Wild-born (16 page)

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” said Cindy as I sat in my usual chair across from Alia.

“Good morning,” I yawned.

I noticed that Alia looked about as dazed as I felt. She was silently staring down at her plate of ham and eggs. She hadn’t even looked up when I sat at the table, which was strange because, these days, she usually started chattering into my head the moment she saw me.

“Good morning, Alia,” I said again.

Alia still didn’t move, so I telekinetically rattled her plate a little. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

Alia finally looked up at me, gave me a distracted smile, and telepathically mumbled into my head,
“Hi, Addy.”

Then she looked down again and resumed staring at her plate.

“It’s alright,” Cindy said to me as she gently rubbed Alia’s back. “Alia’s a little out of it this morning. She had a rough night. Bad dreams.”

I had no doubt that her rough night had been triggered by her trip to the mall yesterday. I hadn’t fully appreciated how frightened Alia was of strangers until now.

“We shouldn’t have gone out,” I said apologetically.

“Don’t worry, Adrian,” said Cindy. “She’ll come around.”

Cindy gently coaxed Alia into taking a few bites of scrambled egg, but Alia left the rest of her breakfast untouched and, without helping clear the table, quietly slipped up to her room.

Though it was a Saturday, Cindy had to leave for work right after breakfast. At the front door, I asked her if Alia was really okay.

Cindy assured me that she was. Apparently, Alia used to act this way much more frequently when she was younger, so Cindy was used to it. “Alia can be pretty moody when she’s feeling upset or insecure, Adrian, but it always passes.”

“But is that normal?” I asked worriedly.

Cindy smiled. “It’s normal for Alia. When she’s like that, it’s best to just give her some time. Sit with her if you like, but let her come back on her own. You might want to give her a break from her mouth-speaking practice today.”

I was only too happy to. Once Cindy left, I made my way upstairs to check up on Alia. She had pulled her big unicorn up onto her bed and was sitting with her arms wrapped tightly around its neck.

“Are you alright, Alia?” I asked from the door.

Alia didn’t reply, silently staring off into space with unfocused eyes.

“Alia?” I asked again.

She slowly turned to me and, though she still didn’t say anything, she gave me a sad little wave.

“I’ll be downstairs if you need me,” I said awkwardly.

Studying my schoolbooks in the living room, my mind kept wandering up to Alia, wondering what was going through her head as she sat alone in her room. Alia was often a bit on the quiet side, but this was different. She had looked so... hollow. I couldn’t stop thinking about the story Cindy had told me of Alia’s past, and about the horrible scars across her back. Where had Alia gone in her dreams last night?

Back when I was on the run, sleeping on the rooftops of buildings, I had often relived the night my parents died. I saw my father killing my mother, I saw the berserker’s terrifying grin, and sometimes I woke up screaming. My nights hadn’t been nearly as bad since arriving at Cindy’s house, but I still had my fair share of nightmares, so I understood how crummy a morning could be after a rough night. Still, you wouldn’t find me staring off into space like a zombie. I really hoped Alia was okay.

Alia stayed in her room for most of the morning. I was about to go check on her again when she came down by herself and said that she was hungry. After eating an early lunch, she recovered enough of her spirit to want to play a few quiet games, and by the time Cindy returned from work, Alia was back to her old self.

“See?” said Cindy when I told her about Alia’s day. “It’s just her way of recharging her batteries.”

“And I thought I was weird!” I laughed.

“No more crowded places for Alia until she’s older,” said Cindy. “And none for you either, Adrian. Even with your disguise, it might still be a bit dangerous.”

We never returned to the shopping mall, but Cindy adjusted her work schedule again, allowing us to get out of the house every few days to a more secluded spot.

Cindy knew of a beautiful little pond in the countryside. It was only about eighty yards across, half-surrounded by evergreens and, most conveniently, located on a large piece of private property that was owned by a friend of hers who lived overseas. I had to wear my girl clothes until we left the edge of town, and change back into them before heading home, but while I was there, I could move freely and without the long wig. The pond water was too cold to swim in, and we couldn’t catch any fish large enough to eat, but Cindy consented to let me do some flying over the surface.

The first several trips were just Cindy and me because Alia adamantly refused to leave the house. However, after much coaxing and repeated assurances that there wouldn’t be any people there, Alia started coming with us too. Sometimes we spent the whole day picnicking in a little clearing by the pond. Having recently read a Peter Pan picture book, Alia asked me to fly her over the water like Tinker Bell. I did, though I accidentally dropped her into the icy water when I heard the distant sound of an airplane engine. Alia had never learned to swim. She came up sputtering, cried for a while, and once she had dried off, asked me to do it again.

“Control, Adrian,” Cindy said reprovingly.

We didn’t go out on Halloween. I felt I was getting a bit old for trick-or-treating, and Alia certainly wasn’t up to the challenge. Even so, with each passing day, I felt better about my new life. True enough, I still hadn’t heard any news about Cat, which caused me pangs of guilt every time I felt the amethyst around my neck. Nor was I making any progress on my power balance—something Cindy frequently gave me worried looks over. Nevertheless, life with Cindy and Alia had become as normal as it could be. I stopped worrying about people like Ralph completely.

“How’s Alia’s mouth-speaking coming?” Cindy once asked me over dinner.

That was another thing that wasn’t making much headway. In addition to demanding that Alia “say the words,” I was now regularly working with her on her storybooks. But while I could sometimes get her to mumble a few of the words aloud, Alia usually just moved her lips silently. I was no lip reader, but I was pretty sure she was just moving them randomly to keep me satisfied. Occasionally, Alia did say a few easy words and phrases almost loud enough to make out her real voice, but she still couldn’t manage any sounds that required tongue movement. “Pea may me fai, A-yi,” was Alia-speak for “Please make me fly, Addy,” and that was the longest sentence I ever managed to get her to say in one go.

“Keep at it,” said Cindy. “There’s not much point in having Alia use your nickname if she’s not going to say it aloud.”

“Hey,” I said, throwing my hands up in defense, “I agree, Cindy. But Alia just doesn’t speak with her mouth.”

“She needs to learn.”

“And I’m trying to teach her!” I said exasperatedly.

“I know you are. Keep at it,” said Cindy, and I did.

The first snow fell in late November, and we had a furious snowball fight by the pond, which was starting to freeze over. I would have had the advantage, of course, since my snowballs would never miss, but to be fair, I deliberately kept my telekinesis out of the battle. Even Alia got a few good hits on me.

Suddenly, Cindy held up her arms and exclaimed, “Stop! Adrian, come here.”

Cindy didn’t seem panicked, but rather excited as she got me to sit down and close my eyes.

“Can you feel it?” she asked.

“Feel what?” The only thing I could feel was the snow under my legs.

“There’s a destroyer nearby,” Cindy said quietly.

I opened my eyes in surprise, but Cindy put her right hand on my shoulder and said, “Relax. He can’t sense you. I have us hidden. He’s not the first psionic to come near us since you came to my house, you know. But this one is a destroyer, so I thought you might be able to feel his presence. Remember, power knows power.”

I closed my eyes again, trying to calm myself. Where was the destroyer? I did feel something different. It was like one tiny instrument in a giant orchestra. Concentrating, you could just hear it when you knew it was there, but the symphony didn’t lose much when it was silent.

“I feel it,” I said. “I can’t tell the direction, though.”

“Direction can be difficult if you’re not a finder,” explained Cindy. “For now, just learn to feel the power.”

“It’s still really far away.”

“Not as far as you may think. Once you are better at tuning into it, you’ll be able to gauge the distance fairly accurately, even if you can’t tell the direction.”

I opened my eyes. “What is he doing?”

“Probably just passing through.”

“He’s not a telekinetic, though, is he?” I asked.

“Very good, Adrian,” said Cindy. “That’s right. He, or she, is a pyroid and a light-foot, and may even be a delver, though not too powerful.”

“What are those?”

“A pyroid can control fire. It is the power of a destroyer, and that’s what you are sensing. Light-foots can lessen their own weight, and delvers can read your thoughts.”

I looked sharply at Cindy. “Control them?”

“No, only read them.”

Alia must have been upset by the sudden tension in my voice because she asked to go home early that day. It was getting colder, and neither Cindy nor I objected. It was our last visit to the pond that year.

That evening, I asked Cindy to tell me more about what kind of powers psionics had. She explained that everyone was a little different, but there were enough similarities that most psionic powers could be grouped into basic categories. I had already heard that “destroyer” was just a broad term for people with combat-oriented powers. Telekinetics, pyroids and sparks were the most common of destroyers. Sparks could manipulate electricity, and some of them could even create miniature lightning bolts like the thunder god Thor. A “controller,” I also knew, meant anyone who could influence your thoughts and emotions, and aside from delvers, berserkers and peacemakers (like Ralph), I learned that there were dreamweavers who could control dreams and induce nightmares, and mind-writers who could implant, modify, or remove memories. And there were many powers that didn’t fall into either category. Phantoms could turn themselves invisible. Some light-foots could lessen their weight so much that they could walk on water, while the most powerful of gravitons could drastically increase the weight of things, including people, making it nearly impossible to move. Telekinetics like me were among the few psionics who could defy gravity completely (even if only for a short time), though a powerful windmaster like Ralph could ride his own gale when he wasn’t tearing apart houses with tornados. The list went on and on, and there were even some psionics who had powers so unique that they didn’t have names. I still had a lot to learn.

“Cindy, there’s something else I want to practice,” I said one evening during the first week of December, after yet another fruitless meditation session. I wasn’t giving up on learning to balance my power, but after two solid months of this, you can imagine how tired I was waiting for a breakthrough.

“One subject at a time, Adrian,” said Cindy.

I raised my eyebrows. “Does that mean I don’t have to study my school stuff anymore?”

“What do you want to learn?” she asked resignedly.

“How to block people,” I replied. “You know, with your mind.”

“How to block controllers? That’s difficult, Adrian. I’m really no good at blocking, myself. I never learned how to do it properly.”

“But you said it’s possible.”

“And it is,” said Cindy. “But it takes practice. Lots of practice. And you’ll need a controller who can help teach you to resist.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed.

“Besides,” said Cindy, “I think you’re still a little too young to learn blocking.”

I frowned. Nothing riles a kid more than being told he’s “too young” to do something, but that didn’t change the fact that, without a controller to teach me, I couldn’t learn blocking regardless of my age. I wasn’t about to give up that easily, though.

“What about Alia?” I suggested. “I know she’s not a controller, but wouldn’t it be the same thing if I can learn to block her telepathy?”

Cindy pondered that for a moment, and then said carefully, “Not exactly the same, but yes, I suppose it could work.” She turned to Alia, who was lazily crayoning a pink and green unicorn in her drawing book. “Ali dear, do you want to help teach Addy some new skills?”

Alia jumped up from her drawing and came over to us. Cindy explained what she wanted us to do. It was actually quite straightforward: Alia would talk to me, and I would try to tune her out. That was the theory, anyway. Alia couldn’t wait to get started.

“Can you hear me, Addy?”

“Yes, Alia, I can hear you just fine,” I replied, not sure how to even begin blocking her voice. Unlike Ralph, Alia could work her telepathy without eye contact. She could even send her thoughts through walls, as she often did when she woke me in the mornings.

“Addy.”

“I can hear you, Ali.”

“Addy.”

“Yes, Alia.”

“Addy.”

“Yes...”

“Addy-Addy-Addy-Addy!”

“Yes, I can hear you, Ali!”

It turned into a battle of willpower. A one-sided battle, really, since try as I might, I could find no way to tune her voice out of my head. Alia had decided that this was a fun new game to play, and often just went about repeatedly calling my name and laughing at my reactions. Cindy had it wrong: Telepathy
was
a type of control. Alia was driving me up the wall! And this battle of wills was not unlike my other one to get Alia mouth-speaking and reading her books aloud. I was losing on both fronts.

I found myself doing less and less schoolwork, instead focusing more and more on my “true studies,” as I came to call them, my frustration only fuelling my determination to make some kind of progress in either balance or blocking before the end of the year. Cindy grumbled about my lack of commitment to the textbooks from time to time, but didn’t press the matter much. At least Alia was still doing her schoolwork, and I was gradually becoming a better cook.