The Hammer Unfalls

“Hope?”

Lhani looked at her father. He sat on a blanket on the ground, legs folded beneath him. Dark purple branches swayed behind him. The babble of a nearby brook sent its trickling laughter through the clearing where they’d set up camp. The scent of damp wool and campfire smoke wafted to her.

“Close,” he said, and touched her hand. The tremors of his emotions rippled through her. She chased them down. Not images, but sensations.

“Oh. Encouragement.”

“Yes. But hope is in there too.”

Lhani felt her mother walk up behind them. Her footsteps faltered a bit. Weary? No. Timid? Not her mother. Not here. What then? What emotion gave her pause?

Concern.

But things were going well, all things considered. They’d been at this for weeks. Each day, with each new emotion, Lhani’s confidence had grown. Her sense of self had grown more sure with each vision. She no longer felt merged with the other. She could hear her own thoughts. And, if she focused, she could see the campsite around her. Ground herself in the now.

So why was her mother concerned?

She’s worried that I’m hungry, Lhani finally concluded.

“Fine, we’ll eat now,” Lhani said, with a note of triumph. She turned around, and grinned at the expression on her mother’s face.

Haha. Nailed it.

“That’s my girl.”

The afternoon sky was cloudless and blue. The sunlight took the edge off of the chill of the clearing. Lhani ate until her stomach felt pleasantly full of mushrooms and roasted pine nuts.

Just when she’d gotten comfortable, her parents exchanged an expression she’d learned to fear.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You’ve done well,” Papa Tom said. “It’s time for the next step.”

“What step?”

“Until now your mother and I have shown you pleasant, or neutral, thoughts and feelings. But there’s a whole range of emotions you must learn to tolerate.”

Mama sighed. “Such as anger. Fear.” She took Lhani’s hand and looked at her with sympathy. “Resentment.”

The shame Lhani had felt at her brief glimpse into her mother’s resentment of her flared up. She remembered the unpleasantness of her mother’s fear and self loathing.

Lhani’s mind recoiled.

“It will be different this time,” her mama said. “You’re much more prepared now.”

“And we’ll start slow, and build up,” her father added.

Lhani’s calm from moments before evaporated. The blue sky pressed in on her. The sunlight felt chill and lifeless.

“Shh,” Mama chided her. “No need for that. Be only a feather in your father’s mind. Observe, and learn the signs.”

He leaned towards her. She saw him as if for the first time. Not as her father, but as a potential threat to her own sanity. His deep brown face and straight white teeth she knew. His black hair, less spiky than Tomyko’s, but unruly all the same. The cheery set of his smile she knew also. But when his expression crumpled into some dissatisfied state, she saw him not as a father, but as a puzzle. One she did not want to solve.

But she had to. By Aeolia’s fetid breath, she was so tired. But also, she’d grown tired of this clearing long ago. Sick of the damp wool of her bedding, and hauling water and foraging mushrooms.

“Lhani,” her father said sternly. “What am I feeling?”

His brow furrowed. His lips pressed thin, causing the corners of his mouth to crease.

Not anger. Nor fear. Something milder.

Impatience?

No. Things had gone well, and he seemed relaxed.

His eyes hardened. She caught some glimmer in it. Irritation? But not at her. Even so, he definitely seemed irritated.

“Irritation,” she said.

He nodded. “In a sense.”

Papa Tom took her hand. Lhani opened her mind. A brief glimmer of silver shimmered between her eye and his.

She saw Arrad, sitting on the ground, rigid with focus. She watched him and her heart pounded. Her fingers dug into her own palms. Waves of something tore at her heart as Papa-Lhani watched their son struggle. Their mind walked the same pathways it had already, over and over again, finding nothing new. Yearning to help, but unable to.

Her father pulled away and Lhani saw him once more by the campfire. His emotion clarified in her mind.

“Frustration.”

“Just so.”

The feeling faded almost as soon as she’d named it.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

His lips pressed into a thin line again. His brow furrowed deeper. His eyes glimmered, not focused inward, but outward.

“Suspicion!”

He didn’t even touch her hand. He just laughed. “Yep. You and your brothers sneaking off to Phyr knows where.”

Lhani laughed as well. “Probably looking for apples.”

“That was a tough one,” her mama said, “and you got it right away. What am I feeling now?”

Lhani saw some distasteful emotion flit across her mother’s face. But also happiness. Lhani could not figure it out, so she touched her mother’s hand and let the silvery light whirl between them.

She sat in a cabin made from thick timbers. A white bearskin covered the floor. Fierce men and women sat in a circle around her. They had patterns of scars on their faces in intricate lines, and shards of bone and gold stabbed through their earlobes. Their silken robes flowed into puddles around them. Scented oils and spice wafted through the room.

Mama-Lhani’s royal tutors scowled, and frowned, and rolled their eyes in irritation. She felt the currents of negativity swirling around her, and tried to sort them out. But the nuance escaped her.

Not like her daughter, though. Her daughter had picked it up so quickly.

Mama-Lhani watched Lhani sitting by the campfire. Silver light flitted across her features. Lhani stared in fascination, having never seen herself this way. So beautiful! It pained her Mama's heart to behold such exquisite beauty.

Lhani looked closer at the stubborn set of her own jaw, and her thick eyebrows that looked like ferns in need of trimming. Chubby cheeks that made her face just a bit too round.

You’re exaggerating, mama. I’m not that beautiful. Just normal.

You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

You’re not being ubb-jective, mama.

Objective.

You sound like Arrad.

Her mother laughed and the vision faded.

“Well, what was I feeling?”

Lhani thought back to the circle of mages. The frustration her mother had felt. Then, a flash of something else.

Her daughter had picked it up so quickly.

“Envy!” Lhani exclaimed. “But… pride, too?”

“Yes. You will become a better scryer than I.”

“But never as fierce a warrior.”

The two looked at each other, faces softening.

Papa Tom cleared his throat.

“Read me,” he said, an edge in his voice.

Lhani turned to look at him. His brow no longer crinkled. Instead, his eyebrows raised in an arch. His nostril flared, and his eyes trembled.

Cold trickled down Lhani’s back.

“Fear! You are afraid, Papa.”

“It is the memory of fear. Not actual fear. So you must touch my thoughts and bear the brunt of it. As much as I can recall.”

Calming the pounding of her own heart, she looked into his eye, awash in silver light.

The sea rocked the raft. In all directions, white ice flecked the waves. Lhani saw her mother, curled on the raft, vomiting over the side. She felt weak, powerless, and desperately afraid for her mother’s life.

Emotion surged inside of Papa-Lhani. A clawing, desperate fear.

We are going to die.

Papa-Lhani split in two and the campsite returned. Lhani’s breath sounded ragged in her own ears.

Lhani felt sick. She struggled to regain her composure.

Her mother held her. Smoothed the hair from her brow.

“What emotion am I feeling now, Tomykas?” mama said, clenching her teeth.

“She needs to learn this. It is for her own good.”

Lhani pushed her mother aside. She thought of the fear in the villager’s eyes. Of Arrad’s sense of isolation. Resolve flooded her.

“He’s right, mama.”

She looked at her father’s wide eyes once more. Silver light lanced from her eyes, boring into his.

She rowed against crashing waves. Her arms burned. Her shoulders ached. Her stomach clenched, twinging in pain with each oar stroke.

The hairs rose along the back of her neck. She felt an ominous, unseen presence at her back.

Pursuers.

They would leap into the raft, tear Mhagi from Papa-Lhani’s arms, and separate his head from his shoulders with the stroke of the sickle.

The vision faded as her father pulled away. Lhani leapt back, stood, and spun, seeking enemies in the woods.

Unlike the cabin, here she did not fling the wind. She did not attack. Merely looked for danger.

But the afternoon sun and blue sky and purple trees surrounded her. The brook babbled merrily.

The fear faded away.

“That’s good,” her father said. “You contained your fear.”

“Enough!” her mother hissed. “We’ll do no more.”

Lhani followed her mother’s eyes. She tugged at her hair and lifted it in front of her eyes.

The tips of Lhani’s hair had blanched as white as snow.