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“Her name is Katia,” Lilli spoke quietly while gently stroking the girl’s back as if she were a frightened kitten. “I think she’s been alone...for a while before coming here.”
With a little probing and an encouraging smile, Lilli was able to determine that both women spoke some English, though Katia was only willing to speak in French.
“How did she know where to find us?” Eli asked, trying to mimic Lilli’s soothing tone as he turned to address Katia directly. “How did you find us?”
Eli glanced between the two women as he waited patiently for Lilli to translate his question into the French she spoke so beautifully and interpret Katia’s response for the group.
“She says she doesn’t know. She was living in...I guess you could call it a rooming house for girls - until a week ago. That’s when she got a vision of us that showed her everything she needed to find us–where to go, how to get the money to come here, everything, almost as if she was receiving instructions...”
Lilli could feel the tension in the room gather new weight as it wrapped around her words. Her gaze hadn’t made it halfway around the barn before she began to see the evidence that those in the room understood, as she did, how easy it had been for Katia to find them.
Turning toward the other woman, Lilli asked, “Was it like that for you, too, Maura?”
“Yes, almost the same,” she nodded, in her thick Cape Verdian accent.
“Me, too,” Tess added, amazed by the fact that each of them had been drawn there, unwittingly.
“Who could be orchestrating this?” Marcus interjected from his place outside the loose circle that Lilli, Eli, Alessandra, and Marshall had created around the newcomers. “And for what purpose?”
“It can’t be the Guild,” Eli whispered, addressing so many unspoken fears. “If they knew where we were, we’d either be captured or dead by now.”
“But who, then?” Alessandra asked in frustration. “Who could block all of us from seeing while leading them here? And for what? Why would anyone do this for any other reason but to hurt us?”
Alessandra’s questions seared the silence that hung over the room into a sharp awareness that a new, unseen presence was somehow engaged in their lives, without their knowledge or permission.
Sitting in his makeshift seat, baffled by the implication of the night’s events, Marcus’ eyes began roaming the room, touching on each of the faces in front of him, until he realized that the number of Seers among them had nearly doubled in one evening.
What are the chances of that? He wondered. Why these Seers? Why now, when we have decided to come out of hiding, only to find them waiting for us–seeking us out?
The answers to his questions felt too far away as he rose from his seat beside Liam and walked into the center of the circle to stand in front of the young woman who called herself Maura.
“Do you know what your gift is? What you see?” Marcus asked her without explanation or pretext. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure what he was asking or why. Though he felt compelled to act, he still couldn’t grasp the seed of understanding that he felt pressing at the back of his skull, struggling to untangle itself from his confusion.
Maura’s smile as she answered was kind and patient, as if she had already anticipated what Marcus was going to ask and had been waiting for him to figure it out on his own.
“I can see who you are... inside,” she said as she pressed her long, slim hand lightly into the middle of his chest. “I know if you are a good man or a bad man by your light. I know if someone is happy or sad. You are both, I think, but you will not hurt me,” she finished before returning her hand to her side.
Perplexed and slightly taken off-guard by her answer, Marcus wondered if perhaps she had not understood his choice of words.
“You see these things in the future?” he asked slowly in his calm, low voice, trying to clarify her meaning in the context of his first questions.
“Nooo,” Maura answered, trying to mimic the slower pace of his words. Taking in the confusion that pinched his smooth features, she began to wonder if her English had somehow failed to convey her true meaning. She tried to choose her next words very carefully as she continued.
“I see this now, in you, in everyone,” she said, shifting her eyes toward the people she had been silently assessing earlier in the evening, when she needed to know whether or not she was safe. “The future I see only when I am at rest, in my mind.”
Marcus was stunned. He had never heard of a Seer having any abilities in addition to their visions. He didn’t know what to think as he turned to Lucia, hoping that she would ask his questions again in Portuguese to make sure that she had understood him and, if so, that he truly understood her.
“Lucia, please, I do not understand.”
They all waited as Lucia repeated Marcus’ question in the language that she and Maura shared, and listened in growing curiosity as the two women giggled at the looks of pure disbelief on the faces around them.
“It is as she said, Marcus. While we have been watching her, she has been learning us, discovering if she and Katia were safe. She says that all the people who were... weak have left, and that those of us who remain are, in her words, very good, strong, like family,” Lucia finished her translation proudly, grateful to be of use and hopeful that the news would ease some of the tension in the room.
“So that’s why you’ve had that smile on your face for the past hour?” Marshall asked, addressing Maura directly for only the second time that night.
“Yes,” Maura said. “It was not safe to speak before. Some of the people here when I arrived did not have good spirits. They could not be trusted.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” Eli added pensively. Glancing across all the new and old faces he had come to care for, he wondered what those who left might do with all the information they had.
“Eli, have you ever heard of the ability Maura describes?” Marcus asked, still trying to make sense of what he was hearing.
“No, I’ve never heard of anything like that... I don’t even know what to say...” Eli trailed off.
“I might have,” Lilli said in a small voice.
All eyes turned to Lilli, waiting for her to continue.
“I mean, it’s not the same exactly,” she began, looking sheepishly in her brother’s direction to find him leaning forward and watching her intently.
“It was years ago, when Liam and I were still on the run. Liam was carrying me on his back and we were trying to get away from these men who were after us. I don’t know how, but I felt like suddenly I was in Liam’s head telling him what to do.
“I wasn’t visioning, but all of a sudden I knew where we needed to turn, how we needed to escape, like instinct, but I knew it wasn’t. It was more than that.” Closing her eyes, Lilli tried to bring herself back to that day in Chinatown.
“It was like, for that moment, while we were trying to get away, Liam and I were one person. Like I was his brain and he was my legs. I thought and he reacted. I know it sounds crazy, but it was in...”
“Instantaneous,” Liam and Lilli finished in unison. Liam’s face held a small smile as he watched his sister with new admiration.
“I remember, Lilli. All this time, I thought I was just hearing your voice, I didn’t know...”
“Me, neither,” Lilli interrupted. “It was only later, in the storage room when I finally did speak, that I realized what had happened, but I didn’t know how. I still don’t.”
No one knew what to say after that. There was too much newness, so much left unexplained. As the moments ticked on, the silence began to rustle with impatience as most people in the barn had reached the limits of their capacity for the strange and unexpected.
“That shit is wild,” Kyle murmured through the silence.
Amid a ripple of soft laughter, Marshall shook his head and stood up from the seat he had taken next to Liam half-way through Lucia’s conversation with Maura.
“My thoughts exactly,” Marshall chuckled as he stretched his long arms up over his head. “I think I’m done for tonight. Eli, can the newbies sleep in the clinic until we get some shut-eye? We’ll figure out who’s left and assign new quarters tomorrow.”
“That sounds like a good plan to me.”
Marshall was almost to the barn door before he realized Rachel was not beside him. Turning back, he found her frozen in place, still standing near the haystack he had just vacated.
“Rach, you coming?” he asked, as he followed her gaze from Lilli to Katia to Maura to Tess and back again.
“No, you go ahead,” she answered without looking in his direction. He could barely grasp the dozens of questions he suspected were running through her mind. Knowing her as he did, he also knew that she wouldn’t leave any of them alone until she was satisfied. He turned away without another word and headed toward the warmth of his bed.
“Can she do that?” Rachel asked to no one in particular as she pointed toward Katia.
“What do you mean, Rachel? Do what?” Lilli asked patiently.
“Can Katia do the same thing as Maura? Can she see... inside us?”
Happy to have all eyes off her for the moment, Lilli quickly translated Rachel’s question for Katia.
“She says she doesn’t know,” Lilli translated. “That she always tries not to see anything. She just couldn’t stop the visions that led her here.”
Katia kept her eyes to the floor as she wrapped her arms around herself, looking even more distraught than when she came in.
“Ugh! We don’t know anything!” Alessandra blurted out suddenly. “We don’t know who blocked our sight. We don’t know why they are here. We don’t know who sent them. Hell, THEY don’t even know who sent them! We don’t know anything more than when this crazy night began!”
Marcus watched as Alessandra’s rage receded as quickly as it came.
“I’m sorry,” she exhaled, feeling defeated as she took Marshall’s seat on the bale of hay next to Liam. “I just don’t like feeling so helpless.”
Marcus smiled at Alessandra encouragingly before turning his attention toward the others that remained in the barn. “There is a reason we were all brought here,” he began. “I don’t yet know the reason, but I have a feeling that if we see this through, we will find out.”
