Gift of the Unmage (26 page)

Zoë did not interrupt. When Thea lapsed into silence, Zoë stayed quiet until Thea picked up the thread of the story and continued.

When Thea was finally done, she sank into silence and sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap and her eyes downcast. Zoë finally let out her breath in a deep sigh.

“You do know this is way beyond me?” she said. “There will have to be a higher authority brought in. It’s just too big to let lie.”

“But I know I can trust you,” Thea said. “I don’t know who else I can trust.”

Zoë was shaking her head lightly, as though trying to clear it.

“If it was not you telling me this, and if I didn’t know, somehow, deep inside me, that you were telling the truth—this would be the tallest tale I’d ever heard. Computers…?” She continued shaking her head. “This could make a
lot
of waves. Everyone thinks computers are so safe, such secure repositories for Ars Magica stuff. But now, if this is true, it’s anybody’s game again. You should have told the principal at least some of this, Thea.”

“Would he have let me back into the school?” Thea asked pragmatically.

“What was that?” Zoë turned her head fractionally to stare at her niece.

“The Academy is supposed to be warded against stuff like this. Against people like me. The only reason I was there in the first place is because I
couldn’t
. And now…”

“You’re afraid he won’t take you back?” Zoë questioned. “You’re
that
fond of the place?”

“It isn’t that,” Thea said painfully. “Well, I have friends there now, but it’s just that, as long as I’m there, I’m safe. I’m safe, because the only reason I could possibly be there is that I can’t do any magic. So as long as I am there, I am not what the Alphiri want. And as long as they think that, they won’t come after me.”

Zoë was shaking her head again. “It’s that part,” she said, “that I cannot believe. Thea, there were
no
Faele at your cradle bringing gifts.” She paused for a moment. “That I know of,” she said at length, almost as an afterthought. Zöe had, in fact, asked—and while Paul had been emphatic that no Faele had been near baby Thea, Ysabeau had done no more than shake her head and then refuse to meet Zoë’s eyes in a way that was now haunting her younger sister. “And if that part isn’t true…” Zoë gnawed on her
lower lip in frustration. “How do you know the Alphiri are really pursuing you? What on earth would they want with you?”

“They can smell profit,” Thea said. “Somewhere.”

“No,” Zoë said with the ghost of a smile, the first that Thea had seen on her face since her aunt had arrived at the Academy, “that would be me. And profit can smell nasty enough, trust me, and leave an aftertaste to match. I don’t think the Alphiri sense it in that way. But anyway…let’s just get on home. I’ll be far happier when you’re protected in your own house.”

“But my parents…,” Thea began uneasily.

“Thea, I already phoned them,” Zoë said. “They
know
—they know something, anyway, and you won’t be able to keep it from them forever. Besides, you need someone to look out for you, and who better to watch your back? But you probably shouldn’t tell your brothers too much, whatever the temptation.”

Thea held on for a moment to a delicious thought: the expression on Anthony’s face if she told the truth, the sense of deep satisfaction that she would finally cease to be inferior to the ham-fisted Frankie…. But Zoë was right, of course,
and Thea let it go. “And the school?”

“You may be right, that might be the safest place for you to be for now,” Zoë said thoughtfully. “But don’t make that kind of assumption yourself. There are people you
can
trust whom you should talk to, and they’ve had far more experience at this than you.
Computers
.” Zoë shook her head again.

“I wish I could show you,” Thea said, her eyes sparkling now, excited at last in the presence of someone she trusted absolutely. “But I’m just me, right now. The same magidim that I always was. Until I can get a computer to help me.”

Zoë’s face wore a strange expression, as if debating something with herself. In the end she heaved a deep sigh and allowed her lips to curl into a small smile.

“There’s a laptop,” she said, “in the back.”

“You mean it?” Thea breathed.

“You wanted to show me. So show me.”

Thea unbuckled her seat belt and swiveled to reach behind her on the back seat, bringing out a leather laptop case. She extracted the computer, balancing it on her knees, and toggled the
ON
switch.

“Seat belt,” Zoë said conversationally, with
out taking her eyes off the road.

“What’s the password?” Thea asked, confronted with a dialogue box as she fumbled with her seat belt.

Zoë grinned. “
Believe
,” she said. “I never knew how appropriate it would turn out to be.”

The dialogue box winked off as Thea typed in the password, and Zoë’s software icons popped onto the screen. Thea selected the word processor, and began typing something with her right hand, using the left to steady the computer in her lap.

Nothing seemed to happen, not even when Thea stopped typing and simply sat quietly in the passenger seat, her eyes resting on the line of fir trees that marched beside the road, a half page of text on the screen in front of her. Zoë let the silence continue for a while, but finally her curiosity got the better of her.

“Well?” she said.

Thea had not written much—just enough to bring her to what Grandmother Spider had called the boundary between her worlds. Now, as Zoë spoke, she stepped across it—reached out with one hand into that other place, where she
could
, and picked up a strand of color from the
gray sky, a thin string of dark green from the trees, a ribbon of bright yellow from the car that they had been following for some miles now. They hung from the fingers of her right hand for a moment, the colors of her world, and Thea realized that her heart was beating fast, that she was close to tears.

This was the first time she had done something like this
here
, in the world where she was born, in front of someone she loved.

She wove the strands into a ribbon of light, cradled the shimmering thing in the palm of her hand, held it out to her aunt.

Zoë’s eyes were luminous. “All my life,” she whispered, “in my mind, in my soul, I have known that light and color were something you could touch, you could feel. I’ve never ever seen it done…until now. Thea, do you have any idea how utterly impossible any of this is?”

Thea unraveled the light ribbon, reluctantly, releasing the strands to the places from which she had taken them. For a long moment she hesitated over the words on the screen, but then she sighed, erased what she had written, closed out the program.

She was just Thea again. And light was light,
untouchable, outside of her.

“Maybe being impossible is what it means, in the end,” Thea said.

“Hmm?” said Zoë, her head inclined. “What do you mean?”

“Aunt Zoë…the other Double Seventh children, the ones that came before…what were their gifts?”

“I don’t remember the specifics, quite honestly,” murmured Zoë. “Throughout history it’s always been something pretty powerful. But it’s always been something much like their parents’ gifts were, only much more intense. But you…you seem to be breaking new ground, if that’s what you mean.” She reached out and ruffled Thea’s hair. “So—you’re the Double Seventh at last, in fact as well as in name,” she said. “However weird the road that got you there.”

“They still can’t tell anybody…,” Thea began, and then trailed off, staring out of the window into the distance somewhere.

“But they would know,” Zöe said softly, casting a swift and understanding sideways glance.

“Dad would know,” Thea said. She wasn’t even aware herself of the way her chin lifted a little at those words, finally having something to
bring to her father that would make him truly proud of her. Zöe noticed and could not suppress a small sigh. “I can finally tell Dad,” Thea continued, oblivious of her aunt’s reaction. “He’ll know. Even if the rest of the world still thinks I’ll never be more than a magidim.”

“Only until you get a hold of one of
those
,” Zoë said with a grin, glancing at the computer in Thea’s lap.

Thea followed the glance, and her fingers stroked the computer lightly.

“I think I know just what to ask my parents to give me for Christmas,” she said quietly, and smiled.

My thanks to Jane Yolen—an inspiration even when her words are no more than a throwaway comment on a convention panel.

The usual thanks to the usual quarters—Jill, who made it happen; Ruth, who was the kind of editor writers dream of; the copyeditors who paid such close and detailed attention to the manuscript. And naturally, last but not least as always, to my first reader, strictest editor, and best friend who also happens to be my husband.