Beyond the Horizon

6. Uncertainty

Nezumi clenched his jaw. He and Shion were making their careful way down a rocky slope toward a sleepy town. Picking the right footfalls and taking hold of the correct tree trunks and branches came second nature to Nezumi, so much so he didn't need to think about his path as he eased down. His mind was on a far thornier problem.

          When Nezumi concocted his plan to spirit Shion away and train him into a useful weapon against the Lab, he had been confident he could do it. When he promised Shion to teach him control, he was convinced he was telling the truth. He remembered the way his parents had counseled him when he was young, he had nearly fourteen years of experience with his own powers, and telepathy and telekinesis were both mental alignments. How different could they be?

          Very different.

          He had imagined telepathy as a cousin to telekinesis, but now he was beginning to see the flaw in his logic. Telepathy was all mental subtly. A press here, a push there. Thoughts and emotions ebbed and flowed like a river, and you had to have a feel for the depth of it and the strength of its current to know whether you could brave the waters. Once you had the scope of a person, you knew how much pressure was needed to divert their thoughts and feelings where you wanted them to go. It was fine-fingered work, so Nezumi had taken to using the visualization of a hand to keep his touches light and dexterous.

          But telekinesis was a different beast. Although rooted in the mind, it was linked entirely to the physical world. Shion wasn't dabbling in mood alteration or suggestion, he was manipulating solid matter and exerting his own will against gravity. In theory, it should be as easy to lift, throw, or move an object as it was to think about doing it, but if there were doubts or fears in one's mind about the act, then failure would be certain and catastrophic—as Nezumi learned time and again.

          Shion was a writhing pit of insecurities. He was so afraid of losing control it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nezumi wasn't sure how to school that out of him. He wasn't used to teaching someone who was afraid of what they could do. Hell, who was he kidding? He wasn't used to teaching anyone, period. Nezumi only knew how to deal with his own problems, and he held himself to a high standard—and it looked like that if he held Shion to that same standard, the other boy would crack under the pressure.

          Even now Shion looked close to a breakdown. His hair stuck up in the places he'd pulled at it and was damp with sweat at his forehead and the base of his neck. After a night of poor sleep and a full day of walking, his eyes were shadowed and his legs shaky. He'd barely said a word since their failure yesterday, which Nezumi knew, even from the limited amount of time he'd known Shion, meant he was severely demoralized. Shion weaved down the hillside behind Nezumi like a drunken wraith, so awkward and out of it that Nezumi expected him to go tumbling head over heels down the slope any second.

          Nezumi worried that if he did, Shion might not have the strength to pick himself back up.

          I need to change tactics.

          He wasn't sure if the problem with his first lesson was a result of his teaching skills, or if it lay with Shion—likely a combination of both—but it was obvious they couldn't carry on this way. If this was going to work, he needed to get Shion to calm down and listen and not be so goddamn anxious all the time.

          Nezumi might not know as much as he thought about teaching telekinetics control, but he did know people, and if you wanted someone to do something for you, you had to make them feel comfortable first. He couldn't fix Shion's mental turmoil without violating his trust, but he could remove the physical discomforts.

          They made it safely down the rocky slope and headed into town. Dusk was beginning to creep over the edges of the cobbled street. The buildings around them were quaint brickwork, but squat and tilted, as though the architect had built the first house at an accidental slant and just decided to go with it for the rest of the project. Nezumi tried not to stare too much at the buildings; they gave him an unsettling sense of vertigo.