Impossible Creatures

by Katherine Rundell

Some sentences have the power to change everything. There are the usual suspects: I love you, I hate you, I’m pregnant, I’m dying, I regret to tell you that this country is at war. But the words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these: “I need your help.”

But Christopher didn’t have the words, then, to explain what, nonetheless, he knew: that sometimes, if you are among the very lucky, a spark of understanding cuts like lightning across the space between two people. It’s a defibrillator for the heart. And it toughens you. It nourishes you. And the word we’ve chosen for it (which is an insufficient word for being so abruptly upended in a new and finer place) is friendship. (He would never find it again, that kind of friendship. But once is enough. You need it only once—so that you may know what your human heart is capable of.)

We none of us expected this. That is, in general, the nature of adventures. Adventurers tend to smell. The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for.”

“For instance: consider the greatest riddle of all—what you should do with your one brief life? The answer is different for each person. There is no neat answer, though many have tried to offer one. There are no answers to being alive. There are only strong pieces of advice.”

stop expecting life to get easier. It never does; that is not where its goodness lies. Or”—and she looked at Irian, at Nighthand—“do not wait for people to be faultless before you allow yourself to adore them. Adore them anyway. Such things are worth more than riddles.”

She spoke in the dark. “I wish someone had told me.” “What?” “About the worst question.” “What question?” “The question What if I had done it differently?”

There was a look in Irian’s face of recognition: the joy of one at sea who looks up and sees land ahead. It was the face of somebody who has suddenly felt, for the first time, the precise shape and weight of their own swiftly beating heart.

“But I have seen red dragons fly over mountains in the falling sun. And I have seen people offer up their lives to save one another, as if it were as natural as breathing. I’ve known lovers find each other in war and famine. I have seen promises made and kept for entire lifetimes, unswervingly, as if it was easy. I’ve seen lions at midnight. I have seen wonder on wonder on wonder. I have seen how the world shines. “I have seen people struggle to learn—painting, gardens, language, hand skills, foot skills—and I have seen them triumph. I have seen kindnesses large and wild enough to transform you. I have heard the best jokes in the world and music so sweet, I thought I might fall down because of it. I have seen so much done for love, over and over. I have seen people die for love and live for love. I have seen birth, and birth again. I have known such joy. The joy, Christopher.”

greater than the world’s chaos are its miracles.”

“That is why great power must never reside in only one person. It must be shared.” Her rough voice was rougher than before. “It must be spread, among as many good women and men as can be found; not because it is kind or polite or fair, but because it is the only way to beat back against horror.”