You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
T
here is a difference, I think, between falling in battle and falling in life. I had fallen in both.
If Bondike had not pulled my head from the water, I would have died; if he had not dragged both myself and the Last Prince from the sea, that would have been the end to my story. He, for his gallant actions, received secondary medals of commendation. They celebrated him. But they celebrated me, more, for having fallen. For having dove from the cliffside with the Last Prince. For having fought him end-over-end as we plummeted toward the sea, he a man, then a bird, then a seal, then a man again.
Another man would have resented this. Bondike never did.
I fell again, of course, when I betrayed him as I did.
There would never be a recovery from that mistake. There is no paint among my people. There is no forgiveness for betrayal. As I finish her paint, I marvel at that contradiction: that we allow fallen warriors to rise, but betrayal is so unforgivable that those who perform it have their names struck from our history books, their tombstones torn down, their lineage slandered.
The paint is catching the firelight; and with it, the symbols come alive. They are nearly dancing on her skin, where they flicker and gleam. Thank you, she tells me, as in my own mind I wrestle with all the demons that tell me there is no way to recover from falling in life.
I hope, she goes on to add. You can find what you’re looking for.
I do not smile. I might have, even a month ago. It would be the polite thing to do; and the gesture would also be the ingenuine thing to do. I measure her with my eyes as she measures me; I take note of their strange duality, blue and amber. I have never seen anything quite like it. But she must be going; I know it before she even turns to leave and, when she does, I nod politely and turn away. I walk back into the festivities and firelight; past children playing with bowls of gemstones and adolescents painting one another in flowers and vines and leaves; a girl wears the sea on one flank and the forest on another. Something builds within me.
That woman, she is looking for someone, and someone is waiting to be found by her.
I am looking for someone who does not want to be found by me. I am looking to rewrite history. To open a chapter of a book I have read and read again.
There is a difference.
There is a difference, between falling in battle and falling in life.
