Strongest gift. I’ve got no strongest gift, ’cause I came into my magic all of about a week before it ruined everything. “That’s all right. Let’s go with yours.” I’m not sure how much longer I can stall. “You mentioned you’re a whiz at amplifying sounds, right? And mining into people’s minds?” Not that I would begin to know how to go about doing either of them. What the heck am I going to do, or say, when it’s my turn?
“I think image mining’s a good way to ease into connecting our magic.” Grace takes a few steps back, settles three feet away from me. “Let’s start with you focusing on an object. Pick anything, and then I’ll—”
But I can’t bury the truth anymore, and I blurt out, “Seriously, Grace, why’d you team up with me?”
She looks at me funny, glances around, like she’s worried about who else might have heard. “Told you I’ve got my reasons.”
But Gunn isn’t paying any attention to us. He’s busy watching two sorcerers dangle a rope above their heads with their minds and tie it into complicated knots in midair. “I—I hurt someone I cared about before I ever really grew into my magic.” I drop my voice to a hum. “I don’t even know what I can do. I can’t promise you that I can meet you halfway, that I’m even half as strong as you are.” I command myself to remember why I’m here—I will win, I will sweat and bleed until Ruby and Ben have their corner in the world—but I can’t stop my mouth from moving. A gauntlet’s been thrown down, and the words just keep rushing out. “I’ve accepted dying for what I need to do . . . but I’ve got no interest in taking someone else down with me.”
Grace looks around the clearing again. A hive of debates, conversations, words of power buzzes around us as the other sorcerers settle into their exercises.
“Joan, if you’re here, you deserve to be here,” Grace says softly. “I told you, we Dunes, we’ve got the gift of forecasting. We can see things, sense things that aren’t apparent to the naked eye. And I get this real sense that you’re something special.”
I look up at her, silently curse myself for crying. “Please don’t bullshit me.”
“Joan, look around. Look where we are. What the hell is my incentive to lie?” She nods with purpose. “Come on, let’s start with a simple image, all right? I’ll show you by mining into your mind first. All you need to do is think of one image. Imagine it as clear and detailed as possible. Then hold it, relax, and breathe,” she says. “Magic is a skill too, Joan. You can learn new tricks. You can practice, and get better.”
I wipe my eyes with my sleeve, close them, focus. Ruby jumps into my mind almost immediately. I picture her wild blond hair, her little nose, her mouth making her silly face. . . .
“Ruby again,” Grace says. “She’s doing this strange thing with her mouth this time. This chomping thing.”
I give a release of a laugh and open my eyes. “That’s her silly face,” I say, and add, “Ruby’s my sister.”
“I sort of figured.” Grace smiles. “She’s adorable. You miss her?”
“I miss her even when I’m with her.”
Grace’s smile becomes heavier, and she drops her gaze. “Your turn, all right? I’m going to think of an object. I want you to come searching for it inside my mind. It’s easier if you close your eyes.”
I shuffle-step, settle in, ready to attempt what she says.
“Everyone’s got their own method,” Grace whispers, “but when I mine another’s mind, I picture floating over to the person on a wave, seeping into them, then flooding right around their thoughts.” She gives a laugh. “And I used to think of a dam going up in my mind when I wanted to keep my family out. You can manipulate the space between us, Joan, a heck of a lot more than it seems. It just takes practice.”
I concentrate, try to picture myself smaller, tiny, floating . . . like a boat in an invisible sea between us, a grain of sand in a wave.
But nothing happens.
“Just relax, be patient, Joan,” Grace says. “Every sorcerer has a different way of tapping into their magic. That just works for me. Trust yourself.”
So I let my mind go blank, and wait.
And then something falls over me, something tall and dark as a long shadow. It pulls me forward through a wide, charged space, like I’m walking through the pressure between two magnets. I’m led into a dark, wide, empty theater, right in front of an abandoned stage. And I realize, somehow, that I’m inside Grace’s mind. A spotlight beams down quickly, paints a pool of light onto the center of this stage. Soon, something fuzzy and gray is birthed inside the spotlight. I wait for the image to grow bolder, crisper, fully emerge—
A toy train. Down to every last detail inside Grace’s mind—the little blue caboose, tiny black wheels, detailed etchings of RAILROAD CO. along the side of it.
But then the train begins to move. It chugs slowly around the circle of light, bending and flexing at the connections between the toy cars—and chugs right into a small hand. The rest of the body connected to the hand comes into form slowly, carefully, like Grace is sketching it and I’m watching over her shoulder.