“Yes. We are here,” Tia replied using my voice, which irritated me and downright shocked Dr. Hassan.
“But…Lily. You have merged your forms.”
“Wasn’t that what we were supposed to do?”
“Yes. No.” He shook his head. “Not exactly.”
I put my hands on my hips and watched as he removed his hat and ran a hand through his short white hair, making it stand on end. He then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. “I don’t understand what you’re so upset about,” I said. Then, seeing him continue to dab at his forehead, I added, “Maybe you need to sit down.”
Guiding him over to a fallen tree and retrieving his canteen, I bade him to drink a long swallow before I sprinkled the remaining water over his handkerchief and pressed it against his slightly sunburned cheeks. I allowed myself to briefly marvel at how my very pale skin had not been sunburned at all, considering how much sun exposure I’d had. Actually, the heat didn’t bother me nearly as much now as it did when we’d first arrived.
“There,” I said. “Now, tell me what we did wrong.”
“We?” He wrung his handkerchief in his hands. “That’s just it. There shouldn’t be a ‘we.’ ”
I frowned and then realized what he must be talking about. “Oh, yes. Tia told me that it would take time for our minds to merge. She assures me it’s normal.”
“Tia? Normal?” Dr. Hassan squeaked. “Now, listen to me, Lily, and do not withhold the truth,” he admonished, taking my hands into his. I nodded, the confusion likely evident on my face. “When you”—he paused, as if searching for the right word—“joined with the huntress, did her body disappear?”
“Yes,” I answered frankly.
“And did you…kill her?”
“No!” I exclaimed, aghast at the very notion that I could cause harm to Tia. “She gave up her physical form.”
“Oh dear.” He sighed and glanced at my eyes as if searching for something and then looked away, as if he couldn’t stand what he found. “That is what I feared.”
“I’m afraid I don’t grasp what all the fuss is about.”
“Yes! Speak your thoughts clearly, old one. What do you accuse us of?”
I clapped my hands over my mouth, then hissed, “Tia! Let me do the talking.”
In my mind she responded, You do not say the words you wish to say for fear of hurting his feelings. I prefer directness.
Noted, I shot.
I proceeded to ask the next question she really wanted to know but managed to rephrase it in such a way as to be a bit more polite. “You’re acting a bit like a harbinger of doom,” I said with a half laugh that dried up in my throat as quickly as the water from his canteen disappeared into the sand. My feeble attempt at lightening the mood failed miserably. “Tell us what we did wrong, please.”
“Lily,” Dr. Hassan began. “You were supposed to slay the huntress.”
“Slay her? You never said that!”
“It was implied.”
“Not really.”
Why is he upset about this? Tia asked, an edge to her thoughts that I couldn’t identify.
I don’t know. Out loud, I asked, “What difference does it make? Her physical form is gone. She gave it up.”
“You don’t understand. She was supposed to try to kill you, and you her. One of you would die, and the one who survived would absorb the energies of the fallen.”
“The spell said we’d both die.”
“Yes, in reabsorbing the power of the fallen, the old you would die and be reborn. The huntress is not supposed to sacrifice her own life. At least, not in this manner.”
“Okay.” I waved my hand in the air, flustered and altogether unhappy at the cryptic meanings and ambiguous instructions I’d received thus far. Tia was right to ask for more direct communication. “So she did. It is what it is. What difference does it make?” I asked.
“The difference, Lily, is that irrepressible changes will start to happen within you.”
“Clarify,” Tia said, and this time Oscar was upset enough that he didn’t seem to notice that she was the one who’d asked and not me.
“If you had slain the huntress as you were supposed to,” Dr. Hassan explained, “then you would have absorbed her energies, her power. You would have earned the right to harness them. Her awareness of herself would be gone. Only her instinct would remain. Because she sacrificed herself, and you allowed her to merge with you rather than take what was hers, the two of