Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

She yawns as her father rolls down the staircase like a funny rag doll that never stands up.

She closes her eyes as the falling birds patter against the roof like rain.

She starts to dream as her mother’s heart stops beating.

I start to dream as my mother’s heart stops beating.

1

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

“Dol? Are you okay?”

The memory fades at the sound of his voice.

Ro.

I feel him somewhere in my mind, the nameless place where I see everything, feel everyone. The spark that is Ro. I hold on to it, warm and close, like a mug of steamed milk or a lit candle.

And then I open my eyes and come back to him.

Always.

Ro’s here with me. He’s fine, and I’m fine.

I’m fine.

I think it, over and over, until I believe it. Until I remember what is real and what is not.

Slowly the physical world comes into focus. I’m standing on a dirt trail halfway up the side of a mountain—staring down at the Mission, where the goats and pigs in the field below are small as ants.

“All right?” Ro reaches toward me and touches my arm.

I nod. But I’m lying.

I’ve let the feelings—and the memories—overtake me again. I can’t do that. Everyone at the Mission knows I have a gift for feeling things—strangers, friends, even Ramona Jamona the pig, when she’s hungry—but it doesn’t mean I have to let the feelings control me.

At least that’s what the Padre keeps telling m

e.

I try to control myself, and usually I can. But I wish I didn’t feel anything, sometimes. Especially not when everything is so overwhelming, so unbearably sad.

“Don’t disappear on me, Dol. Not now.” Ro locks his eyes on me and motions with his big tan hands. His brown-gold eyes flicker with fire and light under his dark tangle of hair. His face is all broad planes and rough angles—as solid as a brambled oak, softening only for me. He could climb halfway up the mountain again by now, or halfway down. Holding Ro back is like trying to stop an earthquake or a mud slide. Maybe a train.

But not now. Now he waits. Because he knows me, and he knows where I’ve gone.

Where I go.

I stare up at the sky, spattered with bursts of gray rain and orange light. It’s hard to see past the wide-brimmed hat I stole off the hook behind the Padre’s office door. Still, the setting sun is in my eyes, pulsing from behind the clouds, bright and broken.

I remember what we are doing and why we are here.

My birthday. It’s my seventeenth birthday tomorrow.

Ro has a present for me, but first we have to climb the hill. He wants to surprise me.

“Give me a clue, Ro.” I pull myself up the hill after him, leaving a twisting trail of dried brush and dirt behind me.