Cauldron Borne by C.E. Murphy

Author:C.E. Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781835570173
Publisher: Miz Kit Productions

Chapter 16

I didn’t know what it was about magic that made people’s eyes go funky. The first precognitive I’d known had done the same trick, and then color had bled back in, turning the irises black with hints of blue and gold around where the pupil ought to be. Suzanne’s did that, too, only with green instead of blue. Mine apparently went gold when I used the Sight, and so had Billy’s. Weirdly, I didn’t remember the coven’s collective eyes changing color when they called up earth magic. A half-formed idea that the power’s source dictated the change settled in my brain and faded out. It hardly mattered right now. I could pursue it when I wasn’t asking a teenager to see the future on my behalf.

The clever part of me thought it’d be safer not to use the Sight on a girl reaching for the future, especially one who burned as brightly as she did by nature. The less clever part gave over to it without much consideration. Maybe it was human curiosity; maybe it was the shaman in me, hoping I could somehow help or guide her. Either way, the Sight flickered on in the same breath that Suzanne’s eyes went white, and for a little while, the whole universe stopped.

She blazed. My God, she blazed, emerald fire pouring off her so hot it turned white at its edges. The world bent toward her as though she’d become a gravity center, pulling everything askew. My breath, light stuff that it was, had no chance, and my heart began to ache as my lungs emptied. The sunspots and flares I’d seen earlier cut through time in all directions, lashing out and hauling fragments of⁠—

Of not just the future, but possible futures. All of them, and all the possible pasts, with every decision made and every path not taken highlighted with chance and choice. Boundless chaos and unavoidable pattern tumbled together, overwhelming and inevitable all at once. Suzanne was concentrating on me, and I on her, and with both of us bound together by magic and intent, I Saw every life I might have ever led.

Moving forward from this moment, spilling literally no more than a few days into the future: Thor on his knee with a diamond ring and a nervous smile, accompanied by a rough “I thought I was going to lose you, Joanne. I’d rather not do that.” Chance and choice rushed forward from there, brief examination of a surprisingly ordinary life filled with neither great regret nor great joy, making it an easy calm course to follow. A dozen similar futures splintered around that, some taking longer to come to fruition, but all of them gentle lives, quiet paths as I helped the people around me in small ways. Making a difference without risking myself: that was the core of who I became in those worlds. I had someone to go home to, something to lose, and never strayed so far as to lose him.

My heart twisted, longing for that comfort, but at the same time those futures turned ephemeral, fading away.

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