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can’t explain what I don’t understand.
That last he said as if he were asking me to be sure his cats were fed while he was away.
A surge of something—not hope, not belief, but something I’d no name for—rushed through me.
‘Dear king, please do not do a thing you cannot undo, until you have considered well what you cannot do once you’ve done it!’
His voice betrayed no emotion. He was a captain finding the limits of a new hire.
The torch fell to the ground and a foot ground it out. I heard a voice. “Better to grope in darkness than to follow false light”.’
I was astonished at her hatred of them; truly I had not known my mother capable of such cold anger. When I stared at her, as the nest burned, she nodded to me. ‘While I live, no one shall hurt you and go unpunished for it.’ I knew then I must be careful of what I told her about the other children. My father may once have been an assassin. My mother remained one.
It made me both weary and envious of their youth. How many years had it been since I had felt the stabs of jealousy and the painful doubts of loving someone I could not claim? It was both a relief to be free of such turmoil, and a reminder of the years that I carried on my shoulders. I
‘It is worse than useless to do things halfway, Bee. For then you think the work is done, but someone must come behind you later to do it all over again. Even if you must work much harder and get less done, it is better to do the whole task the first time.’
Do I break the future?’ ‘Oh, child. We all do. That is both the danger and the hope of life. That each of us changes the world, every day.’
Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn’t tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.
I closed that book and picked up my journal. I read a page, then two, and closed it. It wasn’t mine any more. It had been written by someone I had once been, but would never be again.
It’s like poison working out of a wound. Let the tears fall and let the fear shake you. On my deck or within my hold, you do not have to be strong. Let go of what you had to hide.
