by RJ Crayton
My mother pursed her lips. “It is good not to hurt people’s feelings, but you don’t have to worry about that with mommies. Mommies can take any truth. So do not keep things from me, even if alab suggests you do.”
To this, little me nodded.
The mist clouded the ball and the scene shifted. It was the same room, the same exact location, but it is my mother and Zygam.
“Where is Dirah?” he asked, and he barely looked at my mother, just looking around the room.
“She’s with Talitha,” my mother said.
“You said I should come to get Dirah.”
“I said that because you ignore any other requests I make of you,” my mother said. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at him. “Zygam, I have ignored your hostility toward me since that night. I realized I hurt you greatly.”
“It was nothing,” he said, his voice cool, yet a simmering hurt beneath.
My mother shook her head wearily. “Fine, I didn’t hurt you. But you have hurt me.”
He stared at her as if he wasn’t sure what she meant.
“You had my daughter lie to me, Zy. That is not acceptable. I have done nothing but try to include you in Dirah’s life. I have wanted nothing more than for her to feel like she knew of Idris. To have you tell her stories about her father, about the two of you when you were young, to know parts of him, parts of his life, to see him in you. And you have taken advantage of my desire to do what’s best for my little girl so that you can groom her to be this prophesied child.”
“She is the prophesied child,” he shot back, his green eyes cool and unyielding. “And I do share with her stories of Idris. I share with her stories of our childhood, but I also share magic with her. Idris and I spent our childhood deprived of magical influence. He wouldn’t want that for his daughter.”
My mother snorted. “Stop pretending you care what Idris wanted or wouldn’t have wanted,” she said. “It is clear to me now; you only care about what you want. This can’t go on, Zygam. You can’t ask my daughter to lie to me, and think that it’s alright.”
He watched her, and then shrugged. “I apologize. I won’t ask her to lie to you again”
“No, you won’t,” my mother said. “From now on, Talitha or I will be with you when you’re with Dirah.”
“You have classes to teach. You can’t manage that.”
“I’ll find a way,” my mother said, her tone deadly serious.
This scene dissolved and the scene emerged with my mother and Auntie. I heard Auntie gasp next to me. I turned to her and she nodded for me to watch the memory orb. Inside it, Auntie and mother were inside a light room in the temple.
“Are you sure?” Auntie said.
My mother closed her eyes, leaned against the wall, which lit up more. She pulled away from it. “I can think of nothing else to do. Zygam will not relent, and if I do not do this, I believe he will do the same thing I am considering.”
Auntie shook her head. “He would simply take her and flee? What you are considering is more than just taking her. You want to lock a huge chunk of her memories away. You want to suppress her magic. You want her to grow up like a salab.”
“That is how Idris grew up, and he was all the happier for it.”
“Zygam wasn’t,” Auntie said. “Zygam resented his childhood in hiding. He resented the lack of magical instruction. It is why he shares too much with Kadirah.”
“Zygam shares too much with her because he is obsessed with the Talisman. He will not harm my daughter, and if I leave with all her memories intact, she will call for him.”
Auntie raised a hand to her chin, her eyes clearly not entirely believing my mother’s supposition. “Are you sure?” she asked.
My mother nodded, and closed her eyes. A single tear rolled down her left cheek. “This morning, she portaled out of the room and down to the garden. When she came back, I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that I was jealous of her power and didn’t love her because I didn’t want her to be great. ‘Only alab really loves me.’ That is what she said to me, Talitha.”
My mother looked broken as she said that. I felt guilt and sadness that I had caused such emotion for her. I couldn’t even fathom how I could say something like that.
“She’s only four,” Auntie in the memory was saying. “She doesn’t know any better.”
“She knows what Zygam has been telling her, and she’s clearly going off to be with him, when she’s not supposed to. After two months of watching, he convinced me to let them have time together unsupervised, and I should have said no. But she so adores him and it was a difficulty with my own schedule and part of me just wanted to do right by her and by Idris, but I can’t trust Zygam and if I don’t do something drastic right now, I will not be able to free Dirah from him.”
Auntie nodded. “Alright, then, I’ll do it. I’ll go with you.”
My mother hugged Talitha. “Thank you. I can’t do this without you. You’re the best mage at mind locking.”
Auntie nodded. “We’ll do it tonight.”
The memory fades and then my mother is there again, staring out at me from the crystal ball. “I hope you understand why we had to do what we did,” she says in her hushed voice. I’m not sure when she made this or where she was. But I suspect she had already run from my uncle and now she just wanted to put down her memories in some tangible form. “I am offering these two memory crystals to let you know the state of things. And when you get these, I hope you will understand. I have also saved the crystals your father made for you after he realized he was sick. There are twenty-one. That’s a sacred number, according to ancient lore. I have kept seven, given my sister seven, and left seven with my cousin Pylum. I wish I’d had enough time to replicate them, but there wasn’t. It is my hope that all twenty-one survive for you, but if something happens to one set, at least all will not be lost. I love you, Dirah, and I hope you understand about everything that was done.”
With that the memory orb cleared, leaving me staring into an empty ball.
Chapter 15 - A change of plans
I felt as empty as the crystal ball looked. I turned to my aunt. “The clear crystals, the ones you gave me,” I said, though I hesitated to ask the rest of the question. I didn’t want to hear the answer that was so clearly coming.
“They were Idris’s memories,” she said softly.
I closed my eyes, filled with anger. “Why would Akilah take them? They are of no value to her.”
“She didn’t know that. She may have thought, since this might be her only chance in the temple, that it was best to take them.”
I shook my head, feeling the frustration of the situation settle in. Why had I gone to see Pylum? Why had I left all the crystals in my room? I should have taken them with me. It was a fluke that I had the single crystal that remained.
I looked at my aunt, hopeful. “So, tell me those were just my mother’s portion. There were just seven crystals, right?”
But even as I asked, I knew that wasn’t true. There had been at least a dozen in that bag.
“The ones she’d given me initially as well as the ones she gave me the night Zygam …” her voice trailed off and she paused longer than she should have. Finally, she said, “The night your mother died.”
“Why did he kill her?”
“Because he was angry, and she wouldn’t tell him what he wanted.”
That was a long way of saying the thing Auntie didn’t want to say. “He killed her because she wouldn’t give me back.”
“You were never his,” Auntie said. “That was Zygam’s problem. He believed you were his to control, but we don’t get to control other people.”
“No, we don’t,” I muttered. Zygam would never control me. Not after everything I’d seen. Not after everything he’d done. Even now, he’d prevented me from seeing my father’s memories by having Akilah steal them. I looked at Auntie, who still seemed weak. Her cheeks were a bit sunken and she looked winded. “I shouldn�
�t have come and tired you out, Auntie.”
She shook her head “I’m glad you’re here.”
I nodded. I was glad, too. But I wasn’t going to make things worse for her by not letting her rest. “I’m tired,” I told her. “I think I’ll head to bed. Master Yaritza made me a cot in the other room.”
She smiled at that. “Together again,” she said.
“Always,” I responded, though that hadn’t been true the last few weeks. Still, part of me longed for those days when it was just the two of us. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You said the memories you’d given me were the ones my mother had split between you and her. Does that mean that Pylum’s share weren’t involved?”
She thought for a moment, and then answered. “I suppose not, though he’s not mentioned having them.”
Pylum didn’t mention a lot of things to me, so this came as no surprise. “I’ll talk to him in the morning,” I said.
Auntie nodded and we said our goodbyes.
Chapter 16 - Regret
Akilah wasn’t sure she should’ve taken Kady’s memory orb and crystals. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. She wanted to know what Kady was watching, especially since her memories were locked. Had people shared a bunch of memories with her to help orient her? Were they the aunt’s memories? Had she offered a bunch before she died? She’d heard of mages who were gravely ill spending their last moments creating memories for loved ones. Or maybe the aunt had hidden the memories somewhere and told Kady where to find them.
It was all conjecture, but Akilah had been curious enough to grab the entire bundle and take it with her. The plan had only been to test Zygam’s theory about the linger magic and for her to retrieve some of her things. When she’d returned with the crystals, Zygam’s face had contorted in anger. Akilah suggested looking at them, and he contained his fury well-enough to agree. When they stuck in the first crystal and saw Kady’s mother, Zygam’s anger faded, and he gathered all the crystals and retreated to his study, saying he would watch them all and let her know if there was anything valuable.
She was alone, contemplating their next move. She knew the Talisman of Elpida held immense power. Even though Zygam had it, he couldn’t use it fully. He said it could only be fully controlled by the Child of Light.
Zygam had said he wasn’t sure if Kady or Akilah were the child of light. However, he seemed to be warming to the idea of it being Akilah. She had told him it needed an alab. And she had said that didn’t mean a person. He’d seemed to really take that to heart and spend time looking through books to figure it out. He promised her he’d update her when he learned anything.
Only, he hadn’t. Though he had told her about Nigel. That was a sign of trust and faith. He’d told her everything, even what Pylum had tried to hide. She felt a pang of sadness, and instead tried to shove that feeling away. She tried to focus on Nigel’s gifts instead.
They were almost the opposite of Akilah’s, which focused on manipulating the physical through glyphs. Nigel was an empath and a mirror. Empath was easy for her to get. A person who could read other’s emotions well, understand where they were coming from almost instantly. But mirror was a term she’d never heard before. Zygam had explained, “It means that, in addition to being very good at reading people’s minds and emotions, he can also reflect feelings out to others. Imagine a great orator who can whip up the fervor of others,” he said, looking at Akilah. She nodded for him to go on. “He has the same ability that speaker has, by simply mirroring the emotions of the orator, sending them out to the crowd so that crowd now feels the same verve. He will be of great use to us.”
That made sense to Akilah. She’d been looking forward to getting to know Nigel better, once she got him back to the moon temple. Once he was here, he would understand. But she never got the chance. Kady had the nerve to take the boy first. While she hadn’t pegged Pylum as a kidnapper of young boys, she had clearly pegged him wrong. He might as well have kidnapped her. He’d locked away the memories of her parents. Unlocking had unleashed a few of the memories, but not all of them. Zygam said the brain can’t handle too many memories at once. It releases the most powerful and significant first. And then others trickle in slowly.
She’d had another memory, one of her mother holding her and singing her to sleep. It was after her father had died. Her mother wasn’t the same after that. She was insular and child-like and often needed help. But, in this memory, her mother had cradled her in her arms and sung her a song, a song about the stars in the night sky, twinkling high above.
She tried not to cry as she thought of how Pylum had betrayed her. How could he lock away the good memories of her parents and leave her only with the ones that focused on their obsession with the Talisman? It had been cruel.
No, it had been calculated. He didn’t want her to know she could use the Talisman. He didn’t want her to know that she could be the one. Yes, it had been calculated for him to lock away her memories and pretend to take her under his wing. But he’d miscalculated entirely when it came to Zygam. Thankfully, he’d unlocked her mind, and now she would make Pylum regret attempting to use her.
Chapter 17 - A broken lock
I awakened to bright sunshine streaming through the windows of the healing room. My area in here was cordoned off by curtains, and I was alone. I wondered if Auntie was awake. I stood and stretched, enjoying the flexing of my still sleepy limbs. It was nice to stretch out in the morning. I left my little area and peeked in on my aunt. She was still asleep.
That was good, I supposed, as it was a sign her body was doing what was necessary to recover. Or at least, I hoped it was good, and not a sign that Zygam’s imprisonment had damaged her forever.
I sucked in a breath and decided to go see Pylum. I hadn’t slept well. No dreams that drifted me off into Zygam’s sphere. Just a general unease at the prospect of things to come.
When I arrived at Pylum’s office, the door was closed. I knocked, and was told, “One minute.” After a few moments, the door opened and Master Shanzu, the glyphs teacher, was standing there. He smiled at me and said, “Master Pylum will see you now,” as he exited.
I wondered briefly what they’d been discussing, but it seemed unlikely that Master Pylum would share such details with me. He was standing in front of his desk and he looked weary. “Sit,” he said, pointing to a chair. “We have many things to discuss.”
I nodded. He seemed all business today.
“The fact that Akilah was working with unsubstantiated glyphs means there may be more linger magic we’re not aware of. Master Shanzu and I have been plotting a course to make sure we find any magical hotspots.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely sure the impacts of linger magic. “Does this mean she can portal in again?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, very confidently. “I’ve removed all anchors, even for myself. And it helped that the linger effect was from portal magic. Similar magic is most easily enhanced.”
I felt a wave of guilt. “She made the portal glyph to help me,” I admitted.
Pylum nodded. “I assumed,” he said. “Akilah has a good heart.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Then why did she stay with Zygam?”
“Because I had locked her memories, and she was upset by what she saw when Zygam unlocked them.”
“And what was that?”
He blew out. “Akilah has a history with the Talisman. She used it as a child.”
My mouth popped open in surprise. “You mean, she’s the child of the prophecy?”
“Possibly,” he said, shrugging. “I wasn’t sure. I just knew that her parents had found the stone, that her father had died from it. It had driven her mother partially insane, and right as their mother had finally gotten their life together, gotten it to the brink of happiness, it all fell apart.” He shook his head woefully. “A storm destroyed her village and left her stranded and alone, wandering and trying to take care of herself. Part of her thought the only thing that would
bring her happiness again was the Talisman. Part of her hated the Talisman. She was very conflicted. When I found her, I realized she’d have no peace like this. I locked away many of her memories. The ones that seemed to bring her the most trouble, the ones that would send her on a path looking for the Talisman.”
My mouth was still agape, and I wasn’t sure what to say to that.
He looked me in the eye. “We all have difficult choices to make, Kady. I couldn’t leave her wandering on her own, once I’d found her, yet she was too troubled to be at the temple, to learn magic, without shutting out some of the problems of the past.”
I felt an anger welling in me. “So, even though you say locking people’s memories is unusual, you didn’t mean it. People do it whenever they want to.”
He was impassive. “No. It is never done lightly, and I regret that the lock was removed without context. I’m sure that’s why Akilah stayed. But I don’t regret giving her the years of peace she had at Hakari Ahet. And if you asked her, I don’t believe she would regret it either.”
He couldn’t be serious. “She’s not here. If she didn’t regret it, she would have left Zygam.”
“She’s enchanted by the talisman,” he said. “No matter what she feels about Hakari Ahet, she won’t leave it. It draws her to stay.”
I paused as I considered what he said. The ramification seemed clear. “So, she is the child of light?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. Though, the Prophecy of Light is all about choice. If she is simply staying because she is drawn to it, if she is not actively making a choice, then she is likely not the child of the prophecy.”
I blew out. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’ve promised you no secrets, and you will need to know all if you are to fight Zygam.”
Instinctively, at the mention of the name, I reached up and touched the necklace I now wore. The alab.