Naomi

In the center of the clearing, Esar extended his hand to Naomi. “Try to melt my hand like it’s a rock.”

Naomi imagined his hand slumping and dripping as he screamed in pain. “That seems like a bad idea,” she said.

“It’s impossible. You won’t hurt me. Try anyway.”

“But I can do impossible things,” Naomi said.

“Not this one,” Esar replied. “I think you know well enough by now that I would not ask you to do anything if I had any fear that it would harm me.”

That was true enough, but Naomi still looked at his outstretched hand dubiously. “Is that your dominant hand?”

“What?”

“If I’m going to ruin your hand, I don’t want to ruin the one you write with. Are you right-handed?”

“Oh, for—” Esar groaned and put out his left hand instead. “It doesn’t matter. There. Satisfied?”

Naomi still didn’t like the idea at all, but Esar probably wouldn’t have offered this test if he didn’t know what he was talking about. She reached out and took his hand. Pretend it’s just a warm, hand-shaped rock, she told herself, then tried to push her power into it.

His hand was softer than a rock, of course, but the barrier she ran into when she tried to infuse him with vitricity was harder than stone. She pushed against it, closing her eyes and chewing her lip, the force of her power building up against that invisible wall until something broke loose.

Naomi’s eyes flew open to see what appeared to be colorful lightning snaking off from their clasped hands in all directions, leaving an afterimage of glowing patterns in the air. Her arm prickled, and she pulled her hand back to look. One of the lightning bolts had left a trail on her arm where it had singed some of the hairs. The same had happened to Esar’s arm, and Naomi wrinkled her nose at the scent of burnt hair.

Other than that, though, he was completely unharmed.

“That was interesting,” Naomi said.

“What do you think happened?” Esar walked over to retrieve his overtunic and began donning it again.

“You fought back. I couldn’t get anything through.”

“I have a mind. I didn’t have to fight you consciously—I’m in charge of my own body. I know what I am, and you can’t override that.”

“Well, that’s a relief. That means nobody can change me either, right? Make me something else or control me?” Naomi asked.

“Not directly, using vitricity,” Esar said. “But I know your father would have liked to find another way to control you. And just because your power can’t directly harm another person, that doesn’t make it harmless.”

“I know, I know, I’m a danger to myself and others,” Naomi sighed. “Would your shirt have burned if you were wearing it?”

“Possibly.”

“But the rocks didn’t get hot,” Naomi said.

“When your power breaks loose, as it did just now, the form it takes can be unpredictable. But heat and light are the most likely, as you just saw.”

“What about gamma rays?” Naomi asked.

“What about what?”

“Never mind. So the hair burned because it’s dead? And if your shirt caught on fire, the fire would hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“So it sounds like that could be used as a weapon, if I had to,” Naomi said.

“It wouldn’t work on a construct,” Esar said.

“But what if somebody grabbed me? Tried to kidnap me? Whoosh! Now their clothes are on fire.”

Esar shook his head. “Or maybe the energy doesn’t go in the direction you anticipate. Now your clothes are on fire. The most likely result is that all you do is singe their sleeve a bit.”

“What if I try to melt their clothing? I wonder if I can melt fabric. Not your fancy tunic, though.”

“I suppose it is probably possible.”

“And what if I try to reshape it into something else? Like a rope or something?”

Esar raised an eyebrow. “You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. All you’re doing now is unmaking objects, not shaping them into other things.”

“But couldn’t I? I shaped those rocks, sort of.”

Esar paused for a moment to think. “It would be difficult. It’s orders of magnitude more difficult to make something take on a specific form than it is to just break it down.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Naomi said. “I unraveled a whole sweater once. The yarn got snagged, and I just pulled and pulled until all I had was a tangled mess. That was easy, but making the yarn into a new sweater—or a blanket or something—would be really hard and take a lot more work. It’s kind of like that, isn’t it?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Sure. Like that.” Esar looked like he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Do you know what a sweater is? Do you have knitting here?”

“I get the idea. Why don’t you practice on a few more rocks?”

Naomi practiced until the novelty wore off and she was thoroughly sick of melting rocks, and her stomach growled. “Isn’t it lunchtime?” she asked.

“I suppose that’s enough for today,” Esar said. “Let’s go.”

The sunlight reflected off a broad puddle on the path ahead of them, and Naomi decided to jump over it. She got a running start and leapt, easily clearing the puddle, but landing on a slick pile of leaves. Her feet slipped out from under her, and she landed on her bottom in the puddle she’d just jumped over.

Esar offered her a hand up. “Why do you do this to yourself? All you had to do was walk around it.”

Naomi laughed as she got back to her feet. “At least it wasn’t a cliff this time, right?”

Esar shook his head. “A person with the sort of powers you possess shouldn’t be so careless.”

“But I’m not careless! Not when it counts, anyway. I’m not going to hurt anybody by jumping over a puddle or melting a rock in the middle of nowhere.”

“You could hurt yourself.”

“Could I really?” Naomi wondered.

“This is why you scare me, Naomi. One day you are going to misjudge what’s safe. And you’re going to make a mistake that you can’t just skip away from.”

“How am I supposed to know what I’m capable of if I don’t test myself, and push myself, and get a feel for what I can and can’t do? I’d rather figure all that out now than when I’m facing a construct or something.”

“And I would prefer to see you exhibit caution and restraint no matter what the situation!”

“But I do,” Naomi said.

“You—do you even know what those words mean?”

“Have you been listening to a word I said?” Naomi replied. “When I have to fight, when everything is on the line, do you want me to hold back? Or do you want me to give it everything I’ve got?”

Esar didn’t answer her question.

“All right, be that way. Don’t trust me. Don’t trust anybody. Clam up whenever somebody gets too close to one of your precious secrets.”

“It’s not because I enjoy keeping secrets,” Esar said. He was getting more irritated, and Naomi hoped he might let something interesting slip in his irritation.

“I don’t think you enjoy anything.”

“I—” Esar began. “I was fine before you showed up.”

“And ruined everything,” Naomi finished for him.

“That’s not what I meant.” Esar frowned at her, and Naomi realized the words had come out more bitterly than she’d intended.

Naomi shrugged. “I’ve been wrecking things since the day I was born. It’s kind of what I do.” She kept thinking about that sweater. It had been a gift that her step-grandmother made for her birthday—thirteenth, maybe? Fourteenth?—but it had actually been pretty nice for a hand-knit sweater. She’d worn it a few times, then one day she’d found the loose thread and pulled on it. Just a little at first, but then it was ruined anyway and there was no point in stopping until all that was left was a pile of yarn.

Her mother had been furious and accused Naomi of destroying it out of spite when really it had just been thoughtlessness. She still had the yarn in a bag somewhere at home, waiting for the day when she learned to knit so she could turn it into something else, to make amends for the destruction. But that day was never going to come. Maybe she just needed to accept that she would always be a destroyer.

“How could you wreck something the day you were born?” Esar asked.

Naomi had been so deep in her own thoughts that she’d forgotten about him for a moment.

“I ruined my mom’s life.”

Esar stopped walking to stare at her. “Seriously?”

“I mean, she never said that. She’s not a monster,” Naomi said. “But a kid can’t help but pick up something like that. That her life would have been way, way better if I wasn’t around. Look, I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Forget it.”

“Maybe it’s better if you do bring it up. Maybe I need to understand more about where you’re coming from,” Esar said.

Naomi kept on walking with her head down. The mud caking her clothing was starting to get uncomfortable.

“I don’t think I’ve even heard you mention your mother before today. You haven’t told me anything about your family, or what your life was like before you came here.”

Naomi shrugged. “My life was fine. I just don’t see how it matters. There’s nothing interesting there.”

Esar raised an eyebrow, and Naomi sighed. He probably wouldn’t understand, but she’d try to explain anyway.

“My mom was scared of my dad. She thought my father, or one of his followers, was going to come after us. After me. She wouldn’t have been so scared if it wasn’t for me. So we moved around a lot, especially when I was little. We never settled in anywhere but we always had enough to eat and everything. I don’t know how she did it.”

“Your mother was trying to protect you,” Esar said.

“I never said she didn’t love me. I just said her life would have been way better if I didn’t exist.” Why did Esar have to make her go into all of this? She wanted to leave it all back on that other planet, the one where she didn’t live anymore.

“Was it just the two of you?” Esar asked.

“Yeah, until I was twelve. That’s when we moved to Cleveland, and she decided it was safe to stay there, and she met my stepdad, and aren’t you bored already?” Naomi groaned. She was getting bored just talking about it.

“Actually, I’m finding your story quite illuminating.”

“What’s so illuminating about it?” Naomi asked.

“The fact that you’re so reluctant to tell it, for one thing,” Esar said.

“What do you expect me to say? Look, I know you’ve got issues with your mom. My mom and I didn’t get along very well, either. We’re just very different people. She’s successful. She accomplishes things. I’ve always been a screw-up. I always let her down and got in her way. And no, she never actually said that, but that’s how things were.”

“So, you felt like you were a disappointment to your mother, who dragged you from place to place, and you never fit in anywhere,” Esar said.

“I guess that’s about right. At first, when I came here, I thought ‘Hey! Maybe this world is where I really belong!’ but now I’m not so sure about that, either.”

“Some of that is just part of being a teenager.”

Naomi smiled. “Oh, I know that. It’s not even that bad. I don’t mind not fitting in that much. People can think I’m weird, or whatever, I’m used to it. No big deal.”

“And you didn’t feel like you belonged at home,” Esar added. “Your mother remarried and had a new family, and you felt like you were . . . superfluous.”

“It was fine!” Naomi protested. “Stephen’s nice to me and my brothers are . . . everybody’s fine.”

Esar just kept looking at her, waiting.

“But you can tell when somebody sees you as a burden, you know? When they’re looking at you and thinking about how much better their life would be if you weren’t there.” Naomi sighed. “It wasn’t all the time or anything, but . . . I felt it. I’ve always felt it. I’ve always been an obstacle for my mother to overcome. I held her back. If she hadn’t had me, she’d probably be president by now or something. And when she married Stephen, it was a chance for her to have a normal family, on her terms, the way she always wanted. Two parents, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs and family vacations to Disney World. Only one complication, but they just needed to tick off a few years and I’d be off to college, and then they could edge me out. They don’t come right out and say that, of course, but—well, when I go, this fall, Ethan gets my room. He already had his own room, but it wasn’t as big as mine, so now my space gets filled up, and they carve out a little spot for me for a couple more summers, until I’m . . . out. I don’t even blame them. My mother would have been better off without me, but she did take care of me and, well, I don’t want to be a burden on her any longer than I have to. So when I said they’re fine, I mean they’re fine—without me.”