by kubasik
But Neden. "There's someone I must rescue."
"Others can do that. Your life is over."
"I have to do it."
"You can't."
"And Kyrethe. She's alone—I ..."
"I know. She will die there. Or not. It is no longer your concern."
Her words were true, and the truth struck me powerfully. They weren't my concern. I did not have to do anything. To care. Yet I did. I wanted to get back to them. To help.
She studied my face. "You aren't willing to accept that, are you?"
"No. I can't. I mean—I can. I just don't want to. I'm choosing not to."
She smiled at that. "Interesting. Why did you kill yourself then?"
"I told you. A mistake."
"A dramatic mistake."
"I'm a dramatic person."
She laughed. "I don't give up the dead lightly. I so want you all near me. But sometimes, if someone can help me understand, I'll give them a second chance at life."
"Yes," I begged.
"Then tell me. Why do some people persevere through adversity, and others become swallowed up by it? Why did you surrender your will to the Therans, and your wife bend her entire being to the act of escaping? Why did you survive for sixty years, despite all the horrible things done to you and all the guilt you suffered for the horrible things you did to others, only for you to one day decide to remove yourself from a life in a strange impulse?"
The questions were so big they made me step back. In my mind there was only a black void. I could not, for the life of me, think of even how to approach the question.
"I don't ... ," I began, then realized the truth would not serve me well now. "I need time."
“Time you have plenty of," said Death. And with that she vanished.
6
She took the table, the chairs, the massive urns with the fires. She took everything but the darkness. The abrupt departure startled me terribly, and for a while I simply stood, waiting for some new surprise. But when nothing happened, I settled to the floor and tried to figure out Death's mystery.
I never did.
I thought of the two dwarfs—one happy, one miserable. The happy dwarf pulled himself out of his misery when he raised his hammer high. Why?
I thought of my mother, trying to make everyone perfect because she wasn't. She sacrificed me to her fears of the Horror, rather than confronting the beast itself. Why?
I thought of Releana, who may have sometimes lacked hope when we sought you and Torran, but her perseverance never failed. Why?
Kyrethe in the tower, alive after all these years, scratching out her story in stone. Waiting for her life to turn. Why?
What allows two people from almost the same background to be faced with similar circumstances— painful, harsh circumstances—and one to overcome the circumstances, and the other to wallow in misery?
Theories popped into my head, one after another.
The Passions gave us unexpected impulses. But we called on the Passions. They could not give what we did not already have.
Some souls were just different than others. But that would not explain what was different about the souls, and that I could not figure out.
Some days were worse than others. But depressions sometimes lasted years. Why did some end and others linger on?
I hadn't a clue.
I waited a long time in the darkness, thinking and thinking until I could think no more.
Why do some people persevere and others become overwhelmed? I still do not know.
Death finally returned, and I was glad, for I had become frustrated and wanted only to seal my fate.
"What can you tell me about mortals and my question?" she said.
“I have nothing to add. It is as much a mystery to me as to you."
"Strange how mortals always say that. I'm Death, not like you people at all. I understand that mortals will be difficult for me to comprehend." She smiled. "But that you are still a mystery to yourselves. Despite all of your trade and the cities you build and your magic—you still don't know who you are."
"Will you please let me go?"
"Why do you want to leave me?"
She said it with such sincere concern that I didn't know how to answer at first. But neither could I stand the idea of writing my story again and again. I said so.
"But it is your story," countered Death. "Revel in it."
"Really, I can't. I've lived it. If I'm going to write something for the rest of my life, it's got to be something different."
"No, J'role. This is the life you made for yourself. This is the story you'll write."
I didn't think to argue that some of my life had been handed to me by my parents. I felt doomed. Then I remembered what I'd overheard about Mordom's plan. I asked, "Is it true that when enough blood is spilled in the lands around your sea, you will be released?"
"I have heard as much, but I do not truly know."
"But it might be true."
"Yes. It might be."
"And if you are one day released?"
"I will claim people more often. Resurrections will be impossible. I will gather more and more stories, and I will keep those stories here."
These words disquieted me, but I made my proposal anyway. "The man I mentioned before, who was raised from the dead, Mordom—" She smiled ruefully, nodded. "He has a plan to prevent a war from taking place in Barsaive. He plans to resolve a conflict between Thera and Throal peacefully, through guile and deception." Death was interested, and leaned toward me. "If I were to, stop him, the conflict would continue, and it would most likely lead to violence."
She thought for a moment, then walked around her desk and sat down. "J'role, this isn't like you. Your violence comes unexpectedly. Helping me become free? That requires both premeditation and the acceptance that you might soon be responsible for countless lives being cut short."
"Only if the conflict then leads to violence."
"Which, knowing mortals, it most likely will."
"It's a risk I'm willing to take." I surprised myself when I said this. Backed into a corner, I was willing to try to prevent Mordom's plan at the risk of releasing Death.
"No guilt?"
"It's not just for me. I don't want Mordom to complete his plan. I don't want him to hurt the boy. I don't want him to control Throal."
"But it is for you. You're asking me to let you go. My question to you is, why should I?
Someone else may stop this Mordom. Or countless other things could go wrong. Why should I release you to handle this?"
"Because," I said slowly, the response growing firmer in my head as I formed the words,
"if you let me go back, with such a firm goal, when I return, as I undoubtedly someday will, the story I write might well reveal something about the nature of your question.
Certainly I've reached a very low state. If I fail, and cannot transcend myself, then we'll know about the power of failure. But if I succeed, surely something can be gleaned as to why some people move on with their lives."
A smile, pleased and coy, formed on her lovely face. "You're very good. I wish you well, and I hope your actions make the blood of Barsaive flow freely." She waved her hand.
All of my tablets vanished from the table save one. She picked it up and handed it to me.
"Destroy it, and you are free."
"Where will I be when I'm ..."
"Resurrected?"
"Yes"
"Somewhere in time and space near the point in time and space of your death. It is imprecise. Mortals who raise the dead call that person to them. But when you destroy the tablet, you destroy the story. The ending no longer exists."
"Minutes from the time I died? Weeks?"
"Anything. Near."
"I could end up standing on your sea and die again instantly."
She smiled. I knew immediately that she had already considered that option. "But at least you'll have tried.”
"That would make it a new story, wouldn't i
t?”
"Oh, yes."
I raised the tablet. Death looked at me, eyes sad. I did not want to disappoint her. I did not want to disappoint myself. What if I went back to my life, and things remained the same? What if they became worse? Fear crept along my strength, tickling it gently, distracting it. I had already made a mess of my life. Why did I think I could do it better now?
I met Death's eyes. She loved me, I could see it so clearly. For her, I was a fascinating person with a fascinating life. She loved people. She did not dismiss me in the face of all others who had lived and died. Suddenly I knew that whatever might come, my life, my narrative, did matter. I mattered. Death, I realized, looked at me with the eyes I wished my mother had possessed. She had given me something my mother never had. A sense of worth.
I dashed my life's story to the ground.
7
Up through molten rock. Fiery liquid flowed around me, burned with exquisite heat. It melted my flesh, burning off one layer at a time. Everything I'd loved about pain came to me, pleasing me. I'd grown comfortable with it over the years, and it reminded me I was alive. It was what I knew.
But soon the heat and pain grew too much for me to bear No longer controllable—like wounds I inflicted on myself, or the bites I had asked for from Releana, knowing she would only go so far. The heat penetrated deeper than my flesh, into the center of my being. The source of my life, my soul, was scorched by the terrible, fiery blast. The molten rock poured into me. I had never realized how pain of the flesh meant nothing against pain of the soul. The agony of my life coursed through me, not as a dull ache that met me each day as I awoke, or the nagging longing for something better, a happiness now lost but remembered from better days. I remembered this:
A boy me, six years old. I sat inside my home, on the floor. Before me, a collection of wooden blocks my father had been given by his father, handed down through the generations in our kaer. The light was soft on my skin, light from glowing, warm white moss. My focus, on the blocks. I was building a city—what my father told me cities had looked like. Walls around them. Tall buildings. Streets. My small hands, still awkward with the large blocks, moved them carefully into place. Composing, somehow, without training, with an eye toward balance. Scale. I knew when things looked right. Changed them when they were off. The task of construction absorbed my thinking, time passed without notice. We knew we might leave the kaer soon. It might happen when I was still a child. I had dreams then of helping to rebuild the world. I would construct cities. Plan for the happiness of others. From the dreams of my mind and the minds of others, towers would be built. Reality would be formed from dreams. And through it all, the habit of pleasure. Building from a love of building.
I had not remembered the moment for years and years. In it, everything had been right. I was alive, being me, and that had been enough.
The loss of decades of my life to misery swept through me all at once. I screamed, molten rock gurgling through my throat. I wept—tears of blood rushed down my cheeks.
Everything I'd gotten used to, the compromises, one after another, accepting life as one endless disappointment so that I no longer felt the full surge of misery, suddenly came clean and fresh into my awareness. It washed away all my assumptions, my habits of misery. I became all too aware of my pain, and it seemed impossible that I should live as I had.
I knew that I had to stop the pain. It was all over. I did not know how to do it, but the pain had to be healed. Getting by would no longer do. Death would not do. I needed to be healed. I wanted to live the promise of life.
I broke the surface of the molten rock. The bright light of day blinded me. And suddenly, I was alive.
I stood at the top of the stairs reading Kyrethe's story, the words she had carved into the wall:
Should I kill myself?
I was twenty when I came here. How old am I now?
Why do I still live?
How many years?
Everything was quiet. Though a moment ago it had been bright outside, now it was night.
The red light of Death's Sea spilled in through the windows, shining bright in the glass vials on the shelves. I pressed my fingers- to my chest. I could not believe I truly lived, that I had flesh on my bones. I smiled, a strange lightness overtaking me. Truly now I felt freedom for the first time in so many years.
The baby, Lochost, the Passion of freedom, appeared beside me, smiling. An inversion of the normal: a baby smiling proudly at an adult. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again." His voice was small and slight, like that of any child.
I reached out, taking him into my arms, his floating body coming easily into my embrace.
He was warm and comfortable against me. I thought of you and Torran and realized I'd never held you with such abandon. Freedom does not come from escaping the entanglement of other people's lives.
I cried for a moment, just a moment, and his small hands pressed up against my neck. His fingers curled slightly. Relief came to me in throbbing waves. Then he said, "J'role. You must hurry." It took a moment for the words to register. As I held him away from me, he said, "If you wish to retain your freedom, stop yourself now."
"Stop myself?"
He nodded.
I looked around the room. Something about it seemed familiar. Not just the place. The time.
I understood.
I raced down the stairs, leaving the child floating in the air, ancient concern on his small, smooth face.
8
I sat on the edge of the bed. Kyrethe's bed. My back to me. My fingers on Kyrethe's gray hair. This was not a Passion, as Raggok had appeared before me as me when I committed suicide. This was really me. It staggered my powers of comprehension. "It's very complicated.' Death had said, and so it was.
The scene was exactly as it had been—when? In my memory, some time ago, the night before I killed myself. But also now. It was happening now. At the base of the stairs I stood stunned, astounded by the sight. The red light of the lava caressed the coiled white sheets of the bed and canopy. Kyrethe slept peacefully, unaware of what I was doing. It was strange—stranger than I can ever express—seeing the events unfolding. The situation was mine. I'd already lived it. But now I was outside of it. I'd slipped out of myself.
"Stop!" I shouted at myself. Kyrethe, of course, did not stir, unaware of any sound in the room.
My double turned shocked to find me standing at the base of the stairs. I—he—stood.
Turned his head slightly. Examined me. Mouth open slightly.
And I examined him. His face shocked me. So dark, twisted. So much anger. A scowl etched in granite. Did I really look like that? Could I really have never noticed?
"Who are you?"he asked.
“You," I replied.
He Stepped toward me. "You're a Passion? As he walked closer, a shadow began forming from the wall behind -him seeping out- into the room. He was breathing quickly. I remembered breathing quickly the night I attacked Kyrethe.
"I'm you," I answered.
'No. You're not. You've an idiotic grin on your face."
I knew I was not smiling, but touched my mouth to be sure. No. I was not smiling. What did he see in me? I, said, "I'm you, and you've got to stop this madness."
"I don't know who you are—which Passion—but I'm turning my back on you. I'm not doing anything wrong. Just touching her." He stepped back to the bed. Sat down at the edge. Carefully picked up her hand. Gently kissed it.
"Leave her alone," I said firmly.
"Leave me be," he answered. "I have no need of you here." The shadow had worked its way up to him. It was as deep and dark as the dead sky of a cloud covered night. It was so palpable that I couldn't believe I had ever doubted its existence.
Taking a few cautious steps forward, I said, “I'm not a Passion. But you feel the thing beside you. You must. That's the Passion ruling you now."
He froze, aware of the thing beside him, but also unaware. I knew because he was me, and I'd lived my life getting
more and more used to that thing near me.
"Go away," he said to me, and took Kyrethe's hand and raked her nails lightly over his face.
My revulsion with myself the night I attacked Kyrethe had overwhelmed me. Had led to my suicide. But seeing it before me, played out, so disturbed me that my breathing stopped. That was me! For the first time there was no screen of pain between my actions and my thoughts. My hands began to tremble. Kyrethe was so helpless. She had no power. What had I thought I was doing? There was no sexual component to my actions at all. Nothing but power. Abusive, cowardly power. The perversity of my actions came clear to me—perhaps fully for the first time.
