Chapter Twenty-Four Fenlia #3
‘I can’t,’ Zinnitzia whispers. ‘I can’t.
I told you already, Marina and I made a pact with the god to help put an end to the plague that would have killed everyone in Soleb and Alelune.
And part of that pact means that I cannot tell you the answer, Fen.
It is forbidden. Everything about who and what you are you have to find out for yourself.
I can put lessons in your way, barriers and roadblocks for you to overcome, but it is you who needs to decide what to do with them. No one else can do that for you.’
‘But you said you thought I’d do it – learn why my talent manifests differently to other Giver abilities. You said you thought I’d figure this out, whatever this is.’
‘Yes, I did. But now…’ Zinnitzia hesitates. She looks out towards the window. ‘I think it’s more and more likely that, in the end, Elician and Alest will be the ones to make that journey. To figure out the shape of their powers. Still…for all your deficits – you are not far behind.’
Fen hates her with everything she has. ‘I’ve never been good enough for you.’
‘Oh, Fen, you’ve always been good enough. You just…can’t see it.’ Zinnitzia hesitates again, then says, ‘Tell me something. Altas and Lio and this plague aside – what do you think would have happened if Elician had been sent to Kreuzfurt as a child? If his powers weren’t a secret?’
The question catches Fen off guard once more.
She shrugs on instinct, but when she thinks about it, all she can see is how Elician would have prospered, flourished, his potential growing beyond expected possibility.
It would not have taken Elician almost two decades to have the power to save all of Altas with his mind – he could have done it so much sooner.
And from there…how far could he have gone?
Perhaps his power could have matched the gods’.
She says as much too, imagining Elician alone healing all in the House of the Wanting day in and day out without so much as leaving the entrance hall, healing all the nation in the blink of an eye.
‘Possibly,’ Zinnitzia concedes. ‘But I wonder, also, if Elician is able to do so much now because he was free to develop at his own pace, free to go on his journey unimpeded by the rules and constraints others had for him – in the field – when you and others like you…were constrained by the lessons we were made to teach you.’
That did not make any sense. ‘Kreuzfurt trains Givers.’
‘Kreuzfurt trains Givers to work and serve Kreuzfurt. Elician trained himself and followed his own path. He was raising Lio from the dead as a child. He may not have had a natural affinity for instant resurrection as you did, but he honed that skill like a fine sword from the moment he realized what he could do. The deficits I mentioned aren’t your personal deficits, Fen.
’ She points towards the door. ‘Look what you have done, on your own, after only a short while training under Elena Morsen. Look at what you can understand.’
‘Are you saying Kreuzfurt is to blame? That it’s keeping our powers in check?’
‘I’m saying that the system was designed to ensure another outbreak like this did not occur, rather than allow and encourage Givers and Reapers to be free amongst the people, healing or killing at will.
Kreuzfurt ensures that both Givers and Reapers refrain from utilizing their abilities to their fullest because the moment they do… this happens.’
‘But none of that helps me with what you’ve decided I’m supposed to do now. You want me to teach these…these Givers, these Reapers, and none of this talk helps me to do that.’
‘No,’ Zinnitzia agrees. ‘It does not. But you must be the one to teach them anyway.’
‘They hate me. All of them hate me.’
‘And you may blame yourself for some of that. You rejected the Givers’ overtures of friendship when you first arrived in Kreuzfurt and disdained the Reapers for their very existence.
So yes, many do not like you and may never like you.
But you will need to work with them anyway.
That’s what it means to be a member of a society, and it is time you learned how to do that properly. ’
She is not wrong. Fen was hateful, furious, even cruel when she arrived in Kreuzfurt.
She loathed the idea of being a Giver, of being pulled away from the capital and the promise of being a true and proper princess.
She didn’t want to make friends or be a part of their community.
Not at first. It was only after the months went by, and she realized she would never have anything else, that she did try to engage with her fellow Givers.
But by then, none would have anything to do with her, preferring to openly mock her many failings.
She never tried again. As for the Reapers…she never gave them a chance.
‘Why would any of them listen to me?’ Fen asks, chest aching as the crushing weight of anxiety and despair presses down upon her.
This is her nightmare, her greatest fear: being responsible for healing others and holding lives in her hands.
She killed a girl once by failing to save her life.
How can she be held responsible for helping people now?
‘Because this is your talent, Your Highness. You can heal the dead. You’re the one who started this, who has studied this, who can do this naturally. You’re the one who needs to lead it.’
‘Why can’t you do it? You know how too.’
‘Because I have already learned the lesson, Fen, and this lesson isn’t for me. It has to be you.’
‘What lesson? People are dying!’
‘Yes. And still, there is a lesson.’ Zinnitzia releases Fen’s hand. She looks down at her, lips pressed tight. She takes a long deep breath in, lets it out. ‘Fen, if I could tell you the answer, I would. But I can’t.’
‘That’s a shit teaching method. How am I meant to learn anything if I don’t know what I’m meant to learn?’
‘No one knows who they’re meant to be when they’re growing up, Fen.
Even as an adult, the future is an unknown thing.
Discovering the mystery is only part of the puzzle.
The journey is the rest. You will understand, one day, and when you do, you’ll find that there are still questions left unanswered.
The parts of you that will make up the person you’ll be twenty or fifty years from now are still unfound.
When you find them, they will feel like home, but until your hand grasps them as your own, they are weightless and meaningless.
No one can give them to you. You must discover them on your own. ’
She looks sad, Fen thinks. Sad, and a little sorry. Zinnitzia has never once apologized for anything. She has never looked remorseful or uncertain. She has sneered and bellowed and hissed cruel words.
Now, she looks down at Fen and her eyes seem wet, her posture weary.
‘They will fight you and they will hate you, and they will have no reason to listen, but that too is part of the journey. And it is one they are on too, because they don’t know the answer either. And it’s why we’re all here, now, together.’
‘How will I know when I know the answer?’ Fen asks.
Zinnitzia’s smile is a sorrowful thing, mired with the weight of thousands of years of meddling in the affairs of Life and Death. ‘You’ll know because it will feel as though every unanswered question in your life has led to that moment of clarity, and nothing else will ever be the same again.’
Fen is not sure she wants to know what Zinnitzia insists she learn.
But, likewise, Fen doubts that she has a choice. The challenge is already upon them and there is no path around the test. She can only dive into its depths and hope she emerges on the other side.