Chapter 23: Chapter 23: The Awakening

The ruse only half-worked. When she returned to the castle in the morning, everyone was awake, looking for her.

“Did you fall asleep in his arms?” Her father's slap brought Saoirse to her knees. “Who is he?”

She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

“I ought to have you beaten. You abuse the servants. You ride wild on Storm! And now you play the harlot!” His aura blazed out of him, for once the purple of arrogance dimmed by orange-brown disgust. “Get out of my sight.”

As she stumbled to her feet, her father's color sound, the loud clanging of bells, assaulted her ears. The orange light of his aura veiled the doorway. In her haste to escape, she hit the door jam. With one hand on the wall, she navigated the hallway, which was rapidly beginning to fluoresce green. A blob of coppery jealousy threaded with the ashen gray of exhaustion scurried past her.

Groping, she turned in a circle, searching for a smoky, blue light. Alyse, where are you?

She ran down the hallway, her hands in front of her like a blind person. She fell as her feet abruptly encountered the first step leading up to the turret. As she crawled up the turret stairs, the mildew on the wet stones began to hum.

“Murtagh!” She couldn't find the latch. Desperately, she pounded on the door with her fists.

Startled awake—he had been snoring in his comfy chair—Murtagh ran to the door, and finding her collapsed on the landing, tried to help her inside, but she recoiled at the ugliness of his diseased-filled, gray aura, almost falling backward down the stairs.

High among the rafters of the round room, a spider spun a lime green web. The sight of it bewitched her eyes, and despite Murtagh's presence, drew her into the room. Like a madwoman or one “touched,” she slowly rotated beneath it, gazing upward, her eyes opened wide. Murtagh's books, the twelve books of the seers, his prized possessions, speckled with mold, glowed a deep, wet, forest green. A fly buzzed, an eye-popping metallic green, as if the creature was made of iron—bright green iron—instead of fly flesh. She looked at her own hands, but they alone were normal. The floor and the walls sparkled: dark green and brown green and red green. A bug, crawling along the floor, shimmered blue green.

Melodies, complex and many, overlayed on top of one another, a symphony without a conductor, drifted in through the window. Entranced, she fumbled toward the window.

“Saoirse, no.”

She fought him, throwing him off, and turned her eyes toward the sea.

The greens of life rushed at her: sea foam greens and olive greens, aquas and artichoke greens, jade greens and emerald greens. They floated on the surface and swam in the shadowy depths. The magic enchanted her, holding her tighter than Quinn in all his violence. Her heart pounded so vigorously it threatened to leap from her chest. She twitched. She quivered. She opened her mouth to scream, and the color sound of the sea like a thousand trumpets blasted. The gongs of gigantic bells, the thunder of drums, beeps and bangs, rattles, chimes, blares as if from tubas, screeches and squeals, whines and clangs beat upon her body.

She fell. Her whole body convulsed, her arms and legs hitting the floor, her head jerking from side to side. Nonsensical moans escaped her mouth.

Murtagh fell to his knees beside her. At first, he put his hands over her eyes. But when she clamped her hands over her ears, he spread his sleeping blanket over her to block the sight and pressed the blanket against her ears. Still Saoirse convulsed. He pushed aside the writing desk and yanked up the four floorboards. He heaved Saoirse up and pulled her with him, falling down the short ladder to the first landing, into the secret passageways, horribly bruising his hip. Despite the hip and the agony when he moved, he climbed back up the ladder, returning with a candle and the blanket. Lighting the candle, he rolled the warm wax between his fingers and stuffed it into her ears. Then he put the blanket over her head. He tried getting under the blanket with her, but his own aura was too much for her. So, he did the unthinkable. He climbed the ladder and replaced the boards. He left her alone in the dark, in a place he knew had little life, under a blanket to dim the sight, the wax in her ears blocking the terrible color sound.

A full hour later, Alyse's quiet knock found Murtagh pacing.

“Where is she?”

Holding his hands up in front of him as if to defend himself from her coming assault, he quaked out, “I was wrong.”

“What are you saying?”

“She may be dead.”

“What? Where is she?” Her eyes searched the room. Roughly, she seized his thin shoulders. “Tell me! Where is my baby!”

He blurted out, “I couldn't have known!”

“Where is she!”

He pointed to the floorboards. “The passageways . . .”

As she fell to her knees, feeling about the edges of the boards, he took hold of her. “You can't go to her.”

She threw him off.

“You'll kill her.”

His words stopped her.

She stood, coming toward him with her hands clenched into fists.

“It's not my fault. The awakening comes upon so few seers, and never before upon a woman.”

With her face inches from him, her whole body shook with the effort not to kill him. “What are you saying?”

“Ahhh m-m-most seers are born with their abilities. They have them from birth. But a few, those who are most exceptional, experience a rush, an awakening when they are older, when their full power comes upon them. Some at the guild thought this was because if they had experienced their full power from birth, it would have kill-killed them.”

“So . . . ”

“So, the rush came and sh-she was thrown into convulsions, and I put her in the passageways because there's nothing alive down there. I mean . . . you know, besides the occasional rat.”

“You left her!”

Backed against the wall, he shielded his face with his arms. “I had to. My aura was too much for her. I was hurting her.”

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Frantic, she turned away from him, crossing the floor, then whipping around. “Is there a way to control it?”

He slid down the wall to the floor. When he spoke, his words were only a whisper. “Yes, but it takes training.”

“Oh, now we have it. You decreed her weak. You told her she was nothing.” Alyse kicked him. “And I believed you!”

He sat at her feet, a pathetic, crumpled heap, nodding his head. “I'm sorry.”

No dragon had ever burned hotter than Alyse. Kneeling in front of Murtagh, her lips next to his ear, her voice dripping with venom, she said, “Tell it all to me, right now, or I'll kill you and laugh while I'm doing it. Oh, I'll have a party, and Duncan will chop you up and Cook will roast your ass over a pit.”

Hot, burning bile vomited itself up into Murtagh's mouth.

“You think I won't?” She grabbed the cartilage of his left ear, twisting it until he cried out.

His words were filled with dread and self-loathing. “This is why the dragon hasn't come. It knows. The-the dragon has been waiting. Waiting for the awakening. It wants a better meal.”

Alyse collapsed back onto her bottom. “And now that she's ‘awakened.’” Alyse shook her head. “Oh, my poor babe.”

Another hour passed, and Alyse could wait no longer. “We have to go to her.”

But when she would have gone down the ladder, Murtagh said, with a voice as gentle as ever she had heard it, “I must be the one to go. I know what to do.”

“We'll both go.”

“Two auras may do her harm.”

In Alyse's voice was the grit of her full, ninety-six years. “If she be dead, don't come back this way.”

When Murtagh had descended, one by one, Alyse replaced the boards to block the auras from above.

Murtagh found Saoirse, her body so still he thought the worst. Carefully, he reached under the blanket and removed the wax from her left ear. At once, she jerked, and her head began moving rapidly side to side.

“Saoirse, listen. Breathe in. Breathe in the colors and the color sound.”

She didn't respond. It was as if she couldn't hear him or see him.

With his lips against her ear, he shouted, “Saoirse! Listen to me! Breathe in the colors. Hold them in your mouth. Breathe them in!”

“Murtagh?” Her hands, trapped under the blanket, groped for him.

“Saoirse!” he shouted. “Breathe in the colors. Hold them in your mouth. Breathe them in!”

She drew in breath; her cheeks puffed out.

“Now, release them, Saoirse. Let the colors go. Let them go.”

Saoirse blew out the air.

“Again, breathe in the colors and the color sound. Breathe it in, hold the colors in your mouth. Feel them swirling in your mouth.”

Again, her cheeks puffed out.

“Breathe them out, Saoirse. Breathe out the magic. Let it go.”

For two hours, he sat beside her on the dark landing, her head on his lap. Teaching her to breathe, to take back control of the magic. At last, the colors faded until only the pure white of Murtagh's aura filled her eyes. So bright was his aura that she couldn't see his face. “Seer Murtagh?”

A tear slipped from his eye. “It seems, child, that you are a prodigy.”

“What happened? I don't remember . . . ”

Bending, he kissed her forehead. “I am afraid you have the most stupid of teachers.”

For the next hour, they practiced breathing, until Murtagh's aura faded slightly, revealing to Saoirse his red eyes and his still-trembling hands. Bringing her up from the passageways into the turret threw her into convulsions again. This time, the blanket and wax worked without lowering her back into the darkness of the passageways. Another hour of breathing, and she could see Alyse's face through her aura, it pure white as well.

Saoirse teased her. “You're worried about me.”

“What? Are you daft?” Alyse said, sniffling. “You being amazingly powerful and all, why should I worry?”

 

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