Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy Read Online Free Page B

eyes, and my hands pulsed in an attempt to pull the smoke back to me.
    Bas wasn’t finished with me yet.
    The fog vanished, and with its loss came rushing waters that pulled me down even as they lifted me up and absorbed me. I gurgled in the banks, feeling sluggish, frigid water bubble below me, the sun warming my upper flows. Tree roots taller than the sky had clear spaces, and I was hungry for them. They fell to the power of my current, but I was so ravenous I continued to swallow them all, as if I hadn’t eaten since last spring. Small twigs fought against me, splashing and flailing before succumbing to my strength, air bubbles popping on my surface as they sank.
    The vision faded and took my strength with it. “No! Come back!” I clawed at the receding waters, trying to become one with the rushing river again. Never before had I felt such raw power.
    Kira was kneeling over me, her pale blue eyes kind as she stroked a cool cloth over my forehead.
    “There’s . . . water . . . coming,” I panted out. “A flood. The river will breach its banks.” My human mind assimilated the images of the vision. “The lower quadrant—it will be gone.”
    In a surprising act of kindness, Kira kissed my forehead and smoothed my sweat-plastered hair back. “Shush now, Child. We are merely the mediums through which She speaks, not the interpreters. When I take you to Sheelin, the Dream-teller will decipher your visions.” So, I had been chosen. “The Oneira won’t know what to do with you, though. You’re much too young. Twelve is as young as we’ve claimed before. You’re something special, Little Rose.”
     
    *
     
    I stumbled down the dark road alone, the small sack upon my shoulders mostly empty. There had been no time to refill my supplies. The calling, a magical summons, was too strong. In turning around just once, I had fallen to the ground. Burning glass cut my feet, venomous snakes attacked my legs, and it all refused to subside until I dragged my pain-riddled lower half towards Madani.
    My knees trembled, knocking together beneath the starry sky as I took another step down the well-worn path. No, I would not turn around again. I knew the time of the blazing vision was coming to fruition. My destiny would be met with open arms, and I would reconcile what might be with what will be.
    Despite all of Kira’s soothing words when I was a child, her pitiful attempts to assuage my fears, my visions have always come true. The winter following my departure to Sheelin, Carek was tending his livestock outside the city gates and was injured by a fall. By the time his sons found him, the cold had claimed the wounded flesh.
    Disregarding my foretelling and Kira’s warning, no one had prepared for the harsh winter. They did not listen when I sent word of the recurring vision two spring thaws later, either. Already, the new religion of the Sun Lord had begun to spread its poison. Even without its warrior priest taking the helm of battle, the Sun Faith had divided my people.
    The flood ruined the lower quadrant of the city as the lake and river became one large entity for days. Dirt-smudged children who lived on the streets were forced into better districts and orphanages, parents were pushed out of their squalor and into new jobs and homes, and the few businesses remaining along the lake’s edge moved out to other cities. The people who had been in Madani for generations knew not to live in the flood plain. We knew what happened when you tested the Goddess too far.
    The natives knew that prayers were answered. The same winter as Carek’s accident, frigid temperatures closed the shores of Madani and Sheelin, but my vision told the people where to find open ice so a ship could be launched for Aristeer to the south. When Madani had no access to the outside world due to dangerously deep snow across the trade routes, Kira reminded them of the hidden sight she had coaxed from me during my test. A small star became a crack in the ice