Kiersten's Arc

Chapter 5 of 33

The morning after the dream, Kiersten walked into town with the spirit humming behind her eyes. It spoke in full sentences now, but it would not say its name. When she asked, she got quiet. When she asked what it wanted from her, she got a picture of an open door and nothing more. She needed teachers. She needed to know who she was about to say yes to. She went first to the small keep at the edge of the meadow. Carved wood. Green vines. Stained glass angels in the tall windows and gold moons above the door. Inside, the chakra healer was arranging jars on a low shelf, white robes, purple sash, hair the color of morning frost. "Sit," the healer said, not turning. "Your heart stone is loud. It is practically shouting. Very dramatic. Ten out of ten crystal behavior." Kiersten sat on the mat. She pulled her sleeve back and showed the tattoo above her heart. "Something lives here. It talks to me. I want to be its vessel. I don't know its name." The healer pressed two fingers below Kiersten's throat and closed one eye. Held still. Then stepped back. "It is old," the healer said. "It is clean. It is not the curse. But I cannot read a name off a spirit that has not offered one. Names are given, not taken. If you bind without a name, you bind to whoever answers. Do not do that." A tarot-card creature padded in from a side room, wheel spinning on its face, tail low. Fortune stopped in front of Kiersten and sat. "You came for a name," Fortune said. "I do not sell names. I show what is already turning." Fortune's face stilled on a single card. A tower, cracked, with a small figure walking out the base. "The one inside you left something behind to reach you. Ask what it lost. The answer is the name." The door opened. A pink figure in a stiff embroidered vest stepped inside and bowed once. Galaxy Ethel. She set a rolled chart on the table and unrolled it flat. "I read your sky last night," she said. "A constellation over the Veil Kingdoms carries your eye color. It is fading. Records show it has been called the Auburn Watcher for four centuries. That is the star the thing in you fell from. It has no name in any tongue I catalog. It was known only by what it watched." Kiersten's throat tightened. She closed her eyes and asked the spirit the question Fortune gave her. What did you lose to reach me. The answer came in one word, small and certain, in a voice she now knew. Watching. She opened her eyes. "Its name is Witness," she said. The tattoo above her heart went warm and stayed warm. The spirit did not correct her. She had a name. She was not yet its vessel. But now she could choose.