Mixed Bag of Tricks by Britta Jensen

Author:Britta Jensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781736383575
Publisher: Murasaki Press LLC

When they returned to the light of the spa’s entrance, Yasha took stock of the splotches of blue weir berry wine and mud that now coated her once pristine white robe. The robe she had missed her mother’s last words for. The robe that had cost her a year of goodbyes. The robe that marked her as a Priestess to each of the Seven Waters, a position worthy of envy, and one she had already grown to despise.

They had looked better on her mother.

There was an image seared in Yasha’s memory, of her mother standing alone at the top of the high temple’s steps, her robes white, her body looking tall and strong. Tears shimmering in her eyes as she watched Yasha go into seclusion. It was Yasha’s last memory of her mother. It was barely more than a year old; time Yasha could have spent with her.

A consuming anger boiled in her chest, threatening to spill out from her throat as her hands went numb, and the blue length of silk at her ankle felt like a shackle. Tears sprung up in her eyes, and Yasha looked up to the heavens, praying that Ryva would bless her with a cleansing rain. Ryva was silent, save for the roar of the waterfall.

A gasping sob wracked her body, buckling her knees. Before she could crash back onto the ground, Leith gathered her up, wrapping his arms around her as her body shook with the force of her cries. He rocked gently back and forth as her tears soaked his shirt. Her arms went numb from being trapped between his.

Finally, the tears stopped, and Yasha pressed her palms against Leith’s chest, giving herself a chance to catch her breath. The light from the spa’s lobby barely reached them, but as she took a shaking breath, Derek the deenk poked his head out of Leith’s pocket, his huge round eyes catching silver in the light. She rubbed the tiny creature behind the ears, his presence a welcome distraction, until it wasn’t. Her wrist was bare; her mother’s chain was gone.

Spinning around, Yasha looked out at the inky darkness that shrouded all but the faint circle of light coming from the spa’s lobby.

Even if it were light, she thought. There were so many cracks and slippery crevasses where her mother’s chain could have fallen. She would never find it now. The last part of her mother was gone, and once again she didn’t get to say goodbye.

“It’s gone,” Yasha whispered. To acknowledge the loss to Leith, to Ryva, if only so that she might begin whatever new stage of grief this put her in.

“What’s gone?” Leith’s soft sturdy voice wavered.

Yasha turned to face him, clutching the remaining weir vine chain, tears welling in her eyes. His eyes flashed immediately to her empty wrist, and she knew she didn’t need to say anything. Leith knew. Leith had come to her knowing. It was the way of the waters to bring all that was needed with the current.

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