Page 3 of The Heir
My mother elbowed me, and I went to fetch the sticks and hand them out. When I reached Thor, I pushed the stick at him without looking into his eyes.
“Wait, Indiana. Don’t light it on fire just yet. First we’ll stand in a circle and hold hands while we do a short meditation.”
They all did as my mother asked but when I glanced over at Thor, his expression was mocking. The knot in my stomach grew with my need to impress him.
After my mother led us in a five-minute meditation, the fifteen delegation members stuck their sticks into the fire.
Walking around, my mother demonstrated over and over. She kept giving me gestures to do the same, but I was afraid of making a fool of myself again and kept to encouraging comments.
“I can’t get it to work,” Freya complained.
“None of us can,” Thor answered his sister. “That’s because we aren’t freaks.”
My head whipped in his direction and I narrowed my eyes, and right there in my anger and hurt, I found my focus. Looking at the smoke from his stick I silently led it into his face.
Coughing, Thor moved the stick but no matter where he moved it, the smoke kept finding him.
“This is stupid!” he exclaimed and began waving his hand to get the smoke out of his eyes.
I walked closer and took the stick from him. “What’s the problem?”
“My stick isn’t working,” he said and coughed again.
Directing the smoke in a straight vertical line, I held my hand above it. “Seems to work just fine.” As I moved my hand to the left, the line of smoke followed and just to prove my point, I moved it to the right with the same result.
Thor took back his stick and tried again but the line that had been straight before dissolved and the smoke flowed freely. “Is this what teens do in their spare time in the Motherlands? Practice magic tricks?” Thor’s laughter was condescending. “It makes me grateful that I’m a Northlander.”
“It’s not magic, it’s tapping into nature,” I shot back.
My mother came over and with a hand on my shoulder, she whispered, “Linea, may I talk to you for a minute?”
We walked to the side before my mother stopped and faced me. “What’s going on?”
I pressed the tip of my right shoe into the grass and muttered low. “Nothing is going on.”
“You were all blue sky and sunshine when we arrived. Now you’re a thundercloud attacking Thor with smoke. What happened?”
“They’re laughing at me.”
My mom’s hand caressed my arm. “You’re upset about the failed demonstration.”
“Yes.”
“That’s okay. You got nervous, that’s all.”
Lowering my voice, I hissed, “No, it’s not okay. It was humiliating. Didn’t you hear Thor?”
“Oh, Angel. That’s your ego speaking. You know better than to care what he thinks.”
“He called me a witch and a freak.”
My mom cupped my face with one hand while I pinned my lips together and blinked away the moisture in my eyes. “Sweetheart, how many times have I told you that when teaching you have to let go of your attachment to the outcome? Our success as teachers can’t be determined by how well our students learn. It would be arrogant to assume we hold that sort of power over people. Those who want to learn from us will do so. Those who fail to see the value of our teachings will miss out. None of that should make us less willing to teach.”
“But how can you stay motivated if people aren’t taking you seriously?”
“Honey, we talked about this. Stop giving away your power. Why are we teaching?”
With my face downturned, I picked at the edges of my long braid. “Because it would be selfish to keep our knowledge to ourselves.”
