 The choice has been made, but there is more to the story. In this episode, the words of the old song return with new meaning and the Whispers launch their most vicious attack yet, as the companions risk everything to heal Azinae. (Click here to read previous episodes) Episode 14 - Divided"So that's it?" I asked. "I was brought to Azinae to suffer? To die?" I choked back the words It's not fair. What was remotely fair about anything the Whispers did? Why should I reproach Rahayar for desiring Azinae to be saved, even from those pathetic, feuding Kinds? "You were," said Rahayar. "So were many. And a few came this far..." The other half of the Tree's words disappeared somewhere across Azinae, to be spoken by the other half that stood on a mountain slope. But I already could guess the words he had spoken. Some had come this far and chosen to walk away. That was the other option, wasn't it? To let someone else choose between one kind of death and another kind of death? Was that what Tahn Kayanu had meant when he told me to do whatever Rahayar asked of me? Had Tahn Kayanu come this far, learned of the choices, and lost the courage to do what needed to be done? Was that why he spent his life caring for others as best he could--to make up for the fact that he dared not do what the Half-Tree asked of him? "What did you mean?" Merlin asked suddenly. "What did you mean when you said that Ulysses had been prepared, to help Connie become what he needed to become?" "Yeah," Dirk nodded. "What Merlin says. What's so special about Ulysses and Connie?" Rahayar did not answer. At last, Astrid said quietly, as though a thought had prodded her: "Oh." Her face seemed haggard with some horror, and tears glistened in the corners of her eyes. "Astrid?" Her husband touched her gently, as though she were delicate. "It's because of what you mean to Connie." "Me?" Ulysses glanced toward me, and our confusion was mutual. "I am fairly certain I do not mean anything to Connie, Astrid." "What you represent to Connie," Merlin said, suddenly understanding. "What do the Whispers feed off of?" "Division," Dirk and I answered at the same time. "And what do Ulysses and Connie represent?" Neither Ulysses nor I could meet one another's eyes. Division. In their first journey through Azinae, my companions had learned to become united. I felt it as soon as I joined them in this adventure: the sensation of being an outsider. And just when I had felt most part of their company, I had become an outcast, forced to divide from them for their own safety. And then--then Tahn Kayanu had warned me against the Division of my soul, of harboring resentment. My desire to remain innocent warred with my sense of justification. No one divided us more than myself, and no one festered the Division in me more than Ulysses. It was the ultimate test.  "I know what he wants," I said finally, and my voice cracked. "Rahayar divided himself to save Azinae. Then he called us because of our division. Because I hate Ulysses. Because when the Tree heals people so divided from one another, the rest of the land can be healed too. The great Division can be unified again." Ulysses turned pale and spoke the words that I suddenly could not speak. "He wants us to suffer together. To die together, if need be. Not as enemies. As brothers." I leaned forward, my hands pressed against my knees. I could appreciate Ulysses' skill and admire his cunning. After all we had been through, I could even screw up the courage to count him as a friend. But die for him? Die for the man who had destroyed so much in me? Die for the man whom I had spent my entire childhood and my adult life hating? Who had Tahn Kayanu been asked to die for? I knew now why he had walked away. Suddenly I was angry. He had walked away and left me with this choice. What right did he have to place the good of Azinae above his... His what? His hate? But Tahn Kayanu had not been the first. Perhaps not even the latest. And here I stood, faced with the same choice, and doing the same thing: pathetically whining that it was not fair, that someone else should have made the first move to forgive, that I shouldn't be forced to sacrifice my carefully-nurtured resentment in order to cure the equally nurtured resentment of the Kinds. And here I was, throwing my pity-party at the very roots of the Tree who had torn himself apart to keep the warring Kinds safe from the fate that their bloody rivalries deserved. I had been brought. What was I here for, if not for this fate? "How do you love them--your enemies?" I gritted out. "How do you love them when they are so despicable?" Rahayar's message was short enough that it was not torn away by half this time. "Love acts." I drew in a deep breath. "What do I have to do?" "Hang upon me and I will..." The message whisked away. "He will what?" Dirk asked, darting his eyes back and forth from me to the Whisper-clouded Half-Tree. "It's the song," Merlin said suddenly, and began to sing. Bear me on a tree until I've surrendered all my will. Make my enemy my friend, Save him ere his darkest end. Reverse, reverse, Reverse the ancient curse. Divide me until I contain The depths of death and hate and pain, Then pour me out until I am The healing of this broken land. At the moment when Merlin sang it, we needed no explanation. I was a Healing. Somehow, when once I stepped into the Half-Tree and surrendered my will to his, I would be split, just like him. And then... I could only guess. And trust. "What are we for then?" Dirk asked, white-faced. "We have to surrender as well for Connie to... reverse stuff." Dirk's powers over language had always deserted him when his emotions were most tangled. "We don't have to know the details of the plan," Merlin said. "You heard him. Love acts. So act." And, before we could lose our nerve, we did.  The Whispers seethed around use like a current of dark water, and their voices now shrieked in our ears. YOU HATE HIM! WILL YOU LET HIM GET AWAY WITH EVERYTHING AND NOT EVEN PAY FOR IT? Some of the voices were Ulysses', sneering at me in the boys' locker room, saying things that kicked me in the gut, things that had never left me, things that had broken my confidence and destroyed my dreams. Visions flashed through my mind. Ulysses hitting me until I pretended to black out just to get him to stop. Ulysses spreading lies about me, lies that people still believed to this day. Ulysses deliberately embarrassing me in front of the girl I liked, in front of the whole school, until no one but Dirk dared to notice me. The darkness I had lived in, and that had followed me even when Ulysses was gone from my life, had been bearable only because I believed that someday I could repay him. I could make him feel my hurt. If ever there was a moment to hate Ulysses, it was now. I reached the tree, scrambling to reach a branch, and swung myself up. The Whispers buffeted me, their screams shredding through my mind, but I clenched my teeth and climbed onward, and soon found that the branches closed around me, thrusting the Whispers back. Then, suddenly, the branches lifted me on their own and I hung in the air, suspended from my arms and legs, completely at the mercy of the Tree. Surrender. How do you surrender when you are terrified? I could not see my friends through the swirl of the Whispers--the Whispers could have sucked them dry, for all I knew--but I had come too far. There was no turning back. Bear me on a tree until I've surrendered all my will... I mouthed the next words, trembling. Make my enemy my friend... Make my enemy my friend... Something began to happen to me. A pressure seized my chest, almost immediately assuaged as I pulled at the life around me. I felt streamers of Astrid's vitality flow into me, pulses of Dirk's vigor, rivers of Merlin's strength, gifts of Ulysses' life. This was why my friends had been needed. They were fueling me, fueling whatever transformation was coming. I heard their agony in my mind, even though I could not see them or hear them above the chaos of the Whispers. I was killing them and they were giving themselves to me. Dirk. Merlin. Astrid. Ulysses. Something broke inside me, like all the tears I had ever shed exploding through a dam. I had wanted to make Ulysses feel my pain. Now, at this moment, I would have given anything to save even him. Then I felt it. It was as though someone unzipped my body, from crown to feet, and turned me inside out. Divide me until I contain The depths of death and hate and pain, Then pour me out until I am The healing of this broken land. And I understood. I was a Healing. Everything in my warped nature sucked life from others to heal myself. But Rahayar was making me like himself, dividing me and turning me inside out, reversing me. I would give back my life to others to heal them. Even my enemies. Even Ulysses. Darkness and death poured into me. The blood of Kinds, spilled through senseless war, stained me. The pain of a million crimes from a thousand generations slashed through my soul. The hate and resentment of long enmity ripped my capillaries and savaged my mind. I became Division. Beneath the utter, blinding terror, a small flicker kindled, like a star just born. This was what I was made for. I surrendered myself completely to the Tree. As death crept around the edges of my vision and poured its decaying taste across my tongue, I heard it: the screams of the Whispers. For a moment, the shadowy bodies cleared and I saw my friends prostrate at the foot of the Tree. Dead? No. I was healing them. Their suffering had nearly killed them, but they would be well. The Whispers whipped into a frenzy, as though blown by gale winds. Their voices lashed me, but I was beyond their fury. Already the world was losing color and the last spasms of my destroyed body were ebbing away. Just as my vision clouded, I heard a great wind in the branches of the Tree. Somehow it had a fuller sound that I expected a Half-Tree to make, with half of its limbs gone. Was it...? Then, with a last shudder, I felt my life tear itself apart from my body, like a man shedding his clothing and leaving it behind. * * * * * Constantinople. I am here. Well done.  I sat upright. The moonlight through the branches sparkled, shifting and dappling my body. I stared down at my hands and noticed that the trails of scars traced them. I reached up to touch my face and felt the fine, thread-like ridges of scars there as well. The scars of Azinae. I smiled. Somehow the disfigurement was a gift. "But how in dickens am I alive?" I asked aloud. The Tree around me shook, as though laughing. "Because I have made you like me," Rahayar's voice said. "You became Division to save Azinae. You are now firstborn of the Unified." It took me a moment to understand all that he had said. "You did not cut off your words in the middle." I glanced down the height of the Tree and saw a deep, pale scar riveted through his flesh where his halves had repaired. "We'll never be the same again, will we?" "No. The scars remain. But so does the joy." Somewhere down the slope from the tree, fireworks exploded in pinwheels of color. Some of them seemed earth-like, others used a technology that I am certain originated in another world. Azinae, the sieve world, had unified different Kinds and different worlds. I knew what the people celebrated and I felt as though every scar on my body laughed with delight. I spoke out of a deep place of contentment. "You could have done it on your own. You didn't need me." "But you needed me, Constantinople." The way he spoke my despised name suddenly struck me differently. Constantinople--constant and noble. I was still pondering how I had missed the dignity of my name all these years when Rahayar spoke quietly. "Go to Ulysses, Constantinople. He does not know, and he grieves you." "Me?" "Why should he not grieve the man who died for him?" I scrambled down the tree and, by some sixth sense, strode toward a distant hilltop where the smoke of a campfire rose. Then, tweaked by some inner need to tell him the good news, I broke into a run. He had to know...! Merlin saw me first. He sprang to his feet, his face glowing with joy, and Astrid clapped her hand over her mouth. Dirk's mouth sagged like his jaw had unhinged. But even in their astonished joy, Ulysses reached me first. I usually avoided hugs--even bro-hugs--but there was nothing remotely embarrassing when Ulysses crushed me in a powerful hug. His voice was hoarse. "I wasn't worth it, Connie. I wasn't worth it." "You were to me." Then, strained: "Ulysses, I can't breathe." He released me and laughed as I gasped for breath. We looked at each other, both suddenly dangerously close to tears. Then Ulysses cleared his throat and slapped my shoulder. "Supper? Dirk found some potatoes. They taste better than his usual muck." If being brothers with my worst enemy was supposed to feel strange, the strangeness had not caught up with me yet. Our reunion meal was the best meal I had ever eaten, even though the camp smoke did seem to follow me from one side of the fire to the other and Dirk did step on my foot--twice--while reenacting some of the events that occurred after my death. (The memory that I had died still felt weird to me.) There was just one thing left. "Sir?" Astrid spoke to the Tree, which now dominated the landscape, its massive trunk nearly as wide as four men laid end-to-end. "Speak," said Rahayar gently. "You called us here for a purpose. Unless I'm mistaken the purpose is over. Will you send us back?" It almost seemed that Rahayar smiled. "This time you choose, Astrid. Each one of you will choose, for himself, to go back to your world or to stay in Azinae forever. What do you choose? Who should stay? Who should go back? Give your reasons and help them choose! 
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |