As we traveled, Khea would send me glimpses of what she was thinking. I could keep her thread connected, a continuous reminder that she was never far away, but she could choose what to send me and when. With others, I had access to their current thoughts, emotions, and recent memories, but she had control over what would pass through the thread somehow.
I sensed she would miss Avis. She wondered what the summer would be like on the islands. Coating each thought was a complete elation at being off the grounds; it was the first time she had been away since the night Rhorken brought us. When she sent me her thoughts about how handsome I looked sitting on my horse, I laughed aloud into the otherwise quiet forest. The others all stared at me as if I’d gone mad, and I had to make up a quick excuse to explain it away. As far as they were concerned, Khea was with us to make sure we made good time on the sea travels between the islands.
There was no doubt in my mind that I could tell Micha about her true Spark and the Affinity, but I just hadn’t gotten a chance to do it. Knowing him, he would just think it was neat. As for the others, they were already irritated at the journey itself. I didn’t think they’d like to know there were two Readers in their group stealing their privacy as well.
While we rode, I wondered how exactly we had managed to receive our assignment together. For nearly five seasons, Lheda and Mathias had intentionally kept us separated with great effort. Why had they, all the sudden, decided we could be together, well away from their watchful eyes?
A memory of Avis arguing with Lheda flooded into my mind, courtesy of Khea. Lheda wanted Khea to go to Nakbe with only one other Tracker, to prove her skill in as many areas as possible: winds on the sea, earth in the forest, healer if need be. Avis argued she was too valuable to risk and needed to be accompanied. He reminded her that we shared a connection and no one would do more to keep her safe than I would. I knew Avis was right, but it was still strange to see him argue so strongly for me. Of course, deep down he knew that it was what I wanted more than anything–to just have time to spend with her.
When no one was looking, Khea would use her Spark to light the evening fire to cook our meal or push away an impending snow storm to ease the trip. The others had no idea, but each time she would give me this smoldering look and I could sense her taking control. It began to settle my mind a little; if she had so much power and was comfortable using it, then maybe she wouldn’t be in so much danger, though I wondered what would happen if her real abilities became known to the rest of the world. She would be a valuable asset to anyone looking to settle a score, even though I couldn’t imagine how anyone would ever manage to control her; she had quite a mind of her own.
About a week into the agonizing cold of the Oakwick, it occurred to me that she could see my memories of Parvani, see what we did in the midnight hours. It wasn’t that I was ashamed, but I was sure those events would hurt her; she would surely be uncomfortable witnessing those moments I spent with someone else. I considered wearing my father’s ring to save her from it.
Of course, as soon as I had the thought, she sensed it and rode next to me with a stern look. She blocked my path with Jasper and forced me to drop behind the others so she could speak to me as she opened herself to my read.
“You don’t have anything to hide. You acted honorably with her, and you don’t need to keep anything from me. I’ll never turn you away. You know that, don’t you?”
I knew it as well as I knew my name or the direction of the sun. Her light blue eyes did me in and I had to smile at her. She was far stronger than I gave her credit for.
“And I like when you think about those nights.” A wicked grin settled across her lips before she turned Jasper and rode to join the others, leaving me baffled on the narrow trail.
As we walked in silence during the days, Khea and I shared our memories while the others just walked along around us. She sent me glimpses of what her sisters had been like, a band of sweet, blonde girls that lived on the far north side of the village. She was destroyed when they all died and all she could do was watch. As she had learned to control her Spark, she understood the strength it gave to keep her alive, but it still seemed unfair that she should be the only one to survive. She chose to stay under Mathias’s watch; it was the only way to learn her gifts and prevent losing anyone again.
She showed me that Mathias had only let her out of her private lessons during the combat rounds, and she had stayed there as long as possible. Round Two was during the time Lheda halted my progress, but Khea had done her best to be there with me, until I yielded and sent her away. When she brought up the memory, I couldn’t help but despise myself for not knowing, for not understanding what she was going through.
She had had mentors from as many rates as Mathias could manage. A gifted Striker to teach her to control fire, a Drifter for water, a Rider for horses, a Handler for animals, Sinha had taught her Healing, and there had been Avis, of course. The other mentors weren’t aware that she was being trained in multiple categories. The Striker mentor thought she was a Striker and she would wear red when she met with her. The Drifter mentor had thought she was just a Drifter, and she had worn dark blue on those days. Only Avis had known.
And, just like he had for me, Avis challenged her and given her space to grow. They became friends over the years, and I knew that he loved her in his own way–as a daughter, perhaps, or the young sister he lost. She was unique in her abilities, and he was the only mentor who could grasp what she went through. He was the only one who had ever gotten to know her.
For many years, he had been her only companion, and me as well through his thoughts about me. After a while, she began to read me directly, especially after we left for the Oakwick. My thoughts had turned to her more and more, and it kept her coming back to read me.
At night, she laid her sleeping pad next to mine the way she always did. My hand would move to twist strands of her hair as we silently told our stories. In the quiet of the winter forest, I asked how she saw the world.
Do you see threads? Or bubbles like Avis?
Rather than an answer, Khea sent me her own thoughts, as she experienced the world she lived in. To her, each person and each substance was occupied by a spirit. People were easy, each one having a single spirit that represented their core. A fire could be the quiet spirit of a flame that she could coax to grow and manipulate until it soared into a huge, consuming blaze. The wind were a series of soft spirits she usually pictured as little girls not unlike her sisters, soft and sweet until angered; then they would torment the earth until their aggression was satisfied. It made the world seem so much more complete, a single force that was broken into a myriad of parts that operated together. I had been glimpsing only a fraction of the world, and she had known it in its entirety all along.
Once I began to feel a little less terrified that she was headed to such a volatile nation, it began to sink in how nice it was that we finally had some time together. No mentors around to watch us, no time scale to be aware of. We could just spend our days together and no one cared. After a while, we began to hold hands even in front of the others, though none of them seemed very surprised. Once I caught Micha smirking, thinking he had known it since the day he jumped into the cart in the Creekmont.
It still made my heart beat a little quicker and a little stronger when she was near, holding my hand as we gathered firewood, lying next to me on a sleeping pad at night. She was warm enough that we wouldn’t have needed a fire, and I knew she could have made one in the midst of a monsoon if she wanted.
I had thought she would be too fragile to be out with the rest of us, too used to sleeping indoors and eating hot meals, but she adapted to life on the road like a flame to straw.
If only the rest of them could be like that.
The other three were fully capable of living out in the Oakwick forever, but they spent most of the day complaining about the snow or the cold or how tired they were of eating snow rabbit. Even cutting their threads didn’t help since they voiced it constantly. I would have walked around naked and worn a cactus on my head if it meant I could spend my days with Khea and sleep next to her at night.
A few times, we managed to sneak away in the night and find a hollow space between tree roots or a dry spot under a thick patch of limbs. She learned that she could radiate enough heat to keep us warm away from the fire without actually setting us ablaze, and the moonlight offered a romantic escape to the monotony of travel. Her blonde hair pulled into a long braid behind her and the glint in her water-blue eyes did something to me that rivaled a trance; she was all I could think about.
I reminisced in those nights, the look in her eye and the warmth of her skin. I thought it strange that she was still in the process of learning about her Spark and how to use some of the finer points. I guess that’s what happens when you have so many abilities; it took a lot longer to learn how to use them all.
Several weeks in, we had made it to the dense woods of the Andover and were past the brunt of winter. The others were aware of the dullness of the winter beaches, having already traveled there during one of their tracking rounds, but that didn’t stop them from whining about it. Khasla had never seen it, though he didn’t really seem very interested. Traveling on the open road wasn’t among his interests, and he constantly wished for the comforts of Myxini.
Just as the snow began to melt, we arrived in Firethorne and began to look for a ship to take us to Nakbe.
“You all go ahead. There’s someone I want to see. I’ll meet you at the harbor at dawn,” I told Micha. I wasn’t surprised that Khea turned Jasper to follow me.
Quauhtil’s house looked the same as it always had, and I was pleased to see smoke from the stack, signaling he was well enough to make a fire against the biting cold.
Before I could knock on the door, he opened it and stared through me with his empty, grey eyes with a wide blade in his hands. He had heard the horses approaching, though he didn’t yet know who we were.
“Greetings, teacher,” I said in Nakben.
“Who comes with you,” he asked in the strange Nakben way, appearing to look in Khea’s direction despite his useless eyes.
Before I could think of a way to explain who she was to me, she answered him. “They call me Khea, teacher,” she said in Nakben, too, and I was sure my mouth dropped to the ground. She sent me my own memories of learning the language from Quauhtil, and of course she had access to every lesson. She was as capable with the language as I was, though she’d never used it before.
Quauhtil invited us in and served us each a bowl of stew from a deep pot over the fire. I pulled four rabbits from my saddle and cleaned them, adding them to the remaining stew so he would have a rich, meaty stew to last him the next few weeks. I pulled the modest bag of coins from Avis from my belt and placed it on the table. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to get him through some hard times.
Khea pulled up my memory of Avis giving a full bag of coins to Estha, and she smiled warmly as she squeezed my hand. She was proud of me, and I swelled at being able to please her.
“You are going to the islands,” Quauhtil said as a statement rather than a question.
“Yes, we plan to meet with Xiuhpilli to prevent her taking action against Takla Maya.”
“You must avoid Chimalma.” He worried that Khea would be at risk there, but I couldn’t grasp how he decided that. It wasn’t as if he could see how obviously beautiful she was sitting in the glow from the fire.
“We go straight to Uxmal.”
Quauhtil nodded his satisfaction and began to ask Khea questions about where she was from and how we met. It was interesting to hear her version–and to hear it in another language. Quauhtil allowed us to use an old mattress in the other room and excused himself to bed, but Khea and I sat by the fire talking for a while.
“That was very kind,” she said with her legs tucked up under her. I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying when her blonde hair was falling in her face as it was.
“Lark!” she teased me when she sensed I had drifted off, brushing away the strands that had fallen over her eyes.
“You’re so beautiful, Ladybird,” I said honestly as I pulled her to sit in my lap facing me. Somehow she made me feel like I constantly wanted to stay in the moment forever.
“And you’re so handsome, my sweet Lark.” She got a mischievous look in her eye, and she didn’t need to send me anything for me to know exactly what she wanted. I let my hand wander until it found the round area that filled that back of her pants and gave it a playful squeeze.
“It’s our last night in Madurai,” she mentioned quietly as I began to peel her out of her traveling clothes.
“Then we’d better make the most of it,” I replied with a series of kisses down her chest and torso.
“Have you given any thought to where you’d like to go when this is all over?” she asked, although she clearly already knew the answer.
“Um, no. I guess I haven’t. Well, we could go back to school and mentor the next batch of students. Or back to Lagodon. Where do you want to go?” She could have said the moon and I would have gone with her.
“I don’t know. I’ve been under someone else’s control for so long. I’m not sure what to do with the freedom to choose for myself.”
“We still have time. It’ll take several weeks to get to Uxmal and back. We’ll think of something.” It didn’t escape my notice that she was talking about the future for the first time, rather than the past. My pulse quickened at the idea that we’d get to continue our relationship beyond the next few weeks.
I decided I would spend more time thinking about our future and planning it to be just right for her, but at that moment, I had a beautiful young woman in front of me that needed my undivided attention. Her arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders, her fingers clutching for purchase in the fabric of my shirt.
One last night in Madurai.
We never actually made it to the mattress.