Page 78 of Awry
I just need to deal with all that.
Because there’s nothing I can do about whatever lies in that empty void I keep coming up against.
So I ignore the mounting evidence that someone has done what I would have thought impossible — stolen time, or memories, or something even worse from me.
I tug on thick wool socks and march downstairs.I shove my feet into gumboots that are slightly too large for me, and put on a puffy waterproof jacket that is most definitely too big.
Then I head out back toward the beach house to check on the mage and the shifter.
I was planningto go to Harlee and Cayley immediately.But at the junction along the moonlit path, I continue forward across the damp, winter-dead grass rather than veering right.
I feel drawn toward the bluff.The gumboots are tall enough to protect my jeans from the damp grass, but the closer I get to the ocean’s edge and the raging surf, the more the mist-filled wind has its way with me.My hair, specifically.Then the grass abruptly gives way to craggy rock, and I continue forward until I’m hovering over the sheer drop and looking into the whitecapped surf crashing against the cliff.My hair and face, my lips, are beaded with salty water.
I … I must have jumped from this cliff a dozen times or more.Always during the day when the tide was high, and into the more sheltered cove on the north side.Yet I can’t distinctly remember a single instance of doing so.As if the understanding or knowledge of the act is there, but the memory is muted or shadowed from my sight somehow.
The face and top of the craggy bluff are all rough rock above the high-tide mark.It looks almost black in the moonlight, as does the tumultuous sea below.An intense energy spreads around me, not just under my feet but radiating from this point— radiating from here throughout the world as it connects to the other intersection points.I instinctively skirted what I identified as the intersection’s primary anchor point as I traversed the bluff.
I know, I’ve been taught, that others of the awry hold five of those intersections, only two of which I’ve visited.Both of those points are held by awry with vast powers that are utterly unlike my own.
I step back from the edge.Something, some feeling or impulse that isn’t aknowing— at least not a future or even present knowing—tugs me a few more steps back.I keep moving blindly backward, unsure of my course but taking the steps nonetheless.
The feeling intensifies … the pressure.Then, after a couple more steps, it eases.I pause, eyeing the ground for a moment, seeing nothing unusual.
Maybe I’m simply sensing the apex of the anchor point acutely?Except it feels as if I’ve been drawn here, am drawn to this particular spot for a reason.
I step forward again.Then I find myself lying down on the uncomfortable rock before I’m even aware of deciding to do so.The hood of the puffy jacket creates a bit of a pillow for my head, but my shoulder blades and pelvic bones don’t like my sudden urge to lounge back on rough stone.
I stare up at the starlit sky for a moment, blinking as I try to absorb the sensations that have drawn me to this exact spot, that are continuing to hold me here.They aren’t all … external — not all a result of my nascent binding to the intersection point.There’s something else too.More of that emptiness.But it’s not an external pressure or a void like before.
It feels like … like … I’m missing something inside me.
I press my bare hands to the rock.Then I bend one leg outward and crank my head in the opposite direction, so that I’m staring toward the sheer drop a few feet away.
Arrayed as such, I’m somehow echoing the sensation that has brought me to this spot, that continues to hold me here somehow.
As if I’m a puzzle piece that has suddenly been notched into a larger background.Part of an image set down on a bigger canvas.
Except as the Conduit, I’m no longer a simple, multiedged piece.As the Conduit, I am the canvas.Or maybe the spool that holds and feeds the threads that create a tapestry — to belabor the metaphor and for lack of a better way to define the place I now hold on a universal level.
Is this feeling, this sense, connected to my recent ascension?Perhaps I’m still absorbing, stillbecoming.I mean, I know I am.Logically, I know it will take decades to wield even half of what my aunt wielded.
Except this isn’t about logic right now.I’m not sure I’ve taken any logic-based steps since I left Vancouver, since I laid eyes on Presh.
I try to narrow my focus, to home in on the sensations in the hopes of finding clarity.
I can feel the pounding of the surf echoing through the rocky ground underneath me.Clouds are starting to edge the night-shrouded sky again.The break in the rain won’t hold through dawn.
My nose and cheeks are cold.My hands start to ache from that same misty chill.
Yet I stay.
I close my eyes and open myself up to whatever is trying to make itself clear to me.I hold myself in place.My breathing slows.
And then I feel it …
The echo of a memory?But it’s more than that … it’s somehow visceral.
My neck … hurts.Or am I remembering my neck hurting?
