Finally, my overly-extended day concluded with Moraine and me twittering like two little girls talking about clothes for their dolls. We made plans to meet later that morning, at eleven in the same place.
Before I left, she made a suggestion to me; one which I knew I should follow through with, but that I was very hesitant to carry out. I had always kept my hair long, and right then when it hung straight down, it reached to my lower back.
During training that day I noticed that it very much got in the way, even when I had it pulled up, and Moraine said it would only get worse when I tried other abilities. I knew I should cut it short, but I was reluctant to give up my hair. I would think about it.
As I made my way back to my room and throughout getting ready for a very short night of sleep, I thought of all the things that Moraine had told me…and all the things she hadn’t.
Chapter 21
A continuing trend started that night in regard to how I slept. Every night for the first month held terror for me, probably due to the stresses of training. My nightmares returned, only now they were worse and more vivid than before. I had even more to work with for the content of the dreams in those days.
Of course, the crash and Michael’s death replayed over and over just as they had before I joined the Mystic, but somehow they turned more grotesque than before. And I could usually count on encounters with my beastly father and sister, Isaac staring in horror as Shadows killed his mom in front of him, Cara suffering as she had been the last time I saw her, and Gabriel…always Gabriel briefly just before I woke. When I awoke in the mornings, something pertaining to my first and now lost friend in the society left me with a horrible feeling in my gut.
It escalated to the point where, had I not been so exhausted after each day of rigorous practice stretching my mind, I would have tried to avoid sleep altogether for fear of what I would see when my eyes closed. However, no matter what had happened in dreamland the previous night, I always fell to sleep almost the instant my head hit the pillow.
After my second day of training, I decided my current hairstyle was not entirely practical. I found myself in Eleanor’s huge bathroom, sitting nervously in a chair as she laid out tools, reminding me very much of a surgeon with his scissors and scalpels and other intimidating instruments.
Even though I trusted Eleanor, I cringed as she cut above the band starting the long braid that would no longer be a part of me. We would mail it to an organization that would make wigs for children with cancer, and that gave me a little peace to know my loss would help someone. Her movements were quick, just a few snips with the scissors and suddenly, I had hair that reached just below my chin. That part wasn’t so daunting since it happened so swiftly and I was a little in shock.
But as Eleanor took the next half hour shaping and styling my hair, I began to feel a little disappointment. I stopped watching in the mirror and just closed my eyes to wait until she finished. We talked about other events occurring in the chapter and how my training proceeded, and I started to feel better.
Then she said excitedly in her melodic voice, “Okay, Aubrie, it’s done, what do you think?”
I sighed and then cautiously opened my eyes. After the first sight, my eyes snapped all the way open. “Wow,” I mouthed, not quite able to speak. Was that my reflection in the mirror?
“Is that a yes?” Eleanor asked, a little nervously.
I didn’t know how to explain to her how much I liked it, how much I loved it. I wasn’t used to expressing my emotions. “I’ve never looked so…stylish, or…”
“Hot,” Eleanor inserted, smiling broadly.
“Well, yeah.” I ran my fingers through the silky smoothness of freshly cut hair, feeling the layers as they perfectly shaped around my face. “Thanks, Eleanor, this is amazing!” I said, as I hopped up and hugged her.
The new style took me a while to get used to, and not least of all because Eleanor had given me bangs that swept across my forehead. I’d never had bangs before. I normally played with my hair, twirling it or smoothing it, or checking for split ends. After the cut, I continued to make absentminded movements that left me grasping nothing but air where my hair used to lay. Then I would remember that I no longer had enough hair to twirl and drop my hand back down, sometimes feeling foolish if others noticed.
After that minor change, training became fractionally easier, and I felt as though the new haircut gave me the power to leave more of my past behind. I slowly transformed into someone much stronger and independent than the girl I left behind in Aurora.
I did feel like my progression should have been speedier, but as the weeks passed Moraine complimented on how quickly I learned. She thought that I would finish my training much sooner than was custom, which was one of the options Gabriel had considered when he first discovered my talent.
This news, of course, excited me. While the rest of the chapter dashed off on missions, I was stuck at Headquarters with Moraine, remaining unhelpful as usual. During most of the days, the only inhabitants of the house were Moraine, myself, Isaac’s gramps and the four children. Sometimes Adam, Tobias, or Mariah’s parents would stop by to visit.
I wasn’t bored, as Moraine kept me busy all day long, and if Isaac returned home at night we would usually watch TV or movies or play video games. However, the elders forbade me from leaving Headquarters, and I found myself feeling lonely even in the presence of the other members.
By the third week, my intuition, in particular, became very strong. Isaac could no longer catch me off guard, even if I was tired. And I started to have feelings further in advance and for events of greater magnitude. Not only could I relay what the chef of the next day would serve for breakfast, but predict the weather…in a week’s time, and could perform my own basic scan of the state.
I started to get the feel for crimes among humans alone, with premonitions involving gas station hold ups and street shootings. Moraine taught me how to filter my intuition in order to gain only the information I requested, which greatly improved my issue with mental whiplash.
The Black Shadow didn’t breach any scans after Tobias had detected Aeris in Pittsburgh, so I didn’t know if their walls would foil me or if I would be strong enough to break through them. And although Moraine taught me about our natural enemy, the Davos, none attracted the attention of our chapter.
I only practiced telepathy a couple of times after the first day and I hadn’t even tried teleportation, which Moraine labeled the ability she showed me the first time I met her…the one where she evaporated into the air. That particular talent was one of the last skills to learn due to its demanding nature.
Moraine also showed me many other abilities and told me of those that Sages sometimes possess, but that she didn’t. I noticed she still used the verb seeing even though the phenomenon was not technically seeing anything, just feeling, or knowing.
“No Sage can see the future. We don’t get glimpses of things to come as though watching it on a personal television. Some of us do have visions, but not often, and they are never passages of the future, only symbolic images,” Moraine explained one day.
“Mostly, what we have is what outsiders would call a very acute sense of intuition, but it is something much stronger than that.”
“So, we just get feelings and suddenly there’s something we know?”
“Yes, ultimately this skill allows us to help find a Davo, that’s why it was given to us. Now we use it to fight the Black Shadow and sometimes even humanly evils in this world.”
I questioned the society’s purpose in the world a few days into training, wondering why we even fought back. Good and evil had always existed in the world, without a sign of ever changing. But the more Moraine explained to me, the more I understood our destined purpose and the idea that some things were worth fighting for. Once Moraine realized I had accepted the role of a Mystic, she stopped having mercy on me during our training sessions.
I experienced a particularly rough day at the end of my fourt
h week there, the day before Adam returned from England. Moraine practiced telepathy with me again, something we only did about once a week, and I had hit the floor only once. Apparently, I had passed the point of fainting, but still did not gain access beyond the barrier that trapped the words in my head. Moraine must have known I was close since she pushed me harder than she ever had, and it seemed like the more she asked of me, the less I was able to give.
I felt rejuvenated after lunch when it happened. I reached the point of the pulsing yellow light, decided I wanted to transfer those pulses over to Moraine, away from me, I didn’t faint and the lights didn’t die away. I shoved the light away from me, willing it to pass forward from myself rather than disappearing as it habitually did.
I managed to keep the light pulsing and traveling forward, and with one great heave I felt myself shout at Moraine, but if there had been an audience of outsiders, none of them would have heard my yell. Without initially realizing it, I had spoken my first words telepathically, and upon recognition of this success, I continued to shout in my excitement.
A great smile lit up on Moraine’s face, but eventually, she clapped her hands to her ears, though they were not the receivers for my voice, and yelled back at me. “Okay, Okay,” she said, “quiet, you are giving me a headache.” And then we both laughed out loud and I performed a pitiful little celebration dance.
Although everyone had thus far told me I did well before that day, the moment when I broke through the telepathic wall was the first time I truly felt I had achieved something great.
Through all of the doubts and after Tobias talked to me before my first training session with Moraine, I had become more positive toward myself. I wanted to believe that I would finish training and fit in, but I still couldn’t avoid thinking of the reservations some of the elders had about me.
I had faced the fact that I might never live up to the potential I had been born with, that I might just have signs of the gift but never gain the ability to use it or participate in the society as an active member. Yes, I had known that my fairy tale might end very soon, but when I breached the art of telepathy, I knew in my heart that I would achieve success.
Moraine decided to give me the rest of the day off due to my improvement and the fact that Adam would arrive home the next day. She also disclosed she would leave as soon as we finished with training to visit her oldest granddaughter, who was ready to give birth to Moraine’s first great-grandbaby.
When I bounded into the living room, barely touching my feet to the floor, where Isaac and Tobias sat watching TV, they both focused on me with all-too-knowing smiles. Tobias obviously knew what I had accomplished and had told Isaac before I had the chance to tell them myself.
I rolled my eyes. “What, you couldn’t wait a few minutes for me to get into the room to tell you? Way to spoil the news, Tobias,” I said into both of their heads. I tried just to tell Tobias, but it seemed I couldn’t direct who I spoke to yet. Just to say that much took a lot of effort for me like I had tried to hold my breath under water for a very long time, and I started to get a headache similar to one due to lack of oxygen.
Isaac’s eyes widened, and I realized he hadn’t been sure if Tobias told him the truth or had been playing a joke on him. Well, he knew the truth now.
“Oh, hush, kid, I’m almost as excited as you. I’ve been the only Sage here for a long time,” Tobias replied, only to me.
I rolled my eyes again, but in a more understanding way. I was about to tell them all about it anyway, but just then Isaac stood up and gave me a congratulatory hug that almost crushed me, cracking my back in the process. Guardians, they were so strong.
Then, Isaac and I fished in the stream out front where I crossed to enter Headquarters, something we weren’t usually able to do since my training always occupied me in daylight hours. Danny and Marielle came with us, too, and we spent the rest of the day sitting on the stone bridge, catching and releasing the random fish that swam down the creek.
Of course, both of the children eventually ended up in the almost current-less stream, splashing each other and taking turns chasing each other around. The day was fairly nice, but a little humid, like rain was always just a few minutes away, though I never did feel one drop fall.
There were only four members, plus the four children, home for dinner that night. Tobias and Eleanor left to stay in a hotel overnight so they could meet Adam and escort him home in the morning.
After dinner, all of the remaining members returned outside, to relax in the spacious gardens.
The mugginess of the day crept on into the evening, and the sun behind the clouds cast out a peculiar light as it made its way over the western horizon. The air seemed for once not to appear clear, but pink, as though the world had been stuck inside a Sepia-colored picture.
How odd this is, I thought, as I looked down at the effect the light had on my skin. Just a month before, I was just plain old Aubrie Lander, destined for my last year in college and beyond that an ordinary life. But there I stood in a classic snapshot of beauty and wonder, Aubrie the Sage, and I knew that my life from there on out would be anything but ordinary.
“I hope Adam will be impressed with how far I’ve come in the month since he’s seen me,” I told Isaac, who hung upside down from a high branch of the tree I was sat under. After learning a bit about his past, I felt like I could connect with him better, and I didn’t mind voicing my thoughts and fears to him. Gabriel was the one I really wanted to talk with, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Gabriel was simply gone and I had to forget about him because he wasn’t coming back. I needed to remember that I spoke to Isaac, and that was just fine.
He swung back and forth, letting his arms dangle below him. “Are you kidding? Nobody learns that fast. I bet if you asked Tobias he’d probably tell you it took him at least six months to learn telepathy. Of course Adam’s gonna be impressed, don’t be stupid.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Yeah, maybe,” I replied as I turned my head to watch Marielle streak off across the front yard blowing bubbles, chased by Danny, and trying to keep up but twenty feet behind, Tanner. Their two-year-old brother, Tate, made himself busy turning into a swamp creature in a mud puddle, while Mariah watched and shook her head from the porch.
Tanner was visibly an Exterminator, taking after Cyrus, with his stocky build and lack of incredible speed. Tate, on the other hand, would become a Silencer like his mother; although, the gift didn’t express itself much in him yet. Danny was destined to become a Guardian, after one of his biological parents. He tended to tag along with Isaac, his idol.
Isaac swung back and forth a few times, did a back flip, and landed in a crouch beside me. He had to have dropped twenty feet, but it didn’t affect him at all. “How do you do that?” I asked, still in wonder of this Guardian ability to fall from high places unscathed.
“Outsiders would reply to a question like that with ‘it’s called talent.’ Funny, that’s what it really is, a Guardian talent. Remember, we are masters of concealment and evasion, the key factors of protection. Being able to jump or fall from places our enemies can’t, and survive, is awesome. You should see the looks on their faces when we jump from say, a cliff, and they can’t follow. It’s priceless.”
Tate grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at Tanner, who had given up on chasing after the other kids. “Yeah, I know, I saw that when…” I cut my thought short because I had been about to cite the time when Gabriel had carried me out of the hospital window, saving me, but I was careful not to mention him to Isaac, or anyone in the chapter for that matter. It seemed everyone missed him. “You guys are like abnormally strong, too,” I blundered on, trying to fix my mistake.
“Yeah, yeah. The strength helps when we have to carry someone or something, or if for some reason we have to defend who we’re protecting. We have to be resilient and all that crap.”
Tate ran towards Mariah, hands flopping out at his sides, crying because Tanner had thrown mud back at him, whic
h had hit him in the face.
Tanner awkwardly backed away from the scene, apparently trying to avoid the reprimand that would surely come to him for throwing mud in his little brother’s face. I wondered what it would have been like to grow up with siblings. I would have had them if Angela had decided to keep them. The thought made my stomach turn and I pushed it away.
“That’s cool. I wish I could jump off a cliff or a building and not be a suicide,” I said.
“Sure, but you can do some pretty neat stuff, too. There’s tons of times I wish I could talk to someone without everyone else in the room hearing. And that teleportation trick, that’s awesome. Tobias can’t do it, though, but I bet you can,” he replied.
“Tobias can’t do it?” I asked, surprised. Isaac shook his head. “Wow, I didn’t know that. But, yeah, I guess our abilities are cool, too. I can’t complain.”
As the kids played in the yard, I suddenly had another thought about their lifestyle. “Do you go to school?” I asked Isaac, meaning not specifically him, but all children in the Mystic. They all seemed intelligent and educated, but I couldn’t see them attending public school for very long, one because I knew they wouldn’t like it and two, because some of their abilities may become too obvious and make other children and teachers suspicious.
“No, we’re sort of home-schooled, if you will, though we leave out a lot of the nonsense. We’re only taught what’s essential for us to become active members and not stand out to outsiders. We learn basic stuff like reading, writing, math, and some science. Our history lessons are the most extensive, since we learn the past the way the outsiders know it, and the way it happened for real, where we intervened. We learn the history of our society as well. We don’t go too deep into math, just basic functions like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and percentages, but we don’t use calculators, we figure everything out mentally.”
The Affliction Page 17