The Burning White (149 page)

“So I had this dream last night,” he said.

“You’re telling me about this now? We’re supposed to process out.”

“They’ll wait,” Dazen said. As if twenty thousand people weren’t watching. “So this dream . . . Orholam was talking to me and He said, He said that because I asked a boon for others and not for myself, that He wanted me to carry a new message for Him in a special way for all those wounded and left bereft by this war. He said with Him, sometimes the healing is fast and sometimes it’s slow, and oftentimes it’s not finished while we still live. But with Him, it’s never, ever partial.”

“That’s a good message, honey.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. His maimed hand.

First her expression flashed apologetic, then she looked down, confused. That was the hand whose fingers were illusions.

But the illusions had held.

“So yeah,” he said. “I kind of lied? I didn’t really forget my wedding gift to you. Orholam’s really?”

“
What!?
”

He locked his gaze with hers, and as if they were all alone, not in front of thousands, he pulled off his eye patch.

He’d thought this moment was going to be a gift for her, but instead he was awestruck anew by the unmerited favor he’d been shown. For he didn’t simply see his bride through the new eye as well as he would have seen her through the old eye he’d lost. He saw his bride through eyes made new. He saw her truly, lit by an unstinting compassionate light, and he knew her every strength and every fight and every wound as he had never known them before, and his heart swelled as if to cover every hurt and rejoice in every joy.

His feelings for her had smoldered for most of his life, banked patiently as if against his will, a stubborn affliction almost, a strong but by now unsurprising love—but now it surprised him, after all, as his love leapt up at seeing this divine creation before him, a jewel with more facets and color and depth than he’d ever imagined, and his love was suddenly burning white-hot, as when they were young, but with an abiding strength beneath it like old oak, tested and true.

Her eyes went wide with wonder and alight with such joy as he would have never dared hope for her.

Finally, he rejoined the stream of time, and took a breath, and realized it was his first breath in some time. And he squeezed her hand with the hand Orholam had made whole.

“Now, for the fun part,” he said, grinning reckless foolishness. His body felt so full of hope and light he couldn’t contain it. “I’m not sure how this is gonna go. Or
if
, honestly. You ready?” he asked.

She didn’t know what he was talking about, but her grip was as strong as iron and her face was radiant.

“Whatever it is . . . Hell yeah!” she said.

The high drapes opened and bathed them in Orholam’s light.

Dazen raised his hands and it was as if all the goodness that had been pouring into him through these days came bubbling out to bless everyone he loved here—and his love had grown a dozen times over—and with skill and brilliance and no small amount of audacity, never stopping to consider whether he could really do what he was about to attempt, without giving it a little test first just in case, but simply believing, as if he were Prism once more, about to dazzle the thousands with spectacle and wonder, he called the colors to him.

He called. And they came.

An hour before his second wedding, Kip looked in the full-length mirror on the wall of the small parlor and marveled: part of him supposed that most anyone could look presentable if they were worked on by the most tenacious hairdressers and personal stylists, and he certainly had been thrown upon the untender mercies of those predators as they dug for any shaking sliver of attractiveness to drag out of its den and into the light to be devoured—but instead his wonder was directed at how he himself saw that schlub.

Seeing himself now, somehow he felt like he saw better than he ever had.

The cosmetics, the clothes, the hair, the shaved and lotioned skin, the anointing oils, the posture, the dazzling bright colors and pleasing patterns: these were all the lampshades we settle over our light hoping to cast a hue and color others will find acceptable. We hope we’ll find it acceptable, too.

But others don’t even see that color, for they view us through their own lenses, filtering our already-filtered light in ways we can only guess. Nor do we see ourselves true, for we wear our own lenses, and sometimes the eye itself is dark, and how great the darkness!

Kip had been so certain for so long that there was nothing he could do to make himself acceptable that he’d hidden his light altogether. The mirror had been an enemy who, overwhelming in his might, had simply needed to be avoided. But the mirror is ever a liar: when you yourself cut out half the light by which you see, how can the mirror be anything but?

‘Let me see my skin, but with no pink tones.’ . . . ‘Oh, how awfully pale and ugly I am.’

We see others not as they are but as we see. We see ourselves not as we are but as we see—and as we are seen, for we each cast our light on each other, too. Surrounded by those who cast only brutal light, we see some truth, and sometimes necessary truth, but a lie if we think it all the truth.

Kip had been shedding filters and lampshades for the last few years now. Being stripped of drafting was different, though. It not only changed his sight, but it changed the very light he cast in the world. It certainly was changing how people saw him.

He’d gone to the Threshing Chamber immediately, hoping his loss might be temporary. But the testing stick had shown nothing. He’d kept it like a bad-luck charm: he was a mund.

Others had paid more in this war. Others had worse injuries. This burden wasn’t going to be easy, and yet . . . he felt hopeful. As one must wear clothing, one must wear shades—clothing itself is one of them!—one must present oneself to the world, and yet he felt that now he could bring more of his light to the world than ever before. He looked now into the mirror and felt, well,
approval
.

“Looking pretty good there, soldier,” he said. He straightened his back—not that these clothes let him slouch much—and then he flexed a bit.

Someone whistled behind him, and he felt the blood rush to his face. He spun.

It was Rea Siluz, in a shimmering burnous, a strand of pearls at her neck, and a bright galabaya down on her strong brown shoulders. She was literally radiant. Skin bright and luminous, eyes brighter still and mischievous. A smile like a current in a river where you thought, ‘That’s a nice smile,’ and then suddenly you were three leagues downstream wondering what had happened. Every part of her was beautiful and strong and potently feminine, and the sum was more than its parts.

“Wow! You’re just—wow!” Kip said. He suddenly understood why people had worshipped the immortals.

“I didn’t want to underdress for your big day. Still . . .” She seemed to dim a bit. A couple of smile lines appeared, and her teeth suddenly seemed less than perfectly straight, and her proportions shifted slightly. “Better?”

“Perfect for starting a riot,” Kip said.

She sniffed. “Here you said you loved a spectacle.” But she shifted still further, until she looked like the prettiest mother in the city rather than in the history of the world.

“You came,” he said, smiling broadly. His heart welled with appreciation. “I wasn’t exactly sure how to send you an invitation. The luxiats looked at me funny when I asked.”

“It’s a big day. Days of profound healing capture our attention as much as days of war.”

“It’s so good to see you again. But I have to admit, I’m still not really sure why I’m doing this. I’ m—well, look,” Kip said. He picked up the Threshing testing stick and showed its lack of colors to her. “I’m not even a drafter now. Not a satrap—oops, missed that bet, I guess. Not a king. Not, not anything. And don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty much delighted just to be alive, but I don’t really understand doing the whole big-spectacle-wedding thing.”

“It’s not really for you,” Rea Siluz said.

“And if you’re going to get married a second time, don’t you usually go more casual rather than more formal?” Kip asked. The entire island was celebrating the party of a century. “Seven days! Do you know I have to give
four
speeches, and that was with me
winning
the argument about how many I had to do!”

“Kip. It’s not for you.”

Kip knew it wasn’t only for Gavin and Karris, and certainly not for the much-lesser-known Kip and Tisis. It was a celebration of victory, and of life. It was as necessary as midwinter festivals amid the chill and death of every year. The people had mourned, and now was time to celebrate.

“So I had this question,” Kip said.

“About me running away when you faced Abaddon,” Rea said.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way,” Kip said. He paused, then admitted, “Out loud.”

She laughed. She’d apparently forgotten to tone down the beauty of that sound.

“You said once that you were less than he had been but more than he currently is. I kind of took that to mean you’re more powerful than Abaddon.”

“Kip, our power isn’t measured by numbers in a ledger.”

“But . . . I didn’t really misunderstand, did I?”

“No,” she admitted.

“And you don’t lie, do you?”

“Oh, my little Guile bulldog. Next you’re going to ask—”

“Why did he kick your ass?” Kip said.

“Why indeed?” she asked as if baffled.

Or as if teasing him.

Kip cocked his head as the possibility dawned on him. “You . . . you didn’t.”

She nodded.

“You
let
him win?” Kip asked, outraged.

“I prefer to put it that I wagered on you, Kip. Yes, I had the power to push him out of your world for a time, but only you could bring him fully into it and thereby make him vulnerable to being banished from this world forever.”

“Well . . . dung,” Kip said. “I mean, well done.”

“Good job, little one. Controlling that tongue will be harder for you than killing ‘gods’ ever was.”

“Hold on. You’re not going to leave now, are you? This feels like goodbye. Before this torture of a wedding, too. You got dressed up and everything!”

“There are . . . oddities to how mortal and immortal time overlap. Every moment I am with you is a moment I cannot be elsewhere in the other realms. My liege has few warriors as gifted as I.”

“Is that an answer, or a dodge?” Kip asked.

“A dodge,” Rea admitted happily. “But don’t worry, my tenacious Turtle-Bear, it is granted to me that I may come to you in your moments of deepest need. You see, Kip, you are the mirror in blood of my own deepest temptation.”

“Huh? That doesn’t sound good.”

“When the Thousand Worlds were young, many of my dear brothers and sisters fell. Much is given to us, as the first created of the Am. But we have no bodies, though we can filter our light such that we put on bodies for a time. But we don’t experience a body as an organizing principle of our selfhood, as you do. We are not given in marriage. We have no children. Thus, even as your kind wish to taste our powers, never realizing the costs therein, so our kind thirst for what you humans have that’s denied to us. The rebels among us promised us that we
could
have it all, that we could transcend the bounds laid out for us. And in some things, they did not lie, though they knew not all the truth, and spoke less. My great temptation was to be a mother, as you mortals experience such things. Motherhood is a true and good and beautiful thing. How could one impugn such a desire?! I thought. A true and good and beautiful thing—reserved for others? What an outrage! This I longed for: to be a demi-creator, to be all the source of sustenance and love to one utterly dependent on me. To experience the unquestioning love of a babe looking up from the breast, though unknowing, utterly dependent, utterly sated, utterly adoring? It is a true love, a mother’s. It is godly and good—but it is a love and gift and burden meant for mortals, not my kind. I was tempted to covetousness, because here was a love
denied
me. Who could deny me
love
? If He denied me this love, He must not love
me
. Was that not the work of a tyrant? Surely the Name above Names was holding out on me.

“Rather than apprehending my pain according to the Love I knew, I apprehended His love according to my pain. Thus misapprehending, my pain threatened to turn His no to anger and thence to rage and thence to rebellion.

“Each of the elohim were tempted thus, according to our station and our weakness. Some weren’t even close to rebelling. I was close, but ultimately did not. I made the right choice, though it has meant sacrifices. I volunteered for you, Kip, but you are so fit for me that I might as well have been assigned. You are . . . so much of what I love about mortals. And my Lord has allowed me to taste as much of human motherhood with you as I can bear. I will be here for parts of today, and I will be there at future moments of great joy for you, and I will be at your end, if it is at all possible.”

“What do you mean, as much as you can bear?” Kip asked. He was tearing up, and he wasn’t sure why.

She stopped as if gut-punched, and her glory dimmed palpably. But when she spoke, it was with a steady, quiet voice. “As human parents do, I got to taste what it means to fail my child.”

“What?” he whispered.

“In that closet . . .” she said, and a grief as potent as all her earlier glory flowed from her, palpably darkening the room.

She didn’t have to say another word. There could be nothing else she was referring to except that lightless, godforsaken closet where Lina had locked him and gone on her binge, blotting out her cares and worries and mind and recollection of her son. The closet where his mother had forgotten him. Abandoned him without food or water to the rats for three days while no one noticed. While no one cared to look for him.

And suddenly, Rea was weeping, too, and he knew that she could see that closet right now. He knew, instantly, that she could see it in the present moment, with an immediacy before her eyes that even he could no longer feel. She was seeing Kip screaming as the rats began biting him, as the blood poured down his back and as he threw himself against the walls, scratching and clawing for an escape that didn’t come. She could see his fear turn to terror, turn to despair, turn to madness. She was watching the pain that would shape and scar his entire life, even now as she spoke.