Just before the clock struck midnight, Ami and I threw our dark secrets into the fire. She’d never done that part of the tradition, but enthusiastically embraced it. She and I spent the last dark hours of that year writing down all the things we wanted to leave behind. Holding hands, we burned them, consigning them to ash.
Then we collected the sleepy twins and took our votives to the big landing, where everyone had assembled. Graves and Skunk were there, and many other people I’d never seen before. All in their best finery. Even the lowest servants joined us, dousing the last of the castle lights as they did, standing on the ascending stairways if they couldn’t crowd onto the landing. At the chime, we blew out the last of our candles, standing together in the dark. Beyond the great glass windows, the sparkling dark night resolved.
The second chime rang, and people began to relight their candles. I lit Stella’s, her luminous eyes catlike and solemn, while Ami lit Astar’s. Outside the windows, torches lit at the castle walls, then ran in a rapidly expanding circuit around all the turrets, then pouring down the winding road down the peak. Ami laughed with pure joy and the kids squealed, nearly forgetting their own candles.
“I so hoped the wind would stop long enough for this,” Ami told me. “I really wanted to see it. For all of us.”
“I understand why,” I told her, cupping her cheek. In the brilliance of the moment, I didn’t care who watched us. I kissed her, something rekindling inside me also, the light spreading throughout.
With Willy and Nilly safely back abed, we joined the party already well underway in the great hall. But they cleared the space for us, and so I led my love onto the dance floor, setting the pace and the tone for the coming year. I wore the clothes Ami had made for me herself, the deep greens of my calling as a healer, embroidered with leaves in ivory, pink, purple and bloodred. All of my allegiances in one.
Though the dance was far from perfect, I did my best. Looking down into Ami’s radiant face, I realized that sometimes that’s all right.
And that love, like fire, might burn and rage, but it also lit the dark night with hope. Which made it all worthwhile.