“Do you want to remember?” Kjell asked Sasha, looking away from the orb and searching her eyes.
“She must,” Padrig insisted. “It is the only way.”
“She doesn’t have to do a bloody thing,” Kjell bellowed, and Padrig grew silent, cowed by Kjell’s adamancy.
“Will who I was change who I am?” Sasha asked, though her eyes still held Kjell’s.
“You will lose nothing,” Padrig reassured. “There are memories that will hurt. There are memories you won’t want in your head. But with the joy comes the sorrow, and I can’t separate one from the other.”
Sasha took Kjell’s hand and he quaked, wishing he could scoop her up and take her away, the Sasha who loved him, who had accepted her lot with clear eyes and a compassionate heart.
“I am ready,” she said, and Padrig wilted a little, his relief evident. He closed the space between them and gently, as though he placed a crown on her head, he brought the orb down over Sasha’s hair. The light was absorbed into the crimson strands, soaking into her scalp, making her tresses glow like fire. Her eyes fluttered closed, and for a heartbeat she was a glimmering statue, completely still, immersed in all that had been taken from her.
Then her legs buckled and a keening tore from her throat. Kjell caught her up, his sword clattering to the cobblestones.
“What have you done?” Kjell cried. Sasha jerked in his arms, her hands pressed to her eyes, and the keening became a tortured scream.
“She is remembering,” Padrig mourned. “She is remembering, and some memories are painful.”
“May the Creator damn you,” Kjell roared.
“There was no way around it, Healer.” Padrig had begun to weep. “She is not just Saoirse of Kilmorda. She is not simply the daughter of a lord.”
Padrig laid his hands on her head and pulled the memories from her mind, coaxing them upward, spinning them into a great, glowing orb. Then he released the sphere, and it floated up into the sky and joined the stars, bright and shimmering, safe from discovery, shining down on the girl who no longer knew who she was.
Images melded one into the other, and the star that had risen into the sky returned again, settling upon her. Pictures flashing, flickering, upside down and inside out. They bounced and wavered, then shifted again. Womanly fears became childish dreams, girlish longing became survivor’s pain. Kjell became a liberator, and a king became a tree, Sasha became a slave, and a girl became a queen.
Nothing fit and nothing matched. She shook her head and looked again, allowing the sediment of memory to sink into place, creating a path she could follow from beginning to end.
Her father’s sightless eyes, her mother’s broken body.
Running.
Padrig pulling on her hand and urging her forward.
She’d known the birdmen were coming, but her visions had become confusing bits of reoccurring history, and she’d stopped being able to tell what was Dendar and what was Kilmorda, what was long ago and what was recent past.
What was now and what was then?
“Then” was a white horse with blue eyes she wanted so badly to ride, a bed that was too big, and a world surrounded by people far too tall. Her mother’s scent, her mother’s hands, her mother’s hair all reminded her of rose petals, fragrant, soft, and red.
“Then” was her mother’s fear. Or maybe that was now. Had her mother always been afraid? “Then” was her father’s stories and the books he helped her read.
“How does the story end, Saoirse?” he would say. Together they would spin visions into fairytales, complete with happy endings.
She believed in happy endings.
A woman named Meshara held her hand and asked her how many summers she had. “I have seven summers,” she said, and the woman smiled. “You are so tall. But you are not so much older than my Lark. You will be great friends one day.”
One day. But not then.
“Then” was the sands of Kilmorda, the blue of the sea, the ships that brought treasures from Porta, Dendar and Willa, places she promised herself she would one day go.
One day became that day.
A trip across the Jeruvian Sea, her belly tossing and her mind weak, wanting her mother and cursing the things she saw. She saw him, the Healer with the dark hair and the sad, blue eyes. She saw him breathe life back into a child, small and dark, whistling like a bird, and she begged him to find her on the water and ease her heaving stomach and broken heart.
Dendar. Then moved into later, and later creeped closer to now, yet still stayed so far away.
Dendar was rarely cold, but it rained the way she cried for home. It rained and rained, until finally . . . it stopped. She stopped. Home became a castle named Caarn in a valley that smelled of earth and grain and sky. The trees were sentries, safe and tall, monuments to a people who didn’t cut them down but bade them move. And move they did, upending their giant roots, finding a new place to grow, and circling the valley while leaving room for those who would eventually join them.
In the castle, she befriended a king, a patient guardian and kind protector to a lonely girl. He loved the forests and named the trees, and he took her with him when he walked among them.
“This is my grandfather,” he sighed, patting an old tree with sprawling roots. He wiggled his fingers and his nails became soft and green. They grew, twining up his arms in clinging vines.
“Someday I will come here too,” he said to the forest.
“Will I?” she asked, wishing.
“No, Saoirse. You are not a Spinner. Your gift is to see.”
The days passed, and then the years. What she saw became who she was.
“Will I ever go home?” she asked the king, her tears falling on his shoulder.
“I don’t know. Will you?” She stared into his beloved face, confused and surprised.
“What do you see, Saoirse?”
“I see Dendar.”
“Then you must stay.”
Flowers and wreaths. The soft petals of her mother’s hands had become petals in Saoirse’s hair. Padrig stood before them, his arms raised to the stars, but he did not pull lights from the firmament. He drew vows from their mouths. He pronounced them man and wife, King Aren and Queen Saoirse, and the people crowed and clapped.
She saw her reflection in the glass and realized she had grown into her mother—tall and straight, a child no longer, a crown on her head and thorns in her heart.
She saw Dendar, but she saw more. She saw the Healer, his hands braced against a tree, wracked in lamentation.
Leaves changed, yellow and gold, orange and burgundy. Then they were gone, leaving Grandfather Tree and the rest of the forest bare and skeletal. But the green came again, clothing the trees and carpeting the fields in grass. Beyond Caarn, the king traveled, returning with terrible news and growing fears.
“Tell me, Saoirse, what do you see?”
Birdmen, winged dragons with the chest and legs of a man. Beasts that drank blood and ate flesh. She saw them over the trees and in the valley, above the hills and across the streams. She saw them everywhere.