The Bird King

by G. Willow Wilson

The people who want to burn you alive will find a reason to do it, whether you pretend to agree with them or not.”

Either something terrible had happened or nothing had happened at all; she couldn’t decide.

She could not envision a God who demanded such particularity of belief, whose mercy and forgiveness were confined to such a precise segment of humankind.

How could the poets write about love so lightly, as if it was something pleasant? Love was terror and loss. Love was appalling.

“Fear can make anything real,” said Vikram. “The black-cloaks are afraid you’re a sorcerer. If they condemn you as a sorcerer and burn you for it, then you are, for all practical purposes, a sorcerer, whether you began as one or not. Fear doesn’t need to make sense in order to have consequences.”

The real struggle on this earth is not between those who want peace and those who want war. It’s between those who want peace and those who want justice. If justice is what you want, then you may often be right, but you will rarely be happy.”

“Lies are for those who are afraid or ashamed of what they are, and I am neither.”

Fatima felt as though she was intruding on something sacred. It was as if a tailor was there in the room, unstitching the work of man, returning the house and the beasts to rubble and loam, and Fatima was not meant to see.

“This isn’t the end of the world, little Fatima,” he said in a voice that was almost kind. “It’s only the end of the world you know.”

“That was different,” protested Hassan. “It was just instinct. I couldn’t very well let him murder Fa while I stood there doing nothing.” “What do you suppose courage is, for God’s sake? You’re not a palace sycophant anymore, young Hassan. There’s no need for any of this affected modesty. Blood doesn’t bother you one bit. Be yourself, it’s far less irritating.”

“Once a story leaves the hands of its author, it belongs to the reader. And the reader may see any number of things, conflicting things, contradictory things. The author goes silent. If what he intended mattered so very much, there would be no need for inquisitions and schisms and wars. But he is silent, silent. The author of the poem is silent, the author of the world is silent. We are left with no intentions but our own.”

“You look like a lot of things, depending on how I look at you.”

I want to live, she thought. It seems a terrible lot of trouble, but I want to live.

“Anger is good,” she heard him say. “Anger teaches you things. How to lead. How to make the decisions you’d rather not make. It protects you from fear and hesitation and the desire to turn back. Don’t waste it on old Vikram, or on Hassan, who would die for you in a moment.”

“Yes, you were taught to waste your anger. It’s convenient for girls to be angry about nothing. Girls who are angry about something are dangerous. If you want to live, you must learn to use your anger for your own benefit, not the benefit of those who would turn it against you.”

What is a story but the map of an idea?

What an interesting concept ... and lending credence to mind mapping an idea, which can turn into a story.

they’re not just out there, they’re in my head. Your head, too. They’re inside the only thing that was ever really ours. Even our stories are not our stories. We tried to tell our own, Fa, and all we did was end up telling theirs.”

She would give up many things in return: she would give up her own beauty, which had served others far better than it had served her.

Your death won’t prove a point—and even if it did, you won’t be around to enjoy the satisfaction.”

There’s a great deal in this world that one is better off not knowing.”

She no longer knew what she believed, but she knew what she was, and this, oddly, amounted to the same thing. She knew now what parts of her persisted when the things that didn’t matter were stripped away:

Some ideas are so beautiful that even evil people believe in them. I thought the abbey would be full of saintly folk, but it wasn’t. Isn’t. It used to depress me. But I’ve come to realize that I must share God with the things that God has set askew.”

You have only one natural enemy here, and that is fear. Nothing in this place can hurt you, no matter how large its footprints. But if you give in to your terror of the unseen, those very same things will devour you and leave not one bit of gristle behind.”

If the creature below her was made from the same matter as Fatima, it was possible that God was not entirely on her side; if the thing below her was real, then God was also on the side of the monsters. The world, in all its upheaval, was not partisan, and might raise her up only to strike her down with luminous indifference.

“I’m afraid of being happy,” she confessed. “You mustn’t be. Joy is one of the most powerful weapons your race possesses.” “Joy I feel,” said Fatima, closing her eyes against the bright air. “Joy comes in moments. Happiness is supposed to last. Whenever I feel it, I’m afraid something will take it away, and it won’t come back again.” “Little old woman! You’re wise, and wisdom often makes people unhappy. But you’re more afraid of happiness than you were of the leviathan you met on that cliff. Have you already forgotten what I told you when I pulled you out of the sea? You must be without fear: of the leviathan and of yourself.”

The youngest was no more than five and did not speak at all but stared up at Fatima with wide brown eyes from which childhood had been wiped clean.

They would live, they would smile again, but they would not laugh, and no amount of pleading by adults would make them into children.

They suffused the extraordinary landscape with what was small and tender and banal: the anxious muttering of hens settling down to roost, the sound of washing water poured into basins, the gentle unmelodic snores of those who slept. Civilization was, Fatima realized, something very simple; it was the right of these small rituals to perpetuate themselves in peace.

“You think Luz has decided to be a particularly awful sort of person, and if you kill her, the evil will go away. But it’s not like that. Plenty of ordinary, peaceful men and women think someone like me ought to be murdered, even if they’d never dream of doing it themselves. Get enough of them together and the Inquisition will spring into existence all by itself, as if called from the very air.”