Chapter 37

“...What?” they both asked. Christopher was the first to follow up: “Ren, that’s exhausting to maintain, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Actually, especially if it doesn’t feel like it. Stop it right now.”

I flushed with panic. Sorry, Rose, I quickly thought as I let my mana still, the feeling of her soul fading away. “Ok… So I shouldn’t do that?”

He shook his head. “No, you shouldn’t. You’re still untrained — I mean, at least compared to us from the training compounds — so you are likely burning through your mana at a very inefficient rate,” he explained. I got the jist of it, including the critique, not that I was happy to hear. “I have something for that, though…” he mumbled, rifling through his bag. “I don’t need it really, it just helps. Ah, here!” He pulled out a few leaves and handed me one. “Chew these thoroughly and swallow.”

I trusted him. Immensely. With my life even, at this point. But I was not about to chew on mysterious leaves without an explanation. “Why?” I just asked, certain my face already spoke the question clearly enough.

“It’s the origin of the Soulsleep drug, which works by leaking your magisoul so that it’s not powerful enough for it to control your dream. It has to be refined though and the raw plant just allows a tiny leakage. The result of that is what some call ‘Soulspeak’. Just eat it,” he finished, sighing, looking tired of explaining.

I figured that what he said made enough sense, and he implied that he had eaten them before, so I did so. I bit down and the leaf oozed with the nastiest flavour I had ever tasted. I wretched, gagging as I almost spit it out. Christopher yelled at me not to and I focused on Rose as I chewed it slowly, deliberately, but not regretfully, and swallowed.

It only took a second to begin.

“Ren? Wait, what’s going on? Where am I? This feels wrong! Ren!? Ren, why can’t I move!” Rose’s voice began to scream, panic setting in as she surely was faced with a very different situation than a dream or magic.

“Rose, I’m right here!” I quickly said. “Everything’s fine. You’re fine. I’m just awake right now and I took something that should let you communicate and see through my eyes and such,” I quickly explained as the sensation was apparently very different. Wait, why am I talking out loud? Rose, can you hear me?

“Yeah, ok, yeah, I can hear you,” she answered back, gradually calming, able to hear both my words and thoughts. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “Whew, warn me next time. I thought we were dying.” I heard her chuckle in my head at that.

Christopher held a leaf out to Sarah.

“Oh, no thanks,” she politely said. “I don’t need that or Soulsleep. The critters aren’t very chatty.”

“Critters?” I asked. I vaguely recalled what Christopher had told me before about Sarah’s magisoul, that it was the amalgamation of a lot of little ones.

“Yeah. Mostly squirrels,” she said nonchalantly.

Christopher’s jaw hung. Even if he had said it before, I wasn’t sure if he totally believed it. “You got your magic from just killing some squirrels?”

“Maybe like a hundred or two, or three?” she questioned. “And some other creatures. And I really don’t like saying ‘kill’,” she said with disdain. “A military mage stayed at my parents’ estate when I was young and told me that ‘magic is just moving your soul with others’,” she performed a little impression that I figured was an older man, “and I just did it. I was six at the time.” Christopher just shook his head at her, which drew a pout from her. “Don’t give me that look. I didn’t like killing the squirrels and chipmunks and other things. But I could feel them each time; they lived on. We had so many on our estate but they would die every year, and I just wanted to take care of them.”

I had no words, but Christopher did. “You got your magic… from squirrels,” he just said. “You baffle me in ways I did not realize was possible.”

“Thank you!” She grinned at what she appeared to take as a compliment. “But, Ren, your sister… she’s not mad at you?” she asked.

I didn’t quite know how to answer that. Should I tell them everything? I wondered to myself. Or just about her?

“Meh, you can give them all the details. Might help,” Rose said in my head.

“Ack!” I yelped, startled. I could hear my sister laughing as Sarah looked confused and Christopher gave me a sympathetic chuckle.

“Did you forget I was here?” Rose asked, sounding amused but also just a touch annoyed.

Just that you could talk, I answered, a bit embarrassed. I faced back to focusing on the two in front of me. “As you know, Christopher, I grew up right outside of Gleban. But this really started with my parents…”

I told them the whole story, about my family, Hector, whose name caused Rose to accidentally squeeze my chest, and about her. I was honest. It was hard to get through, and Sarah began tearing up when I told her how Rose died. I did as well, but I fought to keep my voice steady.

“…Wow,” Christopher muttered as I finished. “I had heard rumours about a prodigy that was lost from Sandun, but not all of that,” he told me. “Ren, Rose,” he addressed us both, “I’m sorry you were tricked into this life. It’s not for everyone, just those already stuck in it or… others.” He glanced over at the oblivious Sarah, sounding like he had wanted to say a different word.

“Thank you, Christopher. And thank you for the Soulspeak. And for being there for Ren. You’ve been a real help to him,” Rose said in my head.

“Uh, Rose says ‘thank you’,” I quickly said, not wanting to say the whole thing.

“Hey! No! You left part of that out!” she yelled, startling me as it sounded like she was shouting in my ear.

I winced before continuing. “And she says thank you for the Soulspeak… and for being a friend to me,” I finished, my face feeling a bit warm as I mostly repeated it all.

“Good enough, thank you,” Rose tittered, sounding very pleased.

“Ah, you’re welcome, Rose.” Christopher tipped his head to me like a gentleman traditionally would to a lady.

We chatted longer as the fire died, occasionally remembering to keep our voices down. Christopher spoke up, sharing about his brother, Jonathan, who joined the conversation second hand. I, too, spoke for Rose, at first awkwardly talking as the intermediary with Sarah until it became second nature. Sleep eventually came and we took shifts, two of us staying awake while the third slept. Christopher told me that talking between Sarah and Rose was good practice, both for conversation and getting used to the whole sensation. Rose seemed to thrive on the attention, and it pained me to think of what she was missing.

As Sarah slept, I looked over to Christopher, who himself peeked out of the cave mouth as if he could see in the dark. “So… squirrels?” I asked him. The thought needed no elaboration.

“Squirrels,” he nodded back.

“But… how could it just be squirrels?”

Christopher turned back to me and looked to be pondering it over. “I think I understand the basics of it. I mean, imagine that our magisoul is like this.” He held up a fist, thumb tucked inside, covered by his other hand.

“Ok…?” I replied, not sure where he was going with this. “And how does her—?”

“And hers is like this!” He shoved his other hand into his held up one, fingers intermingling. They crisscrossed and wiggled chaotically, and I burst with laughter at the unexpected example, but the conclusion was clear enough.

“Whatcha talking about?” Sarah asked as she slowly came to.

“Oh, you’re awake. Sorry,” he shot me a smirk but kept his calm, “we were just musing about wildlife. You can go back to sleep.”

She eyed him suspiciously then glanced outside. “No, it’s been long enough. You can sleep, Ren, I’ll help keep watch.”

I didn’t know how she knew how long had passed but I appreciated the gesture, resting my body against the rock as best I could. I didn’t think that I would be able to sleep but the exhaustion set faster than I meant to let it.

My dream with Rose was soft and gentle, and we reminisced about the past. It was sad, thinking about what was lost, what we could not recover, but we didn’t let that steep the memories of good times in sorrow. We talked of our mother, who we never met but now knew, and of our father, who we both wished to know better. Scenes of our past from her point of view played like a movie in front of us, even as her control of the dream faltered occasionally, a likely result of the Soulspeak drug.

I woke peacefully as Christopher gently shook me. “Sun’s rising,” he pointed out, nodding his head to the mouth of the cave that, even if facing westward, let the ambient light in the air fade inside. “I think that we’ve been here long enough, the dragons are probably done searching for us or gone far enough that we can safely sneak back to our camp. Let’s see about getting out.”