Ten minutes later, we’re in her mind. I don’t use my power to build the forest around us this time, allowing her own subconscious to lead. She brings us to the tavern where we first met, what feels like years ago. A fire crackles in the grate, and the smell of baking bread drifts from the kitchen door. It’s cozy and welcoming. The fact she brought us here and not the home she grew up in tells me so much.
“No forest?” she asks, looking around curiously.
“I think we need to try a different strategy,” I say. “Provoking you brought your sun power out, but if your orbital ability is still in hiding, it may need another approach.”
She looks skeptical. “So we won’t be fighting?”
“Not this time,” I say. I glance around, unable to keep my own curiosity in check. Seeing the tavern through her eyes, in her mind, lets me experience the way it makes her feel. Safety, comfort…longing. I blink, not expecting the strength of the last emotion.
“How often did you come here?”
“Almost every week,” she says.
“They let you visit?”
“Let? No.” She smiles, like she’s about to share a secret she’s proud of. “I found a way to sneak out. I’d never hang around the inn long. I couldn’t be seen by anyone who might let my guards know they’d seen me. But we’d stop by, in between playing in the fields.”
“We?” I ask.
“My friends. Tira, her brother Kit—their parents own the inn. And there were others. Village kids.” Her face twists with sadness, and I can tell how much she misses them. Now I know how she turned out so normal despite her imprisonment. She was stealing little pockets of reality wherever she could.
“So how are we going to find my orbital power if we’re not going to fight?”
I’ve already considered this.
“We’re going to search for something that has a ‘pull’ for you. Something that draws you strongly, just as you drew those objects to you in the tunnels.”
She looks unconvinced, but nods.
“Alright.”
She closes her eyes, and the inn disappears. Now we’re in the gardens of a big manor house, watching two little girls chasing each other. One, with chestnut hair and hazel eyes, is slower than the other. Her friend—with curly hair and freckles that remind me of the boy from the tavern—glances behind her. When she sees little Ana lagging, she slows her sprint to a jog.
“Don’t do that,” the small Ana complains, sounding masterfully indignant for an eight-year-old.
“Do what?” the curly-haired girl asks.
“Try to make it too easy for me. I know I’m not fast.”
The curly-haired girl turns and charges at her, knocking Ana to the ground, until the two are wrestling in the grass.
“I’m not making it easy for you, dirt-face,” the curly-haired girl says gleefully. “I just want to look you in the eye when I beat you.”
Little Ana laughs, then attacks her friend, tickling her until she surrenders.
The scene starts to replay. This must be the person Ana feels the strongest pull to—her best friend who she misses. I turn to the grown version of Ana, standing beside me.
“Focus on the feeling you get, thinking about her, and try to conjure your orbital magic,” I say.
Ana grows still, concentrating.
Nothing happens at first, the scene playing out in front of us unchanging. Ana closes her eyes, focusing harder.
And then I see it.
As Ana reaches for her power, the scene changes. The gardens start to subtly glow. Every element of it—every blade of grass, every flower petal—is alive with magic.
This entire place is filled to the brim with power.
