“What is your problem?” I snapped, glaring back. “Is it me, or are you always so … unpleasant?”
Zia raised her eyebrows … and then her expression morphed into a huge grin as she laughed.
Great. Not only was she mean—she was crazy.
“Well, praise the Mother Mage, you’ve got a backbone after all.” Then she sighed. “Look, honey, it’s nothing against you. It’s just that … I got close to your mom while training her. I thought we’d have centuries together, and then,poof, she died and went to the Realm of the Dead.”
Wait. My mom was in the Realm of the Dead, but this was the spirit realm, which meant they were two different places. That was something I needed to learn more about, but I held my questions for later.
Tears lined Zia’s eyes, but then she shook her head, and they evaporated. “I don’t like to get attached to my heirs if they are going to leave, okay?”
I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling bad for Zia. My mother’s passing could’ve been rough for all of them. “Well, I’m not going anywhere. At least, I plan on being around a long time.”
“Well, that’s always a good plan.” She leaned over then and unzipped her boots. As soon as she’d shucked the first boot, it disappeared into thin air, followed by the second. “Now,” she said, straightening. “Tell me what gaps you have, and I’ll decide which I’m best capable to fill.”
“Uh… gaps?”
She cocked her head. “Or tell me your proficiencies if you’d rather.”
“I’m not sure what all I should’ve learned by now, but… uh… this is my first lesson.” I winced, mortified that I knew so little.
Pursing her lips, Zia tugged at the corner of her ‘70s dress…
Whoa.
She was no longer dressed like a go-go dancer. Zia’s dress had somehow morphed into a sarong, which she tugged free and laid out on the sand, plopping down onto one side of the fabric island. Now she wore a pretty red and white polka dot one-piece swimsuit. She patted the other side of the blanket she’d created with her dress. “Have a seat. Let’s get to know one another a bit, and then we’ll chat about your experiences with spirit.”
Turned out my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother wasn’t nearly so intimidating this time. In fact, she was pretty cool. She’d been married twice before she had children and was nearly nine hundred years old when she had Than. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for high mages to have children later in life.
I gave her an abbreviated version of my last couple of months, which earned me a wide-eyed gasp of shock.
“You’ve had a few surprises yourself,” she said in the understatement of the year. Or maybe millennium.
She explained how doing spirit magic was always hardest the first few times. “It’s like learning the steps to a new dance or how to do martial arts. Once you know how, it will barely take any focus, but until you’ve learned it, spirit magic—and all magic for that matter—will take every ounce of your attention.”
I told her how I thought I’d spirit walked to Kaja back when Rage and I had left the selkies, and Zia explained that this was the easiest type of spirit-magic because I’d known what Kaja looked like and where I could find her—plus, we’d been in the same realm. But when I went to fetch Honor’s soul from the Realm of the Dead, I’d needed Grandpa’s help because my power hadn’t all been unlocked and it was a different realm.
“But, now that you have access toallyour power, you were able to pull me here and quite easily, it seems,” Zia said. “Tell me how you did it. Did you bring my soul stone?”
I held up my hands, empty except for the crystal shard, to indicate that I didn’t have her stone. And I wasn’t about to say it’d been easy to pull her here. “I’m not sure how I called you because…”
No way did I want to tell her.
“Because…?” Zia pressed.
After a sigh, I admitted the truth. “Because I didn’t really want you to show up. I mean, you weren’t very helpful last time—or even very nice.”
She nodded. “True. I was surprised to get pulled into training another spirit master—plus, you look so much like your mother I let my emotions get the better of me—but it sounds like I made a memorable impression on you. That’s likely why you were able to focus enough to pull me in. Lesson number one: your focus and attention to detail will determine your ability to call on spirits.”
“Gotcha.” Probably why it was so easy to spirit walk to Kaja and connect with Honor’s spirit in the Realm of the Dead. Also probably why I needed my ancestors’ soul stones to meet them the first time. I’d had no idea what any of them looked like or even their names to call on them.
“But … let’s start your lesson with that,” she said, pointing at the crystal in my hand. “Because the first thing you need to learn to do, on your own, is how to get in and out of the spirit realm using just your own magic, not a safety net crystal.”
Then we—and I use that term very loosely—worked on me bouncing in and out of the spirit realm—like,allflippin’ day—until my skin was pruney from sitting in the water. During our lesson, Zia explained that water was an energy conductor and made it easier to do magic, especially when training new students. By the end of our session, nine hours later, I could access the spirit realm in the blink of an eye—no crystal, and even out of the water of the spirit pools.
“Good job, Nai,” Zia said, standing up and brushing sand from her legs. “Now, go get some food and sleep. You need to recharge.” She pulled me in for a spirit hug, which felt nearly as amazing as a real hug. “Tomorrow, you should work with Than on the process of finding one’s soul stone. That’s probably what Geoff will want you to do next, given how short you are on time.”
I nodded absently until the memory of my first experience with a soul stone surfaced. “Where are soul stones found?”
