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mean?” she asked in a hushed voice.
    “We are not sure. It is not the language of the Xi—or if it is, it is something more ancient than we can read. But you shall take it with you.”
    Taisin was surprised. “Me?”
    “Yes. It will be entrusted to you. It may be a talisman of some sort—to mark you as a proper guest of the Xi.”
    Taisin slid the chain around her neck, and when it touched her skin it was cold for only an instant, and then it felt as though she had always worn it. She cupped her hand around it in astonishment, and looked at her teacher. “It feels like it’s mine.”
    Sister Ailan’s brow wrinkled just slightly. “You must keep it safe, Taisin.”
    “I will.”
    Sister Ailan sat back in her chair, lifting her own teacup. As her right arm rose, the dark green silk of her robe’s wide sleeve fell back, exposing the sage’s mark on her forearm. Every sage who took the vows was given a mark just above her wrist: a stylized symbol slightly larger than a gold coin. Though it was tattooed in black ink, Taisin had always seen colors in it, as she did now in the lamplight—shadow colors, as indistinct and shifting as dusk over the sea.
    She had looked forward to receiving the sage’s mark on her own skin since she was a child, but remembering her vision, her face burned. “Teacher,” she began in a hesitant voice, “I must ask you something.” When she had first told Sister Ailan about her vision, she omitted the feelings that had been so upsetting, fearing they were a sign of weakness or inexperience. But they had come back to her again and again, and now she could not ignore them.
    Sister Ailan regarded her gravely. “Yes?”
    “In my vision, I felt something.” Taisin clutched the teacup with both hands, as if that might hide her self-consciousness, but she was afraid it was written plainly on her face.
    “What did you feel?”
    “I felt—I think that I”—she looked away, biting her lip, and finally she blurted it out quickly—“I think that I was in love with Kaede. In my vision. But that is—that can’t happen, can it? I want to be a sage, and I know that all sages take vows of—of celibacy. Does this mean that I—that I will never become a sage?”
    Sister Ailan heard the anxiety in Taisin’s voice. She answered carefully: “Your vision is not the same as a fortune foretold by a traveling mystic. It is not a prediction of the future, Taisin.”
    “No, but visions—the one I had—isn’t it a glimpse of the truth? A truth that exists already within the energies of the world? Everything I do—everything that Kaede does—will bring those energies into the form they took in my vision. Isn’t that what you taught me?”
    “You are thinking about this too analytically. Your vision is the truth, but it is not the future. It may be that you don’t yet understand what you saw.”
    Taisin put down the teacup, curling her fingers into fists. “Teacher, I want to be a sage more than anything I’ve ever wanted in this world. I don’t want to jeopardize that by falling in love with anyone.”
    Sister Ailan considered Taisin’s flushed face, her renitent posture. She asked, “How did it make you feel, this… love?”
    Taisin was taken aback by the question. “I—I have been trying to forget it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it can’t happen,” she said miserably. “It can’t. If Kaede comes on this journey—if my vision comes true—then—” She broke off, remembering the dreadful fear roiling in the pit of her stomach when she saw Kaede leaving the beach behind. At last she said, “I don’t want her to die.”
    Sister Ailan leaned forward and took Taisin’s hands in her own, curving her warm, dry fingers over Taisin’s fists. She looked into her student’s dark brown eyes. “Love is not what you fear, is it? You fear the loss of it.”
    Taisin’s eyes filled with tears; she was mortally embarrassed. She should not cry in front of her teacher. She wanted to pull