Chapter Text
“Memory” by W. S. Merwin
Climbing through a dark shower
I came to the edge of the mountain
I was a child
and everything was there
the flight of eagles the passage of warriors
watching the valley far below
the wind on the cliff the cold rain blowing upward
from the rock face
everything around me had burned
and I was coming back
walking on charcoal among the low green bushes
wet to the skin and wide awake
VOLUME ONE
Preface
Tam sat up, spine straightening after hours of lying on the bed. The tears on his cheeks had dried long ago, leaving faint trails that no one would ever get close enough to see. (Anymore.) The sun was shining through the windows. The trees in the forest around them swayed peacefully, perpetually wet with dew.
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” He asked Linh. The question was not a revelation, only the fact that he’d said it aloud.
“There was never anything wrong with you,” she replied.
“But it’s over,” he said, “everything is over.”
“Wasn’t everything over when I was banished? When Wildwood was destroyed? When you were taken? When you realized you liked boys, and knew the world would call you broken?” She shook her head, silver highlights shining and swaying. “It feels like everything is over. And yet, here you are.”
“Here I am,” he repeated. He could believe the words, truly. He'd survived so much. He would survive more. By holding on to what he loved, and against all odds trusting it would never change, most of the time.
But some things had to end.
Some things weren’t meant to be.