Eyes in the Water Read Free

peered down at his hands as if their size
might convince him. The demanding life of homesteading showed. The
long handling of tools and livestock marked the palms, knuckles,
and finger pads with hard calluses.
    Suddenly he chuckled. “Four orbits and I
still can’t get it right,” he muttered softly. “Darsey was right.
It isn’t about me.”
    He considered the situation anew, and his gut
wrenched with the sudden realization of the precariousness Colette
must be facing. She had never once requested his return. Not once.
She had barely spoken for orbits, and now her pleading voice was
small and weak. She needed him.
    “My cartess,” he found himself
whispering.
    Of course I’ll go. I’ll fly.
    But he made no move to depart. Instead, he
stared out into the canal as his mind grappled with time, emotion,
place; jumping worlds and lives was not a simple action.
    Four and a half orbits. The days had eked by
with the dull monotony of a clock ticking. He had come back from
Massada a different person: more man than boy, pensive and silent,
restless with love, and so out of place he felt he wore someone
else’s boots. His mother had never spoken about the change—or his
absence—but she assessed him with a bizarre, shrewd detachment, her
eyes constantly hovering over him. He had counted the days, hours,
and minutes, fondling the cinereous stone he had scooped up from
the shores of Ziel. Every corner and crevice had been worn smooth
between his fingers, imbued with his musings. Four and a half
orbits.
    And still, the Genesifin remained a
mystery.
    He had nearly committed the book to memory.
He sometimes felt like a cow with its cud—chewing, chewing,
chewing—wondering if he would ever swallow the knowledge and
comprehend it. Insight was there somewhere, for it had to
be, yet the mystery remained obscure. He saw nothing more than page
after page of proverbs and lessons. Nothing about fate or the
workings of the worlds to be discovered in its lines, no magic.
Only allusions and clichés. He was weary of this cud. He ached for
his friends—Arman, Colette, Darse. He ached to belong. He ached to
be part of an adventure again. He ached for his home.
    Then why do I wait? Why drip here in the
dark?
    He knew the reason, though. He could still
feel the maralane’s reptili eyes hot upon him, and he feared
returning cloaked in the shame of his failure to decipher the book
of fate.
    Deniel would’ve known… Wouldn’t he?
    He turned the thought over in his mind but in
truth did not know. He no longer held Deniel up on a pedestal. No,
as the orbits had passed, the mysterious man had sunk into Brenol
until the youth knew there could never be a possibility of
separation again. Deniel’s memories felt more like his own than
another’s, and in a way, Deniel was him. Brenol was who he
was because of Deniel. It never caused him angst, for Brenol
cherished the man’s memories. They offered him a tie to Colette
that he could never have had otherwise. With them, he could look at
the princess and see her as a whole—both the innocent girl and the
woman she had become following her nightmarish captivity.
    Her tree…
    Brenol played the memory over again, its
corners as smooth from wear as his pocketed stone. He had pondered
and treasured the scene for orbits. It had come in a flash several
moons after his return to Alatrice. He could not see how, but
Deniel had been in her consciousness, and the power flowing from
the man was astonishing. He had been able to maneuver his mind as
simply as if he were flicking his little finger.
    “ My tree?” she asked.
    Deniel whispered into her mind, opening her
intuit as gently as the sun unfurls a blossom. She smiled. Her eyes
danced in wonderment.
    She stood under her tree and waited. He
waited too. Her tree was lovely: the leaves, the colors, the
scents. It was a symphony of beauty. It blazed his heart up with an
even greater drive to keep her safe.
    I will protect her , he vowed. My
sister.
    A