Tides by E J Wenstrom

Author:E J Wenstrom [Wenstrom, E J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944728601
Publisher: City Owl Press
Published: 2017-10-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

As evening sets in, the rest of them fall quiet, too. Adem rarely is anything else, and Calipher has little to add to the situation. Eventually even Jordan runs out of encouragement for Lena and Xamson, and the only sound that is left for a long period is the waves on the shore, lapping in from past the guards at the cave's mouth.

Jordan, typically, is the one to finally break the silence.

"Avi isn't wrong."

"Of course Avi is wrong," I snap. "Everything about this is wrong."

But Xamson is watching him more carefully. "What do you mean?"

Jordan sighs, slouching forward and digging his fingers through his hair.

"I have to make a confession. Something I have not told any of you, have barely been able to admit to myself," he looks up, makes eye contact with each of us in turn. "I can't hear the Gods."

No one speaks. I weigh it out, considering what kind of reaction I should be having.

"I could. Most of my life they hummed around me like the heat that comes of a fire."

He stretches his hand out, as if to feel the warmth.

"I couldn't see it, but I could feel it as sure as I can feel the sand between my toes. I didn't even have to think about it. Listening to their presence in the realm was like breathing. Then, in recent years, they started to grow too loud. Instead of a warming hearth, they became more like a house burning to the ground."

He stares blankly in front of him, lost in his own bewilderment.

"And then... it changed. After Adem came back and Kythiel was banished, the Gods went silent. They were just gone. I have no idea where they went. But I do not think I lost my ability to hear them. I think they're just gone from Terath."

He stares out at us again. His eyes are desperate.

Adem shifts, glances away uncomfortably.

"It is not your fault, Adem. Even if it was because of the rift between the realms, you couldn't have known."

"I still did it," Adem grumbles. "It was still because of me."

It unsettles me, to see how unsettled Jordan is. Jordan's ability to hear the Gods seemed to be so much a part of who he is. As a person, as a fighter, as a leader.

No wonder the people of Haven have been shaken up.

"Does anyone else know?" I ask.

"No." He says. "At least, I have not told anyone. They couldn't know it for sure. But... well. If Avi has noticed, he is probably not the only one."

"Koreh knew. Somehow," Adem says.

"I knew, too," Calipher adds. "Well, not all of it. But I can see that any magic you may have held, it is no longer there. Any First Creature would be able to see this."

"We all kind of knew," I confess. "After what Koreh said. It wasn't hard to connect the dots. It had been a while since you had shared anything from the Gods."

I remember what it felt like when I first realized Theia would no longer speak to me.

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