Chapter Ten #3
“You know,” I say slowly. “That may be the first time anybody ever asked me. Mostly, they just tell me what it is. What I am. And they’re almost always wrong.”
“Your mind is delicate. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Trick says.
Anger sears through me with a wave of heat, and I realize I’m finally and thoroughly fed up with being told what I am. What my mind is.
How I’m worthless.
“My mind isn’t delicate. And it certainly isn’t defective.
It just … needs a break from reality sometimes.
Like, when I reach a limit on how much stress or pain I can bear, my mind just …
hides away. Sometimes, I sink into a kind of gray fog, where the most menial tasks become almost impossible to complete. ”
“Valourian healers treat this condition with some success,” Kaelen says. “They use mental exercises and physical movement. Scholars have suggested that physical actions can influence mental processes.”
I sigh with no small amount of bitterness. “Yes. I’ve heard this, too. Because the first thing I want to do when my brain drags me into the bleakness of the gray fog is jump up and run around the library.”
“My people call Gray Mind ‘Sandstorm Mind.’ We know this illness,” Chitai says. “The healers offer an herb that grows at the Oasis of Aurora. It helps some who suffer, but not others.”
“I’ve read about it but have never been able to try it,” I tell her. “Though I’d love to, if given the chance.”
She nods. “We can make this happen.”
“And the Valourian mental exercises, too,” I admit, but less enthusiastically. “Unless they’re just another excuse for so-called scholars to condescend to me.”
Kaelen’s smile is a slash of teeth in the firelight. “I’ll make very sure they don’t.”
Chitai grins at him and then looks at me again. “The important thing is this: We don’t treat those with Sandstorm Mind any differently than we treat those who catch the bleeding fever or suffer snakebite. These are illnesses and injuries to be treated, not judgments of a person’s value.”
“If only Pyrrhans believed that,” I mutter.
“But what is it?” Andras asks again.
I blow out a breath. “Trying to describe Gray Mind … It’s like describing an ocean voyage to someone who has never seen water.”
Chitai furrows her brow. “What do you mean?”
I shake my head, frustrated by my inability to explain.
“First let me say that I can only speak for myself. Others experience the condition differently. But to me … Gray Mind is like a giant serpent made of lies. Always in the background, slinking around. Lurking. Lying in wait to strike, to spurt its venomous distortions into my mind. I’m not good enough.
I’m nothing. I’m alone and always will be.
There’s no hope for my future, so I shouldn’t bother trying. ”
“But you know that’s not true,” Elianna protests.
When I raise an eyebrow at her, she has the grace to flush. She knows what I’m thinking.
“You, yourself, chose me for this quest because I’m a nobody. A goddess’s amulet confirmed it,” I say bitterly. “How is it not true that I’m nothing?”
She starts to speak, but I cut her off. “It’s almost funny that you made me pose as a poisoner.
I’ve spent my entire life with Gray Mind dripping poison into my ears—into my heart and soul—one drop at a time.
Drip: you’re worthless. Drip: you’re a failure.
And if you think a single drop is nothing, consider that a river is made up of single drops, and rivers can cut channels through the hardest rock. ”
Suddenly, I can’t talk about this anymore.
“When I fall into the fog on this journey—and I will, I can almost guarantee it—you should know that I’ll have no idea how to pull myself out of it, other than to give it time.
Step by step, hour by hour, day by day, I have to wait until the fog lifts and I can finally see the light again.
It’s like that serpent’s poison is always working to choke any chance of joy out of my life. ”
When I stand, needing to escape them—needing to escape these too-painful revelations—Kaelen stands, too.
He crosses to me and holds out a hand, but I just stare down at it mutely, until he clenches his jaw.
Pulling back his hand, he shocks me by unbuttoning his shirt.
When he pulls it open, the scar that spans his chest glints silver in the firelight.
I gasp. “How could you survive that?”
His eyes are fierce. “I survived because my parents put themselves between my sister and me and the monsters. Our scars are the connective tissue between our frailties and our futures—the language of our stories written on our skin. We’re stronger for having them.
Rather than denying them, we should honor them as a record of the obstacles we have survived. ”
Andras stands as gracefully as he does everything, then turns to show me his back.
When he lifts one side of his shirt, I see three ridged, twisted scars.
“Arrows. The ones who shot them are dead now. Two of them died slowly.” He drops his shirt and turns to face me, and I almost flinch at the brutal expression on his face.
“The princeling is right. Be proud of the scars you survive.”
I shake my head when Chitai starts to stand, no doubt to show me scars of her own. “Yes. I appreciate what you’re all saying, and I’m glad you survived your wounds. But as you say, Lord Al’Sylvan, you killed the people who attacked you.”
I take a deep breath and look at each of them in turn. “Tell me. How do I kill my own mind?”
With that, I brush past Kaelen and hurry away from the fire, determined not to cry in front of them.
I was right. They can’t understand.
But a tiny part of my heart feels painfully grateful that they tried.