“It’s overwhelming,” I said, more to myself than to Emmet.
“This is good for you, Mercy,” he said. “This power you feel overwhelmed by. It is only a tiny fraction of what’s surging inside Oliver, Iris, or Ellen. Even Connor for that matter. And when you compare it to Maisie’s power, it’s nothing. Nothing.” He let the word sink in. “Tell us, Mercy, how does it feel? Does the power frighten you?”
“No,” I said. I stopped and considered how it really felt to have the energy flowing through me. “I feel alive, I feel like a picture coming into focus. It feels good.”
“You are a mystery, Mercy Taylor, to all of us,” he said. “The power slides into you with none of the ill effects that we would have expected to witness in an average human. You fit the power like a glove. It fills you beautifully, as if you had been made to hold it, but still—”
“But still I never did,” I finished for him.
“You do today,” he said. “And now you must show yourself worthy of this gift. Whatever magic you work today, you must work on your own. We wish neither to impede any action your conscience allows you, nor to give you ideas that might distract you from your intuitive course. You are a natural vessel, and the magic is merely awaiting your command.”
TWENTY-THREE
Standing in my room, I could still sense the bit of wood vibrating in my hand. When I looked down at it, it was visibly quivering and giving off faint blue sparks. Everything about me felt changed. No, not changed—heightened, intensified. I tested the power I felt surging through me, using it to bore a small hole in the tip of the shim so that I could wear it as a pendant. I watched as the wood pulled itself apart, cell by cell, leaving a perfectly shaped circle through which I strung some hemp. I knotted the hemp a few times to make sure it would hold, and then pulled the loop around my neck. The string was long enough that the tip of the wood rested near my heart. As the wood slid between my breasts, the vibrations spread all over my body.
Liquid fire coursed through my veins. I slid my hand over the pendant and looked at myself in the mirror, amazed at the self-assured face that was reflected back at me. I felt like a fish that had been tossed into water for the first time after somehow managing to survive its entire life on dry land. I had been waiting for this feeling my entire life. For once, I felt like I could truly breathe.
I was saddened by the knowledge that this power was only borrowed. Tomorrow I would be back to floundering on the shore, even though the river would continue to flow right next to me. One second I regretted ever taking the power into me, and the next I wondered what I’d be willing to sacrifice to hold onto it. The memory of Jilo’s words plagued my conscience. I pulled the necklace up over my head and tossed it down onto the table. I tried to walk away and leave it there, but my hand reached out of its own volition, my fingers hovering over the wood, wanting so badly to touch it, to hold it. I wondered how it would change me if I let it fill me for even a day, if I let myself see the world through the eyes it gave me.
“You need this,” I heard Ellen’s voice. She had been watching me from the doorway. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, but I was sure it was long enough. “You need to feel the magic, if only this once. I know you’ve always wanted this experience, and the other families might not allow it again. This is a special dispensation. This is your opportunity to walk in a witch’s shoes, Mercy. It may make it easier for you to understand your family and forgive us for our gargantuan shortcomings.”
I could have been angry with her for spying on me, but I wasn’t. I was glad that someone was here to share this with me, to be my confessor. “I’m afraid,” I said. “I don’t want to feel this good, this powerful, knowing that I’ll never experience it again. It’s worse than a drug.”
“No, it isn’t a drug at all. It’s the power that naturally flows through a witch…and you sense that it should be flowing through you.”