Chapter 32 Silver #2
The emotions I find that are too dark, too far gone, I kill with my bare hands and resurrect into something new.
Amazingly, as we work, side by side, tiny sparks of light appear in the darkness, like starsprouts in the night. They glow green at first, then lighten to a buttery yellow, as clear and bright as the sunshine streaming through the door.
We continue like this for several minutes, together in the darkness, coaxing tiny points into light and celebrating each other’s successes, however small.
Then Mara appears in the doorway, framed by the light and squinting in at us.
“Something you’re doing is working!” she calls.
But she’s not looking directly at us and her voice is too loud for the proximity.
She must not be able to see us.
I pull Silver forward, toward the door, until I am able to grab Mara’s hand.
She shrieks and pulls back, true terror in her cry, and with my connection to Silver still strong, I can see fear billowing from her skin like there’s a forest fire blazing through her.
But I thrust my head out to reassure her.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just me. Come inside.” Mara’s expression sets into something hard and cold, and she tries to pull back, but I stop her with a gentle pressure on her wrist. “Be with me in the darkness this time, Mara,” I urge. “Let me be with you.”
Her face crumples, but even so she wraps her fingers around my hand and visibly forces herself to take one step toward me, fear still thick as fog. I could pull her in, but I wait, letting Mara take each deliberate step herself.
Until she’s past the threshold.
The second she crosses it, she doubles over with a scream, and the darkness around us rushes toward her. I catch her, and Silver hurries to hold her up as well, probably afraid the darkness will rip us all apart and Mara will be lost in it.
But the darkness doesn’t affect us the same way anymore. It doesn’t tear at us the way it tears at her. We can still see her, and it, and each other clearly. Which means we can hold her through it.
Before long she is standing next to us on her own strength, no longer gripped by the darkness.
Like it was before, her vulnerabilities are ripped open like a raw wound, displayed for us to see, and Silver drops his hand and steps away, offering privacy.
I lose the ability to see the wisps of fear, but even so, I am grateful for his consideration.
I take her other hand in mine as well and I hold on, as we truly see each other for the first time in years, wordlessly sharing similar memories from different perspectives.
Mara cries stoically, with quiet tears flowing across her scars, and I cry unabashedly, collapsing against her.
Because underneath all the hard memories, all the distance between us, all the ways in which we struggle to know how to support each another while trying to protect ourselves as well, there is love.
I feel her love for me and she feels my love for her, and in this moment that is all that matters.
I show her what we’ve been doing, how we’ve been trying to heal the magic, and after a few moments, Mara steps back, considering the darkness around her and how her own magic might affect it.
She creates boundaries within the shadows, sectioning off the parts that feed and bleed and darken, and she breaks the walls around the parts of the magic that long to be free. Light sparks beneath her efforts, too, and I smile, proud to see her shine.
With three of us working, the pinpricks of light appear faster, like a starry sky emerging from behind the clouds.
And then I reach a hand out the door again, and this time it’s Azele who takes it, like she was only waiting for the chance.
After enduring the consumption of the shadows, she uses her power to pluck up the deepest corners of the darkness, the ones Mara contained neatly in little boundaries, and turn them into ash that flutters harmlessly into the rest.
And the work carries on.
Silver
We continue this pattern, reaching back in invitation, pulling someone into their own personal darkness, holding them through it, and then showing them how to use the gifts the darkness gave them to make it brighter for everyone else.
Each and every person brave enough to enter the place that haunts them was also brave enough to look at their darkness directly, see it for what it is, and then use their power to heal instead of hurt.
It’s easier for some to figure out how to do this than others. But easy or not, everyone finds a way.
I am shocked when Kiar comes in, following some members of the Forest Realm she must know well.
After getting through the storm, she plants seeds that urge the magic to mend itself, and the vines on her chest don’t grow further when she does.
When she sticks her hand out the door, it’s Reltas who grabs it.
Only he tries to pull Kiar back out, to him.
They wrestle with each other, whispering harsh words. Kiar stands stubborn and firm, but Reltas fights with an unexpectedly vulnerable desperation. The flinty anger I’m used to seeing on his face is stripped bare at the prospect of Kiar going somewhere he can’t follow.
When he finally surrenders, more falling in than walking, it is with a cry of grief.
But he makes the choice nonetheless.
The storm he endures is intense, but Kiar is relentless in holding him through it, and when it passes and they stand emotionally exposed before each other, neither one speaks for a long, long time, their eyes locked and their arms trembling even as they grip each other hard.
I look away, focusing on my own work, and when I look back Reltas is summoning hands to bury the ashes that Azele left scattered on the ground. He and Kiar are no longer looking at each other, but their fingers are still entwined, a small gesture of intimacy in the middle of the dark.
Once their Prime led the way, the Forest Realm at large plunges inward, so many at a time that those already inside have to scramble to be there for all of them through the initial rage of the magic.
But once they’re through it, once they understand what it is that we’re doing, the atmosphere turns almost jovial, with so many sparks of light floating in the air that it feels like a holiday.
There’s laughter, the kind that comes on the other side of a tragedy, when you suddenly and unexpectedly realize that you’ve somehow made it through all right.
Not everyone enters. Prime Tibits never shows, nor does Prime Apea.
But I’m happy to at least see Prime Artro enter with the last of the Forest Realm citizens, his aged head bowed.
Mance holds his hand personally, as he braces against the darkness that has haunted him for decades upon decades.
He looks lighter once he’s finally through it.
Of course, we don’t heal the whole Citadel in one day.
It will take time. It will probably take generations to undo the darkness, because it took generations to build.
But we toil until we’re spent, and then we parade our daisy chain of people back out the door, spilling onto the sand and collapsing in exhausted relief.
When we turn around to see what we’ve done, there’s still a twisting body of magic crackling above us.
But the light has changed. The darkness at its center is not so deep. And the green mass at the top now boasts a gorgeous fringe of yellow and orange at its tips.
It reminds me of a spring leaf slowly changing color in the fall.