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(un)Talent, Chapter 6 of 11
Chapter 6:
Please see Chapter 1 for the Summary, Author's Notes, additional details, etc.
Avi was a little distracted at work, which Aly certainly noticed. During breaktime, she took care to pay a special visit to Avi’s classroom.
“So how are things with Jason going?” Aly asked in a sing-song voice.
“They’re fine,” Avi said in a tone that was meant to discourage Aly from asking any more questions. Of course it didn’t work.
“And when you showed up at his place? Did you give him a … surprise?”
That felt like it had been so long ago that it took Avi a few minutes to realize what Aly’s innuendo-laden remark was referring to, then another few minutes to remember what cover story she’d given Aly to squirrel Jason’s address out of her. “I just left something- a letter for him on his doorstep.”
“How … romantic,” Aly cooed, but her eyes were sharp. She probably realized there was something Avi wasn’t telling her, but hopefully she chalked it up to not wanting to share intimate details rather than hiding something very, very big. “By the way, you know that old crush of yours has been hanging around, watching the school?”
“What?” Then Avi realized she must mean Maya. “You mean, while I’m here?” That would make some sort of sense. Maya would be keeping an eye on her because of Zhang Family, and probably also at the behest of her parents. No wonder she hadn’t bothered asking where her work was and what time she got out – between Maya and Jason, Avi seemed set for life when it came to non-obsessive stalkers.
“Yes. I saw her hanging around yesterday, and I think I saw her earlier today. Do I need to worry about stalking?”
“Oh, no,” Avi said. “I … think she’s just a little worried about me. She’s keeping an eye on me for my parents. You know how worried my parents get all the time,” Avi flashed Aly an optimistically convincing smile. Inwardly, she cringed. Sometimes, even years of experience lying didn’t mean you couldn’t stumble and come up with a crap excuse from time to time.
Aly didn’t buy the story, but she didn’t question it either. “So. This was more than a crush, wasn’t it?” Aly said instead, narrowing her eyes and watching Avi’s reactions carefully.
“What are you talking about?” Avi asked. She didn’t break eye contact, but she didn’t maintain it overlong either – that was also an elementary mistake when lying, holding someone’s eyes for too long. Instead, she put on a quizzical look, shook her head in exasperation, and looked thoughtfully at the papers she had been stacking.
“There’s no way she’d be this … worried about you if you were just some girl who’d had an embarrassing crush on her back in the day. I’m not saying she was the love of your life or anything, but there had to have been mutual interest to generate this much … protective instinct.”
“So you think that her checking out my workplace means we did the nasty way back when?” Avi said, letting the sarcasm in her voice do all the work. Sometimes, you didn’t even need to answer a question with a lie to dissuade it.
But of course, Aly was used to her evasive half-answers. She didn’t even bother to respond, just raised an eyebrow.
“There may have been a few drunken kisses,” Avi dismissed, “but this is high school we’re talking about. She wasn’t the first or last crush, boy or girl, that thought I was good enough to kiss, but didn’t want anything more.” That … ended up being a bit bitterer than she’d intended.
“Did you want something more?”
Avi hesitated. “I wasn’t sure, but it would have been nice to have a choice,” she finally said. “Sneaking kisses in someone’s closet at a house party was exciting and all, but while I made it obvious to her I had a crush, she never returned my feelings. And then she was off to college and I had to move on.”
(Okay, not to college, because nobody that Talented went to a mundane university when she could and did have an apprenticeship, but she couldn’t exactly tell Aly everything.) Still, though she knew it for a silly, meaningless crush now, at the time she’d been so convinced she was in love. She’d considered those secret kisses with Maya some sort of Great yet Tragic and possibly Unrequited Romance that had come to an untimely end, and had daydreamed about what she’d do if she ever saw Maya again. Then, of course, Maya came back the summer after and the whole truth spell debacle happened and Avi’d learned the hard way that something things are better as daydreams.
“It must have really hurt when she did what she did.”
“You mean, when she didn’t bother to defend me in front of her friends and just scorned me in public like a hypocrite?” Avi said scathingly. “Yeah, it hurt just a little.” She paused, regrouping herself. There was no use taking her anger out on Aly. “I mean, it’s one thing to be ashamed of me, it’s another to make it so public.”
And how sad was it that she had to draw that distinction. Susan, for example, was ashamed of her Dud nature but she would never say anything about it in public. And the Maya of the time had not felt that same solidarity.
And then the bell rang, and Aly had to rush back to class, while Avi waited for her students to arrive and put the whole issue out of her head. For now, at least.
---
It was dark by the time Avi got off work, and Maya was standing in the darkest patch of shadows outside the building – if Avi hadn’t been looking for her, her eyes might have skipped right over.
“You don’t need Talent to shield you from mundane eyes,” Avi commented as she approached. “You take to the shadows very easily.”
“What can I say?” Maya said, twisting her mouth into a smile. “The Zhang Family takes special care in training their assassins.”
“How did you end up out here, anyway?” Avi asked. She gestured expansively to indicate the bustling crowds, dirty streets, and insane traffic that made up Beijing. “Last I heard, you were on track to taking your pick of any position you wanted in D.C. Everyone was sure you were going to be the next HeadWizard.”
“Are we really going to have this conversation right here, right now?” Maya asked. “Don’t we have a seer you to get you to?”
“I have a feeling the journey’s going to be a long one,” Avi replied. “Are you telling me I’m wrong?”
Maya sighed. “Not as long as you might think, but you’re right. I can’t just transport you there. We’ll take the subway to the nearest portal.”
Avi let Maya lead the way – she knew where they were going. She didn’t let up with the questions, however. “I mean, coming to China and taking a side wasn’t really in your grand life plan, was it?” Avi asked.
“Why would you think that?” Maya said flatly
“It’s not like you can get any kind of governmental position back in the U.S. now,” Avi said, cutting through Maya’s sarcasm to get to the heart of the issue. “You know what the administration’s position is on the Family Feuds here. You’d never get security clearance. Hell, I don’t even think you could pass the background check for your run-of-the-mill corporate job. You-”
“I know,” Maya snapped. “I know what my future’s like, I don’t need you to tell me.”
Avi drew back, stung. “I just want to understand,” she said quietly. How did the proud, ambitious, charismatic girl she once knew turn into this … moody, quiet, weary woman with so much resignation written in every line of her body?
Maya didn’t say anything, as they both boarded the subway.
Avi worried the rest of the trip would take place in awkward silence, as they took their seats on the surprisingly empty subway. To her surprise, however, she was wrong.
Five minutes after the subway started moving, Maya suddenly spoke.
“The story starts with your senior year,” Maya said quietly, her voice raw with some indefinable emotion.
“You didn’t want to have this conversation outside work when we were alone, but you’ll have it now when we’re surrounded by people?” Avi asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“They’re mundane,” Maya shrugged. “Even if they understand English, they’ll only hear what they want to hear. And … you need to hear what I have to say.” Her voice was too serious when she said that, and Avi shivered at the implications.
“Alright, continue,” Avi said.
“I should start off by telling you … I didn’t say it, you know,” Maya said.
“Say what?” Avi asked, confused. Had she lost track of the conversation?
“You know. Back home, when your brother spiked your cereal. What everyone said I said, I didn’t actually say it. Lana made it up, and spread it around.”
Avi turned to stare at Maya in shock. “But you never denied it!” She remembered staying up all night by the phone, wondering if Maya would phone with some sort of explanation for the way she’d so callously dismissed her, not giving up because surely Maya wouldn’t have said that, would deny it. But she never did.
“No,” Maya said seriously. “That’s why I never asked you for forgiveness, never told you it wasn’t me who said it. I was there when Lana said to me, ‘But it’s not like you’d have anything to do with a Talentless Dud like her, right? Even if you were lesbian, it’s like gag me now.’ And then she laughed, and I … didn’t have the guts to say anything, so that’s how the rumor got started.”
She didn’t look at Avi at all, staring straight ahead as she spoke.
“Because I didn’t deny it, I figured my inaction was as terrible as if I’d said it myself. I mean, you know I was a stupid shit as a teenager. I just … didn’t know how I could fix the situation without actually telling people about, you know, us. And … I didn’t have the guts to tell anyone about us. The Headwizards in D.C. are very ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ hardcore, my parents would have killed me, my friends would have shunned me …. So that’s where the story begins – when I as good as scorned you in public, as far as everyone knew.
“I felt so incredibly guilty afterwards, for not denying it, and I felt repressed and treacherous and dishonest...needless to say, it wasn’t a great time of my life. And so, when I was in D.C., I did … a lot of things with a lot of people, as a way of striking back and claiming something for myself, only I wasn’t quite as discreet about it as I should have been. And that’s why I’m out here instead of raking in the dough back home. Because Zhang Matriarch is never going to publicly humiliate me and out me to my parents because she found a photograph of me kissing another girl.”
“Is that what happened?” Avi asked quietly.
“I could have stayed,” Maya allowed, “but I was absolutely furious with my supervisor, less than happy with the way the Headwizard handled my case, and pissed at the D.C. Talented community as a whole for turning their back on me and not supporting me. Granted, I hadn’t many friends – mostly rivals for the same few coveted positions, so I’m not surprised they didn’t put in any good words for me, but I was still pissed. Pissed off at my parents, pissed off at the world. And then Zhang Matriarch waltzed in, said she’d recognized my Talent, said she didn’t see how my inclinations were a problem (that’s how she put it), and offered me a high-paying five-year contract. Before I knew it, I’d chosen a side.”
Maya slit a glance at Avi.
“You know, I found out a few months ago that she was responsible for that photograph crossing my supervisor’s desk?” She laughed hollowly. “Ten years of Talent School on the weekends, ten years having it drilled into my head that our Talent is not meant to be misused, ten years having to recite the Standards of Ethics by rote once a week … add to that twenty years listening to my parents’ firsthand accounts of the senseless slaughter and ruin that resulted from endless Family Feuds in China, and you know what? All it took to throw off all those years of conditioning was a bad situation and a little bit of money.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Avi chided. “You know as well as I do – if she’s Matriarch of the Family, especially if she was chosen over traditionally more-favored male Heirs, she’s smart, powerful, and political, and has decades more experience than you do in manipulation. If she set her sights on you, she would have gotten you, one way or another.”
“I can’t figure out how upset I should be that she manipulated me anyway,” Maya sighed, “when I’m still glad that I got out of D.C. when I did. I hear that things have gotten even worse since I left.”
“I’ve heard,” Avi allowed. “I’m still on the listservs even though I’m not technically Talented. I know plenty of people who’ve left D.C. because of the homophobia. Last I heard, it’s gotten so bad even the international community is ready to step in.” And that was serious business. One of the unwritten rules was that the Talented community within any particular country was allowed near-unlimited sovereignty. Even the escalating Family Feuds in China, which seemed sometimes as if they’d been going on forever, only drew censure from the international community in the form of reprimands with no show of force.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m out here. That’s why I ended up going against everything our teachers taught us. And … though I’m not proud of it, I’m not ashamed of it either – D.C. wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I may be abusing my Talent, as our teachers would say, but I’m being truer to myself than I could be back home right now.” She laughed hollowly.
Avi hesitated before she asked her next question. “Are … you going to stay when your five years are up?”
“Hell no,” Maya said. “I’m grateful to the Matriarch for giving me a job and a salary, but I like having control of my own life, and I can’t believe I was young and stupid enough to actually give up my freedom to a Family. When my five years are up, I’ll make my own choices. But right now, you understand, my choices aren’t mine to make. So Avi, whatever happens, if I ever have to hurt you because I’ve been ordered to, I apologize in advance.”
“Do you expect that to happen anytime soon?” Avi asked, bemused.
When Maya didn’t respond, Avi looked at her – she was looking unnecessarily serious. “You know that when your deadline hits tomorrow, and you don’t respond to Zhang Family’s request, the Matriarch is going to be upset. I cannot guarantee she won’t order me to terminate you.”
“I can,” Avi snorted. “I may not be Heir to Lau Family, but my parents would still be plenty pissed if she had you murder me. Regardless of their plans to take a side or not, they’d definitely avenge my death if it became an issue.”
“I … I don’t know if Zhang Matriarch thinks in the same terms of assets and liabilities that you do,” Maya said dubiously, but before she could continue, they’d arrived at their station.
They squeezed past the masses of people to get off, and Avi looked expectantly at Maya to lead the way. Maya didn’t lead her out the turnstiles, as she might have expected, but rather took her down to the end of the platform and then, between one blink and the next, pushed her into the wall.
Only instead of pushing her into the wall, it seemed there was no wall, and Avi found herself sinking through something with the consistency of custard, before all of a sudden she was through – inside a hidden room, where she could outside but nobody could see inside.
“Nifty,” Avi observed.
“It’s just one of a few hidden portals,” Maya said. “This one is actually supposed to be for Zhang Family members only but, uh, we can bring guests.”
That explained, among other things, the sparse decorations and the single mirror against the wall. If any other Talented person stumbled across the room by accident, Zhang Family wouldn’t want them guessing at its true purposes.
Maya took her hand and led her to the mirror. “This will probably work better if you close your eyes,” she advised, and Avi obeyed.
Maya muttered a long of string words at the mirror that Avi didn’t understand (probably a password), and then Avi felt herself tugged forward. She took a few steps, and then suddenly it was as if she plunged into cold winter air. There was no wind, but she felt cold, a cold that went into her bones, and she felt that surely her breath was going to freeze. The cold lasted for a few seconds at the most, but felt like it lasted for minutes, hours, days, before suddenly everything was normal-temperatured again.
Avi opened her eyes without being bidden, and found herself in front of an apartment complex. “We can’t still be in Beijing,” she said. “The temperature feels different.”
“I … really shouldn’t say,” Maya said. “Old Man Wu likes his privacy – he wouldn’t appreciate me giving out his address.”
Avi accepted this – it was understandable. Someone as precognitively skilled as Old Man Wu would only have maintained the anonymity he had thus far by remaining discreet – outside the eye of any important people, out of the country when he’d come to the attention of an angered Matriarch, and so on.
But of course, this didn’t stop Avi from guessing.
From the temperature, Avi would bet they were farther south – and if they were significantly far enough south that she noticed the difference in temperature, she was impressed by how much Zhang Family was willing to spend on their mirror portals. Especially if – and here, Avi checked Maya, and saw she was only slightly winded – especially if most of the energy for the transport had come from the mirror and not from Maya. That was expensive technology to purchase and maintain – obviously Zhang Family pulled out all the stops, even for its retainers. Unsurprising if Zhang Matriarch went to such manipulative extremes to recruit them in the first place.
The apartment building was very much an older one – they had to climb seven flights of stairs, something Avi wasn’t terribly happy about. There was no way this apartment was in Shanghai, but any other city was equally likely. If you considered the-
“Stop,” Maya said.
“Stop what?” Avi said innocently.
“Stop trying to figure out where we are. If you figure it out and ever try to come back, Old Man Wu will know, and he’ll move so it’s useless. Anyway, we’re here.” Maya stopped in front of the door, which still had a tattered red upside-down character for Spring on it.
Maya knocked on the door. “Uncle Wu,” she called out respectfully in Mandarin. Avi barely restrained a snicker – even though everyone called him 吴叔叔 to his face, she was too used to referring to him as Old Man Wu behind his back to grow used to Maya using the more respectful address now.
There was no answer, so Maya patiently knocked again. And then, when she raised her hand to knock for the third time, just before her knuckles hit the door, the door suddenly opened.
If Avi remembered correctly, this was just the sort of prank that Old Man Wu loved to pull – small inconveniences, doing something just before you were going to do it to disrupt your momentum or asking you a question just as you were about to say something to throw you off.
“I didn’t call ahead,” Maya said politely in Mandarin, “but I brought a guest.”
“Of course you did,” Old Man Wu responded in the same language, “and no need to call, as usual.” He tapped his head. “I knew you were coming.”
It always surprised Avi, how respectable Old Man Wu looked. Given his mischievous personality, she always expected to see him in tattered clothes, a rakishly-tilted hat, as some sort of modern-day incarnation of 土地公 (who probably wasn’t even a prankster god, it’s not her fault her perceptions of the deity have been unduly influenced by historical dramas). Instead, he always looked old and wise, in what she mentally referred to as Mystically Inscrutable Chinese Clothing (the stuff you always saw old people wearing in the parks when they practiced Tai Chi and did water calligraphy on the ground and only worn by Talents when they were trying to put on a show), with his white whiskers and bright eyes.
“Come in, come in,” Old Man Wu said.
Avi didn’t even bother checking for potential pranks – if Old Man Wu wanted to prank you, he could see what precautions you would take, and work around them. It made him a minor annoyance to be around, but he always had useful information and everything was done in good fun, so she liked him anyway.
Of course, she thought grimly as she tried to recover her dignity after she jumped a mile in the air upon seeing what she thought was a snake, sometimes it was difficult to remember this.
“Come, sit down,” Old Man Wu said in the thickest Beijing accent Avi’d heard outside taxicabs and public buses.
Avi and Maya obliged him by seating themselves on the ratty sofa. He himself occupied the more recently-upholstered armchair.
“Now, what brings you here today?” he asked pleasantly.
He would already know the answer of course, but it was always good to observe the formalities.
Maya gestured for Avi to speak.
“I came here to ask about the truth behind my Talent, and the nature of my quest, and the path that I should take,” Avi said haltingly in Mandarin, trying to make her Chinese as formal as possible, and failing miserably.
Fortunately, Old Man Wu knew what she meant.
“Ah,” he said looking at her sadly.
“What does ‘Ah’ mean?” she asked evenly.
He closed his eyes and she waited patiently until he opened them again. As far she knew, he didn’t actually need to think or concentrate to access his precognition; the moment of meditation was more for him to find the best way to articulate what he sensed. “玉不琢，不成器，人不琢，不成材。”
Avi looked confused.
He sighed. “There are many trials ahead of you,” he tried in English. “There will be betrayals, many of them, much tragedy, and heartbreak. And yet, you will learn several irreplaceably important lessons from the experience.”
“What does that mean?” Avi said bluntly. “Should I seek my Talent, or not?”
“Neither success nor failure shall mark the end of your journey,” Old Man Wu continued blithely. “You will not find what you think you require, but you shall find some measure of happiness and answers to certain questions you may have.”
“I was hoping for something a little more concrete,” Avi urged.
“Prophecies are supposed to be vague,” Old Man Wu said sternly.
“If I wanted a prophecy, I would have gone to a fortune-teller,” Avi said unrepentantly. She knew more than most (goodness, how many fortune-tellers had her parents taken her to, back when they thought she might be cured) that the vaguer the prophecy, the more it meant actual concrete information could be given and would affect the future, the seer was simply choosing not to. “I want advice, Uncle Wu. Are you sure you can’t help?”
As she expected, Old Man Wu relented within moments. “I suppose I can give you three pieces of advice,” he sighed. “First, beware of your expectations. Get too caught up in what you think is happening, and you’ll only see what you want to see.”
That, of course, was one of the core principles of Talent. In combat, it was all about using Illusion to fool your opponent and make them see what they expect to. In day-to-day life, it was the only way the Talented world was kept secret from the mundane folk. It was common knowledge that seeing only what you wanted to see was the quickest way to get yourself killed.
“Second, don’t get overconfident,” Old Man Wu said. “You’ll face your biggest threat, and suffer your greatest setback, when you think you are already safe.” He sighed. “I tell you this now, but you will not remember in the crucial moment.”
“That’s okay,” Avi said firmly. “I want to know, even if it doesn’t change the future.”
“My last piece of advice,” Old Man Wu said, “is this. When you have to make a difficult decision, trust your instincts.”
“That’s it?” Avi said. “Nothing more … concrete to offer me?”
Old Man Wu snorted. “Young people these days, want me to tell them exactly what path they ought to take.”
“It’s why I came,” Avi said unrepentantly. “If you didn’t like it, you would have known. Didn’t have to let me in.”
Old Man Wu laughed. “I remember why I liked you so much,” he said. “Alright, something more concrete for you. There will come a time during the course of your quest when you will stand at a crossroads …”
“Yes?” Avi said encouragingly.
“Turn left. And that is all I will say on the matter,” he finished in Mandarin. “But you,” he said, addressing Maya by her Chinese name, “come back after you have dropped her off. I need to speak with you about something.”
“That sounds ominous,” Avi observed as she got up to leave.
“Not really,” Maya said implacably. “Uncle Wu always gives us one-on-one advice when we visit – it’s just that it would be rude to make you wait outside, and after I drop you off, it will only be the blink of an eye to transport me.”
Avi nodded. When- if she found her Talent and chose to restore it, it wasn’t the things she would be able to do that she was looking forward to – it was the convenience of not needing a mundane way to travel while everyone around her was spiriting themselves around by Talent. Aside from the mundane, the only other people who needed to be accommodated the same way she did was children not yet come into their Talent. It was all very exasperating.
Maya led her not to the door, but to a closet. “Uncle Wu has a makeshift portal here,” she explained. “A sort of last-ditch escape route if he needs it. Because of your, uh, needs, we’ll be using it to get you home.”
Avi looked rather dubiously at the closet. It looked like a very cramped space with a lot of moth-eaten coats inside. “I feel like I’m in a Narnia book,” Avi observed, “and there’s going to be snow as soon as I step through the door.”
Maya rolled her eyes. “You and your hobbies.”
Most Talented folk didn’t read much fantasy because it was so laughably ridiculous – and not the way magic worked. Avi, along with a significant minority of the population, felt differently. Fantasy wasn’t meant to appeal to mundane people as “the way magic worked” but rather “couldn’t you imagine if magic worked this way?” It wasn’t that terribly difficult for a Talented person with imagination to adopt the same mindset.
(Of course, the problem was that so much of the Talented community lacked creativity, in Avi’s opinion. Take her sister Nadia, for example. Quite powerful and skilled, and very reliable, but so ploddingly dull and impossible when it came to thinking up an original idea.)
Avi stepped through the door.
This trip was far more pleasant than the earlier one had been. But of course, Old Man Wu was probably arthritic enough he didn’t need an escape plan that would stiffen his joints and incapacitate him for days. It felt like a light breeze blew across her face, and then she was blinking and trying to block out the glaring light of the subway station.
She was impressed. Maya hadn’t needed to say anything, and it’d taken her exactly where she needed to be. Maya stumbled into her vision a few seconds later.
“That’s a very well-designed portal,” Avi noted. “I … don’t think I know of another one like it.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Maya said matter-of-factly. “Old Man Wu designed it himself.”
“He must be very Talented and very skilled to pull that off,” Avi said, surprised.
“Don’t be fooled by his appearance and behavior,” Maya said. “He’s one of the most Talented people you’ll ever meet – just think, he’s managed to be Talented, precognitive, and clever enough to keep out of reach of any of the Families, despite how useful his precognition would be.”
And sure, just because someone could see the future didn’t meant they did it well. It was easy to get caught up in what you thought the future would be, and rely on it to be a certainty when it was not, or else to try so hard to avoid it that the actions you took actually brought about the future you tried to avoid.
It was natural for Old Man Wu to be a little odd, but he pulled the whole thing off very well, especially when it came to still remaining the master of his own fate and not submitting to any Family.
“I can take it from here,” Avi said, “you won’t need to walk me all the way back – subways are something I can do.”
“Don’t be silly,” Maya said. “Old Man Wu told me to take you home; I know better than to disobey him.”
Avi laughed, just as the train came and they stepped on.
“I notice you address him so much more respectfully when we’re there,” she observed.
“Of course,” Maya said. “I mean, would you refer to him as Old Man Wu in his presence?”
Avi hesitated. Normally, she wouldn’t have any compunction against doing so, since he gave off such a convincing air of the scruffy, ragamuffin ne’er-do-well family friend who was always playing practical jokes and being silly. But yet she’d still never done so in his presence, simply because her upbringing was so against showing any disrespect to elders – and when you were in his presence, he definitely gave off the air of being elder. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” Avi cocked her head. “How do your parents know him, anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” Maya shrugged. “They’ve known each other since before my parents left China, that’s for sure. He was the one who told them to go when they did – and good thing, too. They left right before the Families started meddling with Mundane politics.” Maya paused and thought about it. “I’m pretty sure they knew him before he came into his Talent, even.”
“That’s interesting,” Avi said. “What was he like? I can’t even imagine.”
“Well, he was born into a Mundane family,” Maya said wryly.
“That’s … almost unbelievable,” Avi blinked. She tried picturing the fey old man growing up a normal boy, and her imagination came up short.
“Well, a Mundane family, but not a normal one,” Maya corrected. “I think his family did fortune-telling, until that no longer became politically advisable. Around about that time, he started developing his Talent. I think that might be why he was so interested in delving into precognition later on.”
“It’s unusual for a self-trained Talent, and a precognitive to boot, to become so powerful,” Avi mused.
“There’s your Family bias showing through,” Maya said wryly.
“What?”
“You know there are plenty of powerful Talents outside of vaunted Family lineages,” Maya said patiently.
“Yes, of course I know that,” Avi protested. “Iain. Merlin. Zhang Fei and Guan Yu.”
“I mean besides famous historical figures,” Maya said, arching an eyebrow. “Hell, even in my family, three of my grandparents are mundane and the last is a Dud.” Even as she made her point, Maya’s posture unconsciously relaxed. As she grew less stiff, Avi could almost see her transform from the aloof assassin persona she’d adopted to the girl she’d once found so charming. Still not an emotional person, sure, but passionate about what mattered to her.
“Oh,” Avi said. “I didn’t know that.
“We live in America, Avi. That’s the country of self-made Families. Stories like your parents’, lineages like your Family’s, are the exception, not the rule.”
“I know that!” Avi repeated. “But you can’t deny that it’s harder for an untrained, Mundane-raised Talent to recognize and accept their powers, much less get proper training.”
“That’s why we have Seekers and Saturday Schools in place,” Maya said. “Learning to accept your Talent is really not all that much more difficult than emigrating to a new country to establish a Family.”
“Touché,” Avi laughed. “You know, it’s strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“You mention the difficult in emigrating and … it’s just that I keep on hearing everyone talk about these people who are apparently my mom and dad, but they sound so different.”
“What do you mean?” Maya asked.
“I mean, apparently Mom used to duel people all the time and flouted convention to marry Dad. And Dad apparently defied his Family in Hong Kong to marry someone from the mainland and start his own Family. They sound so … dashing and adventurous,” Avi said.
“Well, starting their own Family is a new country is certainly an adventure.” Maya’s parents, for example, had also started new lives in a new country, but they hadn’t had the power at their fingertips or the ambition in their minds’-eye to start their own Family. Or perhaps they had all that, but just knew it to be more work than it was worth. “You need courage, ambition, and vision to pull it off.”
“You mean, you need arrogance,” Avi said wryly. She quieted, though, and thought back to her original point. “It’s just so … different from the Mom and Dad I know. Mom, for example – she’s terrified of everything I do. It just about gave her apoplexy when I first suggested the idea of living on my own in Beijing. It’s the farthest I’ve been from home, for the longest time. She didn’t even like that I went to a university two hours away.” Avi leaned back.
“You have to admit, that’s out-of-character in the generally close-knit Talented community, and it’s especially out-of-character when you come from a Family.”
“But apparently, she was getting into duels and doing all sorts of dangerous things? I don’t know, doesn’t sound like her. I couldn’t possibly imagine her doing anything so risky.” Maya looked like she was about to comment, but held her tongue. “As for Dad … he doesn’t understand anything about me. You know, normal parents are excited when their kids want to be a doctor.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve already established that you’re not normal,” Maya said wryly. “So it stands to reason your parents wouldn’t be.”
“I mean, of all the paths available to me, that really is the best one. And he just can’t seem to understand that me making it in the mundane world could be so useful to our Family. It’s the only way I can be useful to our Family! But he just doesn’t see. How could he have the vision to start a new Family, and not the vision to see this?” It had been a long, long time since she’d rehashed this complaint with anyone who wasn’t Family, and just hearing the worlds out loud frustrated her.
Maya was calm with her reply, however. “Your parents were rebels and defied convention, but all in the Talented world. Your mother started duels and took risks, and if you did the same things she did when she was your age, she probably wouldn’t worry so much. She doesn’t know much about the unTalented world, though, so the idea of you out here alone terrifies her because it’s something she couldn’t do. As for your Dad … he had all kinds of ambitions, but they were Talented ambitions. He doesn’t understand how the mundane world works, so he doesn’t understand your mundane ambitions. Your parents were both trendsetters, but you are setting a new type of trend they know nothing about. And because they can’t help you, because they can’t protect you, that terrifies them.”
“I don’t need their protection!”
“They’re your parents. It doesn’t matter whether you need it or not, they’ll want to protect you until the day they die.”
“And I suppose your parents are protecting you, too?” Avi said sharply, then immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry,” she rushed out. “I’m just …”
“No, fair question,” Maya said. “I’m going on about your parents, as if I know them, when my own parents haven’t talked to me in years. But Avi, I know your parents are difficult and there’s a lot of pressure on you, but think of this: your parents have more or less accepted you despite you being a Dud. My parents, despite all the success I’ve had and the standards I lived up to, won’t talk to me because of who I fuck.”
Avi smiled a small smile, and nudged Maya’s shoulder with her own in consolation. “I guess you’re right,” Avi said, yawning a little from the long day.
They sat in companionable silence for a little while longer, the unsaid conversation as important as their words exchanged had been. Without meaning to, she leaned against Maya slightly and drifted off. The next thing she knew, Maya was shaking her awake.
“We’re at your station,” Maya said gently.
Avi shook herself awake and they both left the train and searched for the right exit. “Are you really going to walk me to my apartment?” she asked Maya incredulously as Maya followed her out the subway station.
“But of course,” Maya smiled. “It’s only common courtesy to walk a lady home after a date.”
“Oh,” Avi rolled her eyes. “This is a date now, is it?” But she didn’t object as Maya trailed behind her out of the station, down the street, up the stairs. Maya really did walk to her front porch, and stood there, waiting for her to open the door. When Avi had it unlocked, she leaned back against it and looked up at Maya. “So, I’m here. And safe. No need to worry.”
She ended her statement on a huskier note than she’d intended. Suddenly, it seemed that Maya was standing too close, that staring into her eyes was too personal, that Maya’s fingers on her elbow were molten hot to the touch. She was holding her breath without meaning to, tilting her face upwards to Maya, suddenly wondering if Maya kissed the same way she used to.
Maya, too, was not moving, her eyes deep with meaning, her lips parting as she breathed, her entire body poised, on edge.
And then a door slammed down the hallway, and the two sprang apart.
“I … should get going,” Maya said.
“Yes,” Avi said stupidly. And she quickly turned around, opened the door, and stepped inside. “Um, bye,” she said to Maya, feeling foolish.
Maya just nodded, and turned and left. Avi walked her walk down the hallway, until between one step and the next, her form shimmered and disappeared.
Please see Chapter 1 for the Summary, Author's Notes, additional details, etc.
Avi was a little distracted at work, which Aly certainly noticed. During breaktime, she took care to pay a special visit to Avi’s classroom.
“So how are things with Jason going?” Aly asked in a sing-song voice.
“They’re fine,” Avi said in a tone that was meant to discourage Aly from asking any more questions. Of course it didn’t work.
“And when you showed up at his place? Did you give him a … surprise?”
That felt like it had been so long ago that it took Avi a few minutes to realize what Aly’s innuendo-laden remark was referring to, then another few minutes to remember what cover story she’d given Aly to squirrel Jason’s address out of her. “I just left something- a letter for him on his doorstep.”
“How … romantic,” Aly cooed, but her eyes were sharp. She probably realized there was something Avi wasn’t telling her, but hopefully she chalked it up to not wanting to share intimate details rather than hiding something very, very big. “By the way, you know that old crush of yours has been hanging around, watching the school?”
“What?” Then Avi realized she must mean Maya. “You mean, while I’m here?” That would make some sort of sense. Maya would be keeping an eye on her because of Zhang Family, and probably also at the behest of her parents. No wonder she hadn’t bothered asking where her work was and what time she got out – between Maya and Jason, Avi seemed set for life when it came to non-obsessive stalkers.
“Yes. I saw her hanging around yesterday, and I think I saw her earlier today. Do I need to worry about stalking?”
“Oh, no,” Avi said. “I … think she’s just a little worried about me. She’s keeping an eye on me for my parents. You know how worried my parents get all the time,” Avi flashed Aly an optimistically convincing smile. Inwardly, she cringed. Sometimes, even years of experience lying didn’t mean you couldn’t stumble and come up with a crap excuse from time to time.
Aly didn’t buy the story, but she didn’t question it either. “So. This was more than a crush, wasn’t it?” Aly said instead, narrowing her eyes and watching Avi’s reactions carefully.
“What are you talking about?” Avi asked. She didn’t break eye contact, but she didn’t maintain it overlong either – that was also an elementary mistake when lying, holding someone’s eyes for too long. Instead, she put on a quizzical look, shook her head in exasperation, and looked thoughtfully at the papers she had been stacking.
“There’s no way she’d be this … worried about you if you were just some girl who’d had an embarrassing crush on her back in the day. I’m not saying she was the love of your life or anything, but there had to have been mutual interest to generate this much … protective instinct.”
“So you think that her checking out my workplace means we did the nasty way back when?” Avi said, letting the sarcasm in her voice do all the work. Sometimes, you didn’t even need to answer a question with a lie to dissuade it.
But of course, Aly was used to her evasive half-answers. She didn’t even bother to respond, just raised an eyebrow.
“There may have been a few drunken kisses,” Avi dismissed, “but this is high school we’re talking about. She wasn’t the first or last crush, boy or girl, that thought I was good enough to kiss, but didn’t want anything more.” That … ended up being a bit bitterer than she’d intended.
“Did you want something more?”
Avi hesitated. “I wasn’t sure, but it would have been nice to have a choice,” she finally said. “Sneaking kisses in someone’s closet at a house party was exciting and all, but while I made it obvious to her I had a crush, she never returned my feelings. And then she was off to college and I had to move on.”
(Okay, not to college, because nobody that Talented went to a mundane university when she could and did have an apprenticeship, but she couldn’t exactly tell Aly everything.) Still, though she knew it for a silly, meaningless crush now, at the time she’d been so convinced she was in love. She’d considered those secret kisses with Maya some sort of Great yet Tragic and possibly Unrequited Romance that had come to an untimely end, and had daydreamed about what she’d do if she ever saw Maya again. Then, of course, Maya came back the summer after and the whole truth spell debacle happened and Avi’d learned the hard way that something things are better as daydreams.
“It must have really hurt when she did what she did.”
“You mean, when she didn’t bother to defend me in front of her friends and just scorned me in public like a hypocrite?” Avi said scathingly. “Yeah, it hurt just a little.” She paused, regrouping herself. There was no use taking her anger out on Aly. “I mean, it’s one thing to be ashamed of me, it’s another to make it so public.”
And how sad was it that she had to draw that distinction. Susan, for example, was ashamed of her Dud nature but she would never say anything about it in public. And the Maya of the time had not felt that same solidarity.
And then the bell rang, and Aly had to rush back to class, while Avi waited for her students to arrive and put the whole issue out of her head. For now, at least.
---
It was dark by the time Avi got off work, and Maya was standing in the darkest patch of shadows outside the building – if Avi hadn’t been looking for her, her eyes might have skipped right over.
“You don’t need Talent to shield you from mundane eyes,” Avi commented as she approached. “You take to the shadows very easily.”
“What can I say?” Maya said, twisting her mouth into a smile. “The Zhang Family takes special care in training their assassins.”
“How did you end up out here, anyway?” Avi asked. She gestured expansively to indicate the bustling crowds, dirty streets, and insane traffic that made up Beijing. “Last I heard, you were on track to taking your pick of any position you wanted in D.C. Everyone was sure you were going to be the next HeadWizard.”
“Are we really going to have this conversation right here, right now?” Maya asked. “Don’t we have a seer you to get you to?”
“I have a feeling the journey’s going to be a long one,” Avi replied. “Are you telling me I’m wrong?”
Maya sighed. “Not as long as you might think, but you’re right. I can’t just transport you there. We’ll take the subway to the nearest portal.”
Avi let Maya lead the way – she knew where they were going. She didn’t let up with the questions, however. “I mean, coming to China and taking a side wasn’t really in your grand life plan, was it?” Avi asked.
“Why would you think that?” Maya said flatly
“It’s not like you can get any kind of governmental position back in the U.S. now,” Avi said, cutting through Maya’s sarcasm to get to the heart of the issue. “You know what the administration’s position is on the Family Feuds here. You’d never get security clearance. Hell, I don’t even think you could pass the background check for your run-of-the-mill corporate job. You-”
“I know,” Maya snapped. “I know what my future’s like, I don’t need you to tell me.”
Avi drew back, stung. “I just want to understand,” she said quietly. How did the proud, ambitious, charismatic girl she once knew turn into this … moody, quiet, weary woman with so much resignation written in every line of her body?
Maya didn’t say anything, as they both boarded the subway.
Avi worried the rest of the trip would take place in awkward silence, as they took their seats on the surprisingly empty subway. To her surprise, however, she was wrong.
Five minutes after the subway started moving, Maya suddenly spoke.
“The story starts with your senior year,” Maya said quietly, her voice raw with some indefinable emotion.
“You didn’t want to have this conversation outside work when we were alone, but you’ll have it now when we’re surrounded by people?” Avi asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“They’re mundane,” Maya shrugged. “Even if they understand English, they’ll only hear what they want to hear. And … you need to hear what I have to say.” Her voice was too serious when she said that, and Avi shivered at the implications.
“Alright, continue,” Avi said.
“I should start off by telling you … I didn’t say it, you know,” Maya said.
“Say what?” Avi asked, confused. Had she lost track of the conversation?
“You know. Back home, when your brother spiked your cereal. What everyone said I said, I didn’t actually say it. Lana made it up, and spread it around.”
Avi turned to stare at Maya in shock. “But you never denied it!” She remembered staying up all night by the phone, wondering if Maya would phone with some sort of explanation for the way she’d so callously dismissed her, not giving up because surely Maya wouldn’t have said that, would deny it. But she never did.
“No,” Maya said seriously. “That’s why I never asked you for forgiveness, never told you it wasn’t me who said it. I was there when Lana said to me, ‘But it’s not like you’d have anything to do with a Talentless Dud like her, right? Even if you were lesbian, it’s like gag me now.’ And then she laughed, and I … didn’t have the guts to say anything, so that’s how the rumor got started.”
She didn’t look at Avi at all, staring straight ahead as she spoke.
“Because I didn’t deny it, I figured my inaction was as terrible as if I’d said it myself. I mean, you know I was a stupid shit as a teenager. I just … didn’t know how I could fix the situation without actually telling people about, you know, us. And … I didn’t have the guts to tell anyone about us. The Headwizards in D.C. are very ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ hardcore, my parents would have killed me, my friends would have shunned me …. So that’s where the story begins – when I as good as scorned you in public, as far as everyone knew.
“I felt so incredibly guilty afterwards, for not denying it, and I felt repressed and treacherous and dishonest...needless to say, it wasn’t a great time of my life. And so, when I was in D.C., I did … a lot of things with a lot of people, as a way of striking back and claiming something for myself, only I wasn’t quite as discreet about it as I should have been. And that’s why I’m out here instead of raking in the dough back home. Because Zhang Matriarch is never going to publicly humiliate me and out me to my parents because she found a photograph of me kissing another girl.”
“Is that what happened?” Avi asked quietly.
“I could have stayed,” Maya allowed, “but I was absolutely furious with my supervisor, less than happy with the way the Headwizard handled my case, and pissed at the D.C. Talented community as a whole for turning their back on me and not supporting me. Granted, I hadn’t many friends – mostly rivals for the same few coveted positions, so I’m not surprised they didn’t put in any good words for me, but I was still pissed. Pissed off at my parents, pissed off at the world. And then Zhang Matriarch waltzed in, said she’d recognized my Talent, said she didn’t see how my inclinations were a problem (that’s how she put it), and offered me a high-paying five-year contract. Before I knew it, I’d chosen a side.”
Maya slit a glance at Avi.
“You know, I found out a few months ago that she was responsible for that photograph crossing my supervisor’s desk?” She laughed hollowly. “Ten years of Talent School on the weekends, ten years having it drilled into my head that our Talent is not meant to be misused, ten years having to recite the Standards of Ethics by rote once a week … add to that twenty years listening to my parents’ firsthand accounts of the senseless slaughter and ruin that resulted from endless Family Feuds in China, and you know what? All it took to throw off all those years of conditioning was a bad situation and a little bit of money.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Avi chided. “You know as well as I do – if she’s Matriarch of the Family, especially if she was chosen over traditionally more-favored male Heirs, she’s smart, powerful, and political, and has decades more experience than you do in manipulation. If she set her sights on you, she would have gotten you, one way or another.”
“I can’t figure out how upset I should be that she manipulated me anyway,” Maya sighed, “when I’m still glad that I got out of D.C. when I did. I hear that things have gotten even worse since I left.”
“I’ve heard,” Avi allowed. “I’m still on the listservs even though I’m not technically Talented. I know plenty of people who’ve left D.C. because of the homophobia. Last I heard, it’s gotten so bad even the international community is ready to step in.” And that was serious business. One of the unwritten rules was that the Talented community within any particular country was allowed near-unlimited sovereignty. Even the escalating Family Feuds in China, which seemed sometimes as if they’d been going on forever, only drew censure from the international community in the form of reprimands with no show of force.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m out here. That’s why I ended up going against everything our teachers taught us. And … though I’m not proud of it, I’m not ashamed of it either – D.C. wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I may be abusing my Talent, as our teachers would say, but I’m being truer to myself than I could be back home right now.” She laughed hollowly.
Avi hesitated before she asked her next question. “Are … you going to stay when your five years are up?”
“Hell no,” Maya said. “I’m grateful to the Matriarch for giving me a job and a salary, but I like having control of my own life, and I can’t believe I was young and stupid enough to actually give up my freedom to a Family. When my five years are up, I’ll make my own choices. But right now, you understand, my choices aren’t mine to make. So Avi, whatever happens, if I ever have to hurt you because I’ve been ordered to, I apologize in advance.”
“Do you expect that to happen anytime soon?” Avi asked, bemused.
When Maya didn’t respond, Avi looked at her – she was looking unnecessarily serious. “You know that when your deadline hits tomorrow, and you don’t respond to Zhang Family’s request, the Matriarch is going to be upset. I cannot guarantee she won’t order me to terminate you.”
“I can,” Avi snorted. “I may not be Heir to Lau Family, but my parents would still be plenty pissed if she had you murder me. Regardless of their plans to take a side or not, they’d definitely avenge my death if it became an issue.”
“I … I don’t know if Zhang Matriarch thinks in the same terms of assets and liabilities that you do,” Maya said dubiously, but before she could continue, they’d arrived at their station.
They squeezed past the masses of people to get off, and Avi looked expectantly at Maya to lead the way. Maya didn’t lead her out the turnstiles, as she might have expected, but rather took her down to the end of the platform and then, between one blink and the next, pushed her into the wall.
Only instead of pushing her into the wall, it seemed there was no wall, and Avi found herself sinking through something with the consistency of custard, before all of a sudden she was through – inside a hidden room, where she could outside but nobody could see inside.
“Nifty,” Avi observed.
“It’s just one of a few hidden portals,” Maya said. “This one is actually supposed to be for Zhang Family members only but, uh, we can bring guests.”
That explained, among other things, the sparse decorations and the single mirror against the wall. If any other Talented person stumbled across the room by accident, Zhang Family wouldn’t want them guessing at its true purposes.
Maya took her hand and led her to the mirror. “This will probably work better if you close your eyes,” she advised, and Avi obeyed.
Maya muttered a long of string words at the mirror that Avi didn’t understand (probably a password), and then Avi felt herself tugged forward. She took a few steps, and then suddenly it was as if she plunged into cold winter air. There was no wind, but she felt cold, a cold that went into her bones, and she felt that surely her breath was going to freeze. The cold lasted for a few seconds at the most, but felt like it lasted for minutes, hours, days, before suddenly everything was normal-temperatured again.
Avi opened her eyes without being bidden, and found herself in front of an apartment complex. “We can’t still be in Beijing,” she said. “The temperature feels different.”
“I … really shouldn’t say,” Maya said. “Old Man Wu likes his privacy – he wouldn’t appreciate me giving out his address.”
Avi accepted this – it was understandable. Someone as precognitively skilled as Old Man Wu would only have maintained the anonymity he had thus far by remaining discreet – outside the eye of any important people, out of the country when he’d come to the attention of an angered Matriarch, and so on.
But of course, this didn’t stop Avi from guessing.
From the temperature, Avi would bet they were farther south – and if they were significantly far enough south that she noticed the difference in temperature, she was impressed by how much Zhang Family was willing to spend on their mirror portals. Especially if – and here, Avi checked Maya, and saw she was only slightly winded – especially if most of the energy for the transport had come from the mirror and not from Maya. That was expensive technology to purchase and maintain – obviously Zhang Family pulled out all the stops, even for its retainers. Unsurprising if Zhang Matriarch went to such manipulative extremes to recruit them in the first place.
The apartment building was very much an older one – they had to climb seven flights of stairs, something Avi wasn’t terribly happy about. There was no way this apartment was in Shanghai, but any other city was equally likely. If you considered the-
“Stop,” Maya said.
“Stop what?” Avi said innocently.
“Stop trying to figure out where we are. If you figure it out and ever try to come back, Old Man Wu will know, and he’ll move so it’s useless. Anyway, we’re here.” Maya stopped in front of the door, which still had a tattered red upside-down character for Spring on it.
Maya knocked on the door. “Uncle Wu,” she called out respectfully in Mandarin. Avi barely restrained a snicker – even though everyone called him 吴叔叔 to his face, she was too used to referring to him as Old Man Wu behind his back to grow used to Maya using the more respectful address now.
There was no answer, so Maya patiently knocked again. And then, when she raised her hand to knock for the third time, just before her knuckles hit the door, the door suddenly opened.
If Avi remembered correctly, this was just the sort of prank that Old Man Wu loved to pull – small inconveniences, doing something just before you were going to do it to disrupt your momentum or asking you a question just as you were about to say something to throw you off.
“I didn’t call ahead,” Maya said politely in Mandarin, “but I brought a guest.”
“Of course you did,” Old Man Wu responded in the same language, “and no need to call, as usual.” He tapped his head. “I knew you were coming.”
It always surprised Avi, how respectable Old Man Wu looked. Given his mischievous personality, she always expected to see him in tattered clothes, a rakishly-tilted hat, as some sort of modern-day incarnation of 土地公 (who probably wasn’t even a prankster god, it’s not her fault her perceptions of the deity have been unduly influenced by historical dramas). Instead, he always looked old and wise, in what she mentally referred to as Mystically Inscrutable Chinese Clothing (the stuff you always saw old people wearing in the parks when they practiced Tai Chi and did water calligraphy on the ground and only worn by Talents when they were trying to put on a show), with his white whiskers and bright eyes.
“Come in, come in,” Old Man Wu said.
Avi didn’t even bother checking for potential pranks – if Old Man Wu wanted to prank you, he could see what precautions you would take, and work around them. It made him a minor annoyance to be around, but he always had useful information and everything was done in good fun, so she liked him anyway.
Of course, she thought grimly as she tried to recover her dignity after she jumped a mile in the air upon seeing what she thought was a snake, sometimes it was difficult to remember this.
“Come, sit down,” Old Man Wu said in the thickest Beijing accent Avi’d heard outside taxicabs and public buses.
Avi and Maya obliged him by seating themselves on the ratty sofa. He himself occupied the more recently-upholstered armchair.
“Now, what brings you here today?” he asked pleasantly.
He would already know the answer of course, but it was always good to observe the formalities.
Maya gestured for Avi to speak.
“I came here to ask about the truth behind my Talent, and the nature of my quest, and the path that I should take,” Avi said haltingly in Mandarin, trying to make her Chinese as formal as possible, and failing miserably.
Fortunately, Old Man Wu knew what she meant.
“Ah,” he said looking at her sadly.
“What does ‘Ah’ mean?” she asked evenly.
He closed his eyes and she waited patiently until he opened them again. As far she knew, he didn’t actually need to think or concentrate to access his precognition; the moment of meditation was more for him to find the best way to articulate what he sensed. “玉不琢，不成器，人不琢，不成材。”
Avi looked confused.
He sighed. “There are many trials ahead of you,” he tried in English. “There will be betrayals, many of them, much tragedy, and heartbreak. And yet, you will learn several irreplaceably important lessons from the experience.”
“What does that mean?” Avi said bluntly. “Should I seek my Talent, or not?”
“Neither success nor failure shall mark the end of your journey,” Old Man Wu continued blithely. “You will not find what you think you require, but you shall find some measure of happiness and answers to certain questions you may have.”
“I was hoping for something a little more concrete,” Avi urged.
“Prophecies are supposed to be vague,” Old Man Wu said sternly.
“If I wanted a prophecy, I would have gone to a fortune-teller,” Avi said unrepentantly. She knew more than most (goodness, how many fortune-tellers had her parents taken her to, back when they thought she might be cured) that the vaguer the prophecy, the more it meant actual concrete information could be given and would affect the future, the seer was simply choosing not to. “I want advice, Uncle Wu. Are you sure you can’t help?”
As she expected, Old Man Wu relented within moments. “I suppose I can give you three pieces of advice,” he sighed. “First, beware of your expectations. Get too caught up in what you think is happening, and you’ll only see what you want to see.”
That, of course, was one of the core principles of Talent. In combat, it was all about using Illusion to fool your opponent and make them see what they expect to. In day-to-day life, it was the only way the Talented world was kept secret from the mundane folk. It was common knowledge that seeing only what you wanted to see was the quickest way to get yourself killed.
“Second, don’t get overconfident,” Old Man Wu said. “You’ll face your biggest threat, and suffer your greatest setback, when you think you are already safe.” He sighed. “I tell you this now, but you will not remember in the crucial moment.”
“That’s okay,” Avi said firmly. “I want to know, even if it doesn’t change the future.”
“My last piece of advice,” Old Man Wu said, “is this. When you have to make a difficult decision, trust your instincts.”
“That’s it?” Avi said. “Nothing more … concrete to offer me?”
Old Man Wu snorted. “Young people these days, want me to tell them exactly what path they ought to take.”
“It’s why I came,” Avi said unrepentantly. “If you didn’t like it, you would have known. Didn’t have to let me in.”
Old Man Wu laughed. “I remember why I liked you so much,” he said. “Alright, something more concrete for you. There will come a time during the course of your quest when you will stand at a crossroads …”
“Yes?” Avi said encouragingly.
“Turn left. And that is all I will say on the matter,” he finished in Mandarin. “But you,” he said, addressing Maya by her Chinese name, “come back after you have dropped her off. I need to speak with you about something.”
“That sounds ominous,” Avi observed as she got up to leave.
“Not really,” Maya said implacably. “Uncle Wu always gives us one-on-one advice when we visit – it’s just that it would be rude to make you wait outside, and after I drop you off, it will only be the blink of an eye to transport me.”
Avi nodded. When- if she found her Talent and chose to restore it, it wasn’t the things she would be able to do that she was looking forward to – it was the convenience of not needing a mundane way to travel while everyone around her was spiriting themselves around by Talent. Aside from the mundane, the only other people who needed to be accommodated the same way she did was children not yet come into their Talent. It was all very exasperating.
Maya led her not to the door, but to a closet. “Uncle Wu has a makeshift portal here,” she explained. “A sort of last-ditch escape route if he needs it. Because of your, uh, needs, we’ll be using it to get you home.”
Avi looked rather dubiously at the closet. It looked like a very cramped space with a lot of moth-eaten coats inside. “I feel like I’m in a Narnia book,” Avi observed, “and there’s going to be snow as soon as I step through the door.”
Maya rolled her eyes. “You and your hobbies.”
Most Talented folk didn’t read much fantasy because it was so laughably ridiculous – and not the way magic worked. Avi, along with a significant minority of the population, felt differently. Fantasy wasn’t meant to appeal to mundane people as “the way magic worked” but rather “couldn’t you imagine if magic worked this way?” It wasn’t that terribly difficult for a Talented person with imagination to adopt the same mindset.
(Of course, the problem was that so much of the Talented community lacked creativity, in Avi’s opinion. Take her sister Nadia, for example. Quite powerful and skilled, and very reliable, but so ploddingly dull and impossible when it came to thinking up an original idea.)
Avi stepped through the door.
This trip was far more pleasant than the earlier one had been. But of course, Old Man Wu was probably arthritic enough he didn’t need an escape plan that would stiffen his joints and incapacitate him for days. It felt like a light breeze blew across her face, and then she was blinking and trying to block out the glaring light of the subway station.
She was impressed. Maya hadn’t needed to say anything, and it’d taken her exactly where she needed to be. Maya stumbled into her vision a few seconds later.
“That’s a very well-designed portal,” Avi noted. “I … don’t think I know of another one like it.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Maya said matter-of-factly. “Old Man Wu designed it himself.”
“He must be very Talented and very skilled to pull that off,” Avi said, surprised.
“Don’t be fooled by his appearance and behavior,” Maya said. “He’s one of the most Talented people you’ll ever meet – just think, he’s managed to be Talented, precognitive, and clever enough to keep out of reach of any of the Families, despite how useful his precognition would be.”
And sure, just because someone could see the future didn’t meant they did it well. It was easy to get caught up in what you thought the future would be, and rely on it to be a certainty when it was not, or else to try so hard to avoid it that the actions you took actually brought about the future you tried to avoid.
It was natural for Old Man Wu to be a little odd, but he pulled the whole thing off very well, especially when it came to still remaining the master of his own fate and not submitting to any Family.
“I can take it from here,” Avi said, “you won’t need to walk me all the way back – subways are something I can do.”
“Don’t be silly,” Maya said. “Old Man Wu told me to take you home; I know better than to disobey him.”
Avi laughed, just as the train came and they stepped on.
“I notice you address him so much more respectfully when we’re there,” she observed.
“Of course,” Maya said. “I mean, would you refer to him as Old Man Wu in his presence?”
Avi hesitated. Normally, she wouldn’t have any compunction against doing so, since he gave off such a convincing air of the scruffy, ragamuffin ne’er-do-well family friend who was always playing practical jokes and being silly. But yet she’d still never done so in his presence, simply because her upbringing was so against showing any disrespect to elders – and when you were in his presence, he definitely gave off the air of being elder. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” Avi cocked her head. “How do your parents know him, anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” Maya shrugged. “They’ve known each other since before my parents left China, that’s for sure. He was the one who told them to go when they did – and good thing, too. They left right before the Families started meddling with Mundane politics.” Maya paused and thought about it. “I’m pretty sure they knew him before he came into his Talent, even.”
“That’s interesting,” Avi said. “What was he like? I can’t even imagine.”
“Well, he was born into a Mundane family,” Maya said wryly.
“That’s … almost unbelievable,” Avi blinked. She tried picturing the fey old man growing up a normal boy, and her imagination came up short.
“Well, a Mundane family, but not a normal one,” Maya corrected. “I think his family did fortune-telling, until that no longer became politically advisable. Around about that time, he started developing his Talent. I think that might be why he was so interested in delving into precognition later on.”
“It’s unusual for a self-trained Talent, and a precognitive to boot, to become so powerful,” Avi mused.
“There’s your Family bias showing through,” Maya said wryly.
“What?”
“You know there are plenty of powerful Talents outside of vaunted Family lineages,” Maya said patiently.
“Yes, of course I know that,” Avi protested. “Iain. Merlin. Zhang Fei and Guan Yu.”
“I mean besides famous historical figures,” Maya said, arching an eyebrow. “Hell, even in my family, three of my grandparents are mundane and the last is a Dud.” Even as she made her point, Maya’s posture unconsciously relaxed. As she grew less stiff, Avi could almost see her transform from the aloof assassin persona she’d adopted to the girl she’d once found so charming. Still not an emotional person, sure, but passionate about what mattered to her.
“Oh,” Avi said. “I didn’t know that.
“We live in America, Avi. That’s the country of self-made Families. Stories like your parents’, lineages like your Family’s, are the exception, not the rule.”
“I know that!” Avi repeated. “But you can’t deny that it’s harder for an untrained, Mundane-raised Talent to recognize and accept their powers, much less get proper training.”
“That’s why we have Seekers and Saturday Schools in place,” Maya said. “Learning to accept your Talent is really not all that much more difficult than emigrating to a new country to establish a Family.”
“Touché,” Avi laughed. “You know, it’s strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“You mention the difficult in emigrating and … it’s just that I keep on hearing everyone talk about these people who are apparently my mom and dad, but they sound so different.”
“What do you mean?” Maya asked.
“I mean, apparently Mom used to duel people all the time and flouted convention to marry Dad. And Dad apparently defied his Family in Hong Kong to marry someone from the mainland and start his own Family. They sound so … dashing and adventurous,” Avi said.
“Well, starting their own Family is a new country is certainly an adventure.” Maya’s parents, for example, had also started new lives in a new country, but they hadn’t had the power at their fingertips or the ambition in their minds’-eye to start their own Family. Or perhaps they had all that, but just knew it to be more work than it was worth. “You need courage, ambition, and vision to pull it off.”
“You mean, you need arrogance,” Avi said wryly. She quieted, though, and thought back to her original point. “It’s just so … different from the Mom and Dad I know. Mom, for example – she’s terrified of everything I do. It just about gave her apoplexy when I first suggested the idea of living on my own in Beijing. It’s the farthest I’ve been from home, for the longest time. She didn’t even like that I went to a university two hours away.” Avi leaned back.
“You have to admit, that’s out-of-character in the generally close-knit Talented community, and it’s especially out-of-character when you come from a Family.”
“But apparently, she was getting into duels and doing all sorts of dangerous things? I don’t know, doesn’t sound like her. I couldn’t possibly imagine her doing anything so risky.” Maya looked like she was about to comment, but held her tongue. “As for Dad … he doesn’t understand anything about me. You know, normal parents are excited when their kids want to be a doctor.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve already established that you’re not normal,” Maya said wryly. “So it stands to reason your parents wouldn’t be.”
“I mean, of all the paths available to me, that really is the best one. And he just can’t seem to understand that me making it in the mundane world could be so useful to our Family. It’s the only way I can be useful to our Family! But he just doesn’t see. How could he have the vision to start a new Family, and not the vision to see this?” It had been a long, long time since she’d rehashed this complaint with anyone who wasn’t Family, and just hearing the worlds out loud frustrated her.
Maya was calm with her reply, however. “Your parents were rebels and defied convention, but all in the Talented world. Your mother started duels and took risks, and if you did the same things she did when she was your age, she probably wouldn’t worry so much. She doesn’t know much about the unTalented world, though, so the idea of you out here alone terrifies her because it’s something she couldn’t do. As for your Dad … he had all kinds of ambitions, but they were Talented ambitions. He doesn’t understand how the mundane world works, so he doesn’t understand your mundane ambitions. Your parents were both trendsetters, but you are setting a new type of trend they know nothing about. And because they can’t help you, because they can’t protect you, that terrifies them.”
“I don’t need their protection!”
“They’re your parents. It doesn’t matter whether you need it or not, they’ll want to protect you until the day they die.”
“And I suppose your parents are protecting you, too?” Avi said sharply, then immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry,” she rushed out. “I’m just …”
“No, fair question,” Maya said. “I’m going on about your parents, as if I know them, when my own parents haven’t talked to me in years. But Avi, I know your parents are difficult and there’s a lot of pressure on you, but think of this: your parents have more or less accepted you despite you being a Dud. My parents, despite all the success I’ve had and the standards I lived up to, won’t talk to me because of who I fuck.”
Avi smiled a small smile, and nudged Maya’s shoulder with her own in consolation. “I guess you’re right,” Avi said, yawning a little from the long day.
They sat in companionable silence for a little while longer, the unsaid conversation as important as their words exchanged had been. Without meaning to, she leaned against Maya slightly and drifted off. The next thing she knew, Maya was shaking her awake.
“We’re at your station,” Maya said gently.
Avi shook herself awake and they both left the train and searched for the right exit. “Are you really going to walk me to my apartment?” she asked Maya incredulously as Maya followed her out the subway station.
“But of course,” Maya smiled. “It’s only common courtesy to walk a lady home after a date.”
“Oh,” Avi rolled her eyes. “This is a date now, is it?” But she didn’t object as Maya trailed behind her out of the station, down the street, up the stairs. Maya really did walk to her front porch, and stood there, waiting for her to open the door. When Avi had it unlocked, she leaned back against it and looked up at Maya. “So, I’m here. And safe. No need to worry.”
She ended her statement on a huskier note than she’d intended. Suddenly, it seemed that Maya was standing too close, that staring into her eyes was too personal, that Maya’s fingers on her elbow were molten hot to the touch. She was holding her breath without meaning to, tilting her face upwards to Maya, suddenly wondering if Maya kissed the same way she used to.
Maya, too, was not moving, her eyes deep with meaning, her lips parting as she breathed, her entire body poised, on edge.
And then a door slammed down the hallway, and the two sprang apart.
“I … should get going,” Maya said.
“Yes,” Avi said stupidly. And she quickly turned around, opened the door, and stepped inside. “Um, bye,” she said to Maya, feeling foolish.
Maya just nodded, and turned and left. Avi walked her walk down the hallway, until between one step and the next, her form shimmered and disappeared.