Doublesight Read Online Free

lead. You have many years in you. Watch the clan. Select a better candidate. It doesn't have to be family.”
    Oro smiled at her granddaughter and shook her hand. “What did Zora say to you?”
    “All those deaths,” she told Oro. “She repeated my thoughts back to me.” Zimp looked away and said, “Perhaps I was hearing things.”
    “Perhaps,” Oro said.
    In a few hours, the wagons halted. Zimp leaped from her seat and greeted Arren, who stopped promptly in front of her as though he knew his place. “I thought we'd stop, eat, and then cross the river just ahead,” he said.
    “You know best,” Zimp said looking up at his eyes. “Oro's resting.”
    “How is she faring?”
    “She's not that old,” Zimp snapped.
    “I meant nothing.”
    She nodded. “I know you didn't mean anything but concern for her. Well, she's doing fine. This route isn't the smoothest for any of us.”
    Arren continued to stand in front of Zimp.
    “Anything else?” she said.
    “It's allowable for us to camp here for a meal?” he said.
    Zimp raised her hands and opened her palms as if to say that it was his decision. “If you say it is,” she said.
    Arren grimaced, then turned on the balls of his feet and stepped away abruptly, off to announce the plan.
    “That was awkward and strained,” Oro said from behind Zimp.
    “Zora…”
    Oro shook her head. “Don't want to hear it.”
    As the sun passed slowly overhead, the clan gathered in a great circle. Oro dragged Zimp into the center of the circle with her. At a makeshift altar made from a wooden bench encircled in pine branches, Oro placed two candles. She lit one and spoke a prayer for the lost members of their clan. “The next realm,” she said, “has called to us. It has pulled many numbers from the lottery. It has selected the best and the worst for its own plan. The next realm has begun gathering together its own army for a battle and it needed our help.” Oro pointed for Zimp to light the other candle.
    With her hands shaking, Zimp poured some powder onto a twig. She cracked two flints together and the powder caught fire in a flash. She lifted the twig and lit the second candle. Before she could shake the twig's flame out, the candle snapped and spit sparkles into the air. Zimp jumped. Sparkle candles were for special purposes. What special purpose did Oro see in their lunchtime prayer?
    Oro opened her arms to include the wide circle of doublesight who sat around her. “We come into the circle in sorrow and in pride. We are saddened for our loss and joyous for their gain. Our friends. Our families. All who have moved on will be there to help us. Today we celebrate their lives and deaths.” She pinched each candle out by licking her fingertips and lightly squeezing each wick.
    The emotion of the clan had changed in that short time. They held to Oro's words, accepted them, acted on them. Zimp held to them, too. She helped Oro collect her candles and stand up to go back to the wagon. The altar would be taken care of.
    “A brief goodbye,” Oro said.
    “And a joyous dance,” Zimp added the saying of their clan whenever someone died. There was more to the saying: A tear and a laugh. One realm leads to the next. Life leads to life. An eternity in time. Infinite in distance. We all walk the same road homeward.
    Back at the wagon, still in thought, Zimp helped Oro return her sacred items under one of the benches. “It wasn't my place to light the candle,” she said.
    “It is your right,” Oro corrected.
    “I was not selected. Zora was.”
    “And Zora was needed elsewhere. Now, you are selected.”
    “Why?”
    Oro placed an arm around Zimp's waist. “No more questions. It is time to accept.”
    Zimp helped her grandmother to the side of the river where the clan met for a quick bite to eat. She lowered Oro onto a fallen tree trunk, then strolled farther down river before she sat down.
    Zimp watched the water slip past as though it were oblivious of the hundred or so