Page 210 of Carousel

Meg removes her radio band and shakes out her tumbling hair. “Maybe they should kiss, Dezeeves. Ara and Drake.” In the brightening sunrise, the smooth skin on her soft face is glimmering. “Maybe that would spark something.”

“An interesting idea, Meg,” Dezeeves exclaims.

I part my mouth, about to tell them both to go to hell.

But Drake speaks before I can.

“No,” he says, tightly. “That would just stall Ara more. But…”

Drake does something strange. He brings my hand, still in his, to his lips.

He brushes them against the back of my hand. He does it softly. Respectfully. As if we are not about to end a battle, but a dance.

Eyes drowning mine, he says one word to me.

“Please.”

It’s a word I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use. Hearing it brings on a rising, solid feeling in my ribs, like something is constructing itself.

“The magic can work, and be powerful, Ara,” he insists. “It has worked. When you wanted it to. Allowed it.”

I glimpse the glass again. Riss and Cosmer are going after the next ship, smooth and coordinated, like they were put on this planet to fly together. Riss, ahead of it, feints, and Cosmer, behind the ship, gets another perfect shot as it falls for her feint, going the wrong way.

And I understand, then, as I watch them, the gravity of this situation. The crushing pressure on me – the heaviest pressure imaginable.

They’re protecting us.

They don’t need to, but they are.

And I need to protect them.

If my magic keeps failing, and I’m not able to do what Dezeeves and Drake want me to do, I’m going to get the two people left on this planet I care about obliterated.

I’ve lost too many people today to lose any more.

Cosmer.

Riss.

Cosmer.

Riss.

“Now,” I say to Drake.

I face the window again.

Cease your fire!

I let the silent words reverberate around me like the shocks I’d felt when the bombs hit my village. Let them fill me up, the way the fear and horror and grief of Old Mother, my friends, my neighbours, had.

My pain becomes my power.

There’s a subtle shift in our magic, the energy between us. I fight the urge to channel him, or even to let him channel me.

Instead, it’s like I’m an observer in my body. I watch indifferently as the light and darkness within Drake converges within the light and darkness within me, unseen by anyone else but us. After wrapping around the strands that are his, I sense my magic fluttering up and out the window like the silky, rapidly beating wings of insects. The sound it makes is a lot like humming.

It’s just like oxygen, I think to myself. Oxygen is just there.