Chapter Sixteen
She walked through the woods, the sky brightening to show it was past dawn. Kira had no idea where she was, had no idea where she was going. She had left her pistol lying on the ground, her throat raw from her scream, and started walking, her mind numb, walking into low-hanging branches rather than moving them aside, leaving a trail of snapped twigs in her wake. Her legs trembled with exhaustion but she kept walking, driven by fear and horror at what she had done.
The light ahead grew stronger as the trees about her thinned. Kira stepped out into a large clearing where patches of herbs and vegetables grew on three sides of a cottage. She kept walking, unable to form a coherent thought, until an older woman stepped in front of her.
“Hello?” the woman asked, peering at Kira with curiosity that changed to concern. “Are you all right?”
Kira wavered on her feet, staring at the woman. “Help,” she managed to gasp in a small voice before the world whirled about her and she fell into darkness.
* * *
When she awoke, her mind still felt feverish. Kira was on a narrow cot in a very small side room, not much more than a closet with no door, that must be inside the cottage. She guessed from the light visible outside that it must be late afternoon.
The older woman came into Kira’s view, studying her. “How are you?”
Kira shook her head.
“Can you speak? What’s your name?”
“Kira.”
“I’m Vina, Kira. I don’t know what the trouble is, but I can tell you are in great need of rest. If you are willing, I will give you something to drink that will let you have a full, restful night’s sleep. Is that all right?”
Something that would put her to sleep. A drug. Like the Imperials had used against her. But Kira felt her reflexive rejection fading. Too tired to argue, her mind a confused welter, Kira nodded. Someone else should be here, but her mind shied away from that thought.
The drink that Vina brought in a mug was warm, bitter, and earthy.
Kira drained it. Within moments her eyes began to droop, and she surrendered to the urge to sleep.
The next time she awoke, the light outside spoke of morning again. Kira stared at the rough ceiling above her, where bunches of dried herbs hung from the rafters. Her thoughts were clear enough to terrify her. “Jason?”
Vina came to lean over Kira again, searching her eyes. “That rest did you a lot of good, Kira. I heard you cry out for that Jason quite a few times. Is he a friend of yours?”
“He’s my— Oh, no. I— Yes. Yes. He’s my man. I love him. He was trying to help me. But… I… think I… ”
Vina moved aside, and Jason came into her view, looking down at her with somber eyes. “I’m here, Kira.”
She stared at him, wondering if he was really there, or a ghost come to haunt her. “I didn’t kill you?”
“No.” A bit of his old smile appeared. “Not yet.”
And there it was again, the thread connecting them, pale in the sunlight but there. Kira started shaking with relief. “I thought… I thought… I fired… I thought… ”
“It’s okay.” Jason sat down beside her and held her, and his arms were real and he was here.
But one thought dominated all others inside Kira. After a few moments she pushed him away. “You have to go. Right now. I’m too dangerous to you. Please, Jason, listen to me this time.”
“And break my promise to stay with you?”
“Please don’t joke. I thought I’d… ”
“I know.” He pulled back enough for her to see his reassuring smile. “But you didn’t. And I think I figured out some things. I think I know what’s causing the problems.”
“We already know that!” Kira protested, dropping her voice to the barest whisper so that Vina wouldn’t hear. “My powers. They’re what’s causing the problems.”
“No. What’s causing the problems is you. Which means maybe you can fix the problems.” Jason reached into the pocket of his jacket and held out something.
Her pistol.
“I found this. Thought you might need it.”
She didn’t want to touch it, the memories of what she thought she’d done filling her, but Jason held it out to her with perfect calmness, as if totally unworried about what she might do. Kira reached slowly for the weapon, checking to see that the safety was set. “Is it loaded?”
“No, I cleared the chamber.” He smiled at her again. “I wonder what Alli and Bev would say if they knew you’d left it in unsafe condition?”
“How can you be joking? I didn’t hurt you, but I could have.”
“I think I know what the problem is,” Jason repeated.
“Why couldn’t I sense the thread connecting us last night, Jason? I tried and it wasn’t there. I… I… Oh. I’d suppressed my powers as much as I could, and I was too tired and confused to think straight,” Kira realized. “I should have remembered that suppressing my powers made the thread vanish. But I was so scared, so tired, I couldn’t think.”
Jason nodded, serious. “I know how hard it is to think when you’re scared and tired, believe me. But we’re both rested. When you feel up to it, can we go somewhere and talk in private?”
“I’m up to it now,” Kira said, realizing that she was strong enough to rise. She sat up on the cot. “Vina? Jason and I need to go somewhere to talk.”
The old woman looked carefully at Kira. “You seem well enough. You’re sure you’ll be all right with this fellow?”
“That’s about the only thing I’m sure of,” Kira said. “That I’m safe with him.”
Outside, she blinked in the sunlight. She shivered as a strange sensation rolled over her, and realized that this place was filled with power. She’d never felt it so strong, as if she was bathing in the energy that allowed Mages to work their spells. Had the pull of that power brought her here as she walked heedlessly through the night? “Do you want to talk here?”
“Can we go in the woods a little ways?” Jason asked. “Vina seems nice enough, but I want to be able to talk without worrying about anyone else hearing.”
“All right. How about this way?” She felt it drawing her, like a spring from which the power here was flowing.
They walked for a good fifteen minutes into the woods, Kira achingly aware of the events standing between them, before coming into another small open area, maybe three or four lances across. A tree had fallen recently, opening this spot, and grass had rapidly grown to bask in the light created by the gap in the tree cover, but saplings hadn’t yet had time to compete for the sudden access to sunlight. Pausing to feel the power wash over her, Kira turned to Jason. “Can we stop here?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you hate me?”
“I’ve got reasons. Let me talk, okay? Do you want to sit down?”
“All right.” Kira sat cross-legged on the grass.
Jason sat down facing her, close enough to reach out to Kira but far enough off to give her a sense of room. “Okay. I think I finally figured something out.”
“I shot at you,” Kira blurted out, blinking away tears. “I don’t remember doing it, but there’s a cartridge missing from my pistol.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“But I fired—”
“Yes, you fired a shot. And it did scare me,” Jason said. “But I don’t think that you shot at me. It was an accident.”
“There are no accidents with guns, Jason! I let the safety off, I loaded a round in the chamber, I pointed it toward you, and I pulled the trigger!”
“That’s not what I mean. Kira, how far apart were we when you fired?”
“Had I moved?”
“No.”
“Um… three or four lances, I think.”
“Three, at the most,” Jason said. “Less than six meters. I was sitting against a tree, not moving. I’ve seen you shoot. Is it even possible for you to miss a shot at a target like that at that range?”
She inhaled deeply, trying to
think. “Not often.”
“If you’d shot at me, you would have hit me,” Jason said. “The bullet didn’t even come close, though I went to ground fast anyway. Kira, do you remember talking to me about Mages soon after we met? You said your father still couldn’t use a weapon like a pistol. He just couldn’t figure it out. But you said he could accidentally fire one if he was holding it, without knowing what he was doing. I think that’s what happened with you that night. Because, aside from missing me, when the pistol went off you also looked shocked and frightened.”
Kira gazed at the ground between them. “They didn’t try to kill you?”
“They?”
“My Mage powers.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think they… you… when blacked out were just as scared that you’d hurt me as the you I’m talking to.”
“Why… why didn’t you follow me again after that? I mean, I don’t blame you! But—”
“You disappeared,” Jason said. “I don’t mean you ran off into the dark. I mean you disappeared. Using that Mage spell. I had no idea which way you’d gone. I tried running after you, got totally lost, and when I was about to sit down and give up on everything I heard you scream a long way off. That… scared me worse than anything else so far. I ran that way, eventually stumbled across your pistol, and from that I found what I hoped were marks of you walking through the woods, and followed them. I had to sleep once, actually I passed out for a while, and it was a lot slower tracking you because I’m no Davy Crockett—”
“Who’s Davi—?”
“—but late last night I finally found Vina’s cottage, where she seemed worried that I was some crazy stalker after you. But she let me sleep outside while we waited for you to wake up.” Jason paused. “Kira, you call your Mage powers them. Have you noticed that?”
“They’re not me,” Kira said.
“That’s not what Doc Sino said. Remember? She said it seemed like you were still you when you blacked out, that you didn’t do anything when blacked out that you wouldn’t do when aware.”
“We’ve talked about this a hundred times, Jason. I’ve been doing crazy things. If that’s me, then get out of here, now.”
He shook his head. “Kira, my point is, the Mage powers you call them are part of you. Have you noticed how you talk about them now? You used to talk about confining, suppressing them. But that changed. Now you say destroy, eliminate, things like that.”
“I’m trying to get rid of them. Do you blame me?”
“When did they start getting stronger? Wasn’t it when you started trying to suppress them? I mean, really confine them and push them down?”
Kira stopped and thought, her eyes on the beams of sunlight coming through the trees but her mind tracing back in time. “Yes. I think so. Why is that important? Do you think they were… fighting back?”
Jason nodded. “I had a long time to think while I was trying to find you. Kira, if the Mage powers are part of you, and you’re trying to confine them, to kill them, what does that mean? I’ve been around you when people were trying to kill you. You don’t just lie there and wait for the end. You fight. You fight hard.”
She eyed him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe the problems are rooted in you trying to confine and destroy part of you, and that part of you is acting the same way the rest of you does when attacked. It’s defending itself, it’s fighting back, it’s not going to give up and let you kill it. Because it’s you. Every time you hit it harder, it comes back stronger. Because that’s you. Your dad couldn’t understand why your powers were getting so strong so fast. Maybe it was because part of you, those powers, were fighting to free themselves and save themselves.”
Kira leaned back, her eyes on Jason but her thoughts racing in a hundred different directions. “So what are the blackouts? Why am I doing that to myself, if you’re right?”
“I didn’t know,” Jason admitted, “until I thought about how you were also having those blackouts when you tried to remember seeing things as both a Mechanic and a Mage. Are we in agreement that when you see things both ways it makes you crazy?”
“Yeah.”
“So remembering exactly how that was would make you crazy again, wouldn’t it?”
She stared at him. “It’s a defense? I’m blacking out to protect myself?”
“I think so. Your mind knows what hurts it, and so when it can, when it recognizes what’s happening, it’s not letting you be aware of that thing that hurts it.”
“But then when I do spells… oh. Yes! Jason, I have to think like a Mage to do spells. If the Mechanic part of me is fully aware of that, it hurts. I feel like the universe is wrong. That’s what happened the first time I did a spell, in Ihris. So my subconscious mind must have said, no, from now on you can’t be aware of what you’re doing because it would hurt you. Jason, this all makes sense. My powers haven’t been attacking me. They’ve been trying to protect me.”
“And when you attack your powers,” Jason said, “when you feel the desire to destroy them, part of you thinks it’s in danger and under attack. And when Kira is under attack, Kira protects herself.”
“Or runs away to protect others from her. But—" She felt a sudden understanding. “To protect you. That’s why I blacked out last night. No, it wasn’t last night. Whenever it was. I was losing control. I was scared about what I would do, and I blacked out. Because part of me was afraid that I would hurt you.”
“Kira,” Jason said, leaning a little closer to her and speaking earnestly, “you’ve also felt confined more and more. Even when we’re out in the open, even when we’re in a boat on the sea. Is that because you’re confining part of yourself? Locking up the part of you involved with your Mage powers?”
Kira buried her face in her hands. “That’s why my internal barriers aren’t holding. I’m trying to confine my powers, and they’re trying to free themselves. Just like I would. So they figured out how to get past those barriers, and intrude on my mind when I wasn’t really aware of it. That’s how I started being able to use Mage senses all the time, to see things as a Mechanic and a Mage simultaneously. I figured out how to do it because I couldn’t stand being confined, and every time I reinforced the confinement it made me want to break out more.”
She paused, probing her inner self cautiously, and there it was. Fear. Just as it had been for some time, and growing all the while. Right there, but not what she had thought it was. Not fear of some external thing, but fear of herself. “Father told me that people who are scared stop listening. I’ve literally been fighting myself, and paying less and less attention to what I was trying to tell myself,” Kira said, her eyes on Jason again. Why are you hurting me? The question that had echoed back at her. “Every time I resolved to destroy my powers I was resolving to destroy part of myself, and that part got scared and all I knew was that something was after me.”
“And since you won’t give up, you couldn’t win.”
“Which meant I was destroying me.” Kira breathed in deeply, looking up at the sky. "And fear of something else. I see it now. All this time I was being mean to you, putting you in danger, I was trying to make you leave so you’d be safe. Safe from me. I knew I was in danger, I felt more danger every time I threatened the part of me that is my Mage powers, and I wanted you away so you’d be safe.
“I’ll bet I blacked out when I took you to bed that time because I felt kind of trapped and I was fighting what I wanted to do and I was a bit scared of the whole thing and not admitting it, and the defense mechanism sort of bled through. I ended up trying to defend myself from something I really wanted. Which just made it worse. It fed the fear. Jason, at least I was right about one thing. One very important thing. You’ve figured it out. You’ve given me answers by seeing things I wouldn’t let myself see. Now what do I do, Jason? How do I fix this?”
“I don’t know,” Jason admitted, looking crestfallen.
Kira looked at him again, trying to smile. “I couldn’t ex
pect you to do all the work. You’ve already helped a lot. You… you stayed with me when I was doing everything I could to drive you away.”
“That wasn’t easy,” Jason admitted. “You were really good at the driving-away stuff.”
“I’m so sorry.” She remembered something he had said. “You held the line, Jason. Just like I did protecting you from the legionaries, you protected me from… myself. And I’m a pretty tough opponent, I think.”
“You’re a very tough opponent,” Jason said. “Can we go back to being on the same side?” The words were half-humorous, but she saw the need and the worry he tried to hide.
“Yes,” Kira said. “You’re my man. Forever. I’ll never forget that again.”
“Thanks,” he said, smiling at last. “What do we do next?”
“I have to master my fear. And that means… I have to stop being afraid of that part of me, stop fighting that part of me. I have to accept it. How do I… talk to my powers?” She paused, thinking. “I’ve never seen them. I mean, not even as a metaphor, unless you count the door they’re behind.”
“The door?”
“Yeah, it’s like I’m in the house, which is my home but not my home, and the powers are behind a door there. In the basement that isn’t really there, remember? Does that give you any ideas?”
Jason frowned, thinking. “This probably won’t help, but I remember something about houses in peoples’ heads. What was that? Oh, yeah. It was something people did on Earth a long time ago. I read about it when I was doing a report on memory storage. They didn’t have many books or means to write stuff down, so they organized everything in their heads to help remember things. They imagined there was a house inside them, and each room held a type of thing and all the stuff in each room was something to trigger a memory about a specific thing. Like one room would be about stories and in that room a table would remind them of something and a book on the table would symbolize something else. But that’s not what’s happening with you, is it?”
“No, but… ” A house. Divided into rooms. Because each room held… “Each room held something different!” Kira laughed, surprising herself as well as Jason. “That’s why I’m seeing a house! Not to help me remember things. To organize things! To organize me! To give each part of me a place where it belongs. I get it! Jason, thank you! I was trying to give myself the answer and I couldn’t see it!”