166 - No one will believe I was Chevenga

“That’s why I have weapon-sense!” I said, as I came back to myself. Myself—what did that mean? I thought I knew; and yet I had been these two other people, and they had been myself as much I was myself now. I felt less myself than before, and more, both at the same time.

“We are the sum of all we have been,” Surya said, as if he could read my mind. “Right now you are the one known as Fourth Chevenga, or First Virani-e, in the year of Yeola-e 1556, and so the business of this particular life you concern yourself with; but over the full sweep of time, you are more.” I had thought of myself as only that, of course. To look at myself this way—one soul that had lived a long string of lives, of all kinds of people in all kinds of places—was dizzying.

And yet there were explanations here. I had thought that the sensations of childbirth were familiar from my having seen my mother do it, forgetting that watching does not give us the sensations. I had thought weapon-sense had come to me because my father had been back-stabbed, forgetting that I had had it before that; it had only been discovered after. My distress the first time I’d put on the brass chain now suddenly had a depth of reason for it that made me entirely understand it.

Remembering the cluttered desk in Brahvniki, with notes in the same writing and the different inks, I could only wonder. It was so obviously my desk. The assassin wiping his—her?—blade on my velvet waistcoat had infuriated me hugely for how small a thing it was; it was because, I realized, I had worked so long and so hard to become able to afford such clothes. That anger I felt as mine.

I lay still on his table. “Just be with it for a bit,” he said, patting my shoulder. Something else was bothering me about it all, so I asked myself, ‘What is in it?’ I realized to my horror that it was pride. Just as so many people fantasize of having been Curlion or Ilesias the Great or Yeola in previous lives—Astalaz had told me that the record-keepers get inquiries all the time—I, who was prominent in this life, was in some part thinking, ‘I was these insignificant people?’ I’d become used to thinking of myself as one who changes the fate of the world, and found the idea I had ever been one who didn’t distasteful. I wanted to beat the feeling out of myself with a stick.

“Here is what you need to understand about past lives,” Surya said. It made it a hundred times worse to realize he was seeing this in my aura. “Their greatest lesson really: acceptance of yourself as you are, and were, whoever you are, or were. It is not easy, at the beginning, for anyone.”

All-Spirit help me, no, I thought. He’s going to put me through past-life tenar menhu… what will it be, one for each life? I wanted to crawl off the table and slither under the door. But he said, “It’s as I say, though, while what happened in other lives touches you, it does not afflict you. Your healing priority is elsewhere. It may well be that you want to return to delve further into it, sometime later in this one… or even a subsequent one. Another thing you should know, though; doing such work can cause the return of memories from any time.”

“Probably I’ll be a Lakan peasant,” I said, “firmly believing in reincarnation in that life—but no one will believe I was Chevenga in this one.”

“Probably,” he said, deadpan. “But you are who you are, were who you were, and will be who you will be; there’s no escaping that, so you might as well accept it.”

“Easy,” I said, drawing out the word in sarcasm. “A-e kras.”

†

The next morning, I woke at dawn as usual, feeling strangely light, as if the spirit of some pleasant dream I’d forgotten was lingering gently around the edges of my consciousness. My body felt light, too, and sweetly relaxed. A thought of my life wandered into my mind, and I saw it stretched out before me, over decades, marked out by the dawns and dusks, the springs and autumns, the festivals and birthdays, punctuated with triumphs and disasters, adventures and crises, the cries of life beginning and the sighs of it ending. I was in this for a while before I saw I was imagining decades. I let out a gasp, and then I was in tears.

Skorsas put his arm around me. “It’s all right,” he said, still half-asleep. “We’ll get you through it, Jewel of the World. Everything’s going as it should.”

“It’s not something bad, Skorsas,” I managed to choke out. “It’s something good.”

“Too good to bear,” he said, waking up more thoroughly, and tightening his arm. “You know, it’s always amazed me. I’d never seen anyone endure adversity as well as you do, come smiling through things that would kill anyone else. But let something good happen, and it shatters you. I always wondered… when you leapt out of the window, the story was always that it was in remorse for the sack. I always wondered if it wasn’t actually because you’d won the war.”

This idea was too much to do anything but clench my eyes shut against, right then. He slid his shoulder under my head and wrapped both arms around me tightly. “Something good. Tell me?”

By breathing deep, I got myself calm enough to form words. “Skorsas… when you think of your future, what does it look like to you? What do you expect?”

His brows, faintly bright even in the darkness, knit in the way of someone asked to consider something he never has before. “You mean, what do I plan?”

“No… I mean the things you can’t plan. When you imagine your life set out before you… what are your assumptions about it?”

His brows knit again. “I… I’ve never thought much about that. I’ll get married, have kids—those are things I’m planning, though—and go on looking after you, for the rest of your life if you’ll let me… I never imagined I’d end up in Yeola-e in my dotage, but then I didn’t know how beautiful it is.”

“Then you can see yourself in your dotage,” I said.

He stared at me. “I guess so… I never thought of it. I mean… the Gods do as they will, and something could happen to me any moment, same as anyone… but aside from that, I expect to be old and grey some day. Which I think is how everyone thinks, except warriors, but then, they’re crazy, as you know. Isn’t it?”

How completely and effortlessly he took it for granted, so much that he wasn’t even truly conscious of it. How I had once hated everyone in the world, for that.

“It is, as far as I understand,” I said. “And it is how I’m thinking this morning. For the first time in my life.” The realization hadn’t made it go away; it still stretched long ahead in my mind like an ornate rolled-out tapestry.

He froze, his arms petrifying around me. “My professional—great noble God… but I thought… you’ve been working on this for nine months, hasn’t it…?” He trailed off as he realized that my expectation of life would hardly have gradually lengthened over the course of my healing, thirty to forty to fifty and so on.

“I’ve thought about it many times,” I said. “Sometimes on Surya’s orders, sometimes just on my own. Made myself imagine living long… made myself imagine expecting to live long. This is the first time I haven’t been imagining it, the first time it’s just been there, as it is for most…” I could barely get out the word “people,” for tears seizing me again.

“Immutable Muunas,” he whispered, pressing his body against mine. “No wonder… this is something so good, of course you’re shattered. It’s all right.” He kissed my cheeks, brushing away tears with his lips. “We’ll get you through it. It will be there from now on and you’ll get used to it, don’t worry. We’ll get you through the emotion. Everything is going as it should.”

He was wrong in one thing; next morning, it was gone. I could feel my way only to thirty, as usual, and the lifelong crushing was there again. As I told Surya this, on his table for that morning’s session, I tried to fight off the sickness of despair.

“This is how it always is,” he said. “As you transform from one state of mind to another, the first change you see is a flash of the state you are seeking. It’s just a flash because that’s all you can take at first; but it lets you know what that state will be like. That glimpse cannot be undone. Think of it as being like the report of the foremost scout in an army; he can’t walk right into enemy territory as if he were the whole army, but has to run back to reveal what he’s learned.

“Next, you’ll get another flash, but it will be longer… then an even longer one, after a shorter time, and so on; then it’s the strange, in-between phase when you’re half and half, and then the phase in which you are there enough that you realize the relapses are indeed relapses, the manifestations of a dark mood.”

“And then… I’ll stop having them at all.”

“Virani-e, I will not promise that you will ever stop having them, ever… the habit is so strongly graven into you that I suspect you’ll always have throwbacks. But they’ll be infrequent and minimal. They won’t matter.”

The room was suddenly spinning end over end, and my breath coming in panting gasps. He put his arm across me, as if to pin me to the table, a great comfort. “You can bear it,” he said, in that distinct, close-to-my-ear way he did when I was so far gone I wouldn’t easily hear. “You have the strength. I’m not just saying that, I can see it in your aura. You’re doing right, in part, breathing through it; keep them fast but make them deep, right down to here, and just let the feeling roll through you with the breaths, until it has run its course.”

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