Chapter #56A Little History Lesson by: Seuzz   It doesn't take much reflection to see there's no point in even talking to Kali about it. You've just started your studies, and you can bet she will want to keep your "prodigies" under close watch and supervision.
And, sure enough, when you return to the living room, Kali insists upon another bit of meditation. "I won't help you with this one," she says. "You have now forged a bond with your primary Stellae, and you will learn the paths under its guidance, not mine."
The reference to a "primary" reminds you that you are supposed to have a "secondary" influence, and you ask about it.
She looks discomfited. "Yes. But to be perfectly frank with you, child, I am not certain what it is, or how to discover it."
"Joe tried making up a horoscope-like thing for me," you said. "Can't you try that?"
"I already have, without success. I am not sure what that means." She hesitates a good long time before speaking again. "It may be that Sulva has to show you. Which is another reason to meditate, and often."
You scratch your cheek. "I think I saw all the planets last night. Wouldn't I have recognized my secondary?"
"Not necessarily. How did you see them? What form did it take?"
The memory of last night has faded considerably, but you relate your progress through the field as best you can, and convey in a very halting fashion your impression of each planet. "I wanted to be with each of them while I was there," you remark at one point.
"That is a common reaction, and may have been more pronounced in your case. Sulva is a mirror, and you would have felt their influence very strongly. We haven't much experience with Sulvae, in point of fact--" A shadow of pain crosses her face. "Our grasp of their nature is quite tenuous. And, in fact--" It is becoming increasingly difficult for her to speak, and her hands work nervously. "Well, all Stellae, even of the same ousiarchs, manifest different powers and to different degrees, but Sulvae, so far as I can tell from my research, vary even more than others. It might even be, in your case, a feature of your relationship to Sulva that your other secondary has no fixed identity."
"What would that mean?"
"I don't know. Possibly you will reflect a little of each of the others." She arches her eyebrows in that expression you've come to recognize. "Something like that happened with Joe, didn't it, when you had his mask upon you?"
Miko has been listening silently up until this point, but she breaks in. "What happened with Joe?"
"Will used his own veritas technique against him."
Miko's face curdles. "You mean he might start acting like me?" She points a jagged finger at you.
"A nice thought, isn't it, Miko?" Kali says.
"Fuck that. Bad enough that I have to see Ed when--"
"Come," Kali says firmly. "There will be plenty of time to worry about that later. Let us see if Will can tell us anymore after tonight's sojourn."
* * * * *
But you've nothing else to tell them after you come out of your trance: you just felt yourself hanging peacefully in the sky. Kali tells you that is perfectly normal and will probably be your regular experience. "That doesn't mean nothing is happening, but it will be reflected in your mundane activities. I myself will have to meditate on this further." You notice that Miko has retired for the night while you were "out."
You have much the same kind of experience the next morning when you meditate again after breakfast: you seem to hang in a peaceful blue void, touching nothing and being touched by nothing. It also appears that every day of the week will leave you alone in the apartment until at least noon. Kali attends church services on Sundays--and makes no point in inviting you along--and Miko also disappears. They have left you with school reading as well, and you spend the bulk of your "alone time" with the books. It's dull, but at least there are no teachers or bullies to distract you. No friends either, though. For the first time in weeks, it feels like, you miss Caleb and Keith, and wonder how they are getting along.
Kali returns before Miko does, and sets to work on lunch. "I am still full from dinner last night," she says. "But I usually prepare a shepherd's pie for Sunday lunch," she says as she pulls out ingredients. "It's a comfort food, I suppose, for a day of rest."
"Am I going to rest today?"
"Of course. I will want an essay from you this afternoon, outlining a history of the United States from its earliest times."
"That doesn't sound like rest!"
She pauses as she takes out the carrots. "You sounded just like Miko when you said that. That's another reason you should rest."
"I don't think of school work as--"
"Rest is relative, child. You have been working hard on your main studies, though perhaps it hasn't felt like it. Today you will relax with school work. I'm not expecting anything great from the essay. I'm mostly curious to see what knowledge you have absorbed."
You mumble under your breath, and then try to make amends for what even you recognize is a bad attitude by opening up a can of peas for her, and otherwise helping her out. "As long as we're talking about history, could you tell me some history of your own. Like, about you and Miko, and Joe and Frank, and everyone else? And the Stellae?"
"I think that's a fine idea. Shall we start with Frank and Joe?" she asks with a small smile.
"Very well," she says, after taking your own crooked smile as an affirmative. "They came to us when they were about seven years old. Frank is a year older, so they joined a year apart. Frank was an orphan. He's Italian, by the way. His real name is Giuseppe. He doesn't know his father. Charles investigated, but never told him the facts, so I won't tell you. His mother was a poor woman, someone taken advantage of by the father. She gave birth in the hospital and abandoned him there." She sighs. "It's a common story, sadly. He was placed in an orphanage, where they treated him as well as they could. But it is difficult to find love in such places."
"If he was in an orphanage, how did the Stellae find him?"
"You said you saw the planets? Then you must have seen their paths." You remember the filaments, like spider webs. "They are tricky to navigate, but individual Stellae can be found on them by those who know how to meditate. That's not the same as finding them in the physical world, of course, and it sometimes takes a team of scouts employing their disparate gifts to finally run them to earth. We don't always succeed. Of course, there's no way to know how many are out there that we don't find, for of course we'd have to find them before we could count them. We suspect that there are a great many more out there that we don't know about."
"Might they be out there doing things we don't know about? Things like Joe and Frank can do?" You don't feel like adding your own name to the list.
"They wouldn't be noticeable. You must undergo the right sort of training to bring your gifts out. Though such gifts can manifest in ways that might seem odd. You yourself, for instance."
"What do you mean?" You pause before picking up the potato peeler, lest you cut yourself.
"Your little disappearing trick the first night you were here. I thought at the time it was only your first prodigy, but it may--"
"What disappearing trick?"
"Didn't you notice? You were sitting in the living room. Miko and I both went through, looking for you. I had to come back in and throw a little light around before I could find you."
"I was invisible?" you gasp.
"No, you weren't invisible. I just didn't notice you, even though I was looking for you and looking directly at you."
"How is that possible?"
She smiles as she pours a little oil in a skillet. "Have you ever turned your house upside down looking for your keys, only to discover they were sitting in plain sight the whole time?"
"Yeah, but it's usually my shoes."
She smiles wryly. "As it was with Frank and Joe. But It was something similar with you. I imagine you were feeling sorry for yourself and wishing you could just disappear. You managed to put up some kind of block that kept us from noticing you, the sort of thing that sometimes keeps us from noticing things that are directly in front of us. Sherlock Holmes," she says, turning to put the skillet on the stove, "called it the difference between seeing and observing. I suppose we saw you, but we didn't observe you, and so kept looking for you."
"Whoa."
"So Miko gave you that necklace. Don't feel like you have to wear it. But as long as you are in training, there is a chance that you'll accidentally disappear on us again. We might not even see you if you're trying frantically to get our attention. That necklace will prevent that from happening."
You touch it with a light fingertip. So it is magical.
"I told you Sulvae are very rare," she continues. "It's probably better to say that we don't notice them, and that they have a unconscious knack for making themselves inconspicuous." She tears open a package of ground beef, but pauses before dropping it into skillet. "Were you often invisible at school, Will?"
"Not as much as I'd have liked. There were these bullies--"
"But you weren't often in the thick of things? No busy social life?"
"No," you say quietly. "Just hung out with a few friends. Never even really sent to parties."
"Would you like to go to a party?"  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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