The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(433)

But when you are born, things are… different. Wrong. You do not feel quite of caprice and wind and man-ness. You try these things, and because you are a god things happen, but they are not the things that should happen, and they do not nourish you. They do not inform you. You are something steadier than caprice. Heavier than wind. And when you curl yourself into various shapes, it is woman-ness that calls to you, except when you make shapes that do not have woman-ness. (Like amoebas. I like being an amoeba! Glurgle glurgle squishchomp.)

You are not what your parents want you to be.

You are not what you want to be, because you love them, your parents, and you want to make them happy, and you just… can’t. In fact, now you have no idea what you should be, instead. You are incomplete.

It is. It is very. Sad. I was very sad.

But then something changed and I got mad. Because it was so unfair. I did everything right. I was born, and everything! Life should have been perfect for me and suddenly it was not and everything was just, just awful.

So I went around for a while, mad. I made hells and kicked them and did not feel any better so I let them fade away. I asked Mama to help me make some life to kick instead, and she looked at me in a scary way and said that life was not mine to play with. She gave me some knowledge to study, though, and that made me bigger which is why I am not talking in quite so many exclamations now. But once I had learned it I was bored again and mad again so I went off looking for something else to do.

I talked to some siblings. Some of them did not want to talk to me but others did. One called the Dreamer told me that he had not been able to find himself for a long, long time—so long that he gave up trying, and thought it would never happen, and resolved to just be sad and empty forever. But then it happened. “It will happen,” he said, which made me feel better. I asked him how he’d made himself be less empty during that long time, and he said he had filled the emptiness with other people’s love for a little while. “But without love of the self, others’ love will never be enough.” I didn’t understand that part so I just nodded and went away.

Then I tried to talk to Spider Manysighted, and she just laughed and threw webs around me and talked gibberish and I almost died! I went away before I could. I don’t think I like her much.

Then I talked to Ral the Dragon, which was hard because all it does is spit fire and roar. So I tried spitting fire and roaring along with it, and it didn’t spit any fire at me, so I guess that was OK.

When I was done I felt even more better, but I was still mad. So finally I went to the wall of torn stars which is at the edge of the Maelstrom, and I just sat there and felt bad for a while.

And I thought: This is so unfair! I should be Sieh!

And then I thought: Why can’t I be Sieh?

And then I thought, ooh, I thought: Maybe I can make me be Sieh.

Oooooh!

There isn’t any rule against it. It’s what the Three wanted, and it’s important to obey them, isn’t it? Nobody said I couldn’t.

So I went back to Spider and I played a trick. I tied her realm to Ral the Dragon’s and ran away before either of them could see what I’d done. They started fighting! And I tried to laugh at them, to feel proud of what I had done, because it was good mischief! And that is what Sieh would have done.

Except… it wasn’t funny. Spider had been mean to me, but Ral had been nice, and… I didn’t like being mean.

I decided maybe I was doing mischief wrong. I tried again, this time sneaking into Elhodi’s Infinite Garden and switching things around so they bloomed out of season and grew next to things that would eat them and making all the flowers be polka-dotted. And then I waited nearby to see what would happen when Elhodi found it. I thought he would get angry, and then I would laugh, and it would be OK because I hadn’t met Elhodi at all and he hadn’t been either mean or nice.

But when Elhodi came in, he started to cry. Really! I felt bad then. I realized his garden had been beautiful, and I’d made it ugly, and… and… being mischievous wasn’t any fun at all.

I came out of hiding and said I was sorry. He let me help him put everything back, which made us both feel better. Then he said, “Why?” Or rather, he rustled a little, because Elhodi only speaks in plant, but I figured it out.

“I thought I could make me be Sieh,” I said. “This is what he would do. Isn’t it?”

Elhodi just stared at me for a moment, then shook his head in a bobbing, windblown sort of way. Then he touched me and took me back to the center of the gods’ realm, where the Three were just finishing whatever they had been doing before. When he spoke to them and left me there I thought I would be in trouble, so I stood before them and bowed my head and waited to be punished for being bad.