Am faithless to this journal. Keep poor records of people and places and world-shaking events. Sentimental. Don't care. Will want to read it when I'm old. When I've forgotten.

The following entries are scribbled on sundry scraps of paper and parchment, and tucked haphazardly in a gap between one ragged half-page and several missing ones.

BEFORE

2
Time may fly, but not like a crow. Nothing so straight and so sure. My passage through the days is likewise crooked. I scribble messages to Brisingr, a scant swap of information and opinion. “Change comes, people go, the Remnants of Kimald endure.” He shares news that his collection of incantations nears completion. At that - brief behind my breastbone – comes a thrill like a plucked string.

I loved hunting in the dark, matching breath to footfall soft as fog. Loved to stalk the sand or stone in search of luck's soft glimmer. Love like a sickness. Like a fever turned to fury.

No harp, my heart. I walk in silence, keep company with ghosts, and seek neither battle nor fellowship. Day and night passes like this.

..................................................................................................................................

5
I stand in a windswept place. Emptiness hangs between me and the crashing ocean. I run my fingers over the coarse nap of my cloak, fret and fray. If I hold the edges out like so – I am winged. The wind's hand tugs, pushes. If it begins to pull with a voice like a storm, flight will follow. I yearn to fly.

The Crier calls me first. In the desert, ants march to war.

Love the desert. Austere, transient beauty. Sharp-edges, serpentine patterns. Wise, rare flowers unfurling only after rainfall, rampant only for a single span of marcs before they wither to ochre, gold, ghost white. Also love the lies that rise from sunlight striking sand - mirrored waters waiting just ahead. Just ahead, an end to thirst.

My opinion of ants is unformed. Or forgotten. Not all things make an equal impression. Memory of leaf and bramble limned with light stolen by the Demon's Eyes - my body shaking, afire with shame at words misspoken, knowing that no one – not even he – would ever despise me as much as myself. Unforgettable. Ants foibles, not so much.

As it turns out, the impression left by ants matches the shape of their mandibles exactly. I reform twice before rediscovering my pouch of enchanter's powder. It promises painless escape. The metallic flavor in my mouth turns out to be a taste for vengeance.

I return to the desert, find a rhythm, and slay two before clambering over a steep dune and meeting a nightmare. This ant is not like the other ones. Spurs of armor rise around each joint and segment, and the head – false-horned – is massive. My pale branch strikes thrice and leaves only the faintest line on the insect's dull red carapace. I circle away from the grasping forelimbs and snapping jaws, stay low and limber, and consider strategy. I am no tactician, but there is only one available route.

Strike approximately three hundred times and hope for the best.

It does not come to that. She strides from the east, oldest dearest most long lost friend. If my life were a storybook, together we would peel the ant apart, clasp hands and huzzah our victory before undertaking the treacly birdsong of reunion. Instead, we spend the better part of two marcs screaming, porting, slashing, sliding, smashing, healing and regrouping, and are too exhausted by the end for much more than a grim trade of smiles.

Should be too exhausted.

“Where do you hunt these days? The Wall? Let's go get some Guardians!” Tisran says with her usual blood-thirsty zeal. She remembers my obsession. Do I tell her that I no longer love the hunt, that I'd rather sit in silence, stare up at the sky, and watch for stars going dark? That I'd rather walk old paths over and over, hoping to catch sight of ghosts? Of my own ghost.

“Can't. My pack is too full. Cannot decide what to relinquish.”

I burden myself. Keys to places I will never go. Trophies from kills I can't recall. Stones that remind me of home. Mementos marking the perilous or consequential. Keepsakes from those who embodied both traits. My pack is always full. I bend beneath the weight sometimes.

I am still strong enough to carry all the things I love. And a few things I hate.

..................................................................................................................................


My first memories are green. My mother's glass thimble brighter than sea foam. I'm being punished for something I cannot recall. Part of the punishment is sitting very still and listening to what my mother most wishes me to learn. She has foolishly put my chair in a puddle of sunshine. Ivy leaves like little lady slippers ladder up the wall beneath my bedroom window.

Our house and garden lives behind a messy stone wall. I see the tops of trees beyond and they are tall enough to touch the sky. I want to be outside of things.

“Little children learn to listen. Any questions that you have will wait until I'm finished speaking. I do not wish to be stern with you, but there are expectations of us...” Her voice becomes a bumble of boring words and sympathetic sighs. Ever so often, a sharper note lifts her voice and I nod a few times.

Outside, a rain begins to fall, making magic of a sunshine that still slants to find my face. I watch for another moment before I close my eyes and begin to dream.

…

I cannot recall jealousy. I cannot still feel the way my gut flexed sickeningly at the news of the carp's death. Cannot still hate myself for killing my sister's pet. She was an awful sister. So was I. I get brittle when I'm jealous.

Didn't try very hard to ingratiate myself. Said dumb stuff and hurt people's feelings. Or made them mad. I learned the pattern of things by rote and without grace.

Think I can still hold a perfect statue pose, lifeless and without warmth. Safe in silence.

…

The celedon waters of the wading pool belong to Jedah's fat orange carp now. The fish swims dazed circles between the yellow-spotted lily pads and the single listing stand of cattails. Sometimes he forgets he's a fish, and drifts to the tiled bottom of the pool to lie on his side, gills fluttering like the wings of visiting butterflies. He's doing this now.

I want to put my feet in the water. So I do. My legs change color beneath the water line, leached of sun and graced with green pallor. The hem of my dress also changes color, copper drinking itself to dark brown, losing sheen and gaining heft, slapping wetly as I wade careful circles around the carp. He doesn't stir.

It's still too hot. Tendrils of my hair have liberated themselves from the tidy cap of braids my mother deems practical and fetching. It's certainly fetching me a headache, tugging at my temples and pushing everywhere else. I pity the crowns of sunflowers suddenly.

Pity myself more when I hear the screech of Jedah's ire. “Get out of my fish pool, brat!”

“It's not your fish pool, it's just your stupid fish,” I say, stomping out of the water nonetheless.

She's instantly smug. Fits her lips like a glove does hands. “It's more mine than yours. Like everything. But since I'm feeling nice today, I won't tell Father.” Her eyes flick upwards, slanting scorn at the picture window of my mother's solarium. “Or her.”

“Don't care.” I measure the distance between myself and the mammoth oak sprawling against the wall to the north.

Jedah walks into my line of sight and stands, hand on her hip, color high with triumph, sorrel hair sparking sunlight, between me and my tree. “Aren't you going to ask me why I'm feeling nice?” She doesn't even wait for me to say no. “It's because Father has relented and is sending for a dancing master. Well, technically a journeyman instructor.” Her florid lips pout petulant. “No matter. It has been said that I am a natural, and will excel regardless.”

“Okay.” I start shifting my bare feet inch-by-inch across the gritty flagstone, and rise onto my tiptoes. My feet tingle. They know the grass beneath the oak tree grows soft and cool and friendly. They know the bark of roots and branches is delightful and rough and interesting. They know that we can reach there in just moments if we run.

“You're supposed to be happy for me. You're supposed to say, 'Jedah, congratulations. You'll be wonderful.' I know you've been working on your manners. Your mother says you're making good progress.” Her smugness returns. Malice too. “We all know she's a liar.”

My feet go numb. I cannot feel them as they carry me over to her. I only hear the slapping of my soles on stone. It's such a lovely noise that I let my hand fly to Jedah's cheek, cracking hard enough to make my taller, stronger sister stumble back. Her eyes, Father's eyes, cold sharp stone-green eyes fill with tears and anger and she sinks her fingers into my hair and drags me to the fish pool.

I claw and twist, slam my elbow into her ribs, and snap my teeth at her. She's still so strong, shifting her grip from my hair to one arm and the back of my neck. She shoves. My knee scrapes over the lip of the pool, and I grab at this one chance to keep my elder sister from drowning me, locking the opposite leg under the rock rim. I wrench my arm and head away from her, cling with both hands to the pool, and twist to snap a wild kick at her face.

I connect mostly with her chin. Her teeth cut my heel. I fall backwards into the water, but scrabble up and away, fly to the tree, and lose some skin from my palms and the insides of my arms clambering up to the lower branch swifter than screaming Jedah can catch me. She keeps screaming and spluttering blood as I ascend and walk the thick limb that crooks over the wall.

Climbing down hurts. Fear and anger fade, leaving me weak and prone to noticing pain. I hobble away, following the north face of the wall, hiding at the corner facing the eastern orchard. No one is moving through the trees or coming up the road leading to the keep. Still, there's a sick swimming in my gut. Going to be trouble from this.

I dart from tree to shadow to tree until I reach the rows of apple planted in my grandfather's grandmother's day. Most are beyond blooming, gone gray and fissured through trunk and branch. The biggest one is split down the middle part way and seems to be two trees - a dead tree and one still green. A swing dangles from there, a smoothed beechwood board suspended by chains gone red with rust. The rust stains the boreholes in the wood. Stains fingers too and feels just awful under hands.

Must go further then. Force feet to run, strides going long and longer, but sometimes crooked as my cut heel balks at taking weight. I stop at the river bend where the reeds hide a hollow made just for me. Cool mud and round stones and heaps of driftwood bleached silver, stained purple and green and red by the decaying plants caught in the tangle. Cool water, deep green and glinting like malachite and nearly as smooth. I see tufts of duck down caught between pebbles or upon tussock of grass, and just upriver swim the ducks themselves, one at a time as the other tends their hidden nest.

I rinse grit and mud from the cut on my foot, bawl over my scrapes and my worry, and then curl into the shade. I close my eyes and begin to dream.

..................................................................................................................................

DREAMING

It comes like this: something learned once. His eyes dark as the earth under the roots, ringed with green like leaves in shadow, cool and keeping secrets. There is fire flickering from one moment to the next but it isn't shaped for you. What is made for you? His arms all boney beneath muscles as he twists the wooden board of the swing, winding it tighter and tighter until the chains are locked together and then whipping, whipping, whipping as it unravels and you spin beneath the sky? His limbs twined around the apple bough, lean form bending like a bow, rippling with effort as he shakes free the last, lazy frost-blushed fruit? Your fingers interlaced, honey-gold and tawny-dark tangled as intentions? Wrists touching pulse-to-pulse? The brush of the back of his hand, by accident, across your hip as you walk with the willow-ease of youth? Innocent as desire.

And still not shaped for you.

Your heart catches in your throat, it is winged in its escape and fretted with grief. Cheep cheep. The noise of hatching trouble.

…

It comes like this: salt spilled twice. Candles kindled in a woven cradle of grass. A seashell crusted with sullen white sediment. The curled black corpses of immolated petals. You kneel in the root-rumpled earth of the orchard. Smooth the ground in front of you, palm sweeping back and forth in time to the distant, wind-rocked rattle of the swing's only remaining chain. When the dust slate lies smooth as paper, you bend your head to scratch the letters of your wish.

And no words form. Only dappled drops that fall from your chin before becoming mud. You blur your vision to escape them.

…

It comes like this: a wish thrice whispered. A gown unraveling. Back to the moonlight, silver spilling on sand. Bruises beneath your eyes. In your eyes. The remembrance of pain. Subtle, hollow, thrilling. There is a soft storm to the meadow. A gentleness to the wind upon the grass. Same with the rain that falls from leaden skies. There is nothing more to say at that point. You don't look at the other. You don't dare breathe. Almost float away like the down-winged thistle seeds. Almost sink deeper than an anchor root. Almost.

You part at the milkweed. You break a stem to taste the bitterness. You never meet again.

…

Other dreams wash past faster than I can catch them. None belong to me anymore. I let them go. It is a two moon tide and even the stars are bright enough to tug the sea. Out in the depths, something falls. A feathered keening breaks into bubbles. The fallen sinks like a stone. Stays there forever. Or just long enough.

..................................................................................................................................

9
I lean against Kilican's Life Monument. Some of me still swims through the pale monolith so I must wait here until I slide back in my skin. I fit the line of my spine to it, tug my hair out of the way so that when I drop my head, the bone at the nape of my neck presses against the monument. It's cooler where the sunlight strikes than at the heart of it. It is a heart, holding fire and life. Holding me for that staggered moment between death and the reformation of my flesh. Warmth rises if you wait for it. Not so with broken stones.

Sorynn comes walking up the road, bereft of that crackling witty vitality I so associate with the wild, curling splendor of her hair. With the ease and tease of her smile, and her brown eyes sharp with both intelligence and joy. It is, in the moment before she catches sight of me, like seeing a stranger.

And something like seeing a mirror.

There is a fade upon my face as well, I wager...but we both burst into brilliance when our eyes meet – surprise and recognition transmuted into zany, childlike delight. We are happy to see one another. We say so. We show so with grins and giddy, flighty conversation that leads to pirate ale. She has huge news for me, a beautiful, bittersweet ballad all too often heard here in Valorn.

Still, there is laughter shared between us. Inappropriate or naughty wit - and with it the memory of teasing Vardian. Bodice-rippers indeed. Something eases around my ribcage and I breath deeply once again. What is so wonderful as knowing that another of your dearest friends still walks and laughs?

I do love the threads that bind me to this place.

AND AFTER

12
It comes with a slither of slush beneath your boots giving way to mud that chills now bare toes. Frost snapping, snow sliding from eaves, cloud breath banished by noon sun. Bold flowers crown the crust of snow in colors warm enough to melt their cages. Sky buries blue in white and white in blue, the indecisive palette giving way to storm gray almost daily. Still light grows lengthy. Trees buds split from bronze chrysalis, peekaboo green lines hinting at spring's design. Birds shrill their delight in the hours before dawn and towards dusk. Their incessant hopping shakes the twiggy boughs of scrub evergreens and flowerless furze. They are so noisy that no one writes poems of them and everyone wants more cats in the world.

There are kittens in Caernival. The Crier calls it to us and we gather to wonder at their whiskery goodness, their sleep-soft breath, their relentless charm as they play at killing one another. I love them so much I want to destroy all demons immediately so that their world will be safe. I've become staid enough to know my hopes are impractical at best.

I try anyway. Test myself each time the Crier calls, and often, often die. Learn that everything can kill me. Decide there's no grace in hiding from death or trying to tiptoe around it. Best to just dance into that malice.

What words for Altitan? Winter-locked longer. Lonely doors compel company. Loom larger than most dreams. Guardian mountains rise like the knife-edged spine of an implacable, long-dormant colossus. They cut the sky to ribbons. Crease it into storm clouds. To rouse the mountains is unthinkable. Thrillingly so.

Stay there through some of the vigil. Some strangers always there. Fear feels hot rising up the column of my throat, searing my tongue, turning all my words to ash – pale things fragile as a moth wing. Feeble, swift to fail. Fear also makes my feet heavy, scraping against the earth, tangling on the air itself. Force myself to swallow the fear. Let it lie like a stone in the belly. Quieter there. Easier to ignore.

Remember the pattern and poses of polite company. Adapt. Watch friends, rare and new, slip into slumber. Sometimes slip too, sleep beneath a monument that does not stay broken. Dreams there, but they are peaceful. Warmer than snow should permit.

Spring comes when it comes, and it does not come the same for any two trees. Some shed needles all year long, but keep their green even beneath winter's white gauntlets. Some flowers fade before they bloom, and some riot late into the summer, keeping all the more modest blooming trees awake with their colorful natterings. Sometimes the ones who green out first find frost still waits to kill them in the night.

...

If you want and want not to be hollowed by it, seek solitude and wild splendor. Find forlorn verges. Places where lazy grasses unfold into trees, all long-limbed lofty aspirations, sky-crowned and haughty. Or where the aching ocean scrapes the sand and leaves its long lament scrawled in seaweed punctuated by seashells. Or the cut of a river into a clay-rich bank. If you are desperate, find the last mossy stones of an ancient road surrendering to bindweed, sinking beneath the flowers forever. Sink there too.

Shape yourself to suit it. Become something forgotten. Tranquil. Fallow. Drink nothing but rain. Bathe in moonlight. Transmute desire to a deep and abiding appreciation for all things. All seasons.

Notice rain-crushed pink silk of crab-apple blossoms nodding low after the storm. A sun-bleached turtle shell scoured smooth by sand, sea, wind, yet still patterned with faint geometries of ivy and topaz. Watch the swirl of sediment darken the waters where the river meets the sea. See snow dance to slow wind. Listen to the song stirring inside sun-warmed branches. And the song inside the pale stones that calls you back from death.

If you should someday rise and follow the road back home, return there with confidence. Know that nothing can numb you to beauty. Know that every single day provokes delight.

Can find people who feel the same. Treasure them.