Overview
The Reed house smelled of other people's satisfaction. Jane knew this involuntarily. She has spent a decade building walls -- stone, grey, thick -- in her mind, layered and reinforced, maintained the way other people maintain their breathing. Constantly. Unconsciously. With the understanding that stopping would kill her.
Then John Reed throws a book at her head. The walls don't crack. They invert. She projects fifteen years of loneliness into his mind in a single second. He screams.
Gift
Jane's Gift is Psychic Heartcraft -- mind-reading, emotional projection, the construction and demolition of mental barriers. The most intimate and invasive form of Heartcraft.
The risk: absorbing others' pain, losing your own emotional identity.
At Thornwood
Rooted into Ironwood, where her tradition requires the discipline of barriers. She can read everyone's emotions while refusing to let anyone read hers. Her friendship with Alice is built on mutual recognition of dangerous intelligence. She speaks with no contractions, addresses people by full names. When she finally uses a first name, it means everything.
Notable
- Rooted into Ironwood Grove
- Companion: Moth, an ash moth that may not be an animal at all but a fragment of the Loom
- Has been at Thornwood longer than anyone realizes
- The only person who thinks the Loom might have preferences about its own survival