Page 56 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“I hid them so well that Lexington would have never been able to find them, and buried them so deep that they’re long frozen over. I’m afraid Coen’s right, Rayna.Youhave to be the one to retrieve them. I can’t melt all of this even if I wanted to.”
Diamonds were crystallizing on my lashes now, but I didn’t bother wiping them away as I trudged toward the wall of ice and said over my shoulder in as bright a voice as I could manage, “Well, then, I guess I’d better start trying, huh?”
Garvis followed me to the frozen gateway, where I leaned in closer to find—
“Look. Somebody’s already broken in.”
Indeed, deep gouges in the ice had carved an opening to the brass handle, and when I looked down, two very separate tracks had been embedded in the snow beneath the door: what looked like large, normal footprints, and something thick and tubular, like a long body had slid through.
“Steeler and Lexington,” I murmured, disgusted at that second wormlike track. I looked up at Garvis. “Why is it…?”
“Lesson number one: the longer you loiter in someone else’s mind, the more your intrusive consciousness morphs into a shape that reflects its true intent,” Garvis answered grimly. “Kitterfol seems to enjoy snooping in your mind, no matter what else he might claim—which is evident in these tracks.”
A worm. Lexington literally became a worm, a parasite, when he invaded my brain every weekend.
Holding back a shudder, I nodded down at Steeler’s footprints.
“He’s in my mind every week, too. How come he’s not…?”
“A monster?” Garvis smiled wryly. “I think you know why, deep down.” He didn’t even give me any time to process that statement. “Now, are you ready to go inside?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
I still couldn’t believe that I was aMind Manipulatornow. That I’d sunk into my own consciousness, that I was staring down my too-familiar wall of ice in the flesh.
Rubbing my palms together, I stole a deep breath of frigid air before pulling on the handle and stepping through.
It was a maze.
I knew that even before I’d let my gaze sweep over every winding pathway sprouting from the main walkway, each wall coated in such a thick layer of ice that I couldn’t tell what lay underneath, wood or marble or something else entirely. There seemed to be no end in sight no matter which way I turned, and nothing stirred within the mist that clung to every edge like ancient cobwebs.
“What happened to me?” I whispered.
Garvis simply said, “Come on. Let’s go find a random memory.”
He started down the main walkway, the only path that didn’t curve or bend at odd angles. I followed until he stopped abruptly and turned toward a pathway that split off in a sharp zigzag, where we rounded a corner to find a condensed pocket of swirling mist.
As soon as we laid eyes on it, the mist burst into shape and sound—an echoing, familiar whoop.
“Is that Rodhi?” I gasped, incredulous.
Yes, that was definitely a ghostly version of Rodhi, butt-naked and balls swinging as he streaked down Bascite Boulevard at two in the morning after he’d chugged a quadruple shot from a pelican’s beak—a memory from last year that I’d tried very hard to forget. Apparently, I hadn’t managed to stifle it properly, because now that I was watching the mist replay it over and over, I doubted I’d ever forget it again.
Garvis chuckled. “He was always a strange kid, wasn’t he? Tell me—where’d he get the pelican? I’ve never seen one on campus. And how did he convince it to hold still long enough for him to fill its pouch with that much alcohol?”
“The pelican was a migratory guest he coaxed in from the beach, and I don’t know how Rodhi does what he does. Or why,”I added as an afterthought. “Okay, so these are what memories look like? And in theory I could—”
“Bury it,” Garvis said, nodding at the snow-packed ground, “which would prevent you from remembering on a conscious level. You could also destroy it completely, which would make it impossible for that memory to ever be recalled. Or you could alter it, maybe give the guy some clothes. But those things all take complicated skill, whereas hiding it within an internal blockade… I could probably teach you how to do that tonight.”
“An internal blockade?”
“Yes. It would… camouflage the memory so that other Mind Manipulators like Lexington would have a harder time finding it, butyouwould still be able to remember it on a conscious level. Not as foolproof as burying or destroying sensitive information, but a whole lot easier. And what we’re doing now takes hardly any skill at all.”
I arched a brow at him mid-shiver. “What are we doing now?”
“Shedding light onto the memory simply by observing.” Garvis gazed upward. “See how your moon has shifted its focus, how it’s beaming down on this spot now?”
I did. Whereas before a misty darkness had filled this pocket of the maze, now moonlight bathed it in a milky yellow glow.
