Edmund and Andrea dance.<\/p>\n
They dance \u2014 that time, and others; they dance until Edmund is utterly exhausted, after the patterns of a nithrid\u2019s ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
The quad goes dark when they are at practice. The clouds roll in and deepest night occupies even what would have been the brightest day. In that thick darkness are veins of darting color, purple, yellow, and white, as the eye tracks the lightning that is the nithrid\u2019s dance.<\/p>\n
Edmund tries.<\/p>\n
He really does.<\/p>\n
It is already the fourth session, now, and he is still half-choking with exhaustion, his own saliva, and chunks of heavy air by the fifteenth minute of the dance. He can\u2019t even hold out long enough to get a good cardiovascular workout out of the experience. He\u2019s too lost. Too staggering. Too inept.<\/p>\n
He spins to a halt, tripping over an old stone fountain that he\u2019d forgotten was there, and the nithrid slams into him. She isn\u2019t sure why. Some combination of \u201cto remind him that there is nithrid also moving on this track,\u201d \u201chumor,\u201d and \u201cbecause she does not decide not<\/i> to slam into him before the fait is accompli.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGah,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He sprawls there in the fading dark, bloody, with a nithrid on his back. She doesn\u2019t bother getting all the way back up. She just sits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is like wrestling with the wolf,\u201d he says, and laughs.<\/p>\n
She stands. She walks away a little bit. \u201cThe problem you are having,\u201d she says, \u201cis that you are not hacking the fundamental laws of the universe with your footsteps.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not very good at that,\u201d Edmund admits.<\/p>\n
He rolls over and sits up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could try eating the light or something,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t want to get all cute in the first month.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEating the light.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stares at him, then shrugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she says. \u201cDon\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She floats a few feet to the right. Her foot comes down. Where it touches the earth smokes; dark gathers; a numinous pall clouds the air. She sights a metal pole; she arcs to it: she leaves a trail of violet behind.<\/p>\n
She catches her breath around a spear of pain all through her chest, swallows it down long enough to say: \u201cLike thus.\u201d before she must rest instead of speaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease remember,\u201d he says, \u201cthat I am not actually a nithrid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d she says. \u201cBut \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
She ponders.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at yourself,\u201d explains the nithrid. \u201cAnd you see yourself. You see the magic in yourself. And it wasn\u2019t magic before, of course. It was only a thing<\/i> before. Before you looked at it, it was only that which had happened:<\/i> marvelous and physical but not magical or intrinsically affecting at all. Only, then you look. You look, and your own sight of it weaves it into magic. You become able to do what before you only inspired<\/i> to do. Thus: nithrid. Does that make sense?\u201d<\/p>\n
She twists, a single writhing, convoluted motion that takes her four feet into the air; makes her form appear to dissolve into caryatids intertwining, bowing towards the center, incandescent, before the frog eggs and the whisked duck and the rainbow glimmers that enchain her snap her back.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike so,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot see myself doing that,\u201d Edmund admits.<\/p>\n
He squints at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody <\/i>sees me doing that,\u201d he says. \u201cYou <\/i>don\u2019t even see me doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that so?\u201d she wonders, distractedly. \u201cHm. That may be a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
She arcs to the water of the fountain. She sits beside him. She is beginning to bleed from the edges of her mouth and eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hadn\u2019t occurred to me,\u201d she says, \u201cbut I suppose I don\u2019t see you people as storms. That\u2019s so. I\u2019d thought that that might just be because I\u2019m outside you? But you are<\/i> rough, gross and physical by nature, and all bound up to wolf and gold.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am that,\u201d Edmund agrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be easier,\u201d she says, \u201cif you were naturally electric. If you were the Easter bunny, or something like.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEnergizer,\u201d says Edmund, with surprising insight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe energizer bunny,\u201d she corrects herself. \u201cBut \u2014 you are not hopeless. It is not that bad. There is a potential in you to be a breaker of chains. A killer. A devourer. A wielder of the lightning. It is a dim and distant potential. It is drowning in your gross mortal fleshiness and the constriction of your pet wolf\u2019s fetters but in you I see something golden, conductive. It is buried but it is there. So see it yourself, Edmund Junior. See it harder. Empower it with your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t see it,\u201d he says softly. \u201cIt\u2019s your<\/i> perception.\u201d<\/p>\n
She hesitates.<\/p>\n
Then she waves a hand dismissively. \u201cJust look harder,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d says Edmund, \u201cI wasn\u2019t meant to \u2014 I mean, maybe I\u2019m supposed to look at the magic that\u2019s actually in<\/i> me, and not . . . like, your nithrid-style stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looks at him blankly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe I\u2019m not supposed to be hacking the world with my feet. Wolves are supposed to pad quietly and not with great crescendos of thunder. We\u2019re not like, you know, cats or \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmund remembers that most cats do not clank.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, like kettles, or the like.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not your father,\u201d she says, \u201cor your faculty advisor. Please feel free to try this, if you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight, then,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He concentrates. People walking by think about bothering him, but don\u2019t. He looks inwards. He faces himself, as in a mirror. He tries to recognize the magic in him: the wolf; the storm. After a while he shrugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is all right,\u201d she says. \u201cTwo human eyes are clouded.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I mean, inside me,\u201d says Edmund. He holds out his hand. He closes it on air, twists it, snaps it open and closed a few times as if grasping at something that he cannot feel. \u201cInside me, there is a yawning white nothing.<\/i> I think it is the wolf. I think it is the thing that calls the wolf, the thing that frees the wolf, the white hunger that is in<\/i> the wolf. It is a devour-some emptiness. It eats the eyes of the mind I use to look at it with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHuh,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re bleeding,\u201d he says. He tilts his head. He looks at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease,\u201d she says, waving it off, \u201cfinish your discussion. I have now become interested in this nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019re bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI pushed too hard,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
He squints.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cage of my bones is lined with knives,\u201d she says. She touches her cheekbones. She touches her breastbone, then runs her hand down in front of her chest to indicate the ribs. \u201cIf I am too vast, too fierce, too quick, then they will cut me when I breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n
His face twitches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is of no account,\u201d she says. \u201cI am a nithrid, that has been caught by Hans. I would rather focus my attention on whether you have actually seen something worth seeing, and therefore worth stirring into a storm with your inner eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t listening.<\/p>\n
She waves a hand in front of his face. He isn\u2019t looking.<\/p>\n
She says something. He does not hear it. She says other things. He does not hear them. She shakes his shoulder. She pushes him. She becomes angry. She pushes harder but he does not feel it. He does not react.<\/p>\n
He pours it all down, down, down, into the box around his heart instead, until the world is humming, empty, barely present around him; and even still<\/i> he must fight back the pain.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about her. He wishes it were just about her. He doesn\u2019t even really like<\/i> her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about her.<\/p>\n
What is hurting him now is the same gnawing emptiness he\u2019d mentioned, only seen from the other side. It is the same knowledge that gripped Linus Evans, once, when he felt Hans\u2019 death and knew the cleaning man would rise; the same that gripped poor Betty\u2019s mother when she saw the turtle-people come.<\/p>\n
He is hurting because he has acquired a fuzzy, awful awareness of the sea of hurt and wrongness that is suffusing the mortal world.<\/p>\n
Finally he lets himself hear her.<\/p>\n
He says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I can\u2019t help you. I can\u2019t help anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c. . . I was not asking for your assistance,\u201d she tells him. \u201cI was teaching you. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
She stares at him blankly.<\/p>\n
He is distant. He is mahogany, balsa wood, and teak. He will accept it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you didn\u2019t,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He gets up.<\/p>\n
He can feel it, behind him. She is breathing. With each breath she is cut. He can feel it, inside him. The wolf is hurting. The fetter cuts into it. And somewhere in the world Linus Evans, who was his friend, is still alone, and suffering, and the antichrist; and Tom, he thinks, must be off in some hospital somewhere recovering from being ophidian; and Jane and Mouser doubtless wandering the streets eating out of the trash bins; and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong, and awful, and there is no brightness in it; it is rising like a storm of pain and horror in him, and he bumps into someone, barely even manages to make himself look up and apologize, o how wayward I have become<\/i> \u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cLinus?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBro!\u201d says Linus.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my G\u2014 my\u2014 my\u2014 oh my sweet, euphemistical goodness,\u201d says Edmund, dropping the rage and pain from him like a backpack that he\u2019s just shrugged off. \u201cLinus?\u201d<\/p>\n
He hugs Linus. He pounds his back. \u201cHow the hell have you been?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Edmund and Andrea dance. They dance \u2014 that time, and others; they dance until Edmund is utterly exhausted, after the patterns of a nithrid\u2019s ways. \u201cWhat are you?\u201d he asks. The quad goes dark when they are at practice. The clouds roll in and deepest night occupies even what would have been the brightest day. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-4974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter-1","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Nithrid_Partly_Chained.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6181,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4974\/revisions\/6181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4974"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=4974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}