I nodded.
“Is it fair to assume maybe you were trying to impress him or follow in his footsteps by choosing that career path?” Millie asked. “Earning good marks in school, following the right path, taking steps to be successful inhiseyes.”
“Yeah,” I said. Then, “Mostly. He wanted me to be a surgeon, but I chose family medicine. It felt like a better fit.”
“Right. Great!” Millie nodded vigorously. “What if you let it go even more. You wanted to be a doctor to help people. I believe that part is true. What if you forgot about everything you’ve learned and reassess what helping people looks like?”
“You mean, helping break the curse on the island?”
“That’s a big way,” she said. “There are other ways. Maybe the way you’re meant to leave an impact on this world is to take control of your powers. Sure, there’s a curse and whatnot, but look at how many people you’ve helped already, practically on accident.”
“I see your point, but how’s that supposed to help me find Silas?”
“Silas is in a place where he can’t be seen or heard, otherwise he’d make himself known. Fates, that man can make himself known if he wants,” Millie said on an exhale. “If that’s the case, then you’re going to need to rely on something else to find him. A connection, your intuition, your powers.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“I’m going to leave you alone for a few minutes,” Millie said. “Close your eyes and sit with yourself. With your thoughts.Yourthoughts and nobody else’s. Not Atlas or Silas or Ranger X. Not me or your parents. If you want to come into your powers, you need to feel comfortable with them in your own skin first.”
Millie disappeared before I could ask for more clarification. Which really, would defeat the purpose of everything she’d just said.
With a huge sigh, I closed my eyes. A few seconds later, the voices in the garden dulled—either because Millie had told them to be quiet or because I tuned them out, I wasn’t sure.
At first, I mostly felt itchy and uncomfortable with the quiet. I wanted to stretch or fall asleep or pace. I tapped my leg, let my fingers trace circles against my knee. I hummed a little ditty to myself.
But I kept my eyes closed, and the longer I sat there, the more still I fell. My thoughts raced, but I didn’t censor them. I let them float in, examined them, and let them continue floating on by.
As I did, one particular thought was persistent.
Silas is in a place where he can’t be seen or heard.
I finally opened my eyes, knowing what I was looking for. I flipped the book open to page 473.Bingo.
“It’s sort of like going fishing.”
I stood at the table in the garden, surrounded by purple florals and buzzing bees and two very intense men looking at me like I was crazy.
“The person rooted in the proper reality—our reality—” I said, pointing at the dusty page of the huge book, “will cast a line out to Silas.”
More blank stares.
“Picture the fishing line as a link between two people. You said you have a brotherly bond,” I explained to Atlas. “Clearly it works because you heard Silas’s call for help, involuntary or not, and we can use that connection to pinpoint him so long as it’s linked to the proper spell.”
Atlas conceded my point with a nod. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation, let alone the fact that I was speaking in spells, and they were looking at me like it made sense.
“With any luck, Silas will be able to latch on,” I said. “We’ll basically hook him with the spell and yank him back. If the power on our end is strong enough, it should be able to blast through whatever’s holding him captive.”
“I don’t know,” Ranger X said. “It sounds dangerous. What if it goes wrong? What if we yank too hard, and things go belly up?”
“What other choice do y’all have?!” Millie blurted from the sidelines with a frustrated huff. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth and stalked back to her sandwiches in the kitchen.
Atlas sized me up. “You’re sure about this.”
I didn’t need to respond because he’d said it like a statement.
“How much do you trust her?” Atlas asked Ranger X.
“I trust her intentions are pure.” Ranger X shot me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Alessia. My doubts are not about you. With all due respect, you’ve only been here a few days. As the head of the Ranger Program, it’s my job to test and double check and question and—”
