Her smirk was absolutely predatory and I froze.
Edward moved out of the way and I retreated towards the door. For every step
back I took, she advance two until her face was inches from mine.
“Was that all?” Her sweet breath left me stunned and
my eyes slipped closed involuntarily. “Are you going to stop me next time?”
Her warm breath passed over my lips and they parted.
Every ounce of blood in my body was redirected. I couldn’t think right; my mind
was fuddled. Her scent was exotic, but also sweet, like poison.
“Divina, down! You’re giving him a stroke!”
I barely heard Edward. Divina pressed against me so
lightly it could have been imagined. My legs went weak. I tried to lean into
her, but the door had been holding me up and so, against my will, I slid to the
ground.
“Dylan! Are you okay? Divina, you devil. Hey!” He
shook me as I tried to clear my head.
I forced my eyes open. “I’m okay,” I lied, climbing
to my feet.
He turned to Divina and growled. It was a very
inhuman sound.
“Relax, he’s fine,” she told him, no longer smiling.
He pushed me onto the bed and faced her. “He needs to
heal. You need to let him do that.” His voice, while not threatening, was low
and authoritative. She nodded and Edward sat next to me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he was still so injured.”
“You smell like plants,” I said without thinking.
That just struck me as odd.
“I make potions for people,” she explained.
I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if it were some
kind of magic that made me react to her scent. Her beauty was undeniable;
however, Vivian was beautiful, too. Vivian had a great scent, but it never made
me dazed. Either magic was to blame for my sudden and extreme reaction, or I
was in trouble.
“You look tired,” she said after a few minutes.
“I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“He had a Guardian warning dream,” Edward added.
Divina frowned, obviously clueless as to what it was. “When our books are in
trouble, they try to help us by giving us visions that reveal plots or even
show the future.”
“Your book is already in danger?” she asked me.
I tried not to be offended. “It’s not my fault. The
ones who killed Ronez are still after it.”
“I thought you killed the ones responsible.” She
started pacing in the tiny room.
“Why did you think that?” Edward asked. “I told you I
was leaving for Earth and that Ronez had been killed. Then I brought back
Dylan. Where did you hear that I killed anyone? I couldn’t even find anyone
responsible. As far as I can figure out, it was Vretial’s servants.”
Her eyes went wide and she stopped pacing. “What does
the dark god have to do with anything? I thought he was… asleep or something
for all eternity. Exiled by the other gods.”
“Erono told me that Vretial had sent servants to take
Ronez’s book. When Ronez was killed, I volunteered to find the book and assign
a new Guardian to Earth. Erono was very insistent that it not fall into
Vretial’s hands.”
“What does Erono have to do with Earth? Shouldn’t it
be the god of Earth who assigns a new Guardian?” she asked.
“Erono decided it was more important to keep the book
safe from Vretial than argue with Tiamat over who did what. I just followed his
orders to get the book and find a Guardian. However, the book found its own
Guardian.”
She studied me. “The book couldn’t have found an
experienced wizard? No offense, sweetie.”
“My instincts tell me it found him for a reason, and
when I realized how much potential he had, I couldn’t argue.”
“If Vretial is responsible, we have serious
problems.”
“If Vretial has been suppressed for so long, why are
you afraid of him? I mean, how do you even know about him?” I asked her.
“Duran has stories about him. I thought every world
did,” Divina answered.
One thought popped into my head and made me want to
puke. If Divina was right and humans did have stories about Vretial, then Mother
was also correct.
Satan.
I shuddered at the possibility. “He isn’t
red-skinned with horns, by any chance, is he?” I asked. Or a psychology
teacher?
Edward snorted and Divina rolled her eyes. “He is a
god; he can appear any way he wants to. Gods have no corporeal form,” Edward
explained. “If he wanted to appear frightening, that sounds like a good way to
do it.” He looked at Divina. “That doesn’t explain why you thought I had killed
the person responsible for Ronez’s death.”
“You said you were going to Earth because Ronez died.
I thought you were going to get revenge. You should have gotten revenge,” she
growled, but it sounded strangled as if she was trying to conceal another
emotion.
“I don’t think I ever heard you show any desire for
vengeance.”
“Ronez was a great man and the one that killed him
should suffer an eternity of misery.” Her eyes watered. “As his brother, I
thought you of all people would agree.” She nearly broke the door with the
force she used to open it and slam it shut behind her.
Edward gaped. “I had no idea she cared about him so
much.”
“Can I see my book?” I asked. Edward pulled it out of
his bag and handed it to me. I sprawled back on the bed and held my book to my
chest. The book was warm. Edward was still sitting there, deep in his own
thoughts, when I fell asleep.
* * *
When I woke, the room had a warm glow from the lit
lantern on the table. Outside, the larger moon cast an eerie glow over the
ocean. Edward was sitting beside the bed and Divina was still gone. “Are you
okay?” I asked.
He sighed and stared out at the moon. “Really, it’s
none of my business what relationship they had. I think I’m more concerned with
her desire for revenge; she has always seemed rather naïve to me. I don’t know
how much she cared about him, but I wonder how much he returned her feelings. I
didn’t think they really even knew each other all that well. What do you think
of her?”
“Pulchritudinous,” I answered.
He smirked and proved his mastery of the English
language. “Yes, she is quite beautiful. I supposed it’s no surprise if he did
like her. Everyone likes her. Come with me, I’ll give you another lesson.”
“What time is it?” I asked, climbing clumsily out of
bed as he stood gracefully. I handed my book, which had slipped to my side in
my sleep, to Edward, who slid it into his bag.
“Between sunset and sunrise. Most of the crew is
asleep and the others should not need to come up to the deck.”
I followed him back out and onto the deck, where the
two moons cast a spooky glow. The history of my childhood suggested it was a
very bad idea to get near the edge of the ship, but that was exactly what
Edward made me do. I wasn’t prepared for how windy it was, so I held onto the
rail with everything I had. “We’re playing with wind this time?” I asked.
“Yes. Remember that wind it the hardest to use for
most wizards.”
That was exactly what I needed to hear to boost my
confidence.
“You’ll start by simply bending it. Gather your
energy, but not too much because air is delicate and too much energy can cause
loss of control.” I gathered about half as much as I did with the water before
Edward told me it was enough.
“Is it like controlling water?”
“Not exactly. Clear your mind and close your eyes.” I
did. “Imagine the wind as something you can see. See it whip around
artistically and bend it to do as you want. Make walls and tunnels around it to
shape it. Give it energy gently and focus.”
It felt like hours passed. I could imagine
controlling the air all I wanted, but the wind kept coming at me. Even if I was
able to control it, to bend it out of the way, there was more coming.
But if
I can use the wind to block the wind…
So I imagined the wind swirling
around just before it reached me and smashing into the oncoming wind. I
imagined it as flowing light, almost like colorful, glowing water with a black
background.
To my surprise, I could feel the wind jerk wildly
before breaking off. Though the sound of whipping wind grew louder, I could
only feel a fraction of the gust that it was before. I tried hold on as it
started slipping, but the more energy I put into it, the more winds slipped
through and the faster I became drained.
“Enough,” Edward said.
His voice broke my concentration and the wind fell
back into its previous pattern. Opening my eyes, I saw him sitting at the
dinner table. I joined him, surprised to find how wobbly my legs were, and laid
my head down on the cool wood.
“You have a lot of power, but not nearly enough
control over it. You learn quickly and you improvise very well. How are you
adapting to the gravity?”
I lifted my head slowly to look at him. “I’ve been
better.” I laid my head back down too hard. “But I can take it.”
“You need to learn to take in energy as you use it. A
few spells allow you to draw energy into something directly, but they are
usually very dangerous.” He stood. “Right now, you should sleep.” I stood as
gracefully as I could manage it.
“I want to practice more.”
“In the morning. Go to bed now.”
I stifled the first response that came to mind. I
wanted to refuse just because I didn’t like to be told what to do, but this man
wasn’t paid to teach me, and he wasn’t on a power trip. He was telling me for
my own good; he knew more about magic’s effect on the body. He wasn’t just
telling me what to do because he wanted to control me.
I nodded. “All right.” So I went back to bed and
Edward stayed up to read a book. Divina didn’t return before I fell asleep.
* * *
I awoke to the sound of wind and the glorious aroma
of Divina. Before I even opened my eyes, I felt the serenity of early morning.
Dim light spilled across the room through the open window.
I hated early mornings. On the other hand…
Divina was sitting on the floor, her body leaning
next to me against the bed with her head touching my pillow. She’d changed into
a really nice shirt. The thin, black shirt had no sleeves and went around her
collar like a turtle-neck. While most of the shirt was made of a satin texture,
the span of her stomach consisted of a black fish net material.
Her breathing was deep and her lips were slightly
open. I forced the images from my head of kissing her, but instead thought of
Ronez. If she had true feelings for him…
“She wouldn’t like it if you get your kiss without
her even knowing it.” Edward’s voice shattered my thoughts and it took
everything I had not to jump out of my skin. While he wasn’t whispering, his
voice was low and quiet.
Although his presence had entirely escaped my notice,
he was still sitting in the same spot that he had been when I fell asleep. It
also escaped my notice that I had been slowly leaning closer to Divina. “Don’t
you ever sleep?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“Was Divina here long? Did you talk to her any last
night?”
He shook his head. “She came in after I fell asleep.
I’ve decided I don’t need to talk to her about it unless she brings it up
again. We’ll be arriving at Mijii in a few hours. You should practice your
magic because I won’t want to stop when we get there,” he said and then left.
I couldn’t play with the wind while the crew was
awake, so I improvised. He didn’t say what magic to practice.
I hunted down my tattered shoes, which were not
nearly as heavy as the rocks I had used, and then repeated my exercise from the
previous morning. It took surprisingly little time to focus my mind and gather energy.
I held out my arms with my eyes closed and imagined the shoes lifting into the
air with the torn shoelaces dangling. At the same time, I tried to push the
energy into them through my hands. After a few minutes, though I could still
feel the leather in my palms, I closed my hands into fists. My shoes floated
about two feet above me.
I lowered my arms, careful to keep my mind focused.
They wavered, but remained airborne. I imagined them moving in front of me. Not
just imagined… I could see it happening. They would obey me because I was a
wizard and they were just shoes. Getting them into the air was easy; now I
needed to turn the potential energy into kinetic…
Wait… wrong idea.
The shoes wavered.
Stop.
They did.
Okay.
I breathed in, drawing energy into
myself, and breathed out, letting the energy out, too. My hypothesis was that
if I stopped pouring my energy into them, or didn’t give them enough, they
would fall. But that didn’t necessarily mean I needed to give them more than I
already was to make them move. After all, I was continuously acting against
gravity. I lightened up on how much energy I gave the shoes until they started
to dip.
Giving them just enough energy to keep them
suspended, I concentrated on envisioning them moving. For the first few tries
they did nothing, but then they slowly obeyed. It did in fact take more energy
to move them in midair than just holding them up.
Interesting.
I was putting a lot of energy into it just to move
the shoes in slow side-to-side motions and it was already wearing me out, but
when I tried to hold back, they sunk and wobbled.
Different tactic.
I imagined myself like a
little stream. I let the energy flow into me through my left hand and out my
right. It felt surprisingly natural. The shoes dithered dangerously for my
moment of distraction.
I have to control them so I won’t be eaten in the
Aradlin.
With that thought, the shoes froze. After a few minutes of almost
perfect control, I knew I could do more, so I visualized them very slowly
circling each other.
Within a few more minutes, they started to move, very
slowly. I willed them to pick up speed and they did. About ten minutes later,
both shoes were evenly revolving without any hint of weakness.