49. Self and Identity
I didn’t remember the memorial, and it had only just ended.
Fold-out chairs scraped against the wooden planks of Keel Watch Harbor’s main dock as Gams’s friends and neighbors stood.
They took turns stepping up to the edge of the dock where I’d stood just minutes earlier with Mom to pour Gams’s ashes into the bay, and one by one they dropped flowers into the water.
They turned away to hug Mom, and then they’d hesitate as they passed me next.
I could see them in my periphery, their eyes searching for invitation to offer me comfort, but I kept my face towards the sunset so they each exited without bothering me.
Most of them had regained their Keel Watch memories.
Gams had given porcelain chickens to every one of them when they’d lived here as Nightmares.
The Skal she had baked into the glaze was what helped them return to their Keldori memories every morning when they were summoned.
So when Mom, Sorcha, and Aoife had helped them find their homes when they’d arrived, the chickens, gifted to them over the years by Gams and waiting on shelves and windowsills, revived the Keldorian lives they’d forgotten.
The only one who still hadn’t touched his chickens was Ciarán. I probably had something to do with it and his lingering resentment for the most Liam parts of himself.
He now helped Iseult and Orla carry chairs back down the length of the dock, cleaning up the memorial that was already foggy in my memory.
“Wren,” Orla prodded when my chair was the only seat remaining.
I stood, and she had enough sense to take it without saying anything more.
I’d done all this to save Gams. Now she was ashes under the dock.
Sorcha and Aoife—though maybe I was supposed to call them Sarah and Gladys again now that they were back in Keel Watch—were the final two to drop their flowers in the water. As the only two Lucid Nightmares in Keel Watch, they’d been Gams’s closest friends.
I wondered if Gams allowed her Nightmare self to age just to keep up with them. She probably thought them so beautiful. It was no wonder her ideal self became gray and wrinkled as they did the same.
Aoife lingered last, clinging to Mom, perhaps pretending she was hugging her friend one final time.
Sorcha waited next to me. She was harder to ignore than the others who’d thought better than to bother me with forced comfort, and when she remained resolutely in my periphery, I deflated and turned to face her.
The sunset cast deep shadows in the wrinkles of her cheeks, and she held her chin high.
“Ethel would be proud of you,” she said. It was probably the nicest thing she’d ever said to me, but a strange, burning feeling that I couldn’t name rose in my gut and throat.
“Don’t.” How many times had those empty words been said to me in the last week?
“Why not?” Sorcha snapped. “It’s true.”
“It doesn’t matter if she would be proud. She’s dead.” Anger. That’s what this feeling was. I’d almost forgotten its bite in the midst of my grief.
“She is dead. Super dead.” Sorcha shrugged but her eyes glistened. “And she’d be proud. It won’t kill you to take the compliment, dear, and if it does we’ve already got all things for a memorial. Though it would admittedly be a headache to set them all out again.”
I stared at Sorcha, appalled by her words but also somehow relieved. She was a foul woman, but she was honest. If she said Gams would be proud of me, then perhaps it wasn’t the empty placation I thought it was.
“Gams would be proud of me,” I finally conceded. “I know that because she was my grandmother and that was her job.”
“And she took that job very seriously,” Sorcha said.
“But Gams isn’t who I’m worried about.”
Sorcha’s eyes roved from me to the line of shops on the street behind me, and her brows knit in understanding. “You’re worried about Darragh’s Watch?”
“I’m worried about everyone.” My voice rasped over the admission, but I was too tired to cry anymore.
“Gams was everything. She did everything. She built and maintained Keel Watch Harbor. She gave everyone here a second home where they could be happy and warm, and she loved every single one of them with everything she was. She did so much. Now she’s gone, but I’m still here, and what if that’s what everyone wants from me too? How am I supposed to do all that?”
Sorcha regarded me with a hardened gaze and her shoulders rose and fell in a stiff movement as she sighed heavy through her nose. Her mouth pressed into a thin line, and she bobbed a single nod before speaking.
“I have observed that when women die, they are remembered for what they provided,” she said.
“The care and love they freely gave, how they built others up, what sacrifices they made for the good of their loved ones. It’s all good and well, but a bit reductive.
Do we miss the woman, or do we miss how willing she was to break off bits of herself to give to those around her?
And it’s tricky with Ethel, because she deserves credit for all that more than anyone.
But do not forget the woman she was, Wren.
Everything she gave us was merely a byproduct of her character.
Do not forget her strength, her courage, or her spirit.
That is and should be her legacy. So do not worry about being a worthy successor. You already are.”
I nodded. It was the only response I could afford with how tightly I was clamping my jaw shut in a bid to keep from breaking.
Sorcha nodded back approvingly, and when I moved forward as if to hug her, she spared us both by raising a hand between us.
“Do not feel obligated to hug me. Neither of us wants that.”
My laugh sounded more like a strangled sob. I took a moment to gather myself, and when I was calm enough, I admitted, “You’re surprisingly insightful for an old hag, Sorcha.”
She beamed with pride, though I wasn’t sure if it was for herself or me.
“I know. Your grandmother hated it.” She turned towards Mom as Aoife joined her, ready to walk up to the memorial reception together.
“Eliza? Game Night is Thursday. Five o’clock up at the library.
You’re the newest player, so you’re on snack duty. ”
Mom’s eyebrows rose in awkward surprise. “Oh, that’s too kind of you, Sorcha, but—”
“It wasn’t an invitation. You’ll be there. We’re down a member without Ethel and what’s the point of Game Night if not to humble a Saergrim at backgammon?”
Mom gave in with a smile and small bow of her head. “Five o’clock. Friday.”
“Nothing with raisins,” Aoife warned. “Sorcha will complain for weeks.”
Sorcha reached out to gently squeeze my hand in hers as she and Aoife passed back down the dock.
Mom sighed behind me, and the sound of her shoes falling against the wooden planks pulled my attention to her.
She sat at the edge of the dock with her feet in the water, watching the sunset.
They were always spectacular this time of year, this one particularly so, painting the sky in a wash of pinks, oranges, and deep reds, but it felt wasted on such a solemn occasion.
“We should’ve spent more time here,” Mom murmured. “I thought it was for the best, keeping you away from Keel Watch. The people here were all ghosts. I thought you’d be lonely.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, low and sad. My mother didn’t need the reminder that I’d grown up lonely anyway.
I kicked my shoes off next to hers, then lowered myself to sit beside her with my feet in the water. She put an arm around me, and I wished I were shorter or she taller so I could rest my head on her shoulder. I leaned against her the best I could.
“Did I do the right thing?” I whispered. “Keeping the Rift open?”
Mom sighed. “I don’t know yet. Your grandmother and the three Sovereigns did what they could to protect everyone when they exiled Magicians to Skalterra, but who’s to say what they did was right either?
And if it was the right thing for them to do, that doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing for us to do now, four hundred years later. What did you think of Skalterra?”
The question caught me off guard, and I thought for a moment on Ergoth, Ferrin, rotsbane, Tamora, and corrupt guards.
And then I thought of Davyn and his daughter sailing us to the Tortoise, the people of Willow’s Grave, the children playing on the docks of Riverstead, and all my friends that I would happily die and kill for.
“I think it was wonderful,” I said. “It had dangerous parts, but so does Keldori.”
“Then we have to hope that the better parts of both our worlds outweigh the dangerous ones.”
A new fear rose in my chest.
“But what if I wasn’t trying to do the right thing? What if I was being selfish? I didn’t want you to be sealed away. I kept it open because it was best for me, not because it was best for anyone else.”
The setting sun turned Mom’s cheeks orange, and her hair was like soft fire in the light. Her brow furrowed as she found her thoughts on the glowing horizon.
“The first night home from the hospital, I cried as you slept in my arms because I knew you’d never be that little again.
The day I dropped you off at school for the first time, I cried then too,” she said.
“Not because I was going to miss you or because I was worried, but because I knew that the baby girl who walked into that classroom would not be the same girl who walked out. You were only three but suddenly, you looked so old. It’s happened over and over for the last eighteen years.
That’s motherhood. At every milestone worth celebrating, we’re also grieving the versions of our children we’ll never get back. ”
“I don’t know what this has to do with the Rift,” I whispered.