Reclamation(174)

The idea delighted her. She reached toward the web, spreading herself wide to surround it.

Welcome! Oh welcome home!

Light suffused her, as if all her pores had become eyes. Joy came with it, riding on the pulses of light that fed into her.

“Who are you?” Distantly, she felt her mouth move. The question took a long time to travel through her awareness to where the light touched her.

I am the Mind. I have waited very patiently for you to come back to me. You will see. I have been very careful with myself. I am all in readiness.

“I have never been here before,” she said, hoping it understood her tone to be gentle.

Not you yourself, but the Eyes were here even before I was. They had to come back. I have waited for you to come back. It has been so hard to be blind and alone.

Sorrow washed through her, and bereavement. “Can you see now?” Arla asked gently.

Yes! Yes! I can see everything you see. Will you not look farther? Again, the pathetic eagerness. The voice belonged to a child that wanted to show how clever it could be.

“I’m not sure I know how to look farther,” she told the Mind. “You must think me very stupid.”

You do not need to know. That is what I am for. You only need to see. This is how.

And Arla knew. She knew, had always known, would always know.

She looked, and she saw. She saw herself standing with Jay in the chamber. She looked at a different angle and she saw a cluster of Vitae stretching a clear film across a corridor threshold. At a different angle, their transports crawled over pulverized stone in the shadow of a broken wall. She looked at yet another angle and she saw … ruination.

Smoke, fire, and smoldering ashes arched up the sides of a crater. Lumps of stone and glass fused to her line of sight, making blurred patches in her vision.

“Nameless Powers!” she cried. “Nameless Powers preserve and forbid! What have they done!”

“Arla?” She didn’t look away from the smoldering crater, but she still clearly saw Jay reach out a hand toward her. “Arla, what’s happening? What has who done?”

Her shoulder shrugged impatiently. “I can’t see Aienai Arla! I can’t see Mother, or Eric. Where is Eric?”

Look here, and here.

Little Eye held Roof Beam’s hand as they struggled to keep up with Nail, half-clambering, half-wading through the marshes. At the same time, Eyes Above hunched in front of her hearthstone while Storm Water fed fresh charcoal into the flames. At the same time, Eric rattled past in the back of the sledge while Teacher Heart drove the team through a landscape obscured by foul black smoke. Both of them had headcloths wrapped so that their faces were shielded from drifting ash.

“Arla,” said Jay again. “Arla, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said. With a little effort, she separated a piece of herself to focus on her own body. “I’m all right. I’m …” A thought surfaced. “Can I show him what I’m seeing?”

Yes. That is part of what the Eyes are for.

And Arla knew how it could be done. She focused on the crater. The Mind took the sight and gave it to one of the shadows behind the chamber wall. Arla watched the chamber and she watched the shadow’s image paint itself behind the smooth wall. It formed itself from a film of the liquid held in the tubes. She looked at the smoking crater, and looked at the image of the crater on the wall and looked at Jay looking at it.

“Where is this?” asked Jay hoarsely.

“Narroways,” said Arla, even though she hadn’t known a moment ago. “The Vitae dropped a …” The words surfaced, from the stones or the Mind or her own memory, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. “An incendiary device. A clean bomb.”

Jay laid his hand on top of the image. Arla saw the lines of his palm, the prints of his fingertips and the flat white blobs where his skin pressed against the wall. “What you create you may some day be forced to destroy,” he said, but he didn’t speak Standard. Her ear heard gibberish, but the Mind did not. The Mind knew and so Arla knew, had known, always would know.

“But how?” she whispered.

There are others here who speak that way. I have been listening. I have neglected nothing. Arla saw a quartet of Vitae faces, leaning far too close to her. These are they.

Then Jay was a Vitae. Jay was Aunorante Sangh. She tried to feel horrified, or angry, but she couldn’t. She could only feel delighted with herself and her newfound vision.

“Arla,” said Jay. “What else can you see?”

“Everything,” she said, and a warm rash of confidence filled her. “I can see everything.”

Jay’s breath quivered in the air. He rested lightly on her surface as he leaned toward her body. “Can you see Contractor Kelat?”