by K. C. Neal
The right amount of orange would elicit honest answers, while too much would send someone into gut-spilling diarrhea of the mouth. Yellow triggered loyalty. How would I juggle all of that at once? “I’ve never tried to balance and adjust more than one influence at a time.” I chewed my thumbnail and eyed Sophie, who followed the conversation with a vacant expression.
“It will require quite a lot of concentration on your part,” Aunt Dorothy said. “If it helps, just keep your focus on her mind and don’t try to keep up with what I’m saying.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and gathered the essence of the orange liquid. I pushed some to Sophie, and the tiniest bit to Ang. Then I opened my eyes and trained on their expressions as Aunt Dorothy began to talk. Drifting into a focused state, I let her words pass over me without really trying to hear them.
When I noticed Sophie’s expression begin to twitch with apprehension, I pushed a touch more green to her, and added a wash of yellow. Her face relaxed back to neutral. Aunt Dorothy began to explain the convergence and the hypercosmic realm, or dream world, and I sensed growing unease in both Ang and Sophie. I pushed a little more green to them. When my great-aunt described my role as the principal in the pyramidal union, I pushed a bit of yellow to Sophie.
As I kept my mind attuned to the girls’ shifting moods and feelings, I sank deeper into a meditation. As my mind seemed to settle into a peaceful lull, my heart lifted. The satisfaction and rightness of the three of us here, with my great-aunt, took me by surprise. I never expected that anything involving Sophie could feel this way, but I wanted to immerse myself in it, absorb it into every cell of my body, like a lizard soaking up the heat of the sun. I felt lighter, buoyed by hope that we would figure this out, and maybe the rift between me and Sophie wouldn’t be impossible to overcome.
After what could have been minutes or an hour, Aunt Dorothy nodded to me. “Reduce all the influences just a bit now.”
Lifting myself from the depths of my meditation, I did as she asked, gathering a faint wash of white influence in my mind and then allowing it to spill over both girls.
“It’s time for Angeline and Sophie to link in syndesmo,” she said, and she rose from her chair. “Follow me.”
I let the three of them go ahead as we filed upstairs to the guest room. The pyxis box was back on the dresser, where it had been when I’d linked with Mason. Vibrations waved from it in rhythmic bursts, and I stared at the box. A melody whispered through my mind, and for a second, I wondered if it was Mason, singing through our link again. But when the song swelled in my ears, I recognized a multitude of instruments playing many melodies that chased each other, weaving a song so beautiful it made my chest ache. I closed my eyes, lost in the sound, and I inhaled as a breeze carrying something green and lovely—maybe fresh-cut grass mixed with crushed lavender—enveloped me.
Then without warning, the melody dissolved into dissonance and disappeared altogether. I strained, trying to catch a note or two, to will it to return.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Aunt Dorothy’s voice broke my trance. I looked into her eyes, my lips parted, on the verge of asking her if she’d heard the beautiful song. But her eyes held only slight concern. No way she could stay so composed in the presence of something so beautiful.
I cleared my throat. Maybe I was losing it.
“Yeah, just a little dizzy, but I’m okay now.” I forced a smile.
“Even though you’re able to affect the influences, I will use the liquids as I did with you and Mason,” she said, turning to the pyxis. “It’s very important to get the balance just so, and we must not take the chance of an error. Go ahead and rectify the influences.”
With every passing second, I became more convinced I’d imagined the song and the smell of fresh greenery. The bedroom window wasn’t even open.
With a push of white, I washed away all of the influences I’d imparted. Now that Sophie was left completely to her own will and thoughts, would she flip out and start hollering at everyone? I waited, and she just watched me with a curious near-frown. I was so accustomed to her guarded, hostile glare, I couldn’t help but stare back.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her. The question sounded lame, but I really wanted to know what was going through her head, even at the risk of shattering her calm.
She met my eyes in silence for a moment. “I knew this was coming,” she said, seeming to understand the real nature of my question. “Well, I didn’t know it would be this, exactly.” Her gaze flicked over to the pyxis box. “But something important. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had . . . dreams.”
I wanted to gape at her, but I controlled myself. That had to be a record for the most sarcasm- and vitriol-free words she’d said to me in years. I waited for her to elaborate, but she turned to my great-aunt. She and Ang settled, side by side, on the bed, and Aunt Dorothy dropped inky black liquid on each of their tongues. They made nearly identical sour-lemon faces, and I tried not to snicker. Aunt Dorothy diluted one drop each of orange, yellow, and green into a glass of water, stirred it, and then divided the solution between two clean glasses.
She directed the girls to let each other drink from their glasses. Ang held her glass up to Sophie’s lips, and then Sophie did the same for Ang. When they finished, I took Ang’s glass and Aunt Dorothy took Sophie’s, and within seconds, both of them fell back on the bed, unconscious. Aunt Dorothy closed the pyxis and left the room.
I lingered a moment, watching their peaceful faces. Ang’s hair lay across the pillow in golden waves. She was a slumbering princess from a fairy tale. Sophie’s face was smooth. Had she felt vulnerable here with all of us? Her breath whispered through her parted lips. Would the pyramidal union give her another reason to punish me? I would almost understand that. At least I’d know why she was angry.
I tiptoed out of the room, trying to push away the anxiety rippling through me.
* * *
While Ang and Sophie slept, I set to work in the kitchen. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d done any serious baking, and it satisfied my restless hands. I made two loaves of banana bread (Ang’s favorite), three dozen peanut butter cookies (Mason’s favorite), and angel food cake (Aunt Dorothy’s favorite). The warm, sweet aromas filling the house reminded me of peaceful days I’d spent here with my grandmother.
I’d been replaying my conversation with Zane while I baked. We’d been cut off so abruptly, right as he started to tell me something, and the question had been hanging in my mind ever since. I wanted to know why he was looking for me. But it wasn’t just that. Curiosity gnawed at me. It was like finding out I had a long-lost brother, but not being able to learn anything about him. Well, not a brother, exactly. But someone I very much needed to know.
My great-aunt returned from checking on the girls upstairs and took in the mess in the kitchen. “Goodness, we could open our own little bakery.”
I smiled sheepishly at her. “The cake isn’t cool enough to cut yet, but it’ll be ready soon. Are they still asleep?”
“They haven’t stirred a hair,” she said.
“Everything’s okay, right? That’s normal?” Mason and I had been out nearly four hours when we’d linked. Only two and a half hours had passed since Sophie and Ang drank the pyxis solution, but I couldn’t help asking.
“Perfectly normal. They’re just fine, my dear, just fine,” Aunt Dorothy said. She filled the kettle and set it on the stove.
“Why don’t I have to go through the rite with Ang and Sophie?” I asked.
“Having been through it with Mason already, you are now psychically open to linking with the two Guardians.” She pulled a box of gunpowder green tea from the pantry.
“Oh, I guess that’s good.” I folded and refolded a dish towel. “Aunt Dorothy, while we have a few minutes alone, I need to tell you about something that happened.”
She set out two mugs and then joined me at the kitchen table. “Sounds serious. What is it, dear?”
&nb
sp; “Last night, I was in the, um, hypercosmic realm,” I said, stumbling a bit over the strange terminology. “A couple of weird things happened.” I told her about Harriet influencing me, and Zane interceding.
When I got to the part about Zane’s pyramidal union, Aunt Dorothy’s lips tightened into a thin line. His explanation of the false Pyxis brought out creases of worry across her forehead. When I finished, she rose and poured water into the two mugs and dropped a tea bag in each.
“You must be vigilant over the other three in your union,” she said, and she handed me a mug. “You’re the only one who can protect them against Harriet’s influences, and the only one who can erase the effects if she should influence them.”
Her voice was neutral, but the worry lines on her face deepened. Maybe Harriet was a bigger problem than my great-aunt was letting on.
She lowered her chin and leveled a stare at me. “As to this other union, you’re not to have contact with them again.”
“What? Why?” Dumbfounded, I stared at her. She’d known there were other unions. Wasn’t it a good thing that there were others, that we weren’t alone?
“It’s too dangerous,” she said, and gave me the steely look she reserved for when she’d take no argument. “If people in different unions are too closely associated, anything that breaks through one will have a direct line to another. Isolation is safety. You don’t want to put Tapestry Lake at unnecessary risk, do you?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But don’t you think they could maybe help us, or—”
“Corinne.” Her voice was a low warning. “Think about it. If an evil force breaches this Zane’s convergence, and his union is in contact with yours, it’s a small jump from his mind to your mind, and straight to Tapestry. That’s how it works in the hypercosmic realm. Connections occur through the mind, and distance in the physical world is much less relevant.”
She rose and pulled a small plate from a cabinet.
“And further,” she continued, “in the Southern hemisphere, they’re approaching mid-winter, the time when the Perth convergence will be most permeable, so the danger of that happening is even greater.”
“Oh.” I stared down into my mug of tea. “I guess you’re right.”
“I’m glad we agree.”
Not that I really had a choice.
Aunt Dorothy sliced a piece of angel food cake, carried her plate to the table, and began working on one of her crossword puzzles. The timer on the stove beeped, and I removed two cookie sheets dotted with peanut butter cookies. While I waited for them to set, I loaded the dishwasher with bowls and utensils coated with batter and dough and dusted with flour.
As I transferred peanut butter cookies from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack, I considered Aunt Dorothy’s warning. While I agreed with her about avoiding anything really risky, there must be some way the two unions could help each other. And why did Zane see no danger in trying to contact another pyramidal union? He’d even been searching for me.
“Smells good in here.” Mason’s voice behind me made me jump, and a peanut butter cookie slipped from the spatula to the counter. He scooped up the damaged cookie and shoved the whole thing in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed it in one huge gulp. “Are Ang and Sophie still asleep?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I went back to transferring cookies to the rack. During Mason’s radio silence over the past couple of hours, I’d listened for his thoughts. My head was too quiet without his conversation for that long, and the silence was like an itch in the middle of my head that I couldn’t scratch.
Miss me, huh? I kept my back to him as a grin spread across my face.
Maybe a little. What were you doing with Mr. Sykes?
Oh . . . He taught me a few things.
Shield stuff?
Yeah. It’s pretty awesome. I’ll show you later.
An hour later, I sat at the kitchen table flipping through a copy of the Tapestry Tribune. Mason lay zonked out on the sofa in the living room, and Aunt Dorothy was loading clothes in the washing machine in the hallway.
Hands won’t move . . . An unfamiliar voice tumbled through my mind like rocks down the side of a hill.
“Aunt Dorothy?” I stood from the table. “I think Sophie’s awake.”
We climbed the stairs together, and when we reached the guest room, Sophie was struggling to raise her head.
“Don’t try to get up, dear,” Aunt Dorothy said. She raised a warning hand as Sophie rolled to her side. “You don’t want to move around too much yet . . .” She trailed off as Sophie vomited onto the cream carpet.
I swore under my breath and went down the hall to the bathroom, where I wetted a washcloth in the sink and grabbed a bath towel from the rack.
Back in the guest room, Ang was just opening her eyes. Sophie lay on the bed, half turned on her side, her legs askew. Aunt Dorothy pressed a hand to her shoulder to keep her from moving. I handed her the wet washcloth, sighed, and knelt down to scrape at the small puddle of puke with the towel. The spoiled, acrid smell of it hit me in the face, and my stomach rolled.
Oh, nasty, Mason said in my mind.
And guess who’s cleaning it up? I rolled up the towel, took it downstairs, and rinsed it out in the utility room sink.
“She tried to get up, didn’t she?” Mason appeared in the doorway of the kitchen as I was filling a glass at the sink.
“Yeah. We tried to tell her not to,” I muttered. I set the glass on the counter and leaned over to dig around among the cleaning products under the sink until I found a clean rag and a bottle of all-purpose cleaner. “Would you grab that glass and follow me?”
Sorry, Corinne. Sophie’s voice was tiny in my mind. She actually did sound sorry.
I sighed. It’s okay. I remember feeling pretty weird when I woke up.
And then it hit me. Sophie Marcelle was in my head. I stopped at the top of the stairs so abruptly Mason sloshed some water onto the floor behind me. I had a hard enough time keeping my thoughts from Mason, but at least I trusted him. Now Sophie had a window into my brain. If I wasn’t careful, she’d have a front-row seat to everything that happened between me and Mason. Conversations with Ang. And Sophie would find out how much she really got to me. I shuddered.
I scrubbed the puke spot on the floor, and Mason handed Sophie the glass of water. She tipped her head up just enough to drink some, then let it fall back to the pillow. Her eyes scrunched shut, and she groaned.
“Is she okay?” I asked Aunt Dorothy.
“Mm, yes, she will be fine. She just woke up a bit abruptly, which is forcing her mind to adjust more quickly than we would like.”
I looked at Ang on the other side of the bed. Her eyes were open, but she just stared at the ceiling.
“Angeline?” I moved over to her side and ran my fingers down her forearm.
She tilted her head so she could look in my eyes. A slow grin spread over her face.
We don’t even need phones anymore! We can talk to each other whenever we want to, from anywhere! This is sooo cool!
I laughed, equally amused and relieved, and squeezed her hand. Yeah, pretty amazing, huh?
Aunt Dorothy’s eyes met mine. “Looks like we’ve done it.” She winked and gave me a half smile. “Now that your pyramidal union is complete, your training begins in earnest.”
|| 9 ||
I LAY IN BED that night staring at the ceiling fan. In addition to Mason’s thoughts, I listened to the stream of Ang and Sophie’s background chatter. My brain kept trying to separate the three of them. Even when I tried to detach from the chatter and allow the noise to drift through me, I’d catch myself trying to distinguish between the voices. And every so often a stray snippet of thought zapped me behind the eyes. I tried not to get irritated with Ang and Sophie’s inexperience, but if they didn’t get control of their links soon, I was afraid I might lose it.
I tightened all of my muscles, and then relaxed, imagining the chatter as a sea of words upon which I drifted, uncaring of the exac
t composition of what buoyed me. It got slightly more tolerable, and I thought of the cove and Zane. With a tipping sensation that I felt mentally more than physically, my surroundings grayed, and then I stood on the beach, full moon mirrored on the still, black surface of Tapestry Lake. I clenched my hands at my chest as my heart jumped.
For the first time, I’d transported myself to the hypercosmic realm from full consciousness. Or maybe Zane had drawn me here, the way Mason had before?
“Zane?” I whispered. Despite Aunt Dorothy’s warnings, there were too many questions that only he could answer. And I just . . . had to see him again.
I walked along the water line, watching the moon’s reflection as it followed alongside me. I waited, watching the rippling water. But something about the stillness of the cove. . . . He wasn’t going to show up tonight. I lingered a few more minutes. Surrounded by the smell of the forest, tension drained from my body. The voices were still present in my mind, but muted to whispers I could easily ignore. Such relief.
I wanted to try moving back and forth between the waking and dream worlds, now that I’d discovered how to do it deliberately. But exhaustion pulled me under, and I drifted from the cove into the emptiness of deep sleep.
* * *
I set out walking to Aunt Dorothy’s house early the next morning. The sky was hazy, in between sunny and overcast, and I pulled my hands into my sleeves. She wanted all of us to spend some time at the cove, where we’d start training. She hoped at this early hour we’d have it to ourselves. If anyone was there, I’d have to use the influences to get them to leave us alone.
Up to this point, it seemed like Mason could do a whole lot more than I could, with his fog-zapping static clouds and illumination tricks. It was cool to be able to manipulate people using the pyxis influences, but how was that supposed to prevent evil from cycling between the physical world and the hypercosmic realm? And how was I to act as the point person in our pyramidal union? And . . . well, the questions multiplied like rabbits anytime I set them loose.