Tarot Academy 4 - Sarah Piper Page 0,54
themselves. We’re communicating with the rocks, our energy interacting with theirs. It’s a direct bond between our bodies and the earth, and in return, we get a direct response.”
“I can feel it!” Stevie lets out a breathless laugh, the dirt still suspended before us. “Their energy is moving through my hands!”
“Exactly. Now just tell them where you want them to go.”
“Tell them? Just like that? Like, hey rocks! Go left!”
“Words, intent, visualization… There are as many ways to direct the energy as there are witches and mages. You have to find the method that works best for you. But so far, it looks like you’ve got their attention.”
The earth shifts to the left, just like she asked it too.
With another laugh, she says, “Okay, let’s move right.”
On command, the rocks and dirt move to the right.
Stevie looks at me over her shoulder again, her face full of wonder, her smile endless. I don’t have my camera, but I take a picture with my mind, memorizing the light in her eyes, the pure joy.
“This is amazing! Look!” She swirls her hands in a delicate arc, sending the debris into a similar pattern. “I feel like a magnet. Or… I don’t know. Like I’m connected to it all.”
“You are. It’s magick. It’s energy. All of it.”
She plays with it a bit longer, trying new patterns and heights, even picking up a little more dirt from the ground, shaping it into a series of flowing waves before finally settling her hands again, letting it hover mid-air.
Taking a chance, I press a delicate kiss to the side of her neck, breathing in her sweet smell.
“I missed you,” she whispers.
“I know. I missed you too.”
She relaxes back into me and sighs, and I circle my arms around her waist, burying my face in her hair. All around us, the crickets sing their delicate lullabies, and a warm breeze ghosts across the yard, carrying with it the subtle scents of the desert.
Years of living in Arizona, in the magickal spaces between worlds, and I’m still not totally used to the climate here. Arizona winters are so different from the crisp, stark air on the east coast, the harsh Decembers that so often made me feel trapped and abandoned.
Inhaling deeply, I hold those warm sensations inside me, mingling with Stevie’s honeysuckle-and-heaven scent, and for a full minute, I just live in it. The moment. The air. The magick. The love. Her love.
It’s so perfect. So safe. And here, in the space between before and after, the words finally find a way out.
“I was fourteen the first time it happened,” I whisper.
Stevie gasps, the rocks and dirt dropping instantly to the ground. Her body stiffens in my arms. She knows I’m not talking about magick.
She tries to turn around to face me, but I tighten my grip.
“Don’t,” I whisper into her hair, lips brushing the silky strands. “Please, Stevie. I need to get this out and I can’t… I can’t look at you. Not yet.”
She seems to understand this, and I feel her relax into my arms once again, despite the banging of her heart behind her ribs. She presses my hands against her belly, giving them a tight squeeze and silently encouraging me to continue.
I don’t speak again right away. I’m not even sure where to start. But she doesn’t push me. Doesn’t prod. She just… exists. Just loves.
After an eternity, I take another deep breath. And then I begin in earnest.
“She told me houses as nice as ours don’t just pay for themselves,” I say. “That everyone has a job to do, and this would be mine. I was lucky, she said, because it was a special job—one I was going to really love. And if I didn’t love it, well… I’d be keeping the critiques to myself. Unless I wanted to be out on the street, and for my brother to be executed.”
She’s silent as I tell her the story—every sick and twisted thing that bitch ever said to me, every night she crept through the shadows, every night I spent crying myself to sleep.
Beneath my touch, Stevie’s body trembles. With rage, with sadness, with frustration, with shock… All of it, all at once. She wants to turn around. I can feel the tension in her muscles, spring-loaded and ready to hold me close.
But I can’t let her see me like this.
“For so long I blamed myself,” I continue, “even after I left that horrible house and came to the Academy. At Iron and Bone,