Mixed feelings

A minute later, I reached up and knocked on Bess’s door. It opened immediately.

“You’re late,” Bess said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my cheeks burning.

She eyed me beadily then handed me a branch with lilac-colored leaves and shut the door behind her. “Let’s walk.”

“What are–”

“Glenberry leaves,” Bess interrupted. “When touched by the light of the moon, glenberry leaves glow violet.”

“Cool,” I said, unsure where she was going with this.

“You won’t get a magic stone like mine until school starts. In the meantime, you can use the leaves to perform magic.” she said. She handed me a small burlap pouch. “Pluck off the leaves and place them in here.”

“Is the stone better than the leaves?” I asked as I started tugging leaves off the branch.

“Much better.” Bess turned a corner. “The leaves hold minimal magic and cannot be recharged. The stone, on the other hand, holds much more magic and can be recharged under the moon each night. They’re like butteries in the underland.”

I think she meant batteries, but I didn’t bother correcting her.

“So I can do magic with these?”

“Yes, but keep it quiet. Children aren’t supposed to do magic before high school, not that anyone ever follows that law.”

“How am I supposed to find the pearls if I don’t have a stone and I’m not supposed to do magic?”

“An excellent question.” She pulled a pocket watch out of her pants and glanced at it.

That reminded me. “Did you know there is a talking clock back in the alley?”

“Of course, I do.”

“Does all the furniture here talk?”

“Only if it’s been imbued.”

“Imbued?” We stepped out onto the cobblestone street.

Bess sighed. “Sorcerers can imbue objects with their essence. The objects then take on some of the characteristics of the person they’ve been imbued with. That clock gets lonely if I don’t chat with it every day.”

“That clock had the personality of a real person?” I asked.

“A very obnoxious real person.” She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to me. I took it gingerly, not really wanting to touch an old lady’s snot rag.

“Um, thanks,” I said.

“That is imbued too,” she said. “It will wipe my nose of its own accord and then go wash itself off at the end of the day.”

“Really?” I asked, half-fascinated and half disgusted. I wasn’t sure I’d really care for a handkerchief slave that wiped my nose on command. “Hello there. Busy day?” I asked.

She snatched it back. “Only deeper imbuings speak.”

“Does–”

“Enough questions,” Bess said. We turned a corner and passed three old men playing some kind of board game at a table. “You must learn to do an emotion reading.”

“A what?”

“An emotion reading. Pay attention,” Bess said. “It allows you to intuit what a person is feeling.”

“And that will help me find the pearls?” I asked, confused.

“This isn’t about a necklace,” Bess said, sounding irritated. “Surely, you’ve realized there’s more going on than meets the eye.”

I swallowed. I hadn’t wanted to think about it. It already felt like my brain might explode. But deep down, I knew she was right. I’d known it ever since we met the city council.

I nodded. “Yeah. But how is reading someone’s emotions going to help?”

“I don’t know that it will,” Bess said.

“Isn’t there some kind of spell to help me find lost objects?”

“The pearls aren’t lost,” Bess said adamantly.

That got my attention. “They’re not?”

“Hidden is different from lost. The Pearls are exactly where their previous owner placed them. Santiago, trust me. An emotion read is one of the simpler divinations. There’s only so much you can do with the leaves.”

That made sense.

“Put a leaf in your mouth,” Bess said as we turned down a narrow street.

I reached into the pouch and pulled a leaf out, peering at the stem with tiny veins shooting out from it. “These don’t have any, um, side effects, do they?” I asked.

“They’re not drugs,” Bess said. “You don’t need to swallow it, but you can get more magic out of leaves if they’re in your mouth.”

I hesitantly pushed it into my cheek. For some reason, I expected it to taste bitter, but it was more like celery; bland with a tinge of . . . something. It wasn’t chocolate milk, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

“Now repeat after me. Runap sunqunman chayayta atisun.”

“Come again?” I asked.

She repeated it again, more slowly.

“Let me write that down,” I said. I pulled my phone out and copied the words as best as I could. Then I repeated it. “Runap . . . sunqunman . . . chayayta . . . atisun.”

The leaf in my mouth suddenly felt warm. The warmth permeated my body but nothing else happened.

“Did I do it wrong?”

“Your pronunciation was adequate. Do you see that girl over there?”

Across the street, a young girl exited a shop with an ice cream cone, accompanied by a woman who looked like she could be her grandmother. They took a seat on a bench.

“What do you think she’s feeling right now?”

I looked at the girl. She was smiling as she licked her ice cream cone.

“She seems happy. The old woman looks worried.”

“Forget the woman. Focus on the girl and pay special attention to what her hands, her face, her legs, her entire body is doing.”

I looked more closely, feeling awkward.

“She’s smiling. She’s holding the ice cream cone with one hand, and her other hand is rubbing her forehead.”

Instinctively, I put my own wrist up against my brow, mirroring her. I noticed a flicker of light that immediately vanished.

“Whoa,” I said, blinking my eyes. “What was that?”

“What did you see?”

“Like a haze of light around her for half a second. Where did it go?”

“What color was it?” she asked, ignoring my question.

“Um, I don’t- green maybe?”

“You did the last step without me even telling you to. You imitated her body language and tried to get inside her head.”

“So I do whatever she’s doing?”

“It helps,” Bess said. “May I see what you’re seeing?”

“Can you?”

“Say, rikuyta atiwajchu.”

“Rikuyta atiwajchu,” I repeated.

She grabbed onto my arm and said, “Ari.”

I looked at the girl again and tried to mirror her movements like I had before, but nothing was happening. I tried to remember what that color was—what that flash looked like.

“It’s not coming back.”

“You’re too focused on getting a read,” Bess said.

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing?”

“This isn’t just a game of imitating someone else. Feel what she’s feeling. Your powers will enhance your empathy, not replace it.”

I bit my lip, trying to concentrate. Now that I’d seen her emotions, all I could think about was what that flash of color looked like. What if I couldn’t get it back? Bess said this was one of the simpler divinations. If I couldn’t do this, what hope did I have of ever succeeding as a Seer?

“Focusing on your failures won’t work either,” Bess said.

“R-right,” I said.

I breathed out, trying to ignore the nagging anxiety. I tried to tune everything out and focus on the girl.

She snuggled up against the older woman, resting her head on her shoulder. I found myself mirroring her once more, my pretend ice cream cone in my hand out in front of me. I realized she’d only taken that first lick since sitting down. I gasped as light started swirling around her again as though she’d been enveloped in a pulsing orb of light.

Mostly blue light, yellow was in there too.

Bess gripped my arm silently. As I turned to her, I saw that her face was scrunched up in concern. My hand reached out, trying to hold an arm that wasn’t really there, and without thinking about it, light start swirling around Bess, mostly yellow, but also with purple, and green.

“That will do,” Bess said, letting go and breaking my concentration. She looked a little disconcerted.

“The colors represent different emotions,” I realized.

“Yes,” Bess said. “Keep walking.”

“What do the different colors mean?” I asked as we left the girl and the woman behind and continued walking up the street.

“I think you already know or at least suspect,” Bess said.

“She’s . . . sad,” I said, feeling a stab of sorrow just remembering it. “And scared.”

“That was Kaia Berg and her grandmother.”

“I think something horrible has happened to her,” I said. “Does—does she need help?”

“We all do,” Bess said quietly. “If I’m not mistaken, Kaia just learned her parents are separating. It’s been a long time in coming.”

“She reminds me of Camila.” I swallowed. “Is she going to be OK?”

“Santiago, we have business to attend to,” Bess said. “Her grandmother will take good care of her. She’s a resilient girl.”

“What about you?” I asked, hesitantly. “Was that . . . fear?”

Bess looked annoyed, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was mistaken or because I was right.

“With more experience, you’ll learn to distinguish the nuances of different emotions,” Bess said. She hesitated. “Fear isn’t entirely inaccurate, although I think a better word would be concerned.”

“About me?” I asked.

“Believe it or not, no.”

She didn’t seem interested in elaborating, so I didn’t push. We walked in silence for awhile. A bus landed a block away next to a line of people who climbed aboard.

The taste in my mouth suddenly turned bitter and I spit it out into my hand. The saliva-covered leaf looked shriveled and brown.

“That leaf is now spent,” Bess said. “You can discard it.”

“I kind of want to keep it. It was my first magic and all.”

Bess rolled her eyes as I stuffed it in my back pocket.

“If Misty gets picked as Seer, would I lose that spell?” I asked.

Bess continued walking for a few moments and I almost wondered if she hadn’t heard me. Finally, she said, “I don’t know what would happen. I’m not sure anybody does. Not all sorcerers can do Seer magic. It’s a very rare gift. The Mantle does come with its own power. It’s possible that your power to do Seer magic would diminish, just as mine has since Saturday.”

We both continued quietly, Bess apparently lost in her own thoughts just as I was. Misty would be so much better at this job than I would be. She knew this place better; it seemed like she was touched by fate—probably even more than I was—and she actually wanted the job.

Maybe, instead of competing, I could explain the situation and we could work together to find the Pearls. If we worked together, maybe they’d determine we’d both won and I could keep my powers but let Misty become Seer. Why not?

For some reason, I felt the urge to stop. I kept walking, ignoring it. However, Bess was no longer next to me. I turned around and saw that she’d stopped in front of a townhouse.

“Excuse me, Seer?”

I wheeled around and nearly tripped over a woman and child. I didn’t need to do an emotional read on the boy to see that he’d been crying. He was clutching what looked like a wooden branch.

“Seer, could you help me with something?” the woman asked, looking at Bess.

“You’ll have to speak to my replacement about that,” Bess said.

“You are the new Seer?” the woman asked.

“Yeah, I mean, yes, I am,” I said. At least, temporarily.

“Could you . . . my son’s pet jackalope disappeared last Friday. Could you help us find it?”

“Jackalope? Wait, those are a thing?” I blurted. “I mean, I absolutely knew those are a thing. You want me to look around your house or something?”

“No, I mean, can you track it? We have one of its first set of antlers.”

Oh right. Because I’m the Seer and am supposed to be able to do that kind of thing.

The little boy pushed an antler into my hand.

“His name is Carson,” the boy said.

“I um, don’t know how to do that yet,” I said. The boy immediately looked crestfallen. “But I can ask Bess to teach me.”

“Would you?”

“We’ll do this tomorrow morning,” Bess said.

“Thank you. I’m Beatrice Butters and this is Bryce. I’m so glad I happened to see you pass by. Anything you can do would help.”

“You bet,” I said.

“Thank you, Seer,” Beatrice said, retreating with her son into a townhouse.

I couldn’t help but find her confidence in me distressing. I hoped that Bess knew what I needed to do to figure this out. I stowed the antler in my backpack.

We spent the next ten minutes of our walk practicing the words for the spell until I felt like I had it down.

Finally, Bess stopped in front of chain-link fence with an open gate. About 50 feet away from us was a two-story building with deteriorating walls. Fog was billowing out of the window and door frames, preventing me from seeing inside.

In front of the doorway, I could see Misty, Valentine, and a middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize.

“Welcome to the Pop Shop,” Bess said. “I’ll see you at 9 tomorrow then.”

“Wait, you’re not coming with me?” I asked, surprised.

“What happens if they see me helping you find the pearls? What do you think old Valentine will say then?”

I thought about it. “That I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Bess stared me down, then said, “Santiago, you must trust fate. You weren’t chosen because I happened to be in the neighborhood. Fate is very deliberate. You don’t need me as much as you think you do.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I didn’t argue. I turned, about to go in, but Bess interrupted me.

“Santiago, put the leaves in your pocket.”

I nodded and stuffed the pouch into my jeans. I was about to walk in, but Bess stopped me again. She stooped down, placing her hand into the dirt, and started mumbling something. The dirt started bouncing as though there were an earthquake and then swirling together quickly into a long cylindrical shape. It took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at—a purple umbrella with a metal handle.

She picked it up and handed it to me. I looked back at her quizzically.

“That should last you for a good two hours. Don’t keep it out if there’s lightning.”

I glanced up at the sky but didn’t see any clouds. “Thanks,” I said anyway, still unsure of why I needed it.

Then I walked through the debris and into the Pop Shop.