#5
“You shouldn’t have killed the Land you met in the woods that time.”
“No, I shouldn’t have.”
“But you learned. And you atoned. And you died for it.” I look at the Sky when I say this so he knows I’m talking about him. “Besides,” I say, “you saved the world.”
“I saved a world. There’s lotsa worlds. Even on this one here, there are lots and lots.”
“You ended a war. You defeated a bad man.”
“I can agree I did those things. But the price was high.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I guess it was.”
“But according to the Sky, I’m not special.”
I look at the Sky again. “He’s wrong about that.”
“How is he wrong?” Pop asks.
“Well, okay, so he means you weren’t somehow chosen by fate or destiny or anything like that. You were just a boy, born in a place you didn’t choose, faced with circumstances you didn’t expect, and you didn’t necessarily have to do the right things, but you did them anyway.”
Correct, the Sky says. The one word he’s contributed to the waking conversation so far.
“But he’s wrong. Your choices are what made you special. You kept trying to do the right thing. Even when it hurt. Even when it was awful. You kept trying. Most people don’t do that.”
“They don’t?”
“I sure don’t see them doing it. Not in the city. You see how people follow Burly, and Burly sure as shit ain’t trying to always do the right thing.”
“Language, please.”
“You swear more than I do.”
He grins. “You’re not supposed to hear that.”
“I’m saying he’s wrong that you’re not special.”
“And you’re saying it was my choices that made me special, if I ever was?”
“You honestly don’t think I was listening all those times you told us, ‘We are the choices we make?’ That’s all we are. We’re a series of choices and consequences, so make the best ones we can.”
He likes this. A lot. “So why did I make those choices?”
I shrug. “Because you’re you.”
“Yeah, but why am I me?”
“I dunno. Granddad and Cillian and your dog, I guess, and the town where you grew up.”
“Nearly every man in the town I grew up in chose differently than I did.”
“Then your heart. You knew loss and you didn’t look away from it. You saw it, and you decided no one should have to look at loss if they don’t ever have to.”
“We all have to. One way or another.”
“But you tried to make it less. You tried to make people suffer less. I remember once you telling me that that’s the only religion that ever really counts. Making someone’s suffering less.”
“But again, why me?”
“I said. Your heart.”
“And where did my heart come from?”
“Nobody knows the answer to that. You just look for good ones, and you hold on to them, I guess. Like you did with Mom.”
“She’s got the best heart, that’s for sure.”
“And she did with you.”
“You’ve got a good heart, too, Max.”
I don’t answer this right away. It’s the kind of thing parents say to their kids a lot, and who knows what it really means? I always think they’re just bragging to themselves about how nice their kids turned out.
“My heart isn’t good,” I say. “It’s just normal.”
Is that what the dreams are telling you? the Sky asks.
“You know about the dreams?”
He nods.
“Then you know what they’re telling me.”
“They’re telling you lies, Max,” Pop says. “And they’re not even coming from you.”
“The facts are all about me.”
“Yeah, but it’s something else taking those facts and twisting them. Something”–he looks up–“from up there.”
“The Glyph?”
He nods. “The Sky’s story had the Glyph, and it had all the bad dreams. Just like you and the other kids are having now.”
Not Ben, I want to say, but I still don’t. I’m still too worried about my brother and it still feels too personal. Yeah, I know, but if you’re not having the dreams, there’s no way you can know. “What does that have to do with my heart?”
Pop leans closer to me. “You came with me on this trip.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You looked at the danger around you, and you came. You survived the rine attack. You survived the attack by the Land god that came out of that rock. You were with Granddad in his final moments.”
I’m not comfortable hearing all this. “So what?”
“You didn’t look away from loss, kiddo. That’s what. You chose to do these things.”
“I did what anyone else would do.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m not special.”
“But you do make special decisions.”
I look back and forth between him and the Sky. “What are you trying to tell me?”
That you are the sort of person who can change the world, the Sky says. If it ever falls in your hands.
“Why would it fall in my hands?”
“Why did it fall in mine?” Pop says.
My voice rises with tension. “Are you saying I have to change the world?”
“I hope not,” Pop says. “But we’re saying you might anyway.”
You are like your father, the Sky says.
“We’re not related, though,” I say, “by blood.”
That is only one measure of fatherhood. There are others.
“This feels like a lot of pressure,” I say.
“Then think of it this way,” Pop says. “It’s also one big roundabout way to say how proud I am of the way you’ve handled yourself and the decisions you’ve made.
Not just on this trip. You had to be brave enough to tell everyone you were someone else.
And that bravery has guided you to a good, good heart.
Guard it. Guard it with everything you’ve got.
Okay, kiddo? Because one day, maybe it will change the world. ”
And what can I say but “Okay”?