Page 99 of In Her Own Rite

He rolls his eyes. “Big surprise.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But really. I saw some shit up there—or, specifically, Iheardsomething that really got me. And it’s been haunting me. Not just in the ring, but in the weeks after.”

“Is this behind the stuff with Em? The fight?” he asks.

I nod. “Part of it. And… Em heard from Maren that you told her some stuff, I guess, about your rite. I don’t know how much, and neither does Em. But I guess your rite involved Mare, somehow?”

He nods wordlessly.

“Right. So, mine was about Em. And the stuff I saw, and learned up there—I don’t know, dude, it’s killing me. I want to be able to tell her, to explain why I’ve been acting like this. But we can’t share what we see up there.”

He nods again.

“So, I…” I sigh, trying to find the words.

“You want to figure out how much you can tell her.”

“Yeah. What did you tell Maren?”

He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees, mirroring my body language.

“Do you think Em’s your mate?” he asks.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has to do with this.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do. Come on, tell me.”

I sigh. “I think so, yeah. I hope so.”

“Do youknowso?”

I think about it for a long moment. The way I feel when I’m with her; the way she gives every day meaning. The way, when we’re together, I somehow feel more myself than when I’m alone.

“Yeah. I do.”

He smiles. “Congrats, man.”

I find myself smiling, too, and try to suppress it. “Thanks. Now we’ll just see if she’ll have me.”

“Please. I’m not worried about thatat all. But okay. Do you remember what the ancestors said about how mate pairs are made?”

“Yeah, what is it, again?” I say, waving my hands. “It’s like, the lights, and the ancestors or something…”

He laughs. “Man, you really didn’t pay any attention in school, did you?”

“I did fine,” I say, defensive.

He shakes his head, still laughing. “The ancestors believed that, in the place before this, the two souls in a mate pair have already found each other. They’re woven together. And when the souls are separated to be born on the islands, they’re too closely woven for a neat split. Each soul comes here with a small piece of the other, and you spend your life—or, if you’re lucky, just your early years—looking for the person who already has a part of you, and whose soul is already in your chest.”

“I… okay,” I say. “This stuff is a bit too mystical for me, man.”

“Alright, but bear with me. What do you know about the rules for what we can tell others about what we see in the rite?”

“‘Nekkatik veijtanna kiyyu unbeijnkit,’” I say, repeating the words from theFakari Eijna, the ancient book. They drill some of the edicts into us as kids, and this is one of them. It practically falls out of my mouth before I can think about it.

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