“You stole that from me!”
“What’s yours is mine. And vice versa.” She nerved herself. “We need to talk about other stuff. Jason, I haven’t blacked out again since that brief moment at the hostel, but I also haven’t tried any spells. My Mage powers are supposed to be suppressed. I know they’re suppressed. But they’re still coming to the surface, intruding on my thoughts, and… unbalancing my mind.”
“You see them as locked in a basement in your head?”
“Not in my head,” Kira said. “In my center. That’s not the brain. That’s, um, where the self is strongest.”
“Oh, yeah. But the powers are getting out anyway.” Jason gazed out at the water again, chewing on a bite of food. “You get a good night’s sleep, and you wake up thinking straight. That means at least part of it is due to being tired. The first time I noticed you acting really odd was when we hadn’t been able to sleep much for days.”
“But yesterday wasn’t that bad,” Kira objected. “I think… Jason, I noticed I could sense a Mage while we were leaving that hotel in Altis. And I was worried at that point.”
“We both were. You think that plays a role, too? Being in danger?”
“I think so. At some point, I start seeing things differently. I can’t really explain it better than that. The world looks a little strange, like… oh. You know that thing Doctor Sino told us about after we got back to Tiae? The thing that was like dobblegonger but different? Cap-something.”
“You mean doppleganger? Like but— Oh, yeah. Ummm, Capgras.”
“Where someone thinks someone close to them has been replaced by an exact double,” Kira said. “Right? They look the same and act the same but the person still thinks they’re different somehow? That’s how the world looks when I get like that, Jason. It’s the world, but it’s different.” She concentrated on that, trying to conjure up detailed memories of it so she could explain better to Jason.
She was sitting at the bow, looking forward. Kira inhaled slowly, trying to calm herself, before looking back at Jason, who had taken over the tiller. “How long was I out that time?”
He shook his head. “Maybe five minutes.”
“All right, so we’ve got a partial pattern, at least,” Kira said, getting up and walking aft. “If I try to remember too clearly how it felt when I was seeing the world simultaneously as a Mage and a Mechanic, I black out. The same thing happened at the hostel in Altis.”
Jason nodded. “There’s a really old joke on Earth. A guy goes to the doctor and says, doctor, it hurts when I do this. So the doctor says, don’t do that.”
Kira stared at him as she sat down by Jason again. “You told a joke from Urth that makes sense! Have you ever done that before? I black out when I try to remember how it is when I’m seeing the world wrong, and when I actually use my powers in a spell. So I shouldn’t try to do either.”
“Maybe in an emergency,” Jason began.
“No! You don’t know what it’s like, Jason!”
“Yeah, I kinda do know what it’s like. That’s why we’re both in a sailboat heading for Cape Astra. Can you remember anything else about how it felt without getting in so deep you black out again?”
“I can remember being so certain,” Kira said, speaking slowly to try to keep the thought close enough to unravel. “So confident. Like I could solve any problem just by looking at it. But when I try to remember any details of anything, there’s nothing there. I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it feels.”
He frowned as he thought about her words. “You’re not thinking straight when whatever it is happens. So it makes sense that when you think back on it when you are thinking straight it doesn’t make sense.”
“Great.” She remembered something else. “I told you to go away again last night, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, a few times,” Jason said, trying to make it sound like no big thing and failing badly.
“Why am I doing that, Jason? I still feel deep inside me that you’re a big part of the answer. Somehow you’ll help me figure this out. So why would I keep trying to push you away?”
He didn’t answer. Kira reached out to hold his chin, gently, and turn his face so that he had to meet her gaze. “Jason, this isn’t about me wanting to be free of you. Is that what you’re thinking again?”
Jason cast his eyes to the side, avoiding her gaze. “How do you know it’s not about that? You realize you love me, and you start having blackouts. You come on this trip with me, and you also start getting crazy. So how do you know it’s not about me? How do you know that deep down inside you don’t really want to be in love with me? You don’t want to be tied to me? How do you know that your feelings for me aren’t only surface things, and what you really want is your freedom?”
“Jason—”
He looked back at her. “You keep saying that, you know. How you feel confined. How important being free is to you. And this relationship is about giving up your freedom, isn’t it? About being tied to me.”
“Jason!”
“You’re not even eighteen years old yet. You could spend another ten or twenty years going out with any guy you wanted to, and not having to worry about them hanging around and tying you down! You could have any guy you like, because any guy on this entire world would give his right arm to be with you! You could be free instead of being locked in with me!”
“Jason!" He stopped speaking, staring at her with wide eyes. Kira put one hand on each side of his head, holding him so that he had to keep looking at her. “I know this has been hard on you. I know how badly you’ve been pushed. But I also know that I want you!”
“Then why—”
“I don’t know!" She felt tears starting and let them flow. “I don’t know. Jason, I told you I’m afraid. Don’t let me drive you away. Maybe it’s my fears trying to do that! But I want you, I need you, I don’t want to be free of you. Please believe me. Whatever is talking when I try to make you leave is not what I really want. Together, you and I have learned that surviving, winning, is about finding a way to keep trying even when it seems hopeless. And you’re my way! My man. Can’t you believe me?”
He lowered his head, his voice low. “Maybe I’ve never been able to believe that a girl like you could really love me. That you’d really want to marry me. I’m not that big a prize. I’m not a prize at all.”
“You’re wrong. I’d be dead several times over by now if not for you, and I know I wouldn’t have learned how happy I could be if not for you.” She raised his head and kissed him, hard, trying to make him feel what was in her heart. When she finally broke the kiss they were both short of breath. “Okay?”
Either the “okay” or the kiss finally got another smile out of him. “Okay.”
“It’s all right if you don’t want to marry a girl who’s losing her mind,” Kira said. “I can’t ask that of you. But I still want to marry you.” She started laughing, unable to stop. “You and I are both total emotional disasters, aren’t we? I mean, I’m actually going crazy sometimes, but we’re both wrecks in every other way.”
He started laughing, too. “Yeah, we are. Do you want to get married today?”
“Sure,” Kira said. She wiped her eyes again. “I love you.”
* * *
Jason took over the tiller again for a while so that Kira could trim the sails and search the boat for anything useful. But aside from a couple of marlin spikes that could be used as weapons in a pinch, the boat didn’t offer a lot of resources.
She sat down in the deckhouse, hearing the water washing against the side of the boat as it cleaved the waves, trying to think. But nothing came to her.
Nothing.
Was that the answer?
Kira came out on deck again and sat down next to Jason. The sun had fallen a fair ways down the sky as the afternoon wore on, but it was still hours until nightfall. “I have an idea.”
Jason’s responding look carried ill-concealed worry. “An idea?”
“Not
one of my brilliant crazy ideas. I think I’m still fine,” Kira said, still not looking over at him. “The problem is my powers. So… I need to get rid of them.”
“Get rid of them?”
“Destroy them. They’ll fight. I know they will. But I have to get rid of them, Jason. That’s the only way to save myself.” Her voice sounded calm, didn’t it? But not too calm?
Jason spent a while thinking before he replied. “I don’t know if that’s right, but I can’t say it’s wrong. I mean, we do know the fact the powers exist is at the root of these problems. If the powers weren’t there, the problems wouldn’t be. I guess.”
“Exactly,” Kira said. “So, I destroy them. Problem solved.”
“Do you know how to do that?”
Kira spread her hands. “Nobody knows how to do that. Not even Father.”
“Then how—?”
“I don’t know exactly! I’ll have to try and see what happens!” She felt a sudden concern and looked around, standing up to scan the horizon. “Somebody’s after us. I can feel it. Do you think Maxim’s ship is that close?”
“Can you see any masts?” Jason asked, watching her.
“No.”
“What exactly are you feeling, Kira?”
“Like we’re in danger!” She shook her head, slowly studying the seas all around the ship. “I don’t see anything, though. Is my foresight starting to act up? Giving me false warnings of danger?”
“Are you seeing that black haze?” Jason asked.
“No,” she said again. “Maybe it’s not my foresight. Maybe I’m just spooked because of everything. I don’t think I’m losing control again.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Jason said, to her relief. “When you lose it you’re really confident of stuff, like you said earlier. You don’t say I think or maybe. You’re certain.”
Kira stared out to sea, fighting another wave of anxiety. It took her a few moments to identify it. “Why am I feeling confined? I couldn’t possibly be less confined. I’m out in the sun and the fresh air. There’s nothing around us within sight. We could go anywhere in the world. If we stopped to get more food and water first. How long until we reach Cape Astra, Jason?”
“About three more days, I think.”
“I’m going to get as much rest as I can tonight, while spelling you on the tiller because I have no right to expect you to kill yourself doing that while I rest. And then tomorrow, when I’m strong and at peace… ” Kira looked at him, meeting Jason’s anxious gaze. “I’m going to destroy my powers.”
She felt another jolt of fear. But even though she scanned the horizon carefully, Kira saw nothing to be afraid of.
The only thing to be afraid of rested inside of her.
Chapter Thirteen
She sat in the stern, the tiller tucked against her side, watching the dark waters roll past the sailboat. Above, the stars looked down on her. Jason had shown her again which one of those stars was Urth, so far distant that light itself took years to make the journey.
Tomorrow she’d try to destroy something without really knowing how. If she failed…
The universe was infinite, Jason said. Too large for the human mind to grasp, the vast emptiness between stars only the tiniest fraction of that immensity. What was a person in all that? What was she? How could she, and whatever happened to her, matter at all?
And yet it did matter.
“Every person matters,” Kira’s father had told her many times. “It is only they who are real. Nothing else we see is real. It is an illusion we create. But it is our illusion. What we do, how we treat others, is as real as you are. And in all of time, only one you has ever existed or ever will exist. Is that not remarkable?”
“If we’re so special,” ten-year-old Kira had asked Alain, “why are our lives so short?”
“Are they short? Length implies an end, does it not? But when we leave this dream we enter a new dream.”
“How do we know that?”
“We do not. I believe it. I may have seen some of it. Perhaps not. But I believe it.”
“Will there be horses in the next dream?” young Kira had demanded. “It wouldn’t be a very good dream without horses.”
“Then surely there will be,” her father had said, and given her one of his rare smiles.
Kira, remembering that long-ago conversation, studied the stars for the arrangement that Jason called Pegasus. A horse with wings. It wasn’t quite right when seen from Dematr, Jason had told her, but the shape was still there for those who looked.
Sort of an illusion. The winged horse in the sky didn’t really exist. People just thought they saw one.
Mages said no horse really existed. All were illusions created by human minds. Even some Mechanics believed that, her Uncle Calu had told her. Something to do with that quantum stuff he liked to talk to Jason about. “Nothing is real,” Calu would say to Kira’s father, and Alain would answer “Nothing is real,” and Kira’s mother would yell at them both to stop saying that.
Would she see her mother and father again?
Why did her powers have to be real?
Why did Maxim have to still be alive?
Kira stared at the stars, thinking that she could endure anything except losing herself. Maxim had wanted to enslave her body, but she could have kept her mind free. Her powers, though, threatened even that, to rob her of herself. She reached into her jacket pocket, remembering that there was something there, something she’d kept in her pants pocket until buying this new jacket.
A single, loose cartridge.
Proof that love mattered, that hope should never die, that even the darkest night gave way to morning.
Kira relaxed as her thumb stroked the bullet. The stars above were as cold and distant as ever, but inside she felt a warmth born of the certainty that dawn would come no matter how long the night.
* * *
Jason relieved her at the tiller well before dawn so that Kira would be well rested when daylight came. When Kira awoke and came out on deck she felt the seas were rougher. Low clouds scudded by overhead.
“There was a reddish tinge to the horizon when the sun came up,” Jason commented. “We might have a storm coming. Hopefully not too bad a storm.”
“At least the winds are still right for us to reach Cape Astra quickly,” Kira said. She handed Jason his “breakfast"—more dried food—and sat down next to him to chew on hers, finishing well before her hunger was satisfied. “Are you sure you don’t want any of mine?” Jason asked, offering the last of his.
“No, I don’t need any of yours. Thank you. This is a feast compared to what we had in the Northern Ramparts.” Kira inhaled deeply. “I think I’m ready.”
“I have no idea what you’re going to do.”
“Go into deep meditation, go deep into myself, and fight a battle,” Kira said.
“What if… ?”
Kira gazed at him solemnly. “What if I lose? Tie me up with some of the spare line and deliver me to the Tiae embassy.”
“Kira… ”
“I’m not joking.”
“That’s not it,” Jason said. “Why do you think I could overpower you and tie you up? You’re a lot more skillful and practiced at fighting than I am.”
“Knock me over the head with a marlin spike,” Kira offered.
“No way. I will not hit you.”
“You may be forced to decide between that and watching me do something so crazy it’ll kill me,” Kira warned. “But that’s if I lose. I’m going to win, right?”
“Right!”
Kira went past the mainmast and sat down with her back to it, facing forward away from Jason. She wanted as few distractions as possible. For a long moment, she gazed out on the waters, a darker blue today, the whitecaps standing out more strongly, the wind racing across the sea and buffeting the sails above her. It seemed appropriate, the growing storminess of the sea matching the turbulence inside her.
Closing her eyes, Kira tried to place her
self in a meditative state, letting her body rock with the motion of the boat, becoming one with the world. As she focused on her center, Kira could feel her powers beating like the waves against the barriers she had created to confine them.
How could she destroy them? Suppress them so thoroughly and completely that they would never manifest again? She had to find a way. Otherwise, she might lose her mind completely and never regain it. Black out, and never awaken.
Someone else would be her. Her body would still be here, still living, still doing things, but she’d be gone. The thought was both strange and terrifying.
But how to do it? Kira knew that Mages could lose their powers gradually by giving up their ability to view the world in the necessary way, but that obviously hadn’t worked for her. Apparently no Mage had ever sought to crush his or her powers.
“And you are so powerful now, Kira,” her father had said before she left on this trip. “I do not know why your powers grow so quickly.”
She would just have to figure out how to do it. All her life she had been taught how to defend herself. This might be the ultimate test of that.
Sinking into the darkness inside her, storm winds blowing through the shadows surrounding her center. But light glowing in that center.
And there it was. The house she’d seen before, the very image of her home outside of Pacta Servanda. Exactly the same, but different. Kira stood before the front door, feeling the powers crouched within, sensing their readiness for her attack.
She went to the front door, not walking so much as being in one place and then another. The door opened and she went inside.
Once again things seemed familiar but different in the front room. Especially the extra door. A door that led into the basement. A basement that didn’t exist in the real world or the real house.
She’d have to go in there. Have to face that part of herself. And take it apart. Somehow.
The door resisted. She pushed, seeing the door become more and more solid, the wood of its initial appearance turning into steel, the small lock growing into massive bolts holding the door closed.
Kira gathered her will and hurled it against that door. The door bent, wavered, and solidified again.