The Affliction

by Wendy E. Marsh

  She was there in front of me, and then she wasn’t. She didn’t make herself invisible like Gabriel. She didn’t transform into an inanimate object like Isaac. And she was not as fast as Mariah that she merely ran away and I couldn’t see her go.

  No, this was something much scarier, much more impossible, much more like magic. The impression I’d gotten of the wind being able to steal her away was more accurate than I’d realized. One second she stood in front of me and the next, I could feel her standing directly behind me. Her body had dispersed into the air, teleported to another plot in space without a sound or warning. I gasped and reeled away from her a good ten feet. I knew my eyes rivaled a frog’s but I couldn’t help it.

  “Hello, Aubrie,” she said in a fittingly wispy voice that contained an accent I didn’t recognize, “I am your new instructor, Moraine.”

  It took me the whole sentence to realize, in horror, that she had not spoken the words out loud. Her lips hadn’t moved. The sound hadn’t reverberated around the room, just inside my head.

  The phenomenon reminded me of when I thought of something in my mind, heard the words in my head without speaking them, except that those words weren’t mine and they weren’t in my voice. It was most definitely hers though I hadn’t heard her speak aloud.

  She smiled at my bewildered expression.

  “Very interesting, isn’t it? And I bet you thought the only trick you could do was see the future.”

  I was still in shock from her display of abilities, of the teleportation and whatever it was that allowed her voice inside my head. “I-I can d-do that?” I stammered, only my words were spoken out loud.

  “Yes. Sages have lots of abilities. Not all of us have the same ones, but I know you possess teleportation and telepathy, at least. We will see what all you can do.” She tapped her head and continued silently, “I know you are something special. You’re much older than I usually teach, but you are one like I’ve never seen before.”

  I didn’t know what to say. What did she mean by that? I knew she was a Sage herself and had been an instructor for over fifty years, so could she possibly be correct or truthful in stating she’d never seen anything like me before? And why was I different? Just because I started late and had mixed parents?

  “Don’t worry, dear, I have a good feeling about you.”

  Well, that’s comforting, I thought. And then I wondered something else that I hoped was not the case. I had assessed her as a witch, after all. “Can, um, can you read minds?” I asked hesitantly and waited impatiently for the answer.

  “No, no. I said we have many talents, but mind reading is not among them. No, outsiders have always thought we could read their minds, but we only see the future, know what they are feeling, and can draw conclusions about what they are thinking from things we see them doing in the future. Same goes for palm reading. There’s no such thing as reading a life in a palm, but if we come in contact with them, we can obtain a stronger feeling of their future. But let’s not worry about what we can’t do. Let’s focus on what you can do.”

  After I adjusted to her creepiness it suddenly hit me that I wanted to do those things too. I wanted to be able to fade into the air around me, to talk telepathically, and more things I couldn’t quite distinguish yet.

  “So you can put your voice in my head, but you can’t see what’s inside it?” I checked.

  “Yes, that is correct. Now you try.”

  Our whole conversation up to that point had consisted of her standing silent and me speaking out loud. She had not spoken one word verbally. Now she asked me to do the same and though I felt like I should be able to do it, I didn’t know how.

  “How do I?” I asked nervously, fearing that I would disappoint her if I didn’t just know automatically.

  I apparently didn’t need to worry because she smiled encouragingly and instructed me patiently on how to proceed. “Don’t be tempted to move your mouth. No lips, no tongue. It’s all in your mind.”

  “Okay, how about this?” I thought without speaking, but it didn’t feel any different than me just thinking to myself.

  “Okay, good. But now you have to push it out to me. You must be willing for me to hear it.”

  I considered her instructions and thought they shouldn’t be too hard to follow, just don’t move your mouth, and will her to hear what you say in your head. I kept my mouth still and thought, “am I doing it right?” while I tried to make her hear it. I still didn’t feel anything significant and I thought I should. I started to become frustrated.

  She shook her head but continued patiently. “You need to want it more and try harder. And you have to believe it will work.”

  I did want it. I knew I should be able to perform the skill, why couldn’t I just do it? And then I felt a familiar uneasiness and I recognized it as the same feeling associated with the use of my intuition, my main manifesting ability. Suddenly, I got excited, knowing that feeling meant using a Sage talent.

  “Good, you are feeling it now. But you must focus. Only think about what’s in your mind, what you want to say to me. Push it to me like a wave.”

  And then I completely focused myself, closed my eyes and thought nothing but the darkness. I tried to feel her in front of me, push my gift outside of myself. The pressure radiated up from my stomach and through my chest as though I vomited something that swelled inside me, but it continued up through my throat to my head and I saw yellow, pulsing yellow before it all went black.

  When I opened my eyes I was sprawled out, face up on the floor.

  “Excellent. They don’t usually catch on as fast as you just did. Most times they stand there staring at me and nothing happens.”

  “But I didn’t do anything except pass out,” I gasped, standing up again.

  “No, you are doing very well. Try again. Concentrate. Believe.”

  Try again? I didn’t want to repeat that feeling. It didn’t hurt per se, but it wasn’t a comfortable sensation, either. This skill required an immense effort and the pressure that moved through my body was strenuous. I was scared to feel it all again, but abruptly my gift’s compulsion overwhelmed me and I almost had no choice.

  Once again I closed my eyes and focused only on the task at hand, felt the pressure spawn in my stomach and rocket upwards into a burst of pulsing yellow light before it all went dark again.

  The white hall was spacious enough that nothing stood nearby for me to fall into; which was a blessing, because no matter how many times I tried that day to push those words outside myself to Moraine, I reached no further than the yellow lights before I fainted. As it was, after about the tenth try I started to feel a little sore from hitting the floor with dead weight so many times.

  With each attempt, I felt the energy drain out of me but I couldn’t stop. After each new pounding I took I stood right back up just to fall down again. I felt like I was stuck on a particularly challenging level of a video game, frustratingly not able to defeat it.

  We spent hours just working on that one ability, which made me feel just about useless. I knew that was only my first day of training but I thought I should at least have made some headway. Instead, all I did was build up a compelling pressure which eventually led to me lying unconscious on the floor. Some Mystic I was.

  “You are gifted, my girl. This talent is not easy. Only Sage’s possess this ability, and we can only have a two-way conversation with other Sages. We can talk like this to Mystics with other callings, but they can’t reply. This is an arduous ability to learn. We’ll stop there for today, and tomorrow we’ll work on seeing, something you already know how to do.”

  “Are we done for today, then?” I asked breathlessly, having just pulled myself stiffly up off the floor for about the fiftieth time.

  “For now we’re done with this type of training. Let’s eat some dinner and meet here again for some theory class work.”

  Everyone greeted me when I ambled into the dining room, then returned to the conversations they were previous
ly engaged in. I hadn’t met everyone residing at Headquarters yet, and the size of the chapter astonished me.

  Marielle’s eyes lingered on me longer than the rest, until the little boy beside her demanded her attention again. He was one of three boys there that I hadn’t met yet but Mariah told me they were her children. The whole family thing still took me off guard, and these three kids were more spread out in age, at two, five, and eight.

  There were also elderly adults here I didn’t recognize. I soon learned that the one extremely cute old couple was Tobias’ parents, and the stricter and military-like couple was Mariah’s parents. Tobias’ mother had been an outsider and his father had chosen to induct her into the society as a non-functional member. Both of Mariah’s parents had been Silencers in their day. Both of those couples were just visiting; they lived elsewhere since they were retired.

  I was afraid of arriving late for dinner, but I noticed that besides Mariah, Isaac wasn’t there, and the food wasn’t on the table yet. I could barely move let alone think. My powers were pretty much useless.

  I slumped into an empty chair and immediately wished I hadn’t. My intuition had been too slow to catch the trap and I already sat down when I realized my mistake. Isaac grabbed my arms while letting out a shriek as he transformed back from chair to human, and I reflexively jumped up and let out my own scream.

  I glared at Isaac, squatting down and laughing hilariously. Some of the other members and the kids laughed but some looked annoyed like they had seen this sort of trick one too many times. “Oh, you just wait ’til my strength is back Isaac, then I’ll get you,” I threatened.

  His laughter finally died down as he slipped into a real chair. “What’s wrong Aubie-bear have a rough day?”

  I gritted my teeth. “If you ever call me that again, and I don’t care how tired I am, I very might possibly rip your head off.”

  There was something in his initial reaction that took me by surprise, an instant of belief because in my new world ripping someone’s head off wasn’t necessarily an empty threat, taken as seriously as a bomb threat in a high school.

  Yes, I saw in his face momentarily something that would haunt me, but he quickly composed his features and looked smugly at me. “Yeah, we’ll see,” he said, “Oh, sweet, food’s ready!”

  I didn’t know how the others had spent their day but it seemed everyone was every bit as hungry as I was. All eyes were on Mariah as she darted into the room with the giant platters of food, moving so quickly I questioned her ability to balance it all. If Cyrus hadn’t awkwardly risen to greet her and in the meantime managed to grab a plate, half the food may have ended up on the floor.

  Apparently, Moraine preferred to eat alone. She had taken up residence in one of the empty wings Isaac had shown me, as she planned to stay for a while, maybe a few years. At that point, I felt like a few years was lowballing it.

  Dinner passed quickly, of course, since I wasn’t overly anticipating the rest of the night with Moraine favorably. And I had a feeling this night would run so long it would end in the morning.

  I kept thinking about what had happened that day with my training, but I tried to listen to the main conversation now going on at the table since it seemed important. Apparently, Tobias had run a routine scan of the state this morning, which turned up a breach of security in Pittsburgh. From the way he couldn’t get a grip on the issue, he figured it had something to do with the Black Shadow, who knew ways to block his abilities.

  Upon this revelation, he and Eleanor traveled to Pittsburgh to check things out for themselves, only to find the old warehouse empty but with leftover residue from the Black Shadow leader, Aeris. I learned that Aeris was the black-haired man I’d seen standing in the window at the hospital, the one who could have been rather handsome had his face not been twisted into an expression that said he wanted to murder me.

  “I just wish I knew what he was doing in Pittsburgh, alone,” Tobias said.

  “Well it wasn’t good, whatever he was up to, if it triggered your intuition,” replied Eleanor.

  I had the feeling they had already discussed the issue several times that day.

  “You’re sure nobody was with him?” Cyrus questioned skeptically.

  “Is it weird he was alone?” I interjected, unable to help myself. Tobias didn’t seem to mind, and answered me eagerly.

  “Although Aeris is a more active leader than those heading most traditional armies, it’s definitely odd that he was doing something so proactive to trip my Sage meter by himself. He has his own minions to do the dirty work for him. I think whatever he was doing was too important to entrust to someone of a lower status.”

  The others nodded in agreement and I realized that Cara and I were not the only complications the society had to focus on.

  Everything there was so complex, everyone running off in unknown directions, acting on impulse as well as on missions, trying to predict and block the enemies’ next move while attempting to dash around the opposing brick wall. Offense and defense working simultaneously like I had never seen, that even the most genius football coaches couldn’t plot out, and the figures and the lines on the chalkboard were invisible, disappearing, and constantly morphing.

  What chaos they had brought me into and I could barely comprehend the current game plans, let alone think of learning how to become a player myself in a game more serious and enigmatic than the game of Jumanji. Compared to my newfound way of life, I thought Robin Williams had it pretty easy.

  If only I could just roll the dice to make my next move, instead of training for years just to learn how to make it. No such luck, no dice for me. Just creepy old Moraine, who would have been tied to a stake and burned into oblivion immediately had she lived in Salem a few hundred years previously. No doubt some of our ancestors had been so crudely disposed of.

  The non-charcoaled Moraine waited for me in the white hall. The translucent one sat in a straight-backed wooden chair behind a small desk. An identical chair on the on the other side of the desk lay empty except for the feeling that it would soon entertain my bottom.

  I was correct in my assumption that I would still sit in that ridiculously uncomfortable chair, my bottom falling asleep, while the night sucked the light from the day, on through the black vacuum of midnight, until the early morning turned the air outside into a gray haze.

  Apart from the seating arrangements, I was quite content to stay with Moraine all night, because as soon as I sat down we proceeded forth not with active training as I had imagined, but passively with a conversation and an extremely interesting one at that. All the while she poured her thoughts into my mind without once opening her mouth, while I replied to her in a non-telepathic fashion.

  The subject range of our tête-à-tête was broad but mostly focused on the society, Sages and my chapter in particular.

  Mariah introduced the three boys at the dinner table as her and Cyrus’ sons; however, she, of course, hadn’t mentioned that only two of them were biologically theirs. They had adopted the oldest, Daniel, from Chapter F in Texas when his parents died on a mission. Cyrus and Mariah then conceived Tanner, now five, and Tate, now two, shortly after the adoption of Danny.

  Many of the rest of our chapter had not been born belonging in the chapter either or didn’t have parents. Isaac was born there but just like Danny, he was also an orphan. The whole chapter had accepted responsibility for him.

  Besides Danny and Isaac, Adam and Gabriel had also belonged to other chapters before ours, and that’s why I had not seen their parents at the dinner table. Adam had been born into Chapter B, just above ours on the map, but had chosen to switch to our chapter when he met Cara on a visit there. I briefly wondered how he had become the master of our chapter at such a young age when he wasn’t even born into it.

  Moraine never expanded on Gabriel’s past, which I believe she knew I was thankful for. She had some intelligence on what happened after they took Cara and delivered a piece of news that saddened me because I kne
w that at that moment Cara’s heart was breaking. Moraine told me Adam would stay at the Capital for a month, but after that time, the elders would not allow him to see her ever again.

  For the safety of each of them, for the safety of the chapters, and for the secrecy of the society, Adam was no longer allowed to maintain a relationship with Cara. When Moraine told me this upsetting news, a horrible notion overtook me and I doubled over as I let out a great dry sob. I knew Cara would forever be scarred and broken, but I could feel Adam’s anguish. I had witnessed his love for her back at the cabin in Sundown, and once more I became aware of the crashing down of their bond.

  Then, at the back of my mind, there was something more…something more than Adam and Cara’s pain. With horror, I realized that for some reason the breaking up of this pair hurt me, too. It bothered and nagged me, but what in my life caused me to hurt over their dying bond?

  Was it just the reminder of the death of my past relationship with Michael? Or was it something more? Possibly the ending of a relationship that hadn’t been given the chance to live? I could still see Gabriel’s face when I ran from his room and my heart clenched. Maybe I had made a mistake, but I couldn’t admit it quite yet.

  Although she tried to disguise it, I could see past the mask on Moraine’s face to know that she felt all the agony in the situation, too. How weary someone as old as she must have been, having lived so long feeling not only one’s own pain, but everyone else’s as well.

  She did not linger on our chapter but moved on to the Sage calling, where we spent hours discussing the origins of the calling, great Sages of the past, and what Sages were doing for the world at the time. Then we talked about the general abilities that Sages usually possess and which of those she suspected I harbored.

  I soon became excited again, anxious to see what all I could do. I wanted to impress her and the rest of my chapter, and eventually the elders, where many of the members expected me to fail.