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can shoot out lightning from my hands too. For that I need to clap my hands together, as if I’m striking stones together to create a spark. The first time that’s all it was, but now I can make long bolts of lightning that stretch for ten meters.
    Sending flames from my mouth is the one I’ve learned most recently. I have to flick my tongue against the roof of my mouth and let out a breath. It’s not a deadly weapon and I can’t do flames while I’m thinking about air and being invisible. But it’s still a good Gift to have.
    I practice my new Gifts every day, and every day I tryto find the other Gifts my father had. He could move objects by the power of thought, change his appearance like Gabriel can, make plants grow or die, heal others, contort metal objects, and make cuts. All great Gifts but the best one was that he could stop time. I’m sure that I have all those Gifts too now. It makes sense that if I’ve got one from him then I’ve got them all, but I’ve not been able to find out how to access all of them. I saw how my father stopped time before he died and I’ve worked on that more than on the others but nothing’s happened. That’s the Gift I want most. What I’d do with that Gift! But I haven’t been able to find that. Of course the Gift I don’t want, the Gift of visions of the future, is the one that comes anyway, whether I like it or not.
    Having visions is more of a curse than a Gift. Visions screwed up my life. Screwed up my relationship with my father, screwed up everything. I wonder how my life would have been different if he hadn’t had the vision that I’d kill him. I mean, it ended up coming true even though he avoided me for the first seventeen years of my life. So all that meant was that I spent my childhood without him, not knowing him, a prisoner of White Witches. Then when I escaped, when we were finally united, within months the vision came true. Without the vision I don’t think my father would have left me with Gran; he’d have wanted me with him. So, seventeen years of separation because of a vision. And weirder than that is the fact that I don’t think I couldhave done what I did if I didn’t know about the vision, if my father hadn’t told me he’d seen that I would eat his heart and take his Gifts.
    Visions aren’t like dreams. For a start they only happen when I’m awake, and they come like a cloud moving overhead, bringing a chill feeling and turning things duller, and, even though I know what’s going to happen and that the vision is coming and I don’t want it, I’ve got about as much chance of stopping it as I have of stopping a cloud from blocking out the sun.
    And, of course, once you’ve seen a vision you can’t unsee it, can’t forget it.
    I’ve had my vision six or seven times now and there’s a bit more detail each time. In it I’m standing on the edge of a wood, trees behind me and a rolling meadow in front, and the sun is low in the sky. The light is golden and it’s all beautiful and peaceful and I turn to see Gabriel standing in the trees. He waves at me to come to him and I look back at the meadow one final time and then turn back to Gabriel and then I’m flying backward through the air.
    That’s all I saw the first time I had the vision, and I told Gabriel about it. But since then I’ve seen more. There’s a dark figure walking away through the trees. And Gabriel has a gun in his hand. I fly backward through the air and it feels like I’m flying but then I land on my back, looking at sky and treetops, and the pain in my stomach hits me and I know I’ve been shot and then it goes black. And that’s the end of the vision.
    I reckon it lasts about two minutes, tops, and I end up sweating and my stomach burning and cramping for real. I know the vision is important, otherwise I wouldn’t be having it,