Page 65 of Awry
Wildflowers grow in these front fields from spring through fall.But right now, the deciduous trees interspersed among the evergreens are still winter bare.
I take another step, then another.
Nothing happens.
Feeling like an idiot, I stride forward.
“Zaya?”Cayley calls.“Can I open the gate?”
She can try.But I don’t say anything, because I don’t know how to explain this part.
Once I get this process over with, I can invite Cayley onto the property.And she doesn’t ever need to know that some inexplicable, universe-driven force ever impeded her entry.The natural boundary wards, the protection wards, that encase this territory aren’t mage wrought.Nor can they be manipulated or altered by any mage, no matter the amount of essence that mage holds or the skill with which they wield it.
I’m a few steps from the top of a low rise when the house begins to come into view again.Still no light in any of the windows.No smoke curls from any of the four chimneys.Set just right of center on the wide-skirted front patio, the front door is closed.
I try to take another step, but stop suddenly in the middle of that movement with my right leg raised.
I’m frozen in place.It doesn’t hurt.Nothing presses against or around me.No energy churns in the earth.No threads envelop me.
But I can’t move.
I can’t tilt my head, not even a dip of my chin, but I can see an ever-brightening halo emanating from the gold-caged, rough-cut pink diamond strung around my neck as it begins to glow under my sweater.Brighter and brighter until its light is literally burning through the thin knit barrier, sending pink-hued beams streaking out from me in all directions.I can’t verify the feeling without actually being able to look, but I don’t think the light slices through me.
My head slowly, almost imperceptibly falls back, so that I’m gazing up into the cloudy gray sky.I’m aware that all the light stretching out from me is now feeding back into the pink diamond, then into me.I swear I can also see the purple-hued blaze of my own eyes lighting the underside of the clouds.
I watch as the world slowly moves around me, over me … sound filtering in, though I’m still caught in that mostly frozen state.Then I can hear actual voices, questioning and stressed behind me.I can see birds, seagulls, then something smaller, flying in flocks.Juncos?Then finally, turkey vultures swooping and spiraling overhead.Looking for carrion?
I haven’t died.
But I am being remade … or perhaps realigned is more accurate.My senses are being retuned to the energy, the essence, anchored in the property as well as in the rough-cut gemstone bequeathed to me by destiny.
The wind picks up, followed by rain.I can feel both stirring my hair, caressing my skin.
My still-suspended right foot falls forward onto the drive.Then my left foot rises.My head snaps down, and the house comes into view again.My arms swing forward, one and then the other.
I’m once again walking along the driveway toward the house, as if I never stopped in the first place.Except the afternoon has darkened into evening, and my clothing is damp, though not soaked through.The rain has picked up again.
I hear the gate being shoved open on creaky hinges behind me, then the sound of multiple engines.Cayley has called in reinforcements.
I don’t look back.
Ineedto know now.
I already knew.But now …
I walked these lands as a child with my mother, then with my aunt, and then alone.The estate has always accepted my inherent right to be here.But now … now we are somehow bound?
I’ve been taught that this property protects one of the world’sintersectionpoints.I am the anchor, or rather the Conduit is the anchor, for all essence.But then that essence threads through the secondary anchors of the intersection points.Besides the one I’ve just claimed, there are six other intersections arrayed across the globe.Though centuries ago, maybe even a millennia, there used to be nine in total.
Until this moment, I hadn’t realized what the intersection point on the estate meant for the Conduit.For me.
It is possible that I’m a goddess when I walk these lands.
I will be lesser when I step away, but never again the person I was before the necklace settled around my neck.
But … if I am actually a goddess, or at least am now carrying some aspect of a divine immortal being, how and why is my aunt— the goddess before me— dead decades before her time?
Aware of the quiet purr of the Corvette and a rumble of three motorcycles following me to the house, I jog up the five wooden front steps, noting that the decking also needs to be power washed and revarnished.The house needs a coat of paint too.Has that much time passed since my aunt last had the property maintained?
