Are you all right? she asks.
I’m not going to laugh bitterly. I’m not.
No, I say.
She looks dismayed.
I’m never going to be all right. However, I’m probably better now than I ever have been, depending, I suppose, on what you mean by better. I had what one might call an ordeal.
You allowed the Denolin Turym to absorb you, says Tara.
I believe that the others tried to play down my distress during the period immediately following. In short, I did nothing but moan and weep, punctuated by the occasional scream. If Jamey and Tarlach hadn’t held me down, there were times when I would’ve ripped out my hair and clawed my own skin off. Not that it really matters when I’m inside.
Tara steps forward, clutching my hand. Lorcan, she says. I wanted to know. I wanted to help you.
The sorry truth is that not only was there nothing you could have done, but you would only have made it worse.
She’s taken aback.
I know that sounds absurd. Under any other circumstance, your presence is stabilizing. But what I was going through…
It’s so hard to talk about this.
Tara, the psychic touch of that thing was the most repulsive experience I can imagine. And yet, after it happened the first time, I craved it. I craved it more than I wanted you.
I thought that I had finally hit the bottom. If evil is really a measure of relishing one’s self-degradation, I had become its incarnation. And yet I had always been fascinated with evil. I found it glamorous. There was nothing glamorous about this. I was disgusted with myself – disgusted with what I desired, and horrified at the complete decay of my n’aashet n’aaverti.
I found myself praying – praying, Tara – to I and I for my own immolation, knowing that God was going to turn a deaf ear. And my prayers deepened my damnation because I knew that you had forbidden the loss of any emanation, and that my wish for death was a further violation of my n’aashet n’aaverti.
Tara is gripping my hand miserably now, but she is silent.
During that time, I was never alone. Jamey and Tarlach and Seth and Beat and Callum and Ross stayed with me. That was a new experience. I and I made me to be disconnected. He didn’t want the depths of His own evil to contaminate the other branches. I had been in quarantine. But when it was decided that I was the needed emanation to face the Denolin, everything changed. The wall came down. I didn’t really know how to deal with it, at first.
They were there; they tried to comfort me. They couldn’t, of course. I didn’t understand why they didn’t hate me. In a way, it made me feel worse.
Davy said he got what he needed after the first Denolin attack. He had enough knowledge to create the Bhavashti orchard, but at that time, he didn’t understand what was going to happen to you. In order for us to preserve you, it was necessary not only for me to die, but to be completely absorbed by the Denolin. I and I must’ve known that. Suibhne knew it. But because I didn’t realize that my impulse to consummate my relationship with the Denolin wasn’t of my own desiring, it was a horrible torment to me. And now one of those things has internalized me, which makes me want to throw up if I think too much about it.
You’re the hero, says Tara. We use that term in a lot of ways – to mean the protagonist of a story, or someone who does something admirable – but you’re actually the hero in the deepest sense of the word. You had to undertake the hero’s journey, which eventually leads to the underworld.
I understand. The myth of Inanna. I’ve always liked that story, especially the part about how the goddess of death kills her and hangs her naked body on a meat-hook to rot.
Tara smirks. You’re still you, she says. I was getting worried. Anyway, I was thinking more of the tale of Jonah, the reluctant hero who has to be swallowed and digested before he can complete his mission.
I wish I could’ve known that from the beginning, I tell her. But that’s part of the deal – the hero can never fully understand what’s happening. The ordeal has to seem pointless and horrifying because it’s a test of faith. Which is absurd because I never had any faith to begin with. But now…
There’s no other way to do this. I drop to my knees. Tara’s face registers her amazement.
Now my faith is absolute. My existence belongs to you. I am your knight although my armor is hardly shining. A black knight, perhaps. I am the devoted servant of my god, and the protector of my companions. It is the will of I and I that I bear all the corruption, horror and darkness so that the others might be spared. I wallow in the foulness of the universe, but I remain pure. You cannot stain a shadow.
Tara tugs my hand gently, pulling me to my feet. Lorcan, she says, I wouldn’t exist now if not for you. I will make you my knight, officially. Sir Lorcan Fearghus.
I’m happy, so very happy. Pain and darkness will never be far from me, but Tara’s love – and the love of the other emanations – is a warmth that touches the ice of my heart, and my newfound purpose is a light that guides me. In my cynical youth, I would’ve mocked such comforts. But now I understand what I am.
A shadow is a sign to mark the direction of the light.