LITMIR.BIZ

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She waved a hand. “Don’t suppose you heard chants and chimes and a gong over the last month, did you?”

      Calli fell back against the plush dining-room chair.

      “Thought so.” Alexa smiled.

      “So you have all the qualities the Chevaliers wanted—someone the volarans would love, courage, determination.” Marian waved a hand. “You’re flexible in mind to accept the Summoning, probably don’t have deep emotional ties to Earth—” Calli kept her mouth shut “—or would consider staying permanently in Lladrana.”

      “Fighting monsters, I don’t think so.” Calli crossed her arms. “Assuming I’m not in a coma from banging my head against that crystal.”

      “What crystal?” Marian started.

      “Stay on topic,” Alexa said.

      Alexa stood. Her deliberate movements kept Calli watching her. She walked to the far corner of the room, where the wall separating the bathroom met the curving outer wall of the tower. Slowly she pulled her baton from her sheath. Green jade glowed above and below her fingers. The top of the wand had sculpted bronze flames. Nerves jittered under Calli’s skin.

      “Calli, call it to you.”

      Her breath stuck in her chest. “What?”

      “Want the baton in your hand. Feel it in your hand. Reach out and say, ‘Baton!’”

      “I don’t think—”

      Coward. It came in her mind. In stereo. Alexa and Marian.

      “You can do it,” Marian said.

      “Why would I want to?” But she rose slowly and faced Alexa.

      “Why not?” Alexa’s smile dared her. “Especially if it’s only a coma-dream.”

      Marian frowned. “I’m not sure people in comas dre—”

      “On topic, Marian.”

      The atmosphere of the room became heavy and charged. It wasn’t only Alexa’s and Marian’s minds brushing hers, but Thunder’s and other volarans’, some people’s linked to them, too. All added to the anticipatory pressure around her.

      “Fine. Baton, come!” Calli ordered.

      It flew across the room and slapped into her open hand, stinging. And everything took on a solid reality that she couldn’t deny, as if her mind, her body, completely focused. The baton belonged to Alexa, vibrated like Alexa, but was real and solid in Calli’s hands. And magical. There was a force within it that compelled her to believe, to face the fact that she was no longer in Colorado, on Earth, like a door slamming shut behind her.

      New place, new rules.

      Before her eyes the metal flames atop the stick bloomed into real fire. She dropped it. Instead of hitting the ground, it shot back to Alexa, who sheathed it at her left hip. “There, you see? You have great magic. That’s another reason you’re here. We all have great magic. Cool, huh?”

      “Magic,” Calli repeated.

      Marian joined her. “Look.” She pulled a finger-length wand from her sleeve. Flicked it, it became larger, flipped it in her hand and flicked it again and the wand elongated into a walking staff. Calli’s mouth fell open.

      “We all have magic here,” Marian repeated. “We have magic on Earth, too, it’s just very hard to access it. Earth is also a more visual culture. The Songs can’t be heard or Sung as easily.”

      Alexa went to a love seat, sat and crossed her ankles. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t return to Earth when the Snap came.”

      Calli’s knees went weak and she crumpled into her chair. There was another one of those strange phrases.

      At that moment a white, long-haired cat strolled in from the bathroom. Calli stared. She could have sworn the door was shut.

      “A cat from my past. Actually, my magical shape-shifting feycoocu companion.” Alexa grimaced. “A cat. I hate when this happens. You get nothing out of a cat.”

      Marian sighed.

      The cat went up to Alexa, stropped her ankles and began a purr that only increased as it leaped onto Calli’s lap. It turned around a few times and settled. Calli found herself petting it. Its fur was as soft as volaran feathers, and she felt oddly comforted. “The Snap?” She managed a squeak.

      Drawing up a chair next to Calli, Marian said, “At some point in time, Mother Earth will call to you, strongly enough to pull you back home. You’ll have a choice to stay or go.”

      “When?”

      “No one knows,” Marian said. “There isn’t enough data for a hypothesis. Perhaps after you experience it…”

      Alexa said, “We do know that time passes the same here as on Earth. If you’re here for, say, three months, the same amount of time has transpired in Colorado.”

      “The ranch!” She’d lose the ranch. Her dad would think she’d just walked away. Her fingers tightened in the cat fur. The feline grumbled.

      “Sorry.”

      The cat jumped down and went to sit in the middle of the floor and groom.

      Calli wouldn’t walk away from the ranch, but her dad would think her cowardly enough to do so, dammit.

      Both the women appeared sympathetic.

      “The shortest amount of time before the Snap came was two weeks, the longest was seven years and three months, the average is about two months,” Marian said.

      Two months.

      Alexa smiled. “We have examples of the Bonding ceremony—” she waved at Marian “—and the Choosing and Bonding ceremony, an older Marshall Pair, coming later.”

      “This is the marriage thing?” Calli asked, attention diverted from her dad and the ranch.

      “Yeah.”

      “I’d like coffee,” Calli said, going to the sideboard. She made the drink dark and sweet.

      Alexa cleared her throat and sat, but didn’t relax. “You know that the Chevaliers want you to stay. It’s easier for a person to stay if you’re paired or bonded—”

      “Involved with someone,” Marian said, “but to be precise, they don’t have just a Pairing ceremony in mind.” She tilted her head. “I think a Pairing would correspond to an affair and engagement.”

      “Yeah,” Alexa said. “They want you to agree to a coeurdechain, which is like soul melding or something.”

      Marian chuckled and her eyes went dreamy. “It’s more.”

      “But they want a quick marriage, and to do that, they’re willing to use, uh—” She threw a look at Marian.

      “Another magical ritual,” Marian said. “I blood-bonded with my tutor, and also with Alexa. Then Jaquar and I decided we wanted the whole deal, minds, souls, bodies.”

      “Huh!” Calli said.

      “The upside is that we’re very close. Neither of us are lonely. We’re partners in the truest sense of the word.”

      “The downside?” Calli asked.

      “We’ll die at the same time,” Marian said.

      Alexa stood and paced the room, hand on her baton. Finally she turned and skewered Calli with a gaze. “You want to be a horse-volaran trainer. That’s doable. You want land. That’s easy, too. But there must be something more, some bigger reason that the Song resonated with you and called you and made you a perfect person for Summoning. An emotional reason. What do you really want, Calli?”

      The demand had words slipping from her mouth, “To be loved.” She had to look

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