My face grew hotter. I looked down at my feet in embarrassment.
Woltan laughed. “Don’t be embarrassed. This is normal. It’s a good sign, actually. You are still very young, and have not had a lot of experience with girls, have you?”
I shook my head.
“This is just one more way the pixie and the sword will test you, to make you stronger. You will find her advances more welcome and less disconcerting once you have found a real girl, here on earth. Until then, she is attracted by your loneliness, because she is lonely too. The faeries in our blades spent an enormous amount of time alone; even when they visit other realms part of their essence is left in the sword, and this part of her was left alone for a long time, I take it.”
I nodded. “I don’t understand it, but for some reason my father never used the sword, and the last person to bear it was my grandfather.”
“Perhaps you will need to talk to your father, to find out why.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think he would tell me, even if I could even talk to him.”
“You think he’s angry you left him, without telling him anything?”
“Angry is not the right word. He is either extremely worried, or furious. And I’m afraid of what that wizard Gerard may have done to him, or threatened him with.”
Once I said it, I realized it was true.
I hoped my father was all right. I hadn’t even thought about my parents for days. What if something had happened to them, and it was all my fault?
Woltan nodded. “You have to contact him.”
“I want to, it’s just...”
Woltan shook his head. “No, now. Before we go any further with your training. I expect your pixie can help, if need be.”
“But they are thousands of leagues away!”
Woltan smiled condescendingly. “Anders. You’re Kriek. You can contact them, as Kara contacted you.”
“But I don’t know how!”
“You managed it very well, when you contacted Kara, didn’t you?”
Now I was angry. He was mixing everything up, like he always seemed to do. Making it all seem so simple.
“She contacted me! I didn’t even know what I was doing. Everyone tells me I’m a prince and I can do all these things, but I don’t know how to do anything!”
“She told me differently. I had a long talk with her while you were sleeping. Perhaps you thought she was contacting you, but she thinks you contacted her. And since she is the more experienced Kriek, I tend to think she knows what she is talking about. Are you implying that she lied to me?”
I shook my head. Why was everyone telling me I knew how to do things I didn’t?
“Do you think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about?”
I shook my head again, my face still hot.
“In that case, would you be willing to try?”
I swallowed hard. I was scared. I had been scared of this moment for a long time, somehow, and had avoided it until now, but I didn’t know why. “I have to try, I guess. Maybe part of me was happy to get away from my parents. Sometimes it seemed like they never let me do anything. But maybe they didn’t want me to get hurt. Maybe they were trying to protect me. And now it’s they who might get hurt. I love them, even if I don’t always like them. I have to try.”
“Let’s try to recreate the situation when you contacted Karla. Were you seated, or standing?”
“I was seated, drinking this special tea my mother made me, and smelling this incense my tutor had told me to buy.”
“Sit down at this table, here. I will go fetch you some spiced tea. For now, try to relax, and forget about everything. Try to concentrate on your father, or your mother.”
Woltan walked out of the room.