Without the tinctures and the teas and the fragrant smoke the Forestals used in their healing, Ont discovered the truth of his world. It was one of darkness and pain. He would no longer take the drugs, he did not think he deserved them and they dulled a world where he was already denied so much. The healers told him he was a fool and he chased them away with fury and blindly flailing arms.
He could walk, in a fashion, though he needed a stick and the stick was difficult for him to hold. In the end Ania made him a special one, carving it for his misshapen hands, running cords through it so he could tie it to his arms and ensure he did not drop it.
He was grateful, beyond grateful, for her small kindness. Yet when she had given it to him, explained its use, he had been surly and shouted at her, demanding she leave. He did not understand why, and when she had gone he found himself sobbing, though he could no longer cry, not really, as the fire had stolen his eyes. He felt ashamed to weep, all his life he had tried to be strong but in the darkness his strength had fled, sapped by pain and hopelessness.
He never travelled far from the hut the Forestals had given him, they allowed him to live off their charity and treated him as they treated their own. Sharing and asking nothing for it. Bringing food. He ate, though all food tasted of dirt, his mouth had been burned inside and out and even the small joy of food was denied him.
He raged at those who tried to help. Snapped at those who offered to guide him when he walked. Swore at those who warned him he neared an edge, and yet these people did not fight back, they did not begrudge him. They yielded, absorbed his blows, and his anger found no target. If anything they treated him like someone special, honoured him for his sacrifice. As time passed his fury became misery, his misery became grief and through it all, Ania still visited him. She spoke to him, told him stories of her life. How she had not always been a Forestal. How she had come to hate the Rai and how she had come to be here, in this place after losing everything and everyone she had ever loved. How Tall Sera gave her a bow and showed her how to use it. How, for her, grief demanded solitude and the bow gave her that excuse. Her skill was born of obsession, a place to run to when she felt she had nowhere to go.
When he broke, she held him. She did not lie, she did not tell him it would be all right. She did not tell him the pain would lessen. When he asked what he was now, where he would go, the only answer she had was, “I do not know.”
In her truthfulness, her unwillingness to soften his situation, he found a strange comfort. This was the beginning of his healing, he thought. This was the place where he changed forever.
He had fought but he had not been a fighter, he had believed he must fight but that was duty, not a calling. He had been called to serve Ranya, to try and fill the shoes of Udinny and he had been put onto a path where he had put the weapon before the word. He did not believe he had been punished for that, it was not Ranya’s way. Udinny had always said, “We do not pick the path, we only walk it.”
But could it really be coincidence that the only thing he could still do, the thing that hurt the least, was walk? Oh, he had to be careful, and it was not easy, but what in Crua was easy?
Without sight, knowing the path became more important to him than ever. The path from his hut to the water. The path to the food. The path to the heat. He learned all these, step by step in his dark world. He used his stick to sweep the ground before him as there was always something dropping from the trees, always some new obstacle. He no longer shouted at the children when they ran into him. Instead he tried to laugh, despite the pain.
Sometimes Furin’s boy, Issofur, came and sang to him in a language he did not understand.
And as if in reward for his patience, and his forbearance and his pain, his vision returned.
Not in a way that allowed him to see the world as he had, but in a way that let him see another world, one he did not understand. He saw flashes of colour, explosions of brightness. It was like waking in the forest at night, half asleep, glimpsing its wonders before being plunged back into unconsciousness. Sometimes he heard whispered voices, but could not be sure if it was in his mind or from the people of Woodhome. The strangest thing, the voices often sounded like his own.
In time he began to experiment with the drugs the healers offered him to combat the pain, the mixtures of plant powders and mushrooms. First to take the edge off the pain, seeing how much he could take before he began to feel stupid and slow. Then trying different mixes, spending long hours talking with the healers and Venn. The trion had avoided him at first, worried by his anger, but as the anger ebbed Venn had returned. The trion could do little more for his pain and Ont felt the trion’s guilt whenever they spoke. He had worked with Venn, fixing what they could in his body and together learning about the properties of Wyrdwood, its plants and fungi.
Sometimes, the mixtures would expand what he saw, the lights would go on longer and it was then that Ont became sure he heard the whispering in his mind. It was not always the voices he thought may be his own, and it was definitely not how he imagined Ranya would sound. He thought his god more delicate than this voice. This speaking-but-not-speaking voice sounded like it delivered some imperative, some demand but one he was not quite ready to hear.
One night, when he sat by the stones, barely flinching from the heat, he spoke with Venn. The trion had, in their own way, been slowly withdrawing from everyone. Whatever they had learned from the trion of Woodhome weighed heavy upon them.
“Do you still follow Ranya, Venn?” No answer at first, only the rhythmic growl of Segur, the garaur, always accompanied Ont. A long gap before Venn spoke.
“Yes.” It amused Ont, he imagined the trion had probably nodded, then eventually remembered Ont could not see the movement and spoke instead. “The Forestals, they revere the Boughry, but there is no comfort there.” Ont did not answer, not straight away as he had found little comfort in Ranya lately.
“Does she speak to you?” he said. A gap, a space where he heard only the forest.
“No, she spoke only to Udinny.” A thought in the air. Ont had become good at hearing the unsaid.
“And?”
“Maybe Cahan, once, at the end in Harn.” At the mention of Harn, Ont had a flash, a vision as real as if he was stood in the place. It lasted only a moment, the smallest amount of time but there was comfort in what he saw. The bower of Ranya in New Harnwood. With it came such a strong feeling of longing that it almost doubled him over.
“Ont?”
“It is nothing,” he said. But it was not. It was something. It was golden like the Light Above on his face and with it came a need, a desperate yearning to be in that place. To be where he had first devoted himself to Ranya.
That evening, when Ania visited him he told her of it. Of this wish that had come upon him and how he could think of nothing else now.
“Take me through the taffistone,” he said. “Back to New Harnwood.”
“It is gone,” she said. “There is nothing of it left.”
“I need to go there,” he told her.
“Need?” He could hear her amusement. “You need to learn to live and to—”
“Please,” he said. Only one word and that was answered by silence. The sound of her movement, the smell of damp material as she came closer to him.
“It is a true need?”
“Yes.”
“Tall Sera does not want anyone leaving Woodhome, not unless he sends them out. He thinks the attack in the Slowlands has endangered us. It was too direct.”
“I must go to the bower, my grove,” he said. “I do not know why but I must.” He heard her draw air in through her teeth.
“The Rai could still be there,” she whispered, urgency hiding within the spaces of her words. “Even after this long. They will want to know how we escaped. Taffistones are our greatest secret, so if any are there to see us arrive they cannot be allowed to live.”
“You talk as if you intend to go with me,” said Ont softly. “You do not need to.”
“Ont.” The pressure of her hand on his arm, he tried not to hiss in pain. “A blind man stumbling about stands little chance of going unseen.” Stumbling, the word hurt him somewhere deep inside. “You cannot go alone.”
“So you will risk Tall Sera’s wrath to help me stumble about?”
A laugh from her, bitter as ever but truthfully he liked her sense of humour. Liked how dark she could be.
“Aye, I will do that for you.” Inside his pain was a warmth, and melancholy at what may have been but never could be now. “But it will take more than just me, and few Forestals will go against Tall Sera.” Her hand moved off his arm.
“Then it cannot be done,” he said, some light within flickering and fading, a promise the despair he thought he had left behind would return.
“I did not say that,” she told him.