She kicked me in the shin.
The sudden pain filled me with just as sudden anger. Just as I was about to open my mouth and swear, she said one last thing — but as her lips moved I heard a second voice as well, in my head. The two voices said the same thing: “Now, open your mind.”
Open my mind? What was that supposed to mean? And why had she kicked me?
She smiled again, and this time her lips did not move: Open your mind to me, and to our kin.
The door rocked, and I wondered how much longer it could hold. I heard cursing from the other side, which was probably a good sign. I hoped they would give up in frustration.
I looked at Kara then, and saw her staring at me, still smiling and smug. It was the smiling after she kicked me that got to me. What the hell was she thinking?
I was about to say something ugly, when she took my head in her two hands, and kissed my forehead.
Whoa. Just like that, my mind opened.
How exactly did it feel?
Like coming home to a home I had never known.
I felt closer to Kara than I had ever felt to Mom and Dad, even in the few moments when we were all getting along.
Nothing in my past, no kiss or hug, came close to what I felt when Kara’s lips touched the middle of my forehead. My whole body buzzed with energy, energy that seemed to feed off my anger and pain and change them into something else.
Suddenly I could see things, things that had been invisible just a moment before.
My inner eye was open, and a glow around Kara and my body stretched out in all directions, even through the walls of my castle room.
Focusing on these webs of light, I could see far beyond the walls of the castle, farther than I had even realized existed.
Her lips left my head, but the third eye she had awakened stayed open. Her hands ran down the sides of my body. I felt a wave of energy rush over me, and then she was holding my two hands in hers.
Sorry about the kick. I had to get you angry.
What’s going on?
It’s amazing, isn’t it? I still remember when my eye was opened. But we have no time. I can see the walls weakening. Even if the door resists, the walls will not, and they will be in here in any case. We must seek someone, now.
How? I don’t know what to do.
She smiled at me and the smile extended into my mind. It was as if her smile had more than three dimensions — not only height, depth and width, but a fourth dimension, too. I found the name for it: luminosity.
Her smile was luminous, golden in the fourth dimension.
Hold my hands and follow my thoughts... Our only hope is to find someone alert and open in a safe location.
She squeezed my hand. Her mind shouted then, and my voice inside echoed hers and we were one voice, shouting a word that somehow my blood remembered:
Volk!
The word vibrated on all four dimensions, sending out pulsating light on the strands that ran away from us in all directions.
At first we heard no answer.
How would anyone answer, anyhow?
Then I felt a small tug.
I looked down, expecting to see Kara’s hand, but there was nothing to see, at least with my first two eyes.