Ice Burns (24 page)

“Sit, please,” she told Chandra after she had found a comfortable position. Chandra dropped quickly into a cross-legged position across from Matta. “I don’t know what or how you were taught, though I doubt it helped from what I can tell. I do know where you came to me from, though nothing else about you.”

Chandra tried to keep herself from shaking. She wondered what, exactly Matta knew but did not have long to ponder.

“I know that on the day you escaped the estate at Malofa, its Master was killed."

Chandra suddenly wished to be far away as quickly as possible before Matta could make the true accusation. The old woman patted her hand.

"I don't know if you realize that you were one of many students to escape," the look on Matta's face when she said escape was colder than anything she thought the old woman capable of.

"I don't think it was ever really a school so much as a place for a deranged, power-hungry man to train mages to defeat or kill other mages, like some sort of war camp,” Matta's voice dropped several octaves. Instead of the normal grate of age, her voice seemed almost booming even though the woman had not raised her voice. The hair on Chandra's arm stood up as though a storm had arrived.

“Beyond that, I don't care,” Matta’s voice had returned to its gentle rattle of wind through dried leaves scratch as quickly as it had shifted away. Chandra realized she had leaned away and resettled her posture on the blanket.

When Matta's last sentence penetrated Chandra's startled mind, joy rose up inside her as though she had suddenly learned to fly. Even if she could express her gratitude, the words to entail it would not form in her brain. Not that she was given a chance to speak.

“Close your eyes, Chandra,” she told her. "You have to find the center of who you are and what you want. Your mind is fickle and you're prone toward action without thought. Anger and impatience will not benefit you in magic.”

"I know most mages learn calling items and levitation before they even find a connection to their inner power well," Matta paused and Chandra opened her eyes to see the blind woman's blank, white eyes on her. "Inside you, once you connect, you can do pretty much anything you need to."

Chandra wanted to believe what Matta said.

"Since you saw ice, that means you are mostly inclined toward the element of water," Matta said. "Focus on water. Connect to it and then command it; give it purpose."

Chandra wanted to ask Matta to tell her what to do but sensed she wouldn't. She closed her eyes and remembered touching the water in the fountain. When she reached into it with her mind, the water asked her to help it and she had. Chandra frowned because she knew she couldn't touch the water from inside Matta's house unless she got a bucket, but that didn't feel like the right solution.

How can I reach an element that isn't nearby?

She remembered the rain on the day Frostwhite became her companion. The rain didn't come from a river, it came from the sky. Chandra had her answer.

She focused on calling the moisture in the air around her. The sun was reaching the mid-day point and the forest was sweating in the heat. That water was in the air and happy to come to her so she could put the vapors back together as they were meant to be. Chandra felt the warm droplets of water floating around her, around Matta, around the cottage, and into the forest. She called the water and gave it a task as Matta had said.

Chandra opened her eyes and kept her connection to the water that was happy to help. Between the grouped droplets and those still trapped in the hot air, they were able to float and form a moving surface. On that airborn river flow floated the pitcher that Chandra filled from the well several times a day. It ran the river out of the cottage and refilled in the depths of the well before being brought back and set down beside Chandra and Matta.

The droplets celebrated their achievement with a mini waterspout in the air between Matta and Chandra. Both women laughed at the antics and rainbow of color the vapors created.

“Excellent! It's as though the water is dancing for us!” Matta said, clapping her hands.

Chandra’s eyes locked on those of the blind woman who smiled and clapped at the water spout.

“You can see!” Chandra accused. She was shocked to watch Matta’s eyes follow the water without that unfocused look Chandra had grown accustomed to from her.

“Not in a normal sense, I can’t,” Matta told her with a smile and shrug. The waterspout gave one shudder and the droplets exploded in a million different directions as they were returned to their previous states. Matta looked at where the pitcher sat, reached over and poured them each a cup of water.

“I don't understand. What do you mean?" Chandra couldn't fight the bitterness on her tongue as it formed the words. She felt as though she had been lied to by the first person she had chosen to trust.

Matta lowered her head for a moment, though Chandra could not tell if she was embarrassed or thinking out the best response. After a few moments, she lifted her head and stared directly at Chandra.

“I am blind,” she began and lifted one hand to ask Chandra to let her finish. “At least I am in the normal sense. My vision only picks up one thing."

Matta paused and continued to watch Chandra as if waiting for her to solve the puzzle. The answer came into her mind, but Chandra shook her head at it in disbelief. It didn't seem possible that Matta could see...

"Magic?" Chandra whispered.

“Magic,” Matta agreed. She met Chandra's gaze with a soft smile that lifted her entire face up to her eyes. “I could see you long before you reached my cottage, Chandra.”

Not for the first time since being in Matta’s presence, Chandra found she did not have a voice. For that matter, she didn’t have a response she could offer to what she had been told. She felt as though she had been doused with river water. She stared at Matta for several heartbeats, wondering how it was possible.

“When you have regained your ability to speak, please let me know,” Matta said in a soft voice as she rose to her feet. She picked up the pitcher and carried it to the kitchen. The old woman went about her routine of cleaning up as Chandra watched.

Distrust warred inside her. In many ways, Chandra had been waiting for something to go amiss and tell her what her situation really was. She felt there had to be some sort of motivation for Matta she hadn’t yet seen or surmised. She hadn't hoped that Matta would simply accept her because that seemed like something that didn't happen. Trust, though given, was watched carefully for the moment it would be proved misplaced. Instead, Chandra came to a different realization: she realized Matta was not unlike her. Here was an old woman, blind to anything but magic, alone and unable to do more than accept the "gift" she had been given.

Matta’s movements were slow and measured. She moved as one who knew her surroundings as intimately as she knew herself, but her emotions marred her normally lithe actions. Chandra stood up and walked over to her. Without uttering a sound, she took the items necessary for tea out and set them on the table before turning to pull the pot down so she could go fill it from the well. When she had returned and put the pot on to boil, she pulled out a chair near where Matta was standing and let it rest against the side of Matta’s leg before sitting down opposite her.

“Is that how you knew about my companion, then?” Frostwhite had returned and drawn the gaze of both women. Matta turned away from the bird and looked at Chandra as though she was afraid to speak.

Chandra felt thoughts of betrayal melt away to bare nubs of what they once were at the vulnerable look in the older woman's eyes. Meeting the colorless glance to acknowledge eye contact was not the most comfortable feeling she had ever experienced. Matta’s opaque eyes were like looking into a cumulous cloud. Prior to today, Matta had ever really looked directly at her, and Chandra knew she was focusing exactly on her forest hewed eyes. She didn’t know what Matta was seeing, but she knew Matta was looking at her.

“I saw you and the bird coming, though I didn't really know where either of you were at first,” Matta told her. She did not lower her gaze from Chandra’s face, though Chandra noticed that Matta twisted her hands around in her lap. “To start, you were blurs of color moving through the trees. The color would get brighter or darker as you moved, which made me wonder if you weren’t calling power as you went.”

Chandra shook her head slowly before stating, “No. We were watching for followers, but I was not using any sort of magic.”

“You were communicating with the ancient one?” Matta asked.

“Yes. He would warn or direct me, in his way, on our journey.”

“Ah, then you were using magic though you didn’t realize it. When you spoke to him without using your voice, you were using magic to send the message.” Matta smiled a tiny smile. “In time, when your connection has been further established, you won’t need to think about reaching him, it will just happen.”

This too, was a revelation. She had assumed the ability to communicate was purely an ability of Frostwhite’s. She had never imagined she had control over their connection.

Frostwhite roosted in the rafters. She knew he had been drawn by Chandra's fear and feelings of betrayal when their discussion had become intense. For him, it had felt like an alarm and he sought to stay close to Chandra.

Chandra nodded but did not speak for several moments. Her mind sputtered and restarted several times as it processed the new information. It was as though a storm were brewing in her mind, tossing the familiar and making new shapes within her for her to study and comprehend.

“May I ask you a question?” Chandra said after long mental debate.

“You may,” Matta replied, the smile on her face gentle but encouraging.

“What exactly do you see?”

“Well, that would be hard to explain to someone who has never been blind,” Matta told her. “Fortunately for you, I was not always blind.”

The kettle whistled over the fire, and Chandra rose to remove it. She poured the hot water into the teapot on the table before returning the kettle to rest beside the fire on the hearth. After she had poured them both a cup of tea, she sat down and waited for Matta to continue.

“The only thing I see is magic. That does not mean I can see clearly that which is magical,” Matta told her. She sipped from her cup, watching Chandra with her milky gaze over the tea cup. She returned the cup to the table and smiled.

“With people, it is different. I see the shape of them and swirls of different color like smoke trapped inside a giant glass bottle. Sometime the smoke flares if they are using their magic or sometimes their whole form seems to glow if it is strong magic.”

“So, I’m a figure to you without any form of distinction?” Chandra asked.

Matta paused and did not speak right away.

“Most people are,” Matta said, raising the glass again to her mouth for a long draft. “Not you. If you hadn't spoken, I would not have thought you to be human at all, but an ancient one in a large body.”

Chandra blinked rapidly, her heart running wild in her chest. She heard the words, but didn't understand how what Matta was saying could be true. What made her different?

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, Chandra,” Matta said with a tiny shrug. “I only know that, up close, I can see you as clearly as if I were not blind. At first, I thought it was a trick or my mind going the way of the feeble. I realized that there was something different about you and knew that I couldn't turn away.”

Chandra frowned. “Why did you pretend to be blind with me, then?”

Matta took a sip of her tea, smiled, and said, “If a giant mythical creature came walking out of the forest and looked at you, would you wave your arms around and shout to get its attention, or would you maintain some form of caution until you knew what you were dealing with?”

Chandra nodded. “Point taken.”

They sat together, sipping the tea for a long time. Doubt and questions floated in the air with the steam from the cups.

Frostwhite called softly from the rafters. In her mind, she had an image of the great bird flying down in front of an image of her and disappearing. She was left with the initial outline of the bird blazed but transparent across an image of her as if he weren’t there at all. Chandra shook her head. She closed her eyes for a moment and sent a hazy image of herself, as if walking through a dense twilight fog, followed by the hawk swooping down. As soon as Frostwhite swept across the image of herself, she became clear and almost glowed. Chandra heard the hawk rustle his feathers and did not need an image in her mind to understand his frustration toward her.

“What did he say?” Matta’s soft voice snapped across the silence like a whip, startling her. Communicating with her friend made her forget she was not alone for a moment.

“That he has nothing to do with your ability to see me so clearly,” she replied.

Matta chuckled.

“He has a glow all his own,” Matta told her. “It took me a while to figure out what he was, but I could see him and feel his strength. When he approached me in dream state, I knew the truth.”

“Do you mean as a hawk or as an Ancient one?”

“I knew he was an Ancient One,” Matta said after another sip of tea. “But I only realized he was a hawk after he called to you a few times and then landed on my work bench, about knocking it over with his weight.” She chuckled again. “The large rodents and small game he keeps leaving in the yard were a hint as well.”