Tell the Wind and Fire(80)

She spun me toward the crowd.

“This is the Golden Thread in the Dark!”

All the people seemed to blur before my eyes as their shouts blended in my ears into one indistinguishable roar. All that was clear were the cages hanging in the air, their chains attached to towers of Light. The cages shimmered darkly, and the memory of the old cages in Green-Wood Cemetery came back to me like a nightmare that had come to life even more terrible than I had dreamed.

These cages were full now. I could see the limbs jammed up, see the blood beading on the iron bars.

My aunt held my hand up high, and the people cheered again.

“You all know her. You all know her story.” My Aunt Leila paused. “Or you think you do. You don’t know the half of it, but now it’s finally time to tell the truth. You know the Strykers are tyrants, but you do not know this story of treachery and murder.”

An excited, anticipatory murmur chased her words, ready to be furious.

“Once I had a sister,” said Aunt Leila. “She was born with Light magic in the Dark city. She did not ever wear rings: she never wanted to be parted from her family, and she never wanted to serve the Light Council. She was a good girl, and by that I do not mean she sat by and was beautiful and harmed no one. Instead, she acted always to help and comfort. She met a Light magician from the Light city come on one of their brief errands of meaningless mercy, and he so loved her that he stayed, and healed and truly helped us. He did more than that. He taught my sister how to heal as well as any Light medic. She could have taken the rings, gone into the Light, been powerful and rich and unhurt. My sister instead hid what she could do, hid her marriage to him. She lived in the Dark where our parents died, our houses so close to each other, they seemed like one house. Her child would run through my gate for supper; my husband would help her husband with household tasks. And every night my sister, my Josephine, would go down to the east, where the least of the buried tried to eke out a living. She would go to those who could not pay true Light magicians, and heal them. She had such power. I saw her lay her hands once upon a dying man and he was well again. She could do marvels. And I asked her, I begged her, not to, because I knew the cost of marvels and mercy.”

My aunt’s hair streamed out like a black banner, and she spoke like a bard. I saw that everyone in the crowd believed her story as much as I, who had been the child running through the gate to her arms, who had lived it.

I had dreamed of a day when someone would tell the truth of what had happened to my mother. I had never thought it could really happen. I had never thought that, if it did happen, it would be anything but a triumph.

“My sister went down into the darkest part of the Dark city one night, and she tended to one of the doppelgangers. She often went to heal them. The Light magicians would not lay hands on them, and the way those creatures are treated and the disgusting way they live means they sicken often and die young. I do not know how many doppelgangers Josephine saved, but I know which one killed her.

“I remember she had talked about him to me. He was young, as young as her own daughter, and very sick. He was raving, repeating the same words over and over: his shadow, his mother, his city. He was so sick, he did not even know who she was. He called her ‘Mother,’ as if doppelgangers could have mothers. She thought he would die, and she was so happy when he lived.

“She did not tell me one thing. I could see she was troubled, see she was keeping a secret, but I did not know what it was until months later, when one of the sans-merci told me what they had seen down there in the darkest part of the Dark. My sister, Josephine, pushed the doppelganger’s hood back and saw his stolen face. She saw the face of Ethan Stryker, one of the Stryker heirs, a golden child marked to inherit the city and uphold the laws of the Light Council. The laws the Strykers all knew they had broken. The Strykers had everything, and they wanted Dark magic too. Their council killed us for the least infraction, but they could commit an abomination. No laws for them, only for us! Our children die, but theirs could not.”

I remembered my father reacting so violently to the mention of the Strykers, trying to warn me of what he knew. Josephine always said that. No matter what the danger is, no matter what you might find, you have to go, you have to heal. She had to heal him, Lucie. She told me she had to.

I’d thought I knew the truth, but I had not known anything.

Him was the doppelganger. My mother had gone into danger to heal Carwyn.

I had not understood. I could not tell if the roar in my ears was the crowd or my own blood rushing to my head. For a moment, I thought I was going to faint, and then I thought that the sheer iron strength of Aunt Leila’s grip would hold me up.