Image (Insight #3)(17)

“They will all break when you cover them; it means you blocked him,” Perodine said, not looking up from the scroll.

In the doorway, I felt the familiar emotion of Patrick, and I turned to look at him; I could sense he was eager to help. “Ma’am, Sir, we are going to start with the floors below ground while it’s daylight. I have close to a hundred people helping me,” he said to us.

“The paintings have to be covered, too,” Landen said to Patrick.

Patrick nodded and left the room. The young woman came into the room behind him with another girl, pushing a cart of food. They left it in the center of the room and nodded in our direction before they left.

“All of you need to eat. Each hour will grow more difficult; you need your strength,” Perodine warned.

Dane and Marc didn’t hesitate; they made their way to the cart and began to fix themselves a plate. Landen and I stood frozen; we weren’t sure where to start. It was hard to imagine how many mirrors and paintings were in the enormous palace.

“Eat, Willow,” Perodine said in a firm voice.

I shook my head in defiance, then felt Dane nudging my shoulder. He handed me an apple, and I looked at him as if he were insane. “You’ll be able to think more clearly if you have your strength,” he whispered. I sighed and took the food from him.

Landen released me and went to the cart to find himself some food. August went to the table to look over what Perodine had found while he rested. “Have you disproven it yet?” August asked.

“Disproven what?” Landen asked over his shoulder as he fixed himself a plate.

Perodine looked and August and nodded, telling him to explain their discovery to us. “Have I ever told you of the pentagonal synodic series?” August asked, looking from Landen to Marc. They both shook their head no. “Come,” August said, gesturing for us all to come closer. He turned his notebook to a blank page, and we all encircled the table and leaned in to watch what he was drawing.

“OK, here’s the sun,” August said, dotting the center of the page. “Here’s Venus,” he said, putting a dot parallel to the one in the center. “And here’s earth,” he said, putting the third dot parallel to the second. “This is what it looks like when the earth aligns with its sister planet, Venus. Now, Venus moves faster than earth; to align, it has to orbit the sun two point six times in the same time the earth will orbit one point six. In our solar system, this alignment will occur five times – seven signs between each.” August drew a large circle to represent the solar system, then he began to draw the dots for Venus and Earth thoughout their next alignments; as he connected the lines, I felt my stomach drop: he was drawing a perfect pentagon. I was beginning to hate stars; they’d brought me nothing but trouble through all of this.

“The pattern of a star in the sky – a few weeks ago, everyone was telling me a star in a looking glass,” Landen said, frustrated.

I reached for the charm on my neck; Landen had placed the star behind the sun and moon just a few days ago. We had thought that the supremacy of man was behind the power of the universe – God – which is where it belonged. In my memory, I saw the rings of the looking glass falling apart; that victory was starting to look insignificant now. Perodine’s eyes were on me, on my charm, and I felt a grief in her, a sorrow for a life I couldn’t remember.

“I cannot undo what was once said,” she said in low tone, looking from the charm to my eyes.

“What did you say?” I asked in a voice that reflected the terror I was feeling.

Perodine looked around the room to Landen, then to me. “I did not understand what was happening to Donalt. Without his knowledge, I witnessed rituals, the priest with candles, snakes, speaking in tongues – I saw the pentagons drawn in chalk as he stood in the center. I assumed he was calling on dark magic to grow his power, that he wanted to rule beyond our world, to bring a devastation that would blind us all. I had no choice but to counteract their words. I studied rituals from ancient times and spoke the words that limited his power; I wanted your innocent heart to restore our world. To anyone else, that is a simple charm, a sun, moon, and star - but to us, because Donalt and I believe it has power, because you believe it has power – it does.”

“Are you saying that it’s what I want it to be? I don’t understand,” I said, staring back at her.

“That would have been true in your first life. Now, after so many, you have given it a power that is more that all of us could imagine,” Perodine said.

“How?”

“When you lost your friend,” she looked at Marc, “when you lost your father,” she looked back to me, “you grieved, you felt emptiness. What you do not realize is that you were grieving the absence of their energy. When you love someone, have them in your life, their energy becomes a part of you; it builds you. When they leave you, they take their energy with them. We feel a void, a loss. You believed that charm had a power in your first life. When you were taken into the string and found your world, your belief grew stronger, and you left that life believing that it held an unimaginable power. In each life, you found it again, and as you studied its history, heard the stories of what it could do, your belief grew stronger. All of the thoughts you had of love and redemption grew more intense with each life. Your signature, your energy, the love you and Landen have for each other and the universe around you was left in that charm. You have protected yourself from what lies ahead; you just have to trust the decisions you made then and now.”