The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington

I WAS EIGHT WHEN THE ship my uncle was on was lost to a storm, killing all aboard. I remember my father’s immense sorrow well, but my own was a strange thing. There, certainly—but more confused, almost uncomprehending, and so something I instinctively tried to push aside until it went away. Then, weeks after, I found a toy my uncle had given me. A stone horse figurine that I had grown out of so quickly that it had sat on a shelf behind books, forgotten, until that day. And when I happened upon it, when I remembered his happiness in the giving of the gift, I wept anew. Wept more freely than I had at his funeral. Unprepared for the sudden realisation of aching, complete absence. My father found me like that, and we talked a while. About life, and death, and the way we deal with them. When I told him I didn’t want to feel sad anymore, he gave me a smile that wished it could take my pain. Grief, he explained to me gently, is a process that has only a beginning. We work through it, not get over it. And so attempting to just ignore its ache is inevitably a pointless exercise.