Page 156 of A Winding Wave of Magic
I looked down at the floorboards, scratched and spit-stained after years—hundreds, perhaps?—of abuse and hard living. There were no books in the house, no paper, nothing with which to entertain myself in the waning hours of the evening.
For the first time in my life, I was completely alone with my thoughts.
And they terrified me more than ever.
45
THE SHAPE OF A WAVE
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
— GEORGE BERNARD SHAW,HEARTBREAK HOUSE
“Ican’tdoit!”
My throat burned. It was the seventh time that morning alone I’d shouted that particular phrase, and probably the twentieth time I’d wanted to run up to my bedroom and slam the door like a grouchy teenager. It was exactly like when my mother had tried to teach me to darn a sock or when Gran taught me to build a saining fire properly. The only difference was that at the time, I was thirteen, not twenty-nine.
Which is to say, things weren’t going well.
I’d done everything just as Caitlin had instructed. No saining. No fires except to cook. No gloves. Nothing to cleanse the space of my mind. I walked around the cottage barefoot, letting whatever memories or other Sights pass through my mind however they pleased—and it wasn’t always pleasant. But theonly thing I learned about my own mind in a week was that I was apparently quick to temper.
The first day, I’d nearly been swallowed by the constant murmuring, swirling visions of Gran in her youth.
The second, utter chaos as every visitor of the house, animal who had roamed the land, or anyone else seemed to emerge from each nook and cranny.
And since then…silence.
I awoke on the third morning feeling as plain as I ever had. And sad. And angry. So, so angry.
That was the first morning I’d burnt my eggs and threw the skillet. It didn’t break any glass that morning…but by the fifth day, I’d lost two windows.
Caitlin and Robbie materialized the day after and informed me that my retreat was over. Robbie was able to mend the windows with a quick spell, but my frustration was harder to fix. I returned to Connolly Cottage to find Jonathan gone and a simple dinner of turbot soup with samphire and rye bread. I was tersely instructed that I would stay at Gran’s cottage, but I would come to the big house during the day to work on my craft and sup with the family.
The irony of being forced into solitude only after I stopped craving it for the first time in my life hadn’t escaped me, but I agreed nonetheless.
“Balance,” Caitlin said as she packed me a box of herbal teas she grew and dried herself. “Balance is what you’ll need. Mark my words.”
And so we tried. In the month since arriving on the island, I had settled into a consistent regimen. My dawn patrol surf—a habit that made all the Connollys nervous—was followed by farm chores with Robbie while he lectured me on fae history. It was the best part of my day, mostly because I wasn’t a completenovice—the majority of the stories he told were the foundations for the Celtic lore I had studied.
From there, things generally went downhill.
Twice a week I met Jock at the cultural center for Irish lessons, which I practiced with the Connollys in the evenings. Although I could read and write old, middle, and modern Irish with near fluency, my speech left much to be desired.
“Bád, notbata!” Enda had crowed yesterday. “You just said there are a lot of sticks in the harbor, not boats.”
The girls liked to tally how many mistakes I made. So far, my record for a single dinner was fifty-seven.
After Irish lessons, Caitlin and I did chores. The Connollys were as big on the old ways, as Jonathan claimed, but their decision to eschew many modern conveniences like vacuum cleaners or steam mops wasn’t out of nostalgia. Both Caitlin and Robbie believed that a physical connection with the world’s elements, established through the most mundane activities, was necessary to connect with magic. So, the land was plowed using the wood loy Irish farmers had used since the potato famines, every scrap of food in the house was made from scratch, and the sweaters Caitlin sold to tourists were all knit by hand from wool sheared from the flock of sheep they raised on the north side of the property.
All the while, Caitlin tried to teach me to strengthen and control my abilities. The strength was there; depth, I had in spades. After a month, I was now consistently practicing all three forms of clairvoyance—all I had to do was think of the type, and its particular brand of visions would come rushing in, with a single touch of an object, place, or person.
Control was a different story.
“Come now, Cassandra,focus. I’m going to try to sneak in again, and all you have to do is imagine a door, a boundary surrounding your mind, and lock it. Put the napkin down. I toldyou before, no gloves, not even the ones you make yourself.” Caitlin rapped her knuckles on the tabletop while the twins took a break from weeding the front garden to peek in through an open window.
“I told you, it’s not working. I. Can’t. Do. It.”
“Try again.”
