by Jenn Stark
I paused and slipped off my boots, then turned in my stocking feet and bowed slightly, vaguely remembering not to hold out my hand. Chichiro startled me by holding out hers. “Your hands, Madam Wilde. Please.”
Okay, this is it. I braced for impact, reminding myself that my one-hour session had already started. I’d survived a full minute of it without pain, so fifty-nine to go.
I placed my hands into the woman’s outstretched palms, and she immediately tightened her grip to keep me from falling.
“Relax, Madam Wilde, truly.”
That was easier said than done. Sensei Chichiro was one of the most powerful Connecteds I’d encountered this side of the Council, and her hands transmitted enough of an electrical charge that my knees wobbled. Though she must have noticed my reaction, she didn’t let go, instead turning my hands over, palms up. She passed her thumbs over the bases of my wrists, and a flash of pain arced through me where the Gods’ Nails had taken up temporary residence there.
Then it was gone, and her hands were back on her side of the playground.
“Better?” she asked, and I blinked, then stared down at my hands.
“Um…yes,” I finally managed. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been carrying around residual pain in my hands since the nails had been yanked out. Healing didn’t always mean feeling better, but I’d gotten used to the dull ache. Now it was gone. “Thank you.”
She gestured to the low couch. “Sit. We do not have much time.”
I sat, leaning forward as she also arranged herself on a cushioned chair at the head of the low table, not so much sitting as perching. She went about pouring the tea in a blur of action that I found impossible to follow. Then she was holding out a teacup, nodding to me. “Drink.”
So far, this wasn’t nearly the harrowing experience I was expecting. I took a sip of the tea, unraveling another notch of tension despite myself. The drink was crisp and clean tasting, some mixture of mint and spice, and didn’t at all seem drugged. And we were still in Chichiro’s front room, the SUV in clear view through the sheer curtains. Ma-Singh could leap right through the big window and save me if I started screaming, I was almost certain.
The sensei set down her own cup of tea, then studied me. “You have come to me because you cannot see clearly. It is a problem I am well acquainted with in Westerners.”
“I…okay.” I nodded, trying to parse a response. Technically, I hadn’t come to the sensei, Ma-Singh had forced me here. That said, she wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t seen enough to rescue those children in time. I hadn’t reached them before Gamon or her minions had. That needed to stop. I had to get faster—smarter. I needed to see more.
She smiled as if I’d spoken. “You do not see because there is too much before your eyes. They are veiled, and you prefer them veiled.” She lifted a hand to forestall my immediate response. “Not consciously, perhaps. But that does not change the truth. When we see clearly and do not act, we have no one to blame but our own lack of courage. It is easier not to see, sometimes.”
I tried not to feel defensive, but Chichiro moved on. “You do not have the luxury of not seeing any longer, however. You know this to be true. There is great ability within you and no discernment. I cannot teach discernment in an hour.”
“Ah…well, I wouldn’t think so,” I said gamely. Mostly I was glad she knew about the hour limit.
“I can, however, help you see. Please come with me.”
She stood, and I did as well, my heart beginning to hammer again. She turned and led the way down a narrow hallway, then opened the door at the far end. A dimly lit room lay beyond, with soft music playing. This was bad. Ma-Singh couldn’t see me anymore. If I died during this operation, I would so come back to haunt his Mongolian ass.
Chichiro stepped into the room and waited for me to get my guts up enough to follow her. Though I couldn’t tell in the gloom, it seemed like she was rolling her eyes at me. Snark was an international language, and I suspected she was fluent in it.
“Please remove your socks and your jacket, and lie down here.” She patted the table, and finally I saw the room for what it was…a spa treatment room, complete with a massage table.
Really? No wonder Madam Soo had come so often. I’d come here too if it meant I could get a rubdown, even from ol’ Electric Hands.
Still, I couldn’t quite allay a twinge of anxiety as I rolled off my socks and laid them and my jacket on a small teak ledge. Not giving myself a chance to think too much about it, I climbed onto the table, lying down stiffly. Chichiro covered me up to the shoulders with a blanket. I decided that if I was going to get assassinated, this was the way to do it.
“Will this hurt?” I asked, but she ignored me. I suddenly got the feeling that the room, the bed, was all an illusion, intended solely for my benefit, to calm my fears. Well, it was working. Sort of.
“I will say a prayer over you, then begin,” Chichiro said, and when she closed her eyes, I felt mine naturally closing too. I would only shut them during the prayer, I resolved. Then I’d watch her every move. Of course, she probably suspected I’d do that. When better to catch me off guard and knife me in the throat?
My eyes popped open again, and Chichiro was looking down at me, her lips definitely now twisted into a grin. “It will be all right, Madam Wilde. The first time, there is no pain. When you return, that is different.”
“Got it.” Note to self, do not darken this door again.
She placed her hands on either side of my head, and the buzzing between my ears suddenly muted. She spoke then, in Japanese, I assumed, but I couldn’t hear the words so much as sense their effect on me. She pressed her fingers into several points along my skull, and every nerve in my body fell limp, my bones turning to milk. That done, she moved to the base of the bed and slipped the blanket off one foot, keeping the other wrapped.
“Reflexology?” I managed, or I thought that was what I said. My eyes were slitted to half-mast, the surreal wash of relaxation dragging me down deep.
“A variant of. You…” She frowned, passing her hand over one foot, then another, but she said nothing further for several minutes. Every time she touched me, however, poking and prodding, something else seemed to unkink.
At last she spoke. “You are very damaged, Madam Wilde. Your kidneys, your ears, your stomach.” Pause. “Your liver, your spine.”
“Yeah, well. You should see the other guy.”
“I do not have time to address these wounds. You will come back.”
“Sure.” I really didn’t care what I said anymore, as long as she kept manipulating bones I was pretty sure had been broken more than a few times. She finally paused midway along the base of my toes on the right foot.
“There is no time,” she murmured again, so much regret in her voice that I almost felt bad for her.
“It’s okay, I’ll—”
“Take three deep breaths, Madam Wilde.”
On the second, she drove a knife through my skull.
Chapter Thirteen
“Stop that!” I screamed, or I think I screamed, yanking my feet out of Chichiro’s grasp and hauling myself off the bed, scrambling into the corner of the room. My arms were flung wide, my hands outstretched, and I drove myself back, back until I came up against the solid surface of the wall.
Wall. Where there was a wall, there was a door. Where there was a door, there was a hallway, and a hallway would take me to Ma-Singh.
I needed these truths like I’d never needed anything before because—because I was blind.
“Madam Wilde!”
“Stay away from me!” I should have been grateful that Chichiro didn’t finish the job right there. She could have, she should have—I would have. My brain was processing these thoughts too quickly, rampaging through pain and fear and disorientation, but all of it was superseded by a need to survive, to escape, to protect.
A flash of something in front of me made me flinch, and heat bathed my face. Somewhere there was a scream, but I focused only o
n the fact that I could still sense light. Light had to be good, right? It had to be.
But now the sound of crackling fire reached me, and the acrid smell of something burning. Nothing wrong with those senses.
“Madam Wilde, you’re all right, you’re all right! It is simply your third eye!”
I’d used my third eye before, though. This was nothing like that—she had to be wrong about what was happening! Panic firing anew, I surged forward, my hands out to the side, banging against the wall until I reached the door. It was open, and I fell through it into the hallway, my lungs filling with smoke.
An enormous crash sounded far ahead, and Ma-Singh’s voice boomed out with an appropriate level of fear. “Madam Wilde!” he roared. Then there was the sound of thudding footsteps, and the enormous bulk of something warm and unforgiving crashed into me, lifting me up in a bear hug and hauling me forward. “Sensei Chichiro-san!”
There was another round of shouting, but I couldn’t focus on that, I couldn’t focus on anything, as my eyelids flared wide and darkness—only darkness—greeted me. Ma-Singh swung me around, and that darkness dimmed ever so slightly, and I lurched in his arms, back toward the brightness, back toward—
“No, Madam Wilde,” he shouted, jerking me back. “You can’t help her.”
Help…her? “I’m blind!” I nearly screamed, ripping myself bodily from him. He was so surprised, he dropped me to the ground. At least that was the explanation I was going with as I collapsed in a heap on the springy earth. When had we gotten outside?
I scrambled up and backward, swinging my head everywhere, but there was nothing. Darkness encroached all around me, and I lifted my hands to my face, running my palms over my forehead, my cheeks. My eyes were there! They should be working! I closed my lids, opened them again, and felt the tears sluicing down my cheeks.
“What’s happening to me?” I gasped, shocked more that the words were no longer high and strident, but low, quiet, and filled with fear.
“Let me past!” Chichiro’s voice had changed to one of absolute authority, almost palpable power, and I sensed her rushing up to me, even as I flopped myself back on my butt and tried to crab-walk away. The whistle of displaced air came a second too late for me to process it, but there was no missing the crack of a thick rod against the side of my knee, sweeping my legs out from under me and arresting my progress.
“Stop!” Chichiro commanded, entirely unnecessarily given the fact that I was now crumpled on the ground.
She crouched down beside me. “You are safe, Madam Wilde. You are not blind. Halt the fire you’ve released into my house.”
I swung my head around toward the sound of her voice. I did feel safe, honestly, my panic instantly stripped away. But I was definitely still blind. Was this how Helen Keller had felt? Because this sucked.
Chichiro said something else, and I struggled to focus. “Fire—?”
“My house,” she said again, very calmly. “The fire. You are not blind, you aren’t. I am telling you this, and I know it to be true. But I will be homeless if you don’t stop the fireballs you’ve loosed in your panic.”
Suddenly, comprehension dawned, along with a sick dread. “I don’t know how to stop them,” I whispered.
She spoke again as if we were discussing where to put away the Cheerios. “There is a stream beyond my house, farther up the mountain. It is fed by snows, very beautiful, very cold.”
She continued on, describing the flowing water, and suddenly—suddenly I could see it in my mind too, bolstered by her rich explanations. I knew it was there—knew it. Knew it was a place to park the fire, much as the hearth in the Viking stronghold had been. The shouts from the house abruptly stopped, then the sound of shattering glass reached my ears as twin streaks of heat flared faintly against my cheeks.
“Your poor house,” I murmured, holding up my hands in…I don’t know what. Shock. Embarrassment. Supplication. I imagined Chichiro’s home in its beautiful simplicity, saw its clean lines, its empty spaces, its serene walls and polished floors. Even the room where I’d been blinded, so warm, so dim, so inviting. So…safe.
Ma-Singh hissed beside me, which didn’t sound good, but Chichiro sighed with something that seemed much more positive.
“Good,” she said simply, and her hands connected with mine, which I realized were still flailing weakly in the air, as if I could feel the space around me and give it form. At her touch, my heart rate slowed further, my breath easing in my throat. Unaccountably, tears began coursing down my cheeks, and I could feel them—I could feel the scratchiness of my eyeballs, the touch of my lids against their surface. They were there. My eyes were still right there. On my face. In their sockets.
“Why aren’t they working?” I nearly moaned, hysteria mounting again within me despite Chichiro’s calming touch.
“They are working,” she said, tightening her hands on mine and bringing my palms together. “But they are not all you need to see.”
I blinked rapidly, pulling my hands out of hers to rub my tears away. Then I focused on my hands.
“Nope, still nothing,” I said, trying not to sound unhinged.
“Relax, Madam Wilde.” There were more sounds of objects moving around me, the shifting of bodies, and I focused on that. I couldn’t see anything, but I—I could sense the movement. Chichiro waving off the mass that was Ma-Singh; other, slighter forms in the background, also stepping away. I saw them not as images, though, but more…more as sensations. Part of the weave of the world that was still all darkness to me.
“Relax.” Chichiro touched my knees, pulled my legs straight, then gradually lowered me to the ground. There was something beneath my head, some rolled-up cloth, but the grass beneath me was surprisingly dry. Hadn’t it been misty when we’d driven up this mountain? Hadn’t it smelled like rain?
She folded my unresisting hands over my stomach, then somehow produced a blanket. She covered me up to my chest. Dimly, I realized that this was the same position I’d been in when she’d ice-picked my brain, but Chichiro seemed so calm, so in control, that I wanted to believe she had my best interests at heart. And Ma-Singh hadn’t thrown me into the SUV and fled down the mountain, so apparently he believed the same thing.
“My eyes…” I couldn’t bring myself to put my fears into words, but fortunately, I didn’t have to. Chichiro laid a calming hand on my shoulder, even squeezed it.
“Your natural sight remains as it ever has. You can see. But you have more than one way to see now. More than two eyes. Your brain is having to make a difficult choice, and is electing to choose neither. It happens, but not often. Only when the third eye is dominant.”
“The third eye,” I repeated. “There’s a spot on my foot for that?”
Chichiro didn’t honor that with a response. And she should have, because it would clearly be a place I’d avoid going forward.
“Your eye is open, but it is not used to seeing. It is very strong, however.” She laughed, a little grimly. “Very strong.”
I winced, imagining the smoking wreck of her house. “So…how do I get it to close again? So I can see like a normal person?”
Another tinkling laugh. “But you are not a normal person, Madam Wilde. Why should you want to see like one? Especially when you have come all this way.”
“Because—”
“Shh. Be still, Madam Wilde. Breathe deeply for me.”
I’d played that game before, but since the woman was nowhere near my feet, I figured I’d be somewhat safe. I breathed in deep once…twice…and tensed, holding my breath for another long count. When nothing knifed through me, I gradually relaxed, all while Chichiro dropped a light, reassuring touch on my crown, my cheeks, my shoulders. It wasn’t a massage, but simply a reminder she was there, that she was unperturbed by my blindness, and it went a long way toward reassuring me that it would go away.
“Can you picture a knotted rope?” she asked, her voice almost as drowsy as I felt.
I furrowed my brow. “A what?�
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“Any item that symbolizes control to you. A rope. A chain of many links. Something you are comfortable with. Something you know well.”
“Right.” I imagined my gun. I don’t know why, but the image formed in my mind so clear and crisp, it was as if I was holding it in my hand—except it was in front of me, isolated against the blackness yet somehow lit up and displayed in rich, perfect detail.
“That’s good,” she murmured. “Turn it in your mind. See it from all angles.”
This was an image I could get used to. My pistol was sleek, deadly, and accurate, small enough to fit in my palm easily, its firing action so smooth that I never had to worry about my hand jerking and throwing off my aim. I loved that gun for all that I tried not to use it. It wasn’t on me now, but it was in the SUV. It was a good gun. I could use more like it.
“Stay relaxed,” cooed Chichiro, but she had it all wrong. With each new gun popping up in my mind, I became more relaxed, not less. A barricade of loaded guns formed around me. Guns I never wanted to need, but always wanted to have at my disposal. That wasn’t a bad idea, truly. I should add more of them.
“Madam Wilde, I am laying my hand upon your brow. Can you feel that?”
The image of the guns wavered as my focus shifted, but Chichiro was right there again. “Keep the image in your mind, strong and full. See those—see what you have imagined. Is it strong?”
Piles of guns. A prepper’s dream come true. I smiled, feeling my facial muscles stretch and lengthen. “It’s pretty strong,” I said.
Beyond Chichiro came an amused Mongolian grunt.
“I’m going to move my hands, then, here.” She placed gentle long-fingered hands over my eye sockets. “Can you still see the image?”
“I can.”
“Focus on the image. The safety and control it provides. The surety of it. Tell yourself you are safe, and that all that you see is safe too. That you welcome it, embrace it. That you can see all that you wish, exactly as you wish.”