The Scarlet Thread

by D. S. Murphy

  “How could you have seen that?” I asked.

  “Let’s say death and I have a very close relationship. Able said you may have the ability to see the future. He’s curious what else you can do.”

  “Why would I be able to do anything else?” I took a sip of my tea, and tasted chamomile and rose petals.

  “Powers can manifest in many different ways. The magic is in the blood, but defined by the person. It’s kind of like how different blacksmiths can make a variety of swords with the same metal.”

  “What are your powers?” I asked.

  Stephanie went to the window and opened the latch to an ornate birdcage. She took out one of the little birds. Its dark feathers had a purple sheen in the light. She held it up to me on the palm of her hand, then squished it in her fist—tearing into its little body with her fingernails. The bird and I cried out in unison. I reached out to grab the bird away from her, but when she opened her hand again, it was already dead, and her palm was smeared with blood. She took my hand and pulled off one of my gloves, then placed the bird in my hand.

  “If you had touched this bird a moment ago,” she said, “you might have seen me crush it. You would have seen its end. But you wouldn’t have seen this.”

  She placed her hands over mine. I felt a warmth, and movement on my palm—the scratching of tiny talons. When she removed her hand, the bird was standing on my palm, looking dazed.

  “You can bring things back to life,” I said. The jealousy tore me to the core. Here was a useful power. The power to restore. To save. If only I’d had a power like that. The chunk of legos around my neck felt heavy, a burden of guilt and regret.

  “It’s easier with animals.” She shrugged and put the bird back in its cage. “Men are different. If the body dies, the soul goes somewhere else. Even if you bring the body back, it won’t be the same person, not unless you retrieve the soul as well.”

  She squeezed my shoulder. Her ice blue gaze reached deep inside me, and I knew she was talking about my brother. “But life and death, it’s mainly just animating force. Life needs a will to survive. The will to exist, to fight. If it has that, it will usually figure the rest out. If it doesn’t, nothing can save it. I can remove that will.”

  The room darkened as though a large cloud was passing over the window. In the pale light, Stephanie suddenly looked terrifying. The flowers around her head dried up and withered.

  The skirts of her dress and the tips of her hair writhed around her like serpents caught in an invisible wind, and I could have sworn she was getting taller—until I saw her feet had left the ground.

  And that’s when I felt it. A powerful despair. A hopelessness that consumed my whole being. It reminded me of my dark phase at JDRI, but worse. My bones felt like melting wax, and I stumbled. I put a hand out on the back of a chair for stability. Then the light came back, and I was myself again, in this bright and pleasant little room. I felt a drip of sweat glide down my forehead.

  “You’re stronger than you look,” Stephanie said, arching one eyebrow.

  “You too,” I smiled weakly.

  “That routine sometimes turns grown men into sniveling cowards.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Well then,” she said, “now that that’s over, let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

  Stephanie knocked on a door down the hall. I took a sharp breath when it opened and Mist peered out at us. She scowled when she saw me. I wasn’t happy to see her either. I thought Stephanie was helping me find my powers?

  “Kaidance and I need some help,” she said. “Got a minute?”

  “I’m kind of busy—” Mist said at first, but a sharp look from Stephanie changed her attitude.

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh. She shrugged on a suede jacket. I noticed again how beautiful she was. Her light brown hair was parted in the middle and tucked behind her delicate ears. She was wearing tight navy jeans and a pair of lightweight sneakers. She looked like a posh Englishwoman about to go for a horse ride.

  I did a double take when we emerged from the back entrance of the ground floor. The sprawling manor was built on top of the crumbling remains of what looked like an ancient temple. Statues were built into the walls, which were supported by towering pillars. They protruded from the modern building like ribs from a massive rotting corpse. Facing the temple was a large half circle of red dirt, surrounded by ascending staircases which were built into the hill. It was an amphitheater. In Washington State.

  “This is impossible,” I said. “I mean, it’s a replica, right?” Able had said my ideas of what’s possible would be challenged, but this flew in the face of everything I knew about human civilization. Even after what I’d just seen Stephanie do, somehow this was harder for my brain to accept.

  Mist rolled her eyes at me, making me feel stupid.

  “It’s real,” Stephanie said. “We came here thousands of years ago. We modernize the house every century or so, but we kept the ruins pretty much as they are. It makes us feel at home.”

  “You mean, your people came here, right?”

  “Can we save the history lessons for another time?” Mist said. “Let’s get this over with. What do you need me to do?”

  “Just shoot some arrows at her,” said Stephanie.

  Wait, what? My heart started pounding and I almost tripped over my own feet. Mist flashed me a dangerous grin.

  “No way,” I said. “She’ll kill me.”

  “She’s an exceptional shot,” Stephanie said. “She won’t kill you unless she does it on purpose. And she won’t do that because I’m asking her not to.”

  “Is this really necessary?” I asked.

  “You don’t know what your powers are or how to summon them,” Stephanie said. “But that’s not a problem you can solve by thinking. I could make you sit and meditate for eight hours a day, but that’s boring, and rarely works. Trust me, we’ve tried it that way. No, it’s so much faster to put you in mortal danger. Get your adrenaline pumping. Remember, all life wants is to survive. When your body feels threatened, when it’s desperate to defend itself, that’s when you’ll have a breakthrough.”

  I was skeptical, but I let Stephanie lead me towards a stack of hay bales and position me in front of them. “You’re going to want to stay very, very still,” she whispered, then kissed me on the cheek. I gulped. A cold breeze tickled my arms, and I shivered.

  Mist stood about fifty feet away from me, holding a simple wooden bow. She nocked an arrow and drew back the string. My heart started pounding. “Ready?” she called.

  Just as I opened my mouth to reply, an arrow sunk into the hay bale behind me, so close the fletching ripped a gash in my left ear. My ear throbbed in pain. I reached up to touch it, and my fingers came away red with blood. I was tempted to run back inside to find Able or Sitri, but I didn’t want to let Mist know that she’d scared me.

  “I thought you said she wouldn’t hurt me,” I said to Stephanie, who was standing on the other side of the small wooden fence surrounding the area.

  “I said she wouldn’t kill you,” Stephanie said, but she gave Mist a warning look.

  The next arrow came right between my legs, thwacking against the hay bale and my right thigh. I cried out in surprise. I was definitely going to have a bruise there later. This was crazy.

  “Should I be doing anything?” I asked.

  “Focus on your attacker. Focus on the arrows. See them coming towards you. Stop them.”

  “But how?” I asked.

  Stephanie shrugged. “Any way you can.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to focus. Another arrow went just under my armpit, between my body and my arm. My right arm snapped out in reflex as the arrow bit into my flesh, and as it did I felt another slide between my fingers. I realized that Mist had shot an arrow between my fingers while my arm was moving. My heart was already pounding, but for the first time I felt really scared, thinking of all the places Mist could put an arrow without actually killing me.


  That’s when I realized the last arrow hadn’t finished moving. The others had buried into the hay bale so quickly I barely saw them fly past me. But this one I could feel, gliding between my fingers smoothly. I brought my awareness to it just as time sped up and the fletching tore a chunk out of my index finger. Blood gushed out of the wound, and my mask of strength failed me. The places where the arrows had hit were screaming in pain. I didn’t ask to be tortured like this. Tears of frustration started welling up in my eyes. Stephanie held up a hand for Mist to stop, then came onto the field.

  She took a long band of fabric from her pocket and wound it tightly around my injured finger.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh well, it was worth a shot,” she said, with her signature sad smile. I realized Stephanie might be a bit mad.

  “Are we done?” I asked.

  “One more thing,” she nodded to Mist, who leaned her bow against the fence with a smug smile. Then she took off her jacket and started walking towards us.

  “We do a lot of combat training here,” Stephanie said. “For exercise, for fun, and because we have a lot of time on our hands and get bored.”

  “You want us to fight?” I said, my mouth hanging open.

  “Ridiculous, right?” Mist said, her lips curling up into lopsided smile. “I’d get more resistance from a punching bag.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Stephanie said. “I won’t ever ask you to do something against your will. I won’t force you. But if you want to learn to control your powers, this is the best way I know how to teach you.”

  “What if I see something?” I asked in a hushed voice. I still had my gloves on, but if Mist hit my face it could still trigger a vision.

  “I doubt you will,” she said, “but if you do, tell me afterwards. In private.”

  I nodded. It beat standing still and getting shot at. Besides, I could fight. Jessie taught me a few moves. She made me practice throwing punches until my arms ached. I put my fists up in front of my face, in the defensive position she’d showed me.

  Mist laughed, then ducked and swept my legs out from under me with a low kick that put me on my back. I rolled on the ground, gasping for air. I noticed that we had a few watchers now. Sitri stood just outside the fence, his arms crossed, looking angry. And there were several others I didn’t recognize.

  I pushed myself to my feet. This time I started bouncing on the balls of my feet, moving back and forth. Keep moving, Jessie would shout at me. Don’t let them see it coming. But Mist was as nimble as a rabbit. I threw jabs and punches, but she ducked and spun between them. I didn’t see her fist until it was an inch from my eye. Then an explosion of pain, and I was on my back again. I groaned and pushed myself up, coughing on the cloud of dust I’d made when I hit the ground. There were more people watching now. This was embarrassing. But what did they expect? Mist was obviously well-trained, and I’d never been in a real fight in my life.

  “Any tips?” I yelled at Sitri.

  “Stop falling down,” he said.

  I glared at him.

  “Stay on your feet. Watch her shoulders. Take the punch and hit back anyway.”

  I took a few more hits before I figured out what he meant. The muscles of her shoulder would flex just before she threw a punch. I saw the next punch coming. Time seemed to slow as I concentrated on her shoulder. Instead of ducking, I flailed out with my hand, swinging at her wildly. Her punch hit me square on the jaw and snapped my head backward, but not before my palm hit her cheek with a slap that echoed in the amphitheater. I heard a few claps and cheers from the audience.

  Mist came at me again, newly enraged. Still reeling from the last punch, I couldn’t even lift my arms to defend myself as she hit me with a flurry of punches, followed by a kick in stomach that sent me flying backwards. I landed like a bag of bones. Every part of my body was in agony. I lay in the dirt, drool hanging out of my mouth, one eye swelling shut from that first punch.

  Get up. I told myself. Get UP.

  But my body wasn’t working. Instead it shut down. That’s when my vision blurred and I saw the golden thread. I thought it was a bit of blond hair, and wondered where it came from, since both Mist and I were brunette. The way it moved seemed unnatural. It drifted slowly in front of my vision. And it was long. Without moving my head I couldn’t see an end to it on either side. My fingers twitched, and I had an urge to reach out and touch it. But before I could, exhaustion overcame me, and I blacked out.

  10

  I blinked my eyes frantically and gulped in air. Sitri had one arm around me and was practically carrying me back into the house. I must have only been out a few minutes. He breathed a sigh of relief when I opened my eyes. “They shouldn’t have done that to you,” he said, his voice shaking. “Mist is a trained warrior, there’s hardly anyone here who could give her a fair fight.”

  “Stephanie wanted me to fail,” I mumbled. My jaw felt like it wasn’t connected properly. It clicked when I talked. I tried to move my legs, to take some of my weight off Sitri, but they felt like jelly. I relaxed against Sitri’s powerful chest, breathing in the smell of him. We stumbled into a wing of the house connected by a side entrance. It had big glass windows and rows of plants. In the center was a fountain with a pool of crystal clear water, surrounding a statue of a man with a beard and a toga. He was holding a staff with a snake climbing up it.

  “My, what have we here?” said a woman with long red hair. She set down a tin watering can near the fountain, and grabbed a basket full of medical supplies instead. She was a little older than me, but like almost everybody here, had a youthful glow. Her eyes were slate gray. Sitri laid me down on a thin bed with crisp white sheets, and I realized this must be an infirmary of sorts.

  “This is Alice,” Sitri said.

  “Let me guess,” I said, mumbling through my thick lip. “You have some magic healing abilities?”

  “I’ve never liked the word magic, personally,” Alice said. “Let’s just say I’ve been around a long time, and have an exceptional amount of medicinal wisdom. Things may seem like magic to you because you can’t understand why they’re working, but everything I do is obviously within the bounds of physical possibility.”

  “Obviously?” I said. “Nothing that has happened to me in the last few days seems obvious. And Able showed me his neat super-healing trick. You’re telling me that’s explainable?”

  “Sure,” Alice said. “Our bodies are made up of cells. They are built to restore and repair injuries.” She poured a few drops of oil from a glass vial onto a cotton swab, and started wiping it against the cut on my ear. I gritted my teeth against the burn.

  “Certain, individuals,” she continued, “merely have an excess of energy. An abundance. So the things that take your body a week, only take them a few seconds, because they can draw on a source of energy that most of us don’t have access to.” She wrapped my ear with white gauze and taped it into a bandage.

  “So the immortals just have more energy somehow?” I asked.

  “Most of them come from a much earlier time, when there were fewer living beings,” Alice said, starting on my arm. “Higher consciousness beings take up more energy. In the beginning, there were a few dozen of them; then hundreds; then thousands. Today there are billions, and when they’re born they divide the available amount of universal energy equally between them. Which means, most humans these days only get a tiny bit of it. Heirs are descendants of powerful beings who were made with more energy. It gets diminished with each generation, but it’s still more than most regular people get. But immortals—especially the early ones—they may have as much energy as a billion living humans. Take him, for example,” she said, nodding at the statue.

  “Asclepius, god of medicine. Son of Apollo. He set up sanctuaries to teach the healing arts. Just being near ordinary humans, or charging the pools with his energy, was enough to dramatically speed their healing.”

  “Sounds great.
He still around?” I joked. Sitri and Alice shared a look. “Unfortunately, no,” Alice said finally. “But we’ll do the best we can without him.”

  “That’s why they did it, you know,” Sitri said darkly. “It wasn’t just about getting you to use your powers. They wanted to hurt you, to see how fast you’d heal. It’s one way to figure out how powerful you are.”

  “It’s pretty common, actually,” Alice said. “Almost everybody ends up in here the first day. I mean, it’s not exactly hazing—but it does help speed up the process.”

  “What process?” I asked.

  “You can’t start improving your abilities until you know what they are, and what you can do. Part of that is knowing which bloodline you have, who you are related to.”

  “Can’t they just use DNA testing or something?”

  Alice laughed, “I’ve been trying to get Able to do exactly that for the past decade. But he’s worried about putting our genetic DNA markers in a database, even something secure, which I’m sure Heph would have no trouble making. Able is more traditional. If you want to keep a secret, don’t write it down.”

  “Well, I think in this case, they’re going to be disappointed,” I said.

  “Why?” Sitri asked.

  I held up my index finger to show them the angry wound that was still oozing blood.

  “It’s been fifteen minutes and I still feel like shit.”

  Alice gave me a tea made of fresh herbs. I sipped on the steaming cup, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my cut finger, my thigh, my ear—and the pounding headache raging behind my swollen eye. The tea relaxed me. I felt my limbs become heavy.

  When I lay back against the pillows, my body felt like it was floating. Alice put a warm poultice over my eye and bandaged up all my cuts and sores with something that felt cool and tingly. I smelled tea tree and lavender oil, mixed with something bitter I couldn’t place. Then my arms got heavy, like stones, and I couldn’t move my fingers, and then I was gone.