“It seems it wasyouwho orchestrated my coming here,” I point out. It was Aggie’s prophecy that set everything in motion, after all.
“I only speak for the Darkness. I do not control its whims,” she says with a cryptic smile. She motions to the small cabin. “I think this calls for tea.” She turns toward the house without bothering to wait for our agreement.
I glance at Cal uncertainly. He shrugs as if to saywhat’s the worst that can happen. Dread winds tightly in my stomach, but I follow Cal onto the porch and through the threshold.
Though only comprised of one cramped room, Aggie’s cabin is an affront to the senses. Every surface is a riot of color. Shelves of all different varieties overflow with books and brightly colored jars. Various knick-knacks line the windowsills and the top of the large iron stove that sits in the corner. Herb bunches hang from the rafters in various stages of drying and a thick perfume of burning incense permeates the air. The few visible patches of drywall have been plastered with paintings of landscapes and graphite portraits of writhing bodies.
Aggie moves through the cramped space with ease, a feat I find impressive as I possess the full use of my sight and still manage to trip over a large cast iron pot that sits by the doorway. Calloway ducks in behind me, his copper hair brushing one of the herb bunches as he stands to his full height. Aggie motions impatiently for us to sit, so we squeeze ourselves awkwardly into the scrubbed wooden seats, the bump of Cal’s knees rattling the stacked china.
Aggie hasn’t bothered to don a shirt; a fact made more evident by the way Cal decidedly looks everywherebuther. She pours the tea into three chipped mugs and slides two of them toward us.
Cal starts to shake his head, eyeing the teacup dubiously. “Thank you, but I’m—"
“Drink, Calloway,” Aggie tells him firmly. Cal brings the cup to his lips, looking like a scolded child.
I blow on the tea and take a doubtful sip. It’s brown and murky but isn’t wholly unpleasant. It tastes of the forest, of herbs and fresh air and a hint of pine. I open my mouth to ask what’s in it but fall silent when I feel the weight of Aggie’s gaze. She eyes me over her blue teacup, her face revealing nothing of her thoughts.
“Ask me your questions, then,” she rasps.
“I have a question,” Cal quips immediately. “Is it pertinent to be naked while thanking the moon?”
I shove my elbow into the soft part of his abdomen and he grunts, turning wide eyes on me. “What?” he asks innocently. “If one is thanking the moon, one should be certain to do so properly, don’t you think?”
I glance at Aggie apologetically, but she is gazing at Cal with approval. “The rest of the world insists on living in Darkness, but you, Calloway, have always stubbornly shown your light.”
Cal furrows his brows, uncertain whether or not he’s been paid a compliment. He opens his mouth to retort but I shake my head impatiently and cut him off. “Aggie, I need to ask about what you said to me at the lunar celebration.”
“Which part?”
Her white eyes land on me and I take another sip of tea to avoid having to meet them.
Which part, indeed. Am I here because of her comments in her silly sing song voice, alluding to my healing powers? Or am I here to ask after her other comments, darker and wholly more intimate?
You cannot touch the Darkness and remain unchanged.
“I can smell it on you, you know,” Aggie says, and I almost leap out of my skin. She can’t know that I spent the morning tangled up in Anrai Shaw; can’t know that if he is the Darkness, I was changed by him long before she made her prophecy.
“The power,” she clarifies with a knowing smile. Calloway quirks an amused grin at my audible sigh of relief, but thankfully, makes no comment. “I sensed something different about you when we first met, but now, little bird, it pours from you like the waves of the sea itself live beneath your skin.”
I stare down at my hands. Short nails, slim fingers, pale skin. They look as unremarkably plain as they always have. Could it be true that something greater lives within them, something powerful enough to save my brother’s life?
“Where did it come from? Is it…is it mine?”
“It belongs to you as much as you belong to it. It’s chosen you and you have claimed it in return. You cannot be parted.”
Something bright blooms in my chest that the power can never leave me. That no matter what life brings, I will never again be truly alone.
“As for where it comes from, it comes from the same place all magic comes from. Life itself. Yours is the spirit of the water. The life it gives and the life it takes. The power it exudes and the sacrifice it demands. All that the water contains is yours to wield if you so choose.”
“So, I can…I’m able to heal someone? If I learned how…I could heal like I healed Shaw?”
Aggie tilts her head, considering her words. “It is possible,” she finally replies.
“Shaw said magic wasn’t…isn’t…something to be used. But I could use it?”
Aggie makes a rough sound in her throat that I realize is a chuckle. “For a boy that can’t find his way out of his own shadow, he is shockingly astute at times. Anrai is correct. It seems that somewhere in time, the lore of magic has been twisted. People now like to think of it as a benign energy source, neither good nor bad. Something that could be formed and wielded according to whoever possessed the power. But the spirits of the elements are just as sentient as you and me, something other but something the same as well.”
Cal’s face wrinkles in confusion, as if Aggie speaks a language he doesn’t understand, but I suddenly feel breathless. Because she has put into words the feeling that crashed through me as the assassin brought down his knife, a feeling that, until now, was indescribable; how something can feel so apart from me but also as if it’s intwined with my very soul.
