Chapter 55
I spend the rest of the day poring over the tapestries. I don’t know what I’m searching for—proof the Nomad loved me? More time with him that I’ve lost to faded memories? A way to weave him back into my story, my life?
But the more I pore over the stories, the more distant I feel from the version of myself in the tapestries, the more distant I feel from the Nomad.
It’s as if I’m watching from a window as this beautiful woman is swept off her feet by a mysterious stranger, wed to a man who loves her and supports her and makes her a mother of two beautiful little girls.
Meanwhile, I’m left alone, in a room full of lifetimes that don’t quite seem like they belong to me.
Eventually, Blaise comes to find me, a cup of tea in her hand. She sits down cross-legged next to me, takes a tapestry in her lap, and begins to run her fingers over it.
“Nox is my brother, isn’t he?” I say.
“How’d you know?” asks Blaise.
“Because you’re really accepting for a woman whose husband watches over another woman all day long.”
Blaise laughs, then nudges me in the elbow.
“Did I mention I like you? You know, for years Nox has talked up his sister. How adventurous, how wonderful you are. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t the tiniest gremlin of a thought in the back of my mind wondering what if you woke up and turned out to be absolutely wretched? Then what would I do?”
It’s my turn to laugh, but as soon as I hear the sound, it feels as if a knife is piercing my throat, and I bite back a sob.
Blaise leans over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Hey. What is it?”
It’s strange. My gut reaction, since I can’t get the words out through the sobs, is to tell her with my hands. But when Blaise looks down at my signs, her brow knits with confusion.
Finally, I’m able to choke out, “In my last life, the one before this one, my voice was taken away. It’s been years…”
Blaise frowns. “Who took it?”
I wave my hand. “Someone not worth mentioning.”
Blaise makes a noncommittal sound. “Not Farin then?”
“Is that what you know him by? The Nomad I mean?”
Blaise nods.
“Then no, not Farin.”
“Well, that’s a relief. That’s the other thing I’ve been worried about. Nox too. We had hoped that love had changed him. But there was always a chance…”
“That his love was more of an obsession?”
Blaise makes a conceding grimace.
“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought of that too, but…” I shake my head. “Stalkers don’t die over and over again to save the lives of their victims.”
“Well, if they did, there would probably be a better connotation to the title.”
I make an expression that’s supposed to be conceding.
We stare at the tapestries for a long while, until my tailbone is sore from bearing down on the marble flooring. But I can’t bring myself to move. You would think that after years of being practically a corpse, I would want nothing more than to stretch my legs.
But here I am. Still. A tapestry spread over my lap, imagining the weight of it is the Nomad’s head, sleeping soundly in a meadow somewhere.
I can see the vision as clearly as if it’s happened.
It occurs to me that it probably has.
“I thought he was hunting me down to kill me, you know,” I say.
“Since I was a child, I would have these dreams of him. Violent dreams. I thought they were visions of the future, and every time they would change, I would think it was because of the smallest thing I had done that day. Worn my hair differently. Taken a different path to the market. Something of that sort. I didn’t know they were memories.
Why do you think he didn’t tell me who he was? Who he was to me?”
I can’t help the anger that ripples inside of me. Who knows how our story might have ended had he simply told me the truth?
Blaise pauses, then uncrosses her legs and stands, walking over to the other side of the room.
When she returns, it’s with a tapestry she pulled down off the wall.
She rummages through it with her hands, then hands it to me, pointing to a specific spot.
“It’s difficult sometimes to ascertain what’s happening.
It’s not as if we have dialogue written out for us. But I think this is your answer.”
I hold the tapestry in my lap. Gaze upon the beautiful threads.
They make out the Nomad speaking to a golden-haired fae—no wings in this world.
In the next picture, they’re both in the same position, but behind them are a half dozen other versions of themselves, all the slightest bit different.
Some with short hair, some with long. Some kissing each other, some holding children, some with a blade at the other’s throat.
The first golden-haired girl looks around at the various versions of herself.
In the next frame, she’s holding a dagger, directing the Nomad to the door.
“So it didn’t work that time,” I say. “That was a different life.”
“That’s not the only tapestry that shows him telling you. And it’s certainly not the only one that shows it going poorly.”
Disappointment fills my gut. It’s a strange feeling, regretting something I don’t even remember. An action that was technically mine, but that I—this version of me—had no control over.
And I wonder how it would have gone had the Nomad told me this time. Would I have believed him? I feel as if I would have.
But maybe that’s the reason the other versions of myself kicked him out. Maybe they believed him too.
This land, this place with Nox and Blaise, as peaceful as it is—it still has the edges of a nightmare.
“Do you think he’s dead for good?” I ask.
Blaise looks at me for a long while. I don’t get the impression she’s the type to sugarcoat the truth.
“I think that’s most likely,” she says. “But we have rooms full of tapestries. They keep showing up in here. We’ve never caught the person who leaves them.
We’re always either gone or conveniently asleep when it happens. ”
“Sounds like a Fate,” I say.
“Yes, maybe,” says Blaise. “But my point is, we have lots of your tapestries to comb through, ones where he hasn’t appeared yet. Maybe we’ll find him.”
I nod.
Blaise reaches out and touches my hand. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“What will you do if we find him?”
It’s strange, being able to say the words. “I don’t know.”
She goes to leave, but I find her name escaping my lips, “Blaise?”
“Yes?”
“The person who took my voice—they needed it to bind a realm. I always wondered why they needed my voice specifically. Do you think it has something to do with”—I gesture to the room and nothing in particular—“all of this?”
“Hm. Nox is probably the better person to ask. But I know he has his theories. One of them is that while your body remained in this world, there were aspects of you that could potentially act as a tether.”
“A binding,” I say, almost to myself. I can’t help but think back to the night the Nomad brought my hand over Venus’s painting, the way I could feel the magic emanating off of it when the others couldn’t.
Another side effect of being woven into multiple places, I suppose.
But then I remember another question I have. “What does Zora mean?”
Blaise smiles. “It means light.”