Darkness
Chapter 2

Gregor’s

Here is what I have really been dreading sharing with my beloved. He stares at her, then at me. “What other thing?” he asks. When I do not speak, hoping that she explains before I have to confess, he looks back over to her.

She shrugs. “If I couldn’t explain the emotions thing, I definitely can’t describe this.” But his eyes entreat her, asking her to tell him. It occurs to me how unusual it is for him to need information from her. She goes on. “I’ll try. It was a little later. Everyone was already crying, and even though it was sunny, it was like the day was dark and everybody felt like the worst thing in the world was happening, and then….”

She pauses, stymied. Gregor looks at her, baffled, then over at me. “Then… what? I passed out? I know that happened at some point.” He can’t imagine what else she could be talking about.

“Then,” she tries, “it was like, I don’t know, like a giant windstorm, but without any wind.”

“What?” he blurts out.

She is frustrated, and she wishes that I would clarify. “Wolk must know. Like, you know the feeling right before lightning strikes nearby? Something was in the air, something powerful, something mighty. I think I heard people whispering about God.”

Gregor turns his eyes to me and glares. “Explain this,” is all he says.

I look at him, all the shame I am feeling flowing through the image of my eyes, and he knows that what I am about to confess is bad. He clenches his jaw. “Just tell me,” he says.

“I dropped the entire glamour, my dear, I couldn’t maintain any part of the shield. You were about to lose consciousness,” I try to excuse myself, “and you were begging me to help you heal the dog, and I had to stop holding any of my own power in reserve for any other purpose. I dropped the shield in order to help you.” I can’t help but allow my wolf image to cringe away as though I am a dog being scolded. “It did work, it made your healing energy strong enough, even after you passed out, and the bullet’s damage to Tiger’s body was repaired.”

He whispers, “But….” He knows what this means, and cannot bring himself to articulate it.

“But all the other Guardians recognized you. They all realize now that you are a Seer.”

“All of them….” he breathes.

“Within a radius of about two miles, yes. I am so sorry, beloved.”

“Are they still…?” he asks, feeling suddenly more exposed than he had bare-chested in front of the crowd.

“No, darling, while you were at Samuel’s office, I realized that I needed to reinstate the shield in order to communicate with Misty. So it is back in place. The Guardians know who you are, but they can no longer hear our thoughts or see your aura.”

Gregor notices that Rosalind is watching with frustration, unable to hear my words. He inhales deeply, releases the breath slowly, and watches the baby while he explains. “Well, I guess everything I just told you about being hidden from other Guardians no longer applies. The whole shield dropped. They all saw.” His mind is swirling, wondering at the implications, the knowledge that centuries of concealment has been undone.

She can see that he is upset by this, but she doesn’t understand the momentousness of what he has just learned. She has no context, no knowledge of just how long he has been relying on that shield. He is determined to stop keeping secrets from her, but there is one big secret that he has yet to reveal.

“What did they see?” she asks.

He huffs out a little chuckle. I am so relieved to see that he is trying to adapt to this with humor. “Damned if I know,” he says. “Wolk?”

“Specifically?”

“Sure, specifically. What is it that they saw?” He is just as curious about it now as she is.

“The concealment of your aura was undone, and once that occurred it appeared as a blast of shining light. No Guardian who witnesses a Seer’s aura can have any doubt about what they are.”

“Huh,” he says, then immediately relays the information to his wife. “Apparently he normally hides my aura, and when the shield dropped the Guardians all saw it shining like a blast of light. So now they all know I’m a Seer. I suppose they could hear everything Wolk and I were thinking too, if the shield was completely gone.”

I nod somberly at him. They heard it all.

She stares at him. This all sounds extremely strange to her. She doesn’t really understand the meaning of any of it, but at least wants to clarify one thing. “What does ‘aura’ mean?” she asks him.

He looks to me, not knowing exactly how to describe it. “You can tell her that it is the way that Guardians are able to see a human’s soul, like a soft glow emitting from their body. With Seers the glow is as bright as the sun.”

He repeats that to Rosalind, expecting her to be baffled by it. But instead, she thoughtfully says, “Didn’t you say that you can see Wolk glow? And even Ayola? Is that what it is?”

She is delightfully perceptive. “Yes,” he smiles at her, “exactly. So apparently I glow pretty brightly when Wolk isn’t hiding me. That must have been what they saw.”

She considers this. “Well, I guess I understand that part, but not what we all felt. What was that? I didn’t see anything glowing.”

Gregor looks back to me for an explanation. “I believe what the humans experienced was the instantaneous diversion of their Guardians’ attention. They were suddenly focused on you, and that caused their energy to flow towards you, across the crowd. The humans must have felt it. I was attending only to our effort to heal Tiger, though, so I am really only guessing how the humans and Guardians were perceiving the event.”

He repeats this, again expecting it to make little sense to her. However again she shocks him. “Well, I have a Guardian, right? Can’t Wolk ask what mine saw and felt? That’d explain it, I think.”

Gregor stares at her, then at me, then back at her. “Rosalind, have I told you lately how brilliant you are?”

She snorts. He leans across the baby and kisses her, caressing her hair. When they are done with their brief embrace, he says, “Honestly, Rosy, you think of things I never would. Wolk wouldn’t either. Guardians don’t really ever talk to each other. But you’re right, this could clear some things up.”

He looks back to me. “Well?” he says, indicating with his hand that I should proceed.

I cast my gaze over to Rosalind’s Guardian, who is observing the conversation with complete astonishment.

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