The Pattern Scars Read Online Free

it someday, Sarsenayan or not,” which only made me scowl more.
    Most of the things she said to me were simple. “You must eat well before you use your Othersight—but nothing rich or heavy, because sometimes the strength of your vision will make you vomit. As you’ve already found out, no?” (She had never asked me to tell her about my first vision, though with Bardrem it had become a half-jest: “Tell me now. No? Very well—now? Or maybe now?”)
    “In times of great difficulty for all—wars or plagues or famines—people want to know about their children. At other times they mostly want to know about themselves.”
    “When your monthly bleeding begins, your Otherseeing will grow stronger, especially when you have visions for other women. Blood gives power.”
    Although she did not allow me to use her mirror again, in those first months, she did teach me different ways to Othersee. There was wax, melted and poured into a bowl of cold water, and kitchen scraps (Bardrem brought them and sulked when he was not permitted to stay): crumbled-up stale bread and chicken bones, thrown into wind. “Once someone has asked you to Othersee for them, anything that forms a pattern will help you. Each way has a different strength, and each seer reacts differently to them.”
    “And when will I try these ways?” I asked, wriggling on the brightly patterned hide stool by her bed.
    “Later,” she said, “when you have learned more.”
    “But I want to try now—the wax one, because it’s pretty.”
    “No, Nola. Not yet.”
    “Teldaru went to the castle two days after he found out he had the Othersight! The king didn’t make
him
wait. All you do is show me. You don’t let me
do
anything!”
    She gazed at me with her eyes that were always black-and-pearl. She had not told me what it was like to see normally, with these eyes, even though I had asked. She had told me so little—only the simple things, the ones I probably would have found out on my own anyway. I glared back at her, not fidgeting any more.
    “Two months ago,” she said slowly, in a strange voice that had nothing of Sarsenay in it; only depth and lilt that sounded wild and very old, “you were living in filth. Two months ago you were eight years old and likely to die of sickness or at your own mother’s hand—eight years old and lucky if you saw nine. And now here you sit, forgetting your ‘before’ and even your ‘now’ because you’re as tempted by your ‘later’ as anyone else who walks into this courtyard to find me.”
    I felt my lip wobbling and bit it to keep it still. I didn’t want her to notice but of course she did.
    “Nola. Child.” Her usual voice, and a smile. “I was fifteen when I came to Sarsenay. A strange land and stranger people, and me alone. I remember what it is to want and to need, and to forget everything else.” She rose from her bed and then bent to touch my cheek. She had never touched me before. I think now that no one had ever done so with any tenderness—and that was partly why I flinched away from her hand. As she went to the other side of the room, I stared at her carpets, which were small, nubbly with wool ends, and woven in every colour, even ones I couldn’t name.
    “Be patient,” she said. I heard water pouring into a cup—probably her ceramic one, which was short and squat and had an orange background with a black crab painted on it. I liked this one because the crab’s claws looked like they were lifting off the pottery; like they might pinch your lips or your nose. “The Othersight is difficult to have, and you are still young, and there will be time to do, after you have learned. Be patient, Nola, yes?”
    I lifted my eyes from the rugs and looked at her. “Yes,” I said, and I believe that I meant it. I believe that I did intend to try for patience, restraint, obedience.
    I was young, though, and I failed.

    It began with a poem.
    A girl lives here who needs your eye
    To look at her and then to