ii.
These names are the beginning of my story, yet they are not the story I had meant to tell. It is so with western stories: You tell from the most distant to the most recently felt, for this is the direction you believe time flows. I have heard time called a river, the men caught in the tides and drawn onward and onward, looking ahead in hopes of seeing what dangers the river has in store. I have heard it said, “You must face the future.”
This is not so with the Valdashi. With us, time flows the other way. To us, time is a great chariot we are bound to but that pulls us backward into the future as we gaze at the past. The charioteer will take us where he wills, and there is little hope in bargaining with him. All we can see is before us in the time gone by. We say it, “You must face what you have passed.”
We will face the future, too, but only once it has taken his brother’s name and is the future no longer. And when we are there, time enough will be given to face that past as well.
Valdashi tell many stories, but it is seldom true that we start with the distant past. Some children may say of my story so far, “You are speaking it badly! You must start with what happened soonest.” Once soonest is spoken, we may pull at its threads and find all that holds the distant past to the soon past, and so try to find where the story lives. So I will begin again as a Valdashi should begin.
There was a storm today the likes of which I have known only once before. The clouds came on so fast it was like great, unseen spiders were spinning a web across the sky. The day had been calm and dry, the air with little sweat in it, and I had not thought a storm would be upon us for a great while yet. But the temper of the sky turned black in a few beats alone.
There was a mighty storm in the City of Pilgrims called Kolmas, and the thunder was fury and screams. The earth itself seemed to tremble from the fear of it and the blackened sky cracked open again and again.
I let the storm quiet me. I dwelled with the God on the horizon. I thought of the days when I had been called Bird, for I clung to the crow’s nest as if it were my own home. I thought of the way the salted air beat my skin as the storm raged and I saw God cutting at the world, seen in Light and in Darkness, but only when they were each other’s only company.
I dwelled with that memory, of the storm that made me into an empty vessel and showed me how all is given and all can be taken away. Yet my mind slipped from the old story of my journey across the western ocean and I found myself thinking of a girl.
She was a stranger to me only seven cycles past, this girl dressed in white silk and tired leather. When strangers wish to travel alongside me, I do not turn them away. One can never be certain when one is traveling with unknown princes. So my life has taught me. Yet it was not merely this that called to me in this girl’s journey. She was like some wilting flower. Her clothes and knives all stained with the rust of old blood, her eyes painted under by shadows thick as oil, her thin frame scraped and torn. She told me her name was Lidahlia.
Was it pity that moved me to shield her as I did? Yet make no mistake of my words. I gave her no shield in the world of flesh and tears. Yet a part of me reached out to her, as if to shield her, for how helpless she felt. Yet was it pity?
I have traveled with many men in my days. I have known men with hearts like black birds and hearts like winter snow. I have known men who are pure as light and men who breathe such a dark fire that the ancient beasts within me feel they must respond. Yet never have I met a man who was both. The girl in white silk and tired leather was frail and strong. She seemed to me stronger because of her injuries. There was such a pure spirit within her, timid and gentle, that I have rarely seen its equal. Yet her hands were fast as serpents striking, and I have rarely seen a creature so built for ending life.
I am called Ceyan, for I long to see. I looked into her eyes and saw into her heart. Her eyes were fierce and innocent. Her heart was burning with two fires.
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