Page 157 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Eyes shut, I attempted once more to feel the “shape” of my mind, as she called it. It had nothing to do with the brain. Each person’s shape was unique to them. The mind was like an ancient house with too many secret passages and windows to count. I had to find them and shut them all. But I couldn’t find the front door.
Though I was starting to be able to sense Caitlin’s eavesdropping at increasingly subtle levels, I still had absolutely no way of stopping her. Maybe her mind was as neat and solid as the cottage she cared for so diligently, but mine seemed to have no boundaries, as fluid and moving as the ocean outside.
Goddess, I wanted to jump in.
“Well, you can’t right now,” Caitlin said sharply. Her chair leg screeched on the floor as she got up. The sun was visible through the window now, which meant it was time for her to start preparing the bread for tomorrow. “Maybe you shouldn’t at all until you can make a shield so basic, the babies could do it by the time they were seven. Maybe your beloved waves will motivate you properly since apparently, I cannot.”
“It’s not about motivation,” I said through my teeth.It’s about ability. Won’t and can’t are two different things—and it’s not my will that’s the problem.
“For the last time, don’t say ’can’t. In your thoughts or aloud.”
Caitlin, I had learned, was as irritated by negative self-talk as I was about burned eggs. Her voice only sharpened slightly, butsuddenly she was pounding shredded cabbage in a thick wooden bowl like it had spat her in the face.
But I wasn’t saying that. I hadn’t thoughtI can’t?—
“Don’t lie either. You were practically shouting it inside that thick head of yours.” She shook her head as she continued bashing the cabbage. “How many times do I have to tell you that self-fulfilling prophecy is real? We know better than most just how much everything we do is in the mind. Try again.”
Stifling a heavy sigh, I closed my eyes to practice one of the visualization techniques Caitlin had taught me. Her theory was that my gloves weren’t anything more than a placebo effect—a way for my mind to perceive a barrier when there wasn’t one. Now she was asking me instead to build said barriers with my mind.
Just as I had before, I imagined a number—three—then attempted to build an imaginary wall around it.Screw that, I thought.Make it a fortress, complete with turrets and walls and guards with crossbows designed for bossy Irish housewives.
A snort from Caitlin told me she could already See what I was thinking. I wasn’t sure I cared. And then I felt her subtle yet strong presence sifting through the rest of my thoughts—some I hadn’t even put words to. My brain felt fuller, somehow, when she was there, but even then it was difficult.
“Three,” she said shortly.
I groaned and set my head on the table, eager to ease the pounding through my temples. A few images of the girls making cookies danced in front of my closed eyes. They giggled, and though I knew the memory wasn’t actually laughing atme, I sat up anyway. “I’m telling you, this isn’t working. It’s been a month, and I’m still no better than a colander. That took you five seconds.”
“You just need to relax,” Caitlin grabbed an onion from the dry goods basket near the door and started chopping. “You’re holding on too tight. The fortress was a nice idea, but too many holes, I think. Forget the fancy weapons. Focus on the stone. How heavy it is. How strong.”
“Maybe I’m too old. You said this should have started when I was a child, not a twenty-nine-year-old crone.”
Caitlin snorted and said something in Irish that I was pretty sure translated to “stubborn gobshite.”
“How am I supposed to be a proper shield if I can’t keep a damn thing out?” I shoved a stack of napkins on the table causing the tower to topple over. “I can’t even hide a stupid number, let alone the biggest secret in the fae world.”
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. This had been happening more too. Instead of getting stronger, I was getting weaker, turning into a sieve that thoughts and tears and everything else could get through in a moment.
I’d never be able to do what Gran asked of me. Everything she had worked so hard in her life to protect was as good as gone.
“Hush,” Caitlin said, setting her knife and the now-chopped onions aside. “As long as you believe that about yourself, you’re right. You’ll never make any progress.” She glanced at the big clock in the foyer. “It’s nearly four. Take a break,we’ll try again with the girls after dinner. They’re always happy to be guinea pigs.”
Two squeaks from the garden outside the window confirmed her assumption, but it didn’t make me feel better. Her pity couldn’t have been clearer, and I didn’t have to touch her to know she had the same doubts I had.
My chair leg screeched as I stood up suddenly. “I’m going for a surf.”
I was out the door before she could tell me, as she always did, to be careful of the seals.
The water was startingto warm a bit—not so much that I didn’t have to wear a wetsuit, but at least it was topping fifty degrees now. My toes didn’t numb in less than thirty minutes anymore, and I could almost manage the early summer swells without a hood. Even when the surf was nothing but close-out after close-out, it was still the only place I felt competent. Where I still felt like myself.
It was also the only place where loneliness didn’t eat me alive.
From where I sat on the board, waiting for a new set, I could see the two cottages that had become my whole universe. The Connollys’ was neat and ordered; the wildest things about it were the white and purple puffs of garlic and chive scapes waving from Caitlin’s garden. To the left, despite Caitlin’s and my work cleaning everything out, the old yard in front of Gran’s house was still overrun by lichens, wildflowers, and grasses, tall and bright with sundrenched ends the color of new straw. Chaotic and colorful, just like my Sight could be.
Robbie said the land could be arable again with some work, but I’d have to wait until next spring. It was a casual comment, but one of many that intimidated me more than I could say. That the Connollys expected me to live here for the foreseeable future. That they expected me to survive on the land, like they did. That they expected progress, in one form or another.
I whirled my legs in the water to turn back to the horizon. Several seals popped above the surface, cocking their heads in greeting. I raised a hand, and one barked before diving headfirst beneath the waves.
“Well, that’s all good for you, but what about me?” I said to the flattened water.
