by Cate Tiernan
“Hi—I’m glad you came,” Anne said.
“Oh, wait, was this optional?” I asked.
She smiled at me. “No.”
The others shuffled in after me, and Anne said, “Thank you all for coming. I’d like you to help me with this morning’s session. I think a good group meditation will be very useful.”
Various murmurs and lame excuses, but Anne was pretty firm, and in the end, the five of us sat in a circle with a lit candle in the middle. Without looking at anyone, I picked up on their feelings of resentment and discomfort. I felt like the unpopular kid in the schoolyard.
Still, I focused on the candle, trying to rid my mind of the forty-seven unrelated thoughts that were crowding into my brain.
I was almost startled when Anne began to hum, then sing softly under her breath. One by one, we joined in, our voices and songs blending. The barn walls faded away, and I forgot about my cold butt and my embarrassment. Anne added words to her song, words in English, saying, Show us what we need to see. I felt her crafting a spell all around us, weaving it together out of our voices.
Spells have forms and structures; some of them are bottom heavy; some are elegant, like cages, ethereal, made of gossamer. Some are solid and sturdy, built to hold weight and intent and power. This spell felt like a basket, like thin reeds and split canes woven in and out and around one another. Then I was conscious of Jess’s mind touching mine tentatively, and within another minute, the five of us were sharing one vision.
It was a farm. Fields of shrubs studded with white lumps stretched away into the distance. Cotton; they were cotton fields. The vision shimmered and expanded to show a large, white, columned house in the distance, raised up on pilings, with long French windows everywhere.
I heard a boom! The ground trembled. In the distance the horizon was lit by a burst of light, and even this far away, the smells of sulfur and gunpowder reached my nose. Another boom! made us jump. This place was on the edge of a war, and the war was coming this way.
People ran across my field of vision. A small boy in a sailor suit collapsed, crying, beneath a huge tree, and a woman in long skirts swept him up in her arms, looking around wildly.
We were suddenly behind the house, by the fields. To the left was row after row of shacks, with glassless windows, holes in the walls, and crumbling chimneys, some of which had smoke curling away into the sky.
Fear splintered in my chest as more screams filled the air. Dogs barked, a horse broke free of its tether and galloped off beneath the trees, and still, the heavy booms of cannons shook the ground, and the smaller popping sounds of guns began to fill in between them.
A man on a horse rode up to the shacks, shouting harshly and cracking a whip. The horse’s eyes rolled in fear and its sides were lathered in sweat. Hesitantly people began emerging from the shacks, their dark skin shining in the dim light. The man shouted at them, pointing with one hand toward the big house. The people cowered, even the men, and none of them seemed surprised when he snapped the whip so it caught one of the men on the shoulder, slicing his raggedy shirt. Soon its edges were red with blood.
The man slid down from his horse. The sound of guns and cannons was louder. A woman cried: “They’re coming! Dear God!”
Rows of heavy chains hung from the horse’s saddle. The man grabbed them and headed toward the slaves, even as another boom! sounded so close by that it seemed like the barn itself should shake. The slaves saw the man coming at them with the chains, and one of them shouted something. They began to scatter, racing away into the chaos, leaving the man enraged, purple-faced, and chasing them with his whip.
Off in the distance an army began to swarm over a low hill, carrying an old-fashioned American flag.
The angry man, Jess, had sandy hair and rough features.
I was glad when the awful sounds and smells of the war faded and we were transported to… what was this—England? Ireland? Stucco walls fourteen inches thick, open windows letting in raucous laughter from outside. It was an inn. The moon shone into the room like a searchlight, framing the red-haired man sliding silently out of a metal-framed double bed. A man with old-fashioned whiskers lay next to him, still wearing his undershirt, his mouth open and snoring.
The red-haired man looked like a farm boy, with fresh pale skin and clear eyes. He wore nothing but old-fashioned drawers, and he tightened the tapes around his waist so they wouldn’t fall down. Slowly he crept to the big, plain dresser, glancing back at the man to make sure he was still sawing logs. Voyeuristically we watched as he drew a wallet out of the man’s pants pocket, opened it, and removed most of the bills. Then he glided like a shadow over to the potted plant on a wooden stand. Grasping the plant carefully at its base, he pulled it up, dropped the money into the hole, and pushed the plant down firmly on top of it. He was smiling as he lightly slid back into bed.
That was Charles, being a male prostitute in Ireland, who knows how long ago.
A shift, and then we saw a burning building. A city street stretched away, fire dotting many houses in a random pattern. Was it London? Boston? I couldn’t tell.
This house was going up in flames quickly. A second-story shutter crashed open, and a man wearing street clothes climbed up on the ledge. Behind him a woman cried, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
“I’m going to get a ladder!” the man said, shaking her hand off his shoulder. “Let me go!”
Crying, she stepped back. The man launched himself out of the window, landing hard on the sidewalk below. He shook his head, looking stunned, then got himself together and stood up. Our last sight of Solis was him racing away, as far from the burning house as possible. The blaze crept up the side of the house to the window frame, as if it were peering inside. We could still hear the woman crying, but couldn’t see her through the flames. Soon the entire house was burning, and her cries stopped.
In the next scene, Anne was very heavy. Her clothes looked like… the mid–eighteen hundreds? We were in a general-type store that carried everything from pieces of farm equipment to bolts of cloth to pocketknives, though the shelves seemed picked bare. Through the glass window we saw a crowd of people knocking anxiously at the door. Anne bustled over to it and flipped the sign over; the word geschlossen was on the back. People poured in, waving money. They started grabbing everything in sight, hardly caring what it was. With arms laden, they staggered to the counter. Anne began quickly writing up sales lists, totaling the sums on a piece of brown paper.
That’s when people began to notice the price cards. The original price was crossed out, and a new price was written in. In moments we saw that the prices on every single thing had been marked up at least four times as much as they had been, and some things, like tools, were ten times as much. The customers started yelling and waving their arms, but Anne remained calm.
“You don’t have to shop here,” she said in German. “No one is making you.”
“You’re the only shop that didn’t flood!” people shouted. “Now you’re gouging us on prices! This is thievery!”
“I can set my prices however I want,” Anne said firmly. She was bulky behind the counter, almost round, with dark hair in braids pinned on top of her head.
“How can you sleep at night?” a man cried. “We’re your neighbors! You’re a thief!”
The crowd took it up as a chant: “Thief! Thief!” Anne stood there stoically, not budging.
Then a woman pushed through the men surrounding the counter. “She might be a thief, but my man needs nails!” She started counting out money on the counter, carefully, coin by coin, out of a threadbare purse.
Anne looked triumphant.
All these hard memories were exhausting me. The weight of concentrating was fraying the edges of my magick. Plus the other thoughts—the things I was picking up from the four people with me. Shame, defensiveness, even nostalgia—it was pretty crowded inside my head.
But we weren’t done yet.
The light changed to that peculiar haunting
quality you find only in the far north, in the countries I grew up in. We saw a room with furniture from the sixteen hundreds. Frowning, I examined the wall hangings, the Dutch kast against one wall, the wide, dark planks of the floor. Though it was reminiscent of rooms I’d seen, I didn’t think I’d ever actually been in it.
Then I came through the door, in servant clothes. The rough linen overdress, petticoats, apron, and the white kerchief covering my hair placed this around four hundred years ago. With effort, I lugged a heavy copper coal scuttle to the room’s large stone fireplace. The northern countries had little to no coal deposits themselves; this must have been imported at an exorbitant price. I set the scuttle down and knelt to clean the old ashes out of the fireplace, but a sound outside caught my attention. The windows had wavy glass and opened lengthwise on hinges. Pushing one open, I leaned out to look down to the street below. A procession filled the narrow street: nobles on horses, two men at the front carrying color guards, other well-dressed men behind the nobles. I stepped back as I realized that the flags were my father’s coat of arms—five black bears on a red background. Scanning the crowd, I recognized no one.
“Ragnhild! What is it?” The mistress of the house hurried to the window. From four hundred years away, I recognized her as a real person I had known.
“A procession, my lady,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
The lady also leaned out the window to look.
The two men carrying the color guards stopped their horses and stood to the sides of the narrow street. People craned their necks to see who was coming, who the trumpets were announcing. But then someone shouted: “He will kill everyone! Hide your gold! Hide your silver! He is coming!”
Gradually I became aware that Anne was guiding us out of the meditation, and the vision was fading like smoke. It took us a while to come down—it had been the most ambitious meditation circle I’d ever been in, and I got the feeling that it had strained the others, too.
I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to process everything I had seen. Anne leaned over and blew out the center candle. I wondered what the rest of them were thinking—we’d seen each of them at real low points in their lives, and we’d had a weird vision about me. I thought about how everyone here except for Anne had nodded when Ottavio had been ranting about how dark I was.
Well, to hell with them.
“What was the purpose of this?” Charles’s voice sounded thin.
Looking weary, Anne brushed her dark bangs off her forehead. “My only guideline was that we see what we needed to see.” Her chin came up. “I think we can all agree that we’ve had dark pasts and, as such, can’t be in a position to judge others.” The like Nastasya went unsaid.
“It isn’t that,” said Solis, his voice strained. “It’s like I said—Nastasya is more than just an immortal with a hard past. Who she is, what she represents, will draw others here; others who want her power, possibly want her dead, like her friend in Boston. That will affect all of us.”
“If a battle comes to us,” said Anne, “we will be ready for it. And we will all stand together to protect our own. There are precious few Tähti in the world—we cannot lose another.” There was a fine thread of steel in her voice, and Solis looked at her without saying anything.
“What was all that stuff at the end?” Charles asked. His fair skin was still pink with embarrassment over his memory.
“I don’t know,” I said, my heart aching. “Those banners—those were the flags of my family, our color guards. But I don’t think that was my father—he never led his army to big towns like that. I never saw any procession of his, ever. I don’t know what it was about.” But I’d found it painful, all the same.
My parents had been Terävä, but I’d been happy, as a child. For the first ten years of my life, I’d felt loved, happy, and secure. I’d had no idea that my parents were murderers, that my father had sought to increase his power by any means necessary. My whole picture of them was changing, and it was so sad. I hated the truth of it.
“What was with the bears?” Jess’s voice sounded scraped raw. Now we would always know who he had been. We would never unknow it. His face looked bleak, shuttered.
“That was my father’s crest,” I said. “Five black bears on a red background. Sometimes the bears wore crowns.” I let out a breath. “My sister and I used to tell stories about the bears, giving them names, making up their adventures.” My sister. Oh, Eydís. I still miss you, after all this time.
I needed to lie down, or maybe go cry in the shower. Abruptly I stood, muttered “Thanks,” and headed out.
Maybe Anne’s exercise had been useful. I didn’t know.
But, oh yeah, now I remember: I hate meditation.
CHAPTER 7
Usually after dinner, if I don’t have classes, I escape upstairs to my room. I have a big, ancient book about immortals’ magick in the Middle Ages, and behind that I keep the paperback romance I’m actually reading.
But now I felt that maybe I should join the others, who were probably in the double parlors. Of course I would no doubt run into Ottavio and Daniel, both of whom I now loathed almost as much as they loathed me.
But I was getting to be a big girl, so let’s see just how far we’ve come, shall we?
In the parlor Brynne was curled up on a loveseat, reading, her shoeless feet draped over the back. When she saw me, she swung her feet down and patted the space next to her.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m here to mingle and strengthen my social skills.” I sat with my back against one arm, she sat against the other, and our legs overlapped in the middle.
Brynne laughed softly, then inclined her head toward the other side of the room. All of the teachers were gathered there, along with Daniel and Ottavio.
“Ooh, serious faces,” I said under my breath. “Have you heard any of it?”
“Nope,” said Brynne. “Not for lack of trying. But River hasn’t smacked either brother yet, so it might not be about you.”
“Ugh. You know they’re here because I’m a dangerous, uncontrollable menace, right?”
“Are we talking about your clothes again?” she asked innocently, and I kicked her with one foot. She snickered, then became more serious. “I believe that has been mentioned, yes.” Leaning back again, she whispered, “What do you think of Daniel? Hot, no?”
I glanced across the room, where Daniel’s face was outlined in red by the fire. “I guess,” I said. “He’s kind of ruined for me, with all the judging and attempted bribery and whatnot.”
Brynne’s even, white teeth shone against her caramel-colored skin. “He tried to bribe you? To what? To leave?”
I nodded, and Brynne snickered. “Did you go for it?”
“He was offering less than a hundred million dollars.”
“Oh, well, to hell with him, then. Anyway—I have taken it on as my personal mission, you know. I must somehow convince him how wrong he is about you.” Her eyes followed Daniel’s every move, and I was forcibly reminded of, like, a snake watching a rat. “No matter what it takes,” she added dreamily. “It will be my sacrifice, my gift to you.”
Stifling my laughter, I kicked her again, and she covered her mouth, her eyes crinkling until they were just slits.
“Seriously,” I said finally. “They think I’m bad news. You’re not worried?” Please don’t be worried.
“Oh, right,” Brynne scoffed, arranging a pillow behind her. “They just don’t know you, is all.”
A warm glow of gratitude surrounded my heart, but I pressed, “You don’t really know me, either.”
That got her attention, and she stopped fussing with the pillow and looked at me. “I do,” she said slowly. “I do know you. I’ve been living and eating and working and studying with you for four months. You’re a lot of things, and God knows you need work, but one thing you’re not is evil.” She shrugged. “I know that.”
My breath was caught somewhere around my solar plexus as I carefully let myself feel the comfor
t of friendship. “Thanks,” I croaked, and rubbed my nose against the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
Tearing her eyes away from Daniel again, Brynne gave me a knowing look. “Speaking of hotness, is there anything you want to share about our dear, monosyllabic Reyn?”
Oh, he’s so hot, I want him so bad, I don’t understand it, I’m scared….
“He’s not monosyllabic,” I said. “Idiot has three syllables, and I hear that a lot from him.”
Brynne wasn’t going to be put off. “Are you guys an item?”
I dropped my head into my hands. “I don’t know! I just don’t know. We constantly piss each other off, but we also—”
“Mmyes?” Brynne purred.
“It’s not that simple.” Brynne didn’t know about the part Reyn’s family had played in the destruction of my life, and I didn’t want to enlighten her.
“It is that simple,” she urged, nudging me. “You guys seem like a pair. Get out of your own way and give in to it!”
I wish. I said nothing but nodded. Brynne looked like she wanted to say more but was deciding not to push me.
“Nastasya.” River’s voice was quiet, but it carried through the room. “We’ve been talking.”
“Okay,” I said, already not liking where this was going.
But River’s eyes, the color of wet stones in a stream, were kind.
“How do you explain the death of a hundred songbirds in Boston?” Ottavio burst out. The look of pained irritation River gave him was classic, but I almost fell off the loveseat. How in the world did he know about that?
“I didn’t do that,” I said, a pinball of alarm pinging in my head.
“And the crippled London cabbie?”
This time, River actually punched his shoulder. He ignored her.