The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) (15 page)

— 33 —

Upstairs, I change into my pajamas and wash my face in the adjoining bathroom, taking the time to comb out the tangles from my hair. I look like my mother when I comb it back, if I close my eyes a little and pretend. I inherited her hair, her bones, her slender hands—not her olive complexion or her deep brown eyes, though; I inherited my ghost-pale skin and (admittedly striking) blue eyes from my father instead.

Karanina was a ballerina when she met my father—strong, lithe, and willowy. I was lithe and willowy for a moment, in middle school, after growth spurts and before puberty. I wonder sometimes if I get my less-willowy shape from someone on my father’s side. But Abe is an orphan, too. I never had extended family.

I never will.

I sigh and put my comb down on the counter by the sink, feeling a heaviness settle over me. I brush a trickle of tears away with my fingertips, scrubbing at my red eyes as I shuffle back into my bedroom, weary from the day.

When I look up, I almost scream.

“Shhh,” Trebor hushes me, standing by my window with his hands up, gesturing to my open door.

I stare at him, at the open window, at the open door, and back again. When I’ve gathered my wits, I hurry across the room and close the door. “Are you crazy?”

“Sorry,” he whispers. His face is unreadable. “I don’t mean to be creepy. I just…I felt something terrible, I was worried something had happened…” When he realizes his words are more confusing than his presence, he looks curiously at me and walks across the room to take my hand. His expression shifts, concerned. “What happened? Are you okay?”

I look at my hand in his. Irin must be a lot more casual about hand-holding than humans generally are, because ever since we met Trebor has been all about it.

“Um.” I’m not sure how to respond. I’m acutely aware of my Wonder Woman pajamas, and the fact that my father is downstairs, and the fact that I’m an emotional mess. But instead of answering him with the truth and dealing with what I’ve just learned, I let go of his hand and walk over to my dresser. I pick up the box Kyla gave me the night I almost drowned, bring it over to my bed, and sit down. Trebor sits next to me, but when I try to give the box to him, he ignores it.

“Ana, what happened?” He asks, his tone sober.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, avoiding his eyes.

“I—” he stops. “Something happened. I
felt
it. You were crying.”

I snort. “That’s ridiculous. How could you possibly
feel
that I was crying?”

He shrugs. “Why won’t you look at me?”

I shrug too. “I’m tired. Here.” I give him the box.

He takes it, but lifts my chin with his other hand, looking so hard into my eyes that I feel naked. “You can trust me.”

“I know,” I say without thinking. And I can’t explain it, but it’s true.

“Then why won’t you talk to me?” Trebor asks, concerned, confused. His hand falls back onto mine, holds it firmly, like a reassurance.

I look into the crystal green of his eyes, so familiar that I can’t believe I haven’t known them all my life. I could wander, lost in his eyes for days, but I pull my gaze inward instead, heart thumping as I imagine telling him the truth about my mother’s clan, imagine him knowing the tragic nature of my family.

But with that thought, something unravels inside of me. I begin to understand.

“I’m afraid,” I admit, for the first time in my life, but I don’t say of what. Tears burn my eyes again, hot and stinging wet, but I blink them back.

“Ana.” Trebor inhales slowly. “You have nothing to fear from me. Ever.”

“You don’t know that.” My face is damp again, fugitive tears running down my cheeks. “It’s the people we trust most of all who hurt us the worst.”

He shakes his head. “But if you never take the risk of getting hurt, how can you ever trust anyone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s worth it.” I swallow.

He closes his eyes, almost wincing, and words fall from his mouth as if he’s surprised he has to say them at all. “I’m not afraid, Ana.
I’m not going to leave
. Whatever happened, you can tell me.”

I blink at his words—my secret fears given shape and sound, before I can even admit them to myself. “How did you…?”

He looks at me and shakes his head. “I’m not sure. It’s like…when you’re crying, I can feel what you’re feeling. I can almost
hear
what you’re thinking.” Trebor straightens, puts both hands on my arms. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m not going anywhere.”

I look back at him. I want to believe him, and his expression is so earnest I can’t help it. But a deeper part of me knows that it’s only a matter of time before something takes him away.

Still, I nod, once, and tell him the story that Andy told me.

When I’m done, the tears are gone. I’m so tired I almost don’t care about the maybe-magical box between us. Instead, I lean heavily against a pile of pillows while Trebor examines the coffer, and I try not to fall asleep—because, somehow, sleep seems possible, even though my heart is beating too quickly for a body so tired.

“It’s definitely enchanted,” he agrees, sitting beside me on the bed, leaning against the headboard. “But I can’t open it. I suppose you’ll have to wait until you’re done with school, like your mother said.”

“If that even means anything. I didn’t close it.” I try not to yawn. “You don’t think the key is in there?”

Trebor studies the red box, hands flat against it, but he shakes his head. “It’s enchanted to keep it closed, not to hide the contents. Whatever is in there, I can tell it has very little magic in it—almost none.” He looks up and studies me for a moment before putting the box on my nightstand. He grabs the edge of my comforter and pulls it up around me, to my shoulders.

“Thanks,” I whisper, possibly blushing.

After a moment or two, Trebor speaks again. “Ana, why did you think I would leave after that story?”

I open my eyes and look up at him, not wanting to say it out loud, not wanting to string the words together and make the thought real at all. But I trust Trebor, and so I do.

“What if they were killed because of me?”

He blinks at me, and cants his head to the left.

“Seriously. It makes sense.” I sit up, anxiety striking energy into my bones. “Seventeen years ago, they were murdered. Seventeen years ago, I was born.” I frown. “And if it’s true—if they died because I was born—then why? What’s wrong with me? Did my mother leave because she married outside of the clan, or because she
knew
I’d be like this?” A shudder runs through me, hating the idea that my mother could have kept that kind of secret from me.

“The Sura have been trying to kill me,” I continue, lowering my voice. “But like you said, it’s more likely they want me
empty
. So, maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe the
Malakiim
want me dead, before I can Fall. Maybe they even sent Irin, and had the clan massacred.” I shiver and cross my arms over my stomach, so tired and anxious I feel sick.

“I don’t care who wanted what, or why any of it happened,” Trebor says, firmly, stopping my rampage of paranoia. “All I know is that you’re here now, and you’re not evil, and I’m not letting you Fall, and even if you were evil and you did Fall, I’d fight to bring you back.” He stares at me. “I’m not letting the Sura take you. And whoever might want you dead is going to have to go through me first.”

I admit that I’m moved by his speech—moved, and alarmed, and other strong feelings as well. But he doesn’t deny that it’s possible the Malakiim would want me dead, and that’s where my mind lingers.

I shift, uncomfortable under my covers, heart beating harder than I think it should. There are other things I’m afraid of that his words have only made more real. “Trebor…” I start, but I don’t know how to finish. Everything seems so terrifyingly unknown right now. “Trebor, what if the angels
do
want me dead? What if I really am dangerous? Maybe it would be better if I talked to them, turned myself in—”

“No, Ana, God
damnit
!” Trebor hisses. He stares at me with such intensity that I can’t tell if he’s furious or scared—and then it softens to a strange and angry sadness, eyes focused not quite on my own, not quite elsewhere, either. He touches my cheek with his fingertips, frowning. “Don’t be a goddamn martyr.”

“Sorry?” I try, but I’m so tired. I take his hand from my face, hold it in my own. He leans back against my headboard, watching our hands hold each other.

I lie back down, next to him, rest my head on his chest as if I have a thousand times before. “I just don’t know what to do. We don’t know what I am, do we?”

“It doesn’t matter.” His heart thumps angrily inside his chest. It matches the rhythm in my own—strange, because I’m not even sure why my heart is beating so hard. “You’re the only one who has authority over who and what you are. You could be the devil’s daughter herself, and it wouldn’t matter. Not to me. And it shouldn’t matter to you. Okay?”

“Yeah,” I agree, blinking back sleep. “I’m sorry. I’m just exhausted. Maybe I’ll be less self-sacrificing tomorrow.”

“I hope so.” Trebor chuckles, and his hand feels good wrapped around mine. “Will you be okay tonight?”

“Yeah,” I decide in a small voice, nestling a little deeper into the comforter, curling in a bit tighter at his side to stay warm. “I’ll be fine.”

But Trebor doesn’t get up to go, and I don’t sit up to let him. We just lie like this for a while, hands folded together between us, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow in unison with mine. And then I sleep, and sleep well, for the first time in ages.

That night, I dream of a one-winged butterfly trapped inside my heart, flying in circles.

— 34 —

“Look at your fingertips,” Trebor instructs me the following night, lying out in the orchard behind the old nunnery. The creek behind Kyla’s house winds past it, through a golf course and more woods, eventually crossing town lines, moving ever closer to the Niagara River.

I hold my right hand up to the sky, and the paleness of my skin pseudo-glows in the dark. Trebor’s hand
actually
emits a glow, but I don’t mention it, because I’m sure it’s just another one of those things I’m probably not supposed to be able to see. I hold my right hand next to his left, up in the air, and study the slender lines of my fingers, the leftover thread of pink on my palm from the cut that has finally healed. I look at his hand, darker in color, stronger in mass. Our thumbs are distant, but aligned.

“Feel the energy inside of you, like before,” Trebor says. His voice is low, soft, somehow bright.

I feel it. I feel his words inside of me, riling up the swell of yearning, of thrumming. I feel the energy flush through my body as I call on it, crashing in great waves against barriers so solid and secure they are like my very bones—an exoskeleton, to keep the soft and fluid parts of me safely locked away where they cannot be harmed, or do harm.

“This time…stretch
outwards
. What else can you feel?”

The vibration of his voice a tremor in my own throat, his presence an electrifying cloud mingling at the edges of my own. The grass underneath me sings, each blade bent under my back trilling with the manifold pulses of the earth. Beneath the grass, I sense a vast network of roots, many thousands of whispers of life. Cold rocks, groaning. Damp earth, sighing. At the periphery of my mind, a hundred trees stand like a vision of ancient medicine men and women, dancing a slow dance around the fertile orchard as the earth twists on its axis, as we wind around the sun.

“Look at your hand.”

The sound draws me back, and I waken, though my eyes never closed. My hand comes into focus, tiny sparks of golden light gently springing from my fingertips like celestial pollen, floating up and off into the night. I surprise myself by laughing, smiling.

“How do you feel?” Trebor wonders, dropping his hand to his chest.

I let my own hand stay above me, watch as I write secrets in the air with the glow of my fingers. “I feel okay,” I’m surprised to find out. “I feel…full. I feel a deer about fifty yards from us.”

Trebor makes a soft and thoughtful noise. “Interesting. I guess I was going about it all wrong then. Instead of focusing inward, you need to turn the focus out.”

“I guess.” I sit up, flick bits of light from my fingertips, watch them spiral up and disappear. “What else does magic do? Besides act as a weapon.”

“Well,” Trebor sits up as well. “You can use it to manipulate the physical world, or your outward projection to the world. You know spells for protection and divination that this kind of access to magic would amplify.” He plucks a piece of grass out of my hair and smiles at me. “You can use it to grow things, too.”

“Like limbs?”

He laughs. “Like plants. But you can make them grow…special.”

“Oh don’t tell me you’re growing dope in a hidden loka somewhere,” I laugh. “Seriously. Is that what you do when you’re not off on secret quests? Grow plants?”

He nods. “Instead of cutting down trees and turning them into lumber, we grow them into living buildings. Homes, mostly. But I’ve grown entire cities in the boughs of trees like the Crimson Oak.”

I think of the skyscraping treetop of that mighty tree. “That must be a lot of stairs to climb. Unless you grow elevators, too.”

He chuckles. “That’s, ah, not really a problem. But you should understand, magic was never
intended
to be used as a tool—not like a weapon, anyway. Magic is just something that is, like electricity. We’ve learned to use it to make our lives better. Its uses are limited only to our ability to harness and understand it.” He looks around us, into the night. “The problem is, even when we think we’ve harnessed it, it can harm us when we least expect it. Weapons are easy—that’s magic 101. Protection is harder. Healing is rare. And it’s the slow magic, the magic with a will of its own, that’s the most powerful—and the most dangerous.”

I look at my hand, dull now that the magic has faded in my veins in favor of fatigue. “Healing,” I wonder, thinking briefly of my mother. “But even humans have healing magic—Chinese medicine is full of different practices: reiki; qi gong; healing touch; laying on of hands. I mean, most people think those ‘healers’ are quacks, but their traditions persist so there must be some benefit. Right?”

Trebor nods. “They do work in their way, and it is a kind of magic. But humans make the mistake of using their
thoughts
to access their power, instead of their feelings, and that makes it more science, more intellectual. Magical healing is rare—when a wound closes before your eyes, or poison is forced from the body, squeezed from the cells. Bruises vanish, pain disappears. It’s fast, and certain, and clean.”

“Why is it so rare?”

“The same reason you can’t use magic to actually change your body.” Trebor shifts. “Each cell is conscious, drawing on its own energy to keep itself alive and to function properly. You are the master of the collection of cells, and you can work together to exert force and magic, but to heal yourself or another requires the most complex and intimate understanding of the symphony of your cells.”

“I see...” I flick a spark of light at him, but it floats upward instead. “But, you say it’s rare—not impossible. Have people been able to do it?”

Trebor nods again, and his eyes do their cat-flash thing when he summons a ball of white light in his hand without a hint of effort. The ball flies up, follows the spark I flicked at him. “The way around directly using magic for the task is to exchange vitality from one healthy person to another, but it’s virtually impossible to construct the pathway necessary to do it, at least with any kind of efficiency. Angels can do it, but they usually can’t be bothered. But, the havati bashrat, the myth I told you about a while back: supposedly their bond is so complete that they can heal one another. Only after they’ve bonded, of course.”

“How do they know they’ve bonded with their other half?” I wonder, watching as Trebor’s ball of light swallows the spark it was chasing, and turns red.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s always just been a myth to me—an old Irin folktale. I don’t even know if I believe the havati exist at all. What would their purpose be, evolutionarily?”

“To inspire others,” I muse. “To fight for the same kind of connection, and trust. In a way, don’t you think, if you could connect that deeply with a person without a fated soul-bond, wouldn’t that be even
more
powerful?”

Trebor looks up at the red ball of light hovering over us. “That’s more evidence for the myth, I think. Myths exist to make us feel better about how things really are. It’s okay to be imperfectly in love because it’s harder to love when it
isn’t
so obvious that you’re meant to be together.” He smiles and closes his fist, and the light hanging overhead bursts, falling over us in a slow shower of sparks.

I smile at the show as bits of magic rain down on us, disappearing on our skin and clothes, but I’m still considering his words. I shift my weight. “I didn’t realize the havati were lovers.”

Trebor stiffens. “Yes. In theory.”

I look at my hands again, watch the little red points of light fall into the lines and creases of my palm, dissolving. “It’s strange,” I say at last. “That all this time, this explosive feeling inside of me was just magic, waiting to be released. I’ve been so afraid of it, and fought it down, and tried to burn it out of myself…but it was magic, all along.”

“Now you just have to learn to control it, and use it for good.”

I sigh. “I hope I can do this without you holding my hand, some day.”

“I don’t mind having to hold your hand,” Trebor half smiles.

I play a wan smile back. “But you’re going to leave some day, and I’ll have to be able to defend myself.”

He looks strangely at me, takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. He doesn’t say anything to deny or agree with what I’ve said.

“So.” I hold up my hand and flick more sparks in his direction. “Can I use this?”

“Let’s find out. Give it a try.”

I look at my hand. Despite it’s unlikely halo of magic, it seems very flesh-bound in this moment. “And do what?”

He raises his hand to mine again. “Try to make the energy connect.”

I look at his fingers, and mine, a few inches apart. The glow from Trebor is different from mine—it’s finer, more dense, like each cell has its own shining aura, as opposed to me—I only get one to share among the collective trillions. But the aurora around his fingers intensifies as I watch and focus, and the light from mine grows brighter. My awareness of the world around me lessens, shrinks, until it’s just me and Trebor and our hands, and then it’s just me and our hands, and then it’s just me and all of the energy I had finally managed to soothe, once again roiling in my veins.

My hand is glowing like a light bulb, and I feel like it might pop.

“Oh shit!” I slap my hand down into the grass at my side, holding it against the ground as an explosion of magic ruptures from my palm, sending tremors up my arm. The next thing I know I’m pulling at my hair, shaking.

“I can’t, I can’t,” I gasp, wanting to scream. The well-chewed tips of my fingers scratch at my throat, my chest, my stomach. I feel like every thing has slammed back inside of me, like my veins are filling with ice cold water, like I’ll die if I can’t rip myself in half and let it out. I gasp, half-whining, crawling away, anything to be away, where I can safely explode, where Trebor won’t see me like this.

But Trebor hurries after me in the grass, grabs my shoulders, whispers something I don’t understand as he pulls me upright and holds me, my back to his chest. “Remember the deer, Ana? Can you feel the deer?”

I reach for it, for the trees, for anything, but my mind won’t go beyond the earth-shattering rumble of his voice, hooking and gutting me in one fell swoop. All I feel beyond the violent storm inside of me is his skin near mine, his heart beating through mine, erasing who I am to replace it with some strange merging of what we both could be, and it terrifies me. I pant, like I’ve been poisoned, like I’ll be sick, and when I can’t take another moment of holding back I fling myself to the ground and scream into the grass.

Trebor hauls me up again, turns me towards him, grabs my face.

“
Ahuvati sheli, salah—
salah—” His lips touch my forehead, over my third eye, a tender kiss to my furrowed brow. A bright light explodes behind my eyes and, for a moment, everything is soft. Serene. And he’s still there, still holding my face, touching my forehead with his own.

I can hear his breath shaking. Or is it mine?

I put my hands up, against him, feel that he’s solid, he’s real, he’s not just magic and mystery and a voice that can build me up or destroy me. I touch his heart, and feel it hammering to the identical rhythm in my chest.

“Trebor,” I look at him, and take his hand, and put it over my heart. His palm is cool against my skin—grounding, despite all odds.

He opens his eyes and leans back to stare at me, through me, sifting through my soul for some part of himself that he’s misplaced. I see it, when he realizes, like a darker shade of night settling over us.

“What does it mean?” I whisper, and feel tears falling from my eyes again.

He takes his other hand and brushes the tears from my cheeks, sweeps the hair from my face, and lingers there.

I feel something—a flash—a hint—like the tip of an iceberg, just enough to let me know there’s so much more. But whatever it is—pain, guilt, desire—it doesn’t belong to me.

Trebor blinks away a tear and falls back on his heels, taking my hand from his heart and holding it between both of his. He looks at me a moment longer, then away.

“I don’t know.”

I want to press him, to ask a million more questions, but something shivers through me and my hands grow warm. I look down at them, and gasp.

“Look,” I say with some wonder.

Trebor turns his head, and his eyes flash again, lighting up with the glow emanating from my hand. A thin stream of amethyst light drifts up from my fingertips, swirling, dancing into form.

“
Ahuvati sheli, sheli
…” he mutters.

I don’t know what his words mean, but they’ve calmed my heart and soul, and lowered my defenses enough so that I can channel the power without imploding. The light bends and weaves, forming the only magical weapon I’ve seen him use so far.

“A net,” he says, laughing. “Is that the weapon of choice among demon fighters, then?”

I laugh too. “I don’t know, what other kind of weapon should I make?”

He chuckles. “I don’t know. Can you use it?”

I make a gesture and throw the net into the trees, where it lands against a trunk and glares brightly for a moment, before sinking into the bark.

“Excellent!” Trebor exclaims.