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Now, if you have been foolish enough to wander from the path, it is up to you to make your way back to the road. Follow the voices of your worried companions and perhaps this time your feet will lead you past the rusting skeleton of a waterwheel resting in a meadow where it has no right to be. If you are lucky, you will find your friends again. They will pat you on the back and soothe you with their laughter. But as you leave that dark gap in the trees behind, remember that to use a thing is not to own it. And should you ever take a bride, listen closely to her questions. In them you may hear her true name like the thunder of a lost river, like the sighing of the sea.
"It is always the same trap," she said gently. "You longed for conversation. The bear craved jokes. The gray wolf missed music. The boar just wanted someone to tell her troubles to. The trap is loneliness, and none of us escapes it. Not even me."
I saw it then. I understood. She'd known it would happen. Maybe from the first day she'd brought me to the Little Palace. She knew him and what he was, but I was the one she resented for it. I stood there, paralyzed, buffeted by two competing winds. I wanted to fall to my knees and bury my head in her lap, to cry and beg for her protection. I wanted to smash the mirror she feared so much and cut her face to ribbons with it, stuff her mouth with glass and make her swallow every jagged edge of my hurt and shame.
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It's been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home. "Be back before dark," they whisper. "The trees are hungry tonight."
I screamed as power flooded through me, as I burned, consumed from the inside. I was a living star. I was combustion. I was a new sun born to shatter air and eat the earth.
Like calls to like. I'd sensed it when the Hummingbird entered the Unsea, but I'd been too afraid to embrace it. This time, I didn't fight. I let go of my fear, my guilt, my shame. There was darkness inside me. He had put it there, and I would no longer deny it. The volcra, the nichevo'ya, they were my monsters, all of them. And he was my monster, too.
I called and the light answered. I felt it rushing toward me from every direction, skimming over the lake, skittering over the golden domes of the Little Palace, under the door and through the walls of Baghra's cottage. I felt it everywhere. I opened my hands and the light bloomed right through me, filling the room, illuminating the stone walls, the old tile oven, and every angle of Baghra's strange face. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout. At last, there was something that belonged wholly and completely to me.
You could ask the immigrant, Why are you telling us all this? The truth is, as an immigrant, especially a first-generation immigrant, your first instinct is to stay silent. Fear; caution; the violent escape, that violent first encounter with the unknown country; that feeling of being uninvited; resentment; longing for and rejection of home, and guilt and rage at the same time, all take root in the immigrant. An immigrant is a confused creature, highly insecure, and that is why he fears confession. All it takes is one gesture from the other side, one sign of denial, or indifference, of the "What's it to me where you come from and what you've been through?" kind, for the immigrant to feel ridiculous, vulnerable, and freakish. That's why he doesn't take risks. Instead, he digests his experiences in isolation and before long is convinced that they are of absolutely no interest to anyone. In the final analysis, he thinks: I wasn't made for telling stories, but to fight tooth and nail for my survival. It's not that people can't understand; they just don't want to.
I asked my self O why has heaven
Denied the precious gift to me
The glorious gift to many given
To speak their thoughts in poetry
Denied the precious gift to me
The glorious gift to many given
To speak their thoughts in poetry