Linked

Thirty-three : Trembling

I sit on a hard, straight-backed plastic chair opposite my mother. My shoulders ache. I try not to blink as I stare into her eyes, motionless, until she dissolves into a blur and I'm forced to squeeze my eyes shut until they recover.

"Very good," my mother says, leaning over to squeeze my knee. "I'm sure I could feel a pressure. You must have been right on the verge."

I sigh, scrubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands. I wish I could practice Linking as a spider all day - it's a challenge, it keeps me occupied. But it also wears me down. The concentration alone leaves me close to a stupor after an hour or so. Though I am lucky. I haven't bled yet. Not like some of the others, who focus so hard for so long blood spills from their noses and they don't even move to wipe it off.

The strange, silent room Corin and I peered into, on our way back from the Medic Room that time? It is where I sit now. I have joined them. The room is small, and warm. Scattered with chairs and not much else. Wall-mounted lamps provide us with just enough light to see our mental targets. Mom's face is angular with shadow across from me. I hold her gaze again, fists clenched together in my lap. I try and narrow my focus to something simple - an image. I think about the sharp tips of the wind chime she made me. The gleam of metal, the ballerina spin as the trees pirouetted in the breeze. I imagine that same breeze pushing the image from my mind to hers. I push and push. My hair sticks to my forehead at the effort of it. She gives no indication she sees what I am trying to send. It is like trying to shout from a soundproof room.

Corin distracts me. The spell is broken, my mind straying to other thoughts. Unable to sleep last night, Corin confessed, once again, how worried he is about his mother. Obviously, this was a secret I already knew.

I should never have left her. He sighed into my mind. She would never have left me.

I turned to face him, centimetres apart on the pillow. I cupped his cheeks in my hands, prickly with shorn hair. "It's not your fault she isn't here."

"But if she isn't here," Corin whispered into the dark, "where is she?"

"I don't know." I thought for a moment. Then I let my hands slide from his cheeks. "But someone here might. If only one of each Linked pair travels to the refuge, maybe her Link is here instead."

"She was travelling here, though."

"It can't hurt to ask around."

So as I sit for hours, trying to intentionally fill other people's minds with my own thoughts, Corin makes use of the time asking others if they know of Umi. With no luck, he slumps into a chair beside me and buries himself in a book.

**

It takes two days for me to break through the wall of my mother's mind. She shoots to her feet, hands clasped at her chest.

"The wind chime!" She bites her lip, waiting for me to confirm. "The one I made for you, sweetheart?"

I nod, grinning. Others scattered around the small room turn to stare at us. I hear murmurs of She's done it? Already? Some have bloody cloths scrunched in their laps. Not me, though. Not a drop of crimson stains my cream shirt.

"You're a natural," Mom says. "Much better at it than I am."

The next challenge is to Link from further apart. To Corin's relief, we can busy ourselves with chores once more. I follow him around the refuge, sending images to my mother throughout the day. Somehow, I can feel her receiving them, responding with joy or amusement or annoyance. I send her simple pictures easily. A red velvet cupcake, iced with Mrs. Plum's signature swirl. The beach vista we jogged towards on the sim-run. Then, I try inserting memories. I have to squeeze my eyes shut to do this, and it gives me a jagged headache, but I manage. I send her a sweet moment where she perches on the edge of my bed, eyes sparkling, telling me a bedtime story. Her hands make fluid motions as she spins tales. That one is met with a warm feeling swirling in my mind, making me shiver. I send another memory - a silent dinner around the table, punctuated by the scrape of knives and forks. My father's dark eyes hard as he glances at my mother. His knuckles white around the knife. He applies just a bit too much pressure as he saws through a pork chop, and the plate cracks with a sharp snap. We all look at each other, frozen in time. That particular memory was shortly before my mother ran away. The reminder I have sent is met with a spiky feeling, like when you reach out and touch a thorn, despite knowing better.