Page 106 of The Witch They Fear

Yes.

A longer pause this time. I can almost feel the Voice deciding how much to give me and where to set the cut-off. When it speaks again it doesn't answer.

You went into the trees last night.

So that's where we are. So this is what brought him back.

I did.

You shouldn't have.

Mm.

Calypso.

You haven't spoken to me in twelve days. You don't get to tell me where I shouldn't go.

That's also true.

We sit with it. The Voice is very good at sitting with things. He has a way of letting silence press without pushing, and it always makes me want to fill it, and I have learned not to.

Are you safe right now?

I'm sitting on a wall in a sanctioned class with a man with a stopwatch in front of me. By every measurable definition I am safe.

That's not the definition I was using.

I close my eyes. Behind them, the field fades. The thud of feet on packed grass goes quieter. There's just the warm uninvited presence in my chest and the slow steady thing it does when it asks me a question.

I'm fine, I say.

That's not an answer I believe.

Then stop asking me questions you've already decided about.

A breath of something that might be amusement, on his end. Or sympathy. Or both.

Forgive me.

Don't apologize. Just say what you want to say.

A longer pause.

I am glad you're alive.

The words land in my sternum like a hand laid flat.

I open my eyes. The field is still there. Midus is still shouting. Kage is across the field running a drill, staff balanced across his shoulders, eyes anywhere but on me. Nothing has changed.

I'm glad too, I manage. I think.

That's the most honest sentence you've given me in two weeks.

He fades.

I feel the warm uninvited place behind my sternum cool by a small but specific degree, and the Voice is gone again—not abruptly, but the way he always goes, like a person who is choosing his exit at the door rather than slamming it.

I sit there for a long time.