him, though, he smiled. That smile touched his light blue eyes, making them dance.

  “Vietnamese,” he said.

  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, 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. “Your husband was stationed there.”

  I nodded, still unable to think of anything to say.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  The male seer, Uye, leaned towards me, clasping my arm in his hand, sending a furnace blast of heat at my chest. So much love lived in that, I felt my chest fight to keep up, my heart stutter as I fought desperately to push it away and to let it in at the same time. When I looked at him next, I fought not to cry, seeing tears rise to his pale blue 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, 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, 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 glimpsed the intensity of his grief, and that time, I closed my eyes, looking away.

  I was wiping my face with the back of my hand, when I realized Revik and the woman weren’t talking anymore. Instead, I could feel both of them looking at me, worry rippling in different currents off both their lights.

  Then Kali reached for me tentatively, clasping my other arm, the one her husband wasn’t holding, the one Revik had been stroking with his fingers.

  “I hope you will not be angry with Revik,” she said to me, in 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 his silence to me,” she added. “I made him vow not to tell you that he and I had met… or anything about who I am. Or about your father.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t look at Revik.

  He still gripped the hand attached to the arm Kali held.

  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 disappear, maybe, run away.

  “Run away, yes,” Kali said, smiling tentatively as she wiped her eyes. She clasped my forearm tighter, using 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.

  You don’t have to say anything, Uye sent, his thoughts firm.

  You really do not, Kali added, gripping me tighter in her long fingers.

  Only Revik remained silent.

  Somehow, it was harder to look at him or to feel anything from him than it was with these two seers 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 me from 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 bare glimpse, choked off my breath a second time.

  The image whispered away, disappearing into the darkness behind my eyes.

  They’d been close.

  All this time, they’d been so 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. 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.

  I frowned, my eyes clicking back into focus. I realized 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. A frown sat on his lips, along with an expression I couldn’t read at all.

  He wasn’t looking at Revik that time.

  He was looking at me.

  Tearing my eyes off his emerald green and violet ones, I looked at Kali, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Her eyes held even more grief than I’d seen in Uye’s. That joy I’d seen in them while she’d been talking to Revik had dimmed, along with the teasing glint I’d seen and heard as she spoke in that other language.

  All of that was gone as she looked at me.

  Seeing the sadness in her eyes intensify, the longer she looked at me, I shook my head, clearing my throat. I didn’t speak, though. I just stared at the sand.

  A part of me really 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, still gripping my arm.

  I felt reluctance from Uye, a flush of protectiveness from Revik, but I only nodded, still not quite meeting her eyes.

  “Okay.” My voice sounded numb.

  She rose fluidly to her feet, moving like liquid air.

  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 sweat sticking to the back of my neck under my long hair, which I had in a relatively non-feminine combat-type braid, I stood up a lot less gracefully, releasing Revik’s hand as I joined her.

  She motioned me forward, smiling 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 looked at Revik while he’d been talking to Uye’s wife––my mother, my mind muttered, softer––I felt my light close even more.

  Tensing, Revik looked at my face, almost like he felt it.

  I couldn’t hold his gaze, though.

  I was still just standing there, when Kali seemed to realize I didn’t know where to go.

  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 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.

  Even so, it baffled me, how some trees remained standing, perfectly intact, while others lay haphazardly over the sand like so many toothpicks.

  Looking out over that debris-strewn beach, its white sand showing in streaks where it wasn’t covered in plant matter, downed palms, or 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, shoving it in the front pocket of my pants along with the other one.

  Walking next to her, I felt really young, and not in a good way.

  She didn’t talk until we’d been walking for a while.

  When I finally glanced at her, I saw tears in her eyes again. Something about that made me want to leave her there. I felt suddenly burdened by this, by having to fucking hold all of their emotions, too, when I couldn’t even hold my own.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, touching my arm.

  She removed her hand when I flinched, but I felt pain on her again, and looked away.

  “I thought we should talk,” she said. “Away from everyone else. We don’t have much time today, and unfortunately there is business we must address.” Her voice caught a little, and while I didn’t look at her that time, I felt her looking at me. “I am sorry, Alyson. I hadn’t meant to shock you like this. It really is not your mate’s fault. I hope you know that.”

  But that brought a flush of real anger from me. Anger I still couldn’t fully catalogue.

  Or maybe I just didn’t want to.

  “Please stay out of things between me and Revik,” I said, hearing a colder edge creep into my voice. “I get that you know each other. I get that you like him, so you want to protect him. But I don’t really want to know anything about that, to be honest.”

  I felt her flinch at my words.

  Even so, after the barest pause, I felt her acquiesce to them.

  “Of course,” she said. “My apologies, sister.”

  Grimacing at her phrasing, it hit me that I was having to fight not to yell at her. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to yell at her about. Maybe I was just confused. Overwhelmed. Or maybe something else was going on with me, something a lot less conscious.

  In either case, I mostly just wanted to get the fuck out of there.

  “What do you want from me?” I clenched my jaw, looking out over the water. “You and your ‘Children of the Bridge.’ What is it you want from your Bridge, exactly?”

  Sarcasm leaked into my voice, without my really meaning it to.

  Fighting to make my tone more polite, I ended up stripping it of emotion instead.

  “Balidor said you have some people who know Dubai.” I cleared my throat, making a vague motion with one hand as I continued to look out over the water. I focused on the curl of white and dark blue waves that crashed lower down on the beach. “Infiltrators, specifically. Balidor said you thought they might be able to help us out.”

  “Yes,” Kali said at once, giving a seer’s single nod. “Dalejem was just there recently. Also, one of our other infiltrators, who is––”

  But I let out a humorless laugh.

  I couldn’t help it.

  Stopping dead on the sand, I stared out at the water, shaking my head in disbelief. The look I gave her that time was openly hostile.

  “Dalejem,” I said. “Of course.”

  Kali frowned, stopping on the sand when I did.

  I saw her study my face cautiously. I didn’t bother to hide my anger.

  “And what is it that I can do for you… sister?” I said, my voice holding a harder edge. “I’m assuming you want something from me, in return? What is it?”

  “You are hurt.” Tears filled her eyes. “I understand, Alyson. I do.”

  “I really doubt that,” I said.

  My words were openly bitter.

  Even so, I think I said it more to shut her up, to get her to stop talking than to hit out at her. Realizing I was crying too, I wiped my face with a hand, looking back out at the water. Shaking my head, I gave her a harder look.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told her. “Just tell me what you want from me. Like you said, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  I felt her fighting with my words, maybe even with my light, off in some place where I couldn’t see it. Eventually, sh
e only nodded.

  I could feel she hadn’t given up exactly, but maybe she’d given up for now.

  “That is more complicated,” she said. “And it is not so much that we want something from you. It is more that we would like to offer you our help, now that we can.”

  She paused, as if waiting for me to respond.

  When I didn’t, she went on, only speaking loud enough to be heard over the wind blowing sand down the beach, rippling her long, dark hair.

  “You probably don’t know this about me,” she said. “But I am a prescient, Alyson. A true one.”

  I looked up.

  I should have known that, but she managed to surprise me anyway. I knew she was Elaerian. The fact that she was on the Displacement List and Uye wasn’t, made me think my biological father probably wasn’t Elaerian––which meant he was Sark. That, or he was the last remaining name, one of the two that had been blacked-out on the Elaerian list.

  For some reason, I knew he wasn’t.

  I didn’t ask her if she was telekinetic, but I found myself doubting she was. I couldn’t have said why, exactly, but something about her light made me think it didn’t have that component, any more than Feigran’s did, the only other true prescient I’d ever met.

  Kali didn’t feel like an infiltrator. Her light felt entirely absent of that warrior stamp I’d grown accustomed to, given that most of the seers I knew had it––even, increasingly, my adopted brother, Jon, especially since he and Wreg had bonded for real.

  Something about remembering Jon, while looking at this woman, made me frown again.

  Why was I letting this confuse me?

  I knew who my family was.

  Trying to apply that same sentiment to the male seer, Uye, who’d looked at me with such love in his eyes, was harder. Maybe it was just easier to push away someone who looked so much like me––someone who seemed to feel free to touch Revik right in front of me, even though it obviously bothered her mate.

  “Allie.” She caught hold of my arm, and held it even after I stiffened, although I had to fight not to jerk it from her fingers. “Alyson.” Her voice blurred. Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you more than my life. I know it may not seem like it, but everything we have done, everything, all of it… it has all been for you, my dearest.”