Page 58 of Bonds of Magic
I cocked my head to the side. “Is that why you and Dean Mansur want me to learn to control mine? So I can spy on people’s dreams?”
“You figured that out, huh?”
His tone wasn’t condescending, but I flushed anyway. “Who do you want me to spy on?”
“Let’s worry about you getting control first.” Noah gave me a once-over, then nodded. “I think you’ll live. Get dressed and meet me in the living room.”
He turned and exited the bathroom, leaving me with more questions than I’d started with.
It didn’t take long to get my clothes back on. I was still in pain, but the bandage was already helping. I looked at my face in the mirror when I was done, frowning. I still looked tired. Gaunt. No wonder Noah didn’t want me. What bounty hunter would date someone who couldn’t even take care of themself?
I snorted. Date. As if that would ever happen. Even if Noah had liked me, he was right. We couldn’t exactly date normally. Not as student and professor.
I realized, looking in the mirror, that this was the first time I’d been alone in his cabin. I could almost hear Ash urging me to go through the medicine cabinet. But that felt wrong. So with a final swipe at my hair to straighten it, I headed back into the main room.
Noah was already sitting in his usual chair. I lowered myself onto the couch slowly, lying on my back.
“Doing alright?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, and for once, I wasn’t lying.
“Good. Because I’m going to push you tonight. I want you to try to find the dream of someone you know.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Isn’t that a little creepy?”
“Not necessarily. You should be able to find anyone’s dreams, once you know who you’re looking for. Even people who aren’t attracted to you. Their dreams will appear more muted, but they’ll still be there.”
That made sense. Some of the stars in the sea appeared brighter, more tempting, than others. “I get that. But I still don’t know how to find anyone specific. I never did find that guy Romero wanted me to locate.”
“It’s really not that difficult.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks. That makes me feel great.”
“It’s similar to being able to influence events. You just have to be centered. Rather than forcing things, let them come to you.”
I looked up at the knots in the tongue and groove ceiling, rising to a peak above us, and wondered what it would feel like to be centered. I wondered if I ever had been.
“You don’t impose your will on it,” Noah continued. “You recognize that part of youisthe dream, so what you imagine becomes what you see. For you, in a dream, there is no difference.”
“That’s easy to say,” I objected. “Become one with the void and all. But it’s not so easy in practice.”
“Itwillbe easy, once you’ve done it for the first time. And it’s not a void. It’s…” He trailed off. “Imagine spending all your life looking up at the sky on sunny days and thinking how beautiful it is. But on cloudy days, all you can think about is how much you miss the sun. But then you realize, youarethe sky. You’re the sky when it’s blue and the sky when it’s cloudy, and you can see the sun whenever you want, because youarethe sun.”
“Was that supposed to make things clearer?” I asked.
“I don’t know how else to explain it. This is how it was explained to me.”
He and Rekha could start a club. I rolled my eyes again.
“Well, I’m not you. Clearly. And I’m having a little more trouble.”
“You’ll get it,” he said. And the weirdest part was that he sounded like he meant it. “You’re growing more powerful with each lesson.”
“But maybe this is where I max out.”
“It’s not. Trust me.”
Again, he sounded strangely positive. Did he really mean it, or was he trying to keep me from psyching myself out?
