Chapter 14 Anything but What I’ve Become
Anything but What
I’ve Become
A
fter an eternity, the tears subside, as if I’ve cried myself dry. If I were a world, my inhabitants would die of thirst. I’m dying, my head limp against the wooden desk.
I only twitch when the boy’s voice curls through my mind like smoke.
“I cannot answer the question for you. It would be too easily dismissed. You must find the answer yourself. That is what a philosopher would say.”
With my head now facing the window, I don’t move for hours. I watch as the sun sets, as the sky turns from bright blue to navy to black.
I watch as the stars come out from hiding, twinkling in the dark.
For just a second, I see Ma, shining on me in this darkness.
I think of all the stories, all the people who were laid to rest in the sky.
All the constellations, all their gory stories and heartbreaks, and I think of her. She showed me all of them.
She must have known, in some way, that her death would follow the pattern of those stories: gory, egregious, gut-wrenching. But she went on anyway. She found the strength for it all.
I only wish for half of it, only a piece of her—but I will never get that if I give up now, when I’m so close to her.
My hands press firmly into the wooden desk as I force myself to rise. It feels like stepping back from the brink, like I am rising from death. It would be so easy to sit here and wither. But I don’t.
I rise.
The same way Ma did a million times.
Because I have something to do—whether I clear her name in my conscience alone or find justice before the masses, I have something to do.
I dare myself to open her desk drawers. Inside, pens, scattered pages, and small, worn books crowd together.
The papers are filled with philosophical scribbles, their words heavy with thought.
But when I touch them, the stack crumbles in my hands, disintegrating into a fine dust that slips through my fingers and vanishes before my eyes.
Beneath, leather-bound books lie waiting, their covers etched with the marks of time.
Each one is homemade. Journals upon journals, carefully hidden, Ma’s secrets pressed between the pages.
I look at the door to the study. Closed.
Opening the first journal, I flip through the pages, reverently touching the edge of each one. I peruse every word Ma penned. Soaking in the scribbled sentences, learning her mind in a way I never thought possible.
There’s nothing about a weapon, but Isa’s name comes up a few times, and I pass a picture of Ma at my age.
She looks so much like Terran and me.
She’s with a Folk in a home I recognize. The woman’s hair is dark brown, highlighted by the sun. I know this woman in the faintest of ways. A distant, foggy memory.
Beneath the photograph reads: Willow and Isa.
Isa. The memories return to me now. I don’t know how they hadn’t before. I heard Ma say that name a thousand times before. Ma and I would visit her when I was a child, and I’d play with Isa’s daughter, but we stopped visiting before I could grow.
Certainly, Ma had a connection to the woman taken by the Arcanes. It opens a million doors, connects very few pieces.
As I open the second journal, it feels like an overstepping of boundaries. By the third, it feels a little less intrusive. Ma writes about her parents a lot. They wanted her to be a gentle, tame, and kind Eunoia.
For her to be like all the rest.
A healer, a helper, always second—never best.
The entries grow in intensity.
They see me as something soft and gentle.
I can’t be a fighter; I have to be the one that heals the fighters.
I can’t have strength; I have to be the one propping up the strong.
I’ve held this anger in me for so long, it feels to be an eternity, but I’ve never been so aware of it as I am in this moment.
It floods out of me like a secret that needs to be shared.
I’m going to prove what I can do, that I’m strong first and a Eunoia second.
The further along I go the less these sound like Ma. The sentences get shorter, hastier.
Angrier.
With every page, she talks more about being a fighter. Proving herself. Ma, the philosopher. These are someone else’s journals—not the woman who raised me.
Then I find a particularly peculiar passage.
They’re back. The two little girls, Marbella and Annabetha, I think, were killed by “mysterious” means.
That means Arcane, even if no one is willing to say it.
I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but if there was ever a time to prove myself, this is it.
If I could kill one—or all—of them, no one could doubt me again.
I’m going to Isa tonight. Freyr is the one with the greatest chance against these creatures.
She wrote this a year before I was born.
She made the Weapon to defeat the Arcanes.
It all makes sense—she was doing something good, and the Arcanes took her friend as a result. The Royals killed her.
Ma might have been more volatile than I remembered, but it was for a good reason. She still wanted to help. She had to.
This is why I picked up my broken pieces—this is why I always have. There is more for me to do, more for me to prove.
I continue searching her journals, looking for something to tell me about the Weapon. Is this the birth of it?
There is nothing more. Ma continues to talk about proving, proving, proving herself.
Until…
We discovered something today. Something so… ahh! This is it, my path to acclamation.
I reach for the rest of the journals. The entries end around the time of my birth. I rip out the pages of the entries that matter, knowing I might need them, and shove them in my bag.
As I rise from Ma’s chair, I feel her hands on mine, then I feel them release me. As if she’s telling me I’m going the right way.
I look back once more at the dust-cluttered pages scattered on her desk and my tears that have soaked through, and I know I won’t be coming to this room again.
Behind me, I leave the door to the study open as I step into the hall, but instead of turning right to the staircase, I turn left, toward my room.
My silent steps do not echo through the wooden hall, but they feel weighted in my mind. Each step a compulsion. I am not choosing this, I am following a trail of the past.
I take a breath as I stand before the cedar door.
It still smells the same.
Like childhood.
I push it open.
To my surprise, not a thing has moved. The small bed with green sheets sits in the far corner. The porcupine Ma crocheted sits by my pillows, and the light shines in through the window the same way it had years ago.
Just like Ma’s study, my room is frozen in time.
I step back, tears pressing against the barrier, desperate to break free. But when I finally let them through, there’s nothing left—no more to spill, no more to cry out. Just emptiness.
I stand in silence at the precipice of the door.
The doors to the closet across from it sit open, slightly ajar, and my old, handmade clothes peek out. Clothing I made with Ma. Ma who dreamed of being a warrior. Ma who made a Weapon.
I find the strength to step inside, grabbing a cardigan from the closet—one of her hand-me-downs—and holding it like a teddy bear.
I figured my childhood was expunged. My family had four years to fix this room, to erase me, and they’ve done nothing.
They’ve preserved me the same way they preserved Ma.
Whispered words jolt through me: “You’re back.”
I drop the cardigan and turn, knowing it’s Pa before I see him.
“Yes,” I say, looking down, away from his smiling face. “It’s my inadequacy, showing up as such.”
“Such a silly thing to say,” he mutters. “Inadequacy. What are they teaching you at that school?” He smiles, but I remain sullen.
His words are a reminder of how far apart we are.
How far I am from the girl who lived in this room.
Pa clears his throat, dropping his smile. “We’re always happy to see you.”
But in my mind, Terran’s words follow: It will always be a falsehood.
I smile without teeth.
“You’ll be staying this time?”
Despite him asking, I don’t know if there is any answer other than, “Yes.” I pause. “For a meal. I have to get back for an assignment.”
“Of course.” Pa smiles and wraps his arm around my back.
I recoil at first, before settling into his embrace. His feelings are tricky, like a spider web that gets stuck on your fingers, and you have to pull and pull to get it off, but you never seem to be able to rid yourself of it entirely.
That’s how he blames me.
That’s how he loves me.
Yet he kept my room intact, as if he wanted to keep me intact, in some way, too.
We walk down to the dining room in silence. Dad doesn’t want to scare me away. He thinks that’s what he did the last time I came. I want to tell him that I was never running from him, but the words die in my throat.
I sit at the table, and he brings plate after plate of Eunoian dishes. Rowan berries, breads, forsagga cheeses. Pitchers of wines and teas. Nothing seems less appetizing.
The last time I ate a meal like this, Ma was alive.
There is no escaping her death here. It’s everywhere. In Visnatus, sometimes I get to remember her as she was.
Her skin not grayed.
Her eyes not glossed over.
Her legs attached to her hips.
Here, she’s just dead.
I understand Terran, his hatred for me. If our roles were reversed, I’m not sure I’d act differently. It makes me feel guilty for being here. Intruding on the little peace my family is managing to find.
But they kept my room.
Pa looks at me, and I smile—for him.
“It’s okay to feel,” he says.
I look away as my smile fades.
Don’t do that, I want to say. Don’t read my feelings the way I am forced to read yours.
I understand why others feel violated by me. It is a violation.
Pa sits beside me, reaching for my hand. His fingers never touch mine. He pulls his hand back, thinking better of it. I wish touching me felt easier, that it wasn’t so tangled in hesitation. Wasn’t something to think better of.