HAWK DIDN’T KNOW what he was supposed to do. Even after Logan Tom was gone and he was alone in his prison and could think about it at length, he still didn’t know. Oh, he understood the nature of his reaction to the finger bones; that much of it was clear. Taking the bones from Logan Tom, closing them into his fist, and, most especially, feeling the press of them against the flesh of his palm had triggered a very unexpected awakening inside him. Where before he had not believed himself to be anything of what Logan Tom thought him, suddenly he discovered that he was all of it and much more.
His awakening came in the form of visions so sharp and hard-edged that he did not even think to question that they were real. They exploded in his mind like fireworks; they came to life in star-bursts.
The first was of a woman, tall and slender and athletic, her face instantly familiar. She had his green eyes, his build and angular features. He knew her instinctively, without having to be told, without a word having been spoken.
Nest Freemark. His mother.
The knowledge of it, the certainty, ripped through his doubts and left him breathless with realization. In his vision, she spoke to him of their shared relationship, of who he was and how he had come to be. He saw himself a boy in the company of another Knight of the Word, a man called John Ross. He was still the gypsy morph then, still transitioning out of the magic that had birthed him, still searching for his identity.
Then he was inside her, her unborn child, his magic mingling with hers to begin the forming of a new life.
And after he was born, he lived with her until he was old enough to leave, and then . . .
Then everything grew very vague and uncertain. She was there and then she wasn’t, alive and then gone back into the earth, the ether, and the shadows. He was alone again, perhaps for a long time, and the world in which he existed was another form of shadows . . .
You were made safe, she said to him. You were kept in a place where your enemies couldn’t reach you.
He didn’t understand, and perhaps he wasn’t meant to. He looked into his mother’s eyes as she spoke to him, explaining, revealing, and investing him with the knowledge of his identity.
Then he saw himself coming into the city of Seattle and into the lives of the Ghosts, and all the connections were made clear to him. His mother smiled and leaned down and touched him gently on his cheek. He could feel how she loved him. He understood that his memories of his parents were vague and uncertain because they had never truly existed. Perhaps he had manufactured them to give himself a sense of belonging. Perhaps they had been manufactured for him. But Nest Freemark was his true mother, and his memory of her, now recovered, was the one only that mattered.
A disembodied voice spoke next, one he did not recognize. There was no face attached to this voice, no presence to identify its source. The voice sounded very old. It told him the story of the boy and his children, the one Owl had told the Ghosts piecemeal. Only this version, while essentially the same, was different, too. It was more complicated and larger in scope. He was still the boy and the Ghosts were still his children, but there were others, too.
Together, they traveled a long way to find a place where the walls were built of light and the colors were no longer muted but bright and pure. In this place, there was a sense of peace, a promise of safety and a reassurance that the bad things in the world couldn’t reach them. He heard his name spoken over and over.
Hawk. Hawk. He didn’t know what it meant, and he couldn’t see who was doing the speaking. But the sound of it made him feel wanted.
Further images appeared. He saw monsters and dark things rising up to confront him. He saw himself running from them and saw them giving chase.
The Ghosts ran with him, and with them a scattering of others. The pursuit went on, a long and arduous race against a death that rode on the back of a fiery wind that followed in the wake of his pursuers.
There were other visions, as well—other voices—coming together out of the awakening that the finger bones had generated, out of the resurfacing of his memories and the foretelling of his future. Some of them stayed with him; some of them were lost. He understood that this was necessary, that it was all part of restoring his identity. Revelations came in the form of small touchings, in the form of fingerprints of his life’s passing. But where the past was fixed, the future was fluid and could not yet be fully defined. He understood why this was so and was not troubled by it.
When it was done, his mother was there again, bending close to kiss him on the cheek, to reassure him anew, to let him feel her presence, which she would not deprive him of again.
Trust in me, she whispered to him as she faded.
Mother, he called after her.