Blind Devotion

When they ask where I came from I say, "Nowhere."

It is Ryce who informs me that the stranger caught on the grounds is stalking me. "He has pledged his life to you," Ryce says, obviously uncomfortable.

"Who is he?"

"He carried no ID and say sit is for you to decide what he should be called."

I was listening to an audio letter from Delos and Maggie when Ryce found me. My bedroom is warm and smells of lavender. I can almost taste the incense smoke on my tongue.

"Perhaps if you spoke with him," Ryce ventures hesitantly.

I sigh, sweat rising where my fingertips still rest on the plastic tape player. "All right, have him brought here."

Gratefully, Ryce leaves, and I put the tape player back in its place on the shelf. Outside, cicadas begin their evening song and I know night is approaching.

I go and lay down on my bed to be quiet. I have been doing that a lot in the last month, since I learned that Raener Calliope, the soulmate I never met, had died. Quiet and alone, those are the things I need to be, need to ask for.

But I never speak up, even when the meetings seem to go on forever. I make those facial contortions I’ve been practicing since I was a year old. I do as is expected of me.

I ask for nothing.

No one can give me what I want.

Part of being blind is always waiting for that cliff you won’t see until you’ve stepped off it. Walking in a blade, touching raw embers. Dangers that don’t apply to the world trouble me and as I lay on the bed, I reach out with my hands on either side so that I’ll know where the edges of the mattress are. What boundaries hold me this time.

I know where I am with my destiny. I didn’t see the fall coming, but I took it. The few hopes I’d secretly harbored are gone, torn away like bits of fabric caught on the mountain-side as I rolled. My soulmate is dead. My sight will never return.

Thierry told me to take heart, but the truth speaks clearly to both of us. The fourth Wild Power remains faceless and whatever millenium explosion we have all been expecting hasn’t arrived. No Divine intervention this time.

I’m tired. I’m lonely and I think I’m beginning to give up.

Ryce opens the door with a gentle knock and I drag myself off the bed and into an arm-chair.

"My lady," a breathless voice gasps, and there is the sound of weight hitting the floor.

"Who are you?" I ask. A sweet scent has reached me, like morning dew.

I can hear a man breathing heavily as if over-come.

"My lady," he whispers, "I have only that name which you would give me."

His voice comes from below, and I realize he must have thrown himself to the floor in supplication.

My fingers clench around the armrests, pressing against the cool metal studs worked into the leather. My body has gone cold all over.

"What do you want?" I ask, and the resentment I’ve felt for the last month is brushed aside in the face of a creeping sensation, like I’ve been wrapped in a blanket of heavy moss.

"Only to serve you."

There is something wrong in his voice. Deep inside, it is twisted, wrung brutally dry of blood. Truly, he is empty. He has only what I give him.

"Do I know you?"

He is crawling across the floor to me, his palms making soft slaps against the carpet.

"I saw you once. At a Circle Daybreak meeting."

Relief. "You are a part of Circle Daybreak?"

Hesitation. "I serve it because I serve you, my lady."

Ryce’s voice has a warning in it. "That’s close enough," he says.

The approach ceases. I think the stranger cannot be more than an arm’s length from my chair.

All my questions run in circles. I try a different approach. "Why me?"

"My lady?" He doesn’t even understand the question.

"Why choose me to serve?"

He hesitates again. "I was at the mansion-"

"-Lord Thierry’s mansion?"

"Yes, my lady. I overheard Lord Descourdes himself speaking of the tragedy you have suffered-"

"Stop!"

I’ve never heard my voice come out so harshly, with so much anger.

"Aradia?" Ryce asks, uncertain. He uses no forma title; Aradia is enough; those close to me call me Ara.

I don’t know what this trespasser has overheard, but I don’t want him passing it along. Ryce knows nothing of Raener Calliope or his death, not do I wish him to. "I’m fine," I say more calmly. "Please give us a few minutes alone."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"I’ll be outside the door if you need anything."

"Thank you."

He leaves. The room is still. My strange supplicant is silence, soaking in my presence as if it were a warm bath.

I want to interrogate him now, bombard him with questions, but when I speak, my voice is so soft as to almost be loving.

"Are you a spy?"

"No, my lady. Merely an eavesdropper out of his depth by Destiny’s choice."

"Destiny’s choice? Why do you say that?"

"I do not think it was by chance that I overheard Lord Descourdes. I believe God must have led me there, knowing that I would learn of your loss and become your faithful servant."

It has been so long since anyone has spoken to me of God. He is foreign, another culture’s mysterious deity, yet this stranger speaks of him with such sureness that I feel a chill, as if a power I do know now has come into the room.

"Why would God want that?"

"Because I may be able to erase your pain, my lady."

Suddenly I’m crying, the flush coming into my eyes and tears pouring out. He is here because he thinks God wants to heal my heart. His logic is as warped as his religion, but I love the idea, that some god, some father of the universe whose all-encompassing power has yet to be disproved to me, as sent down an angel to comfort me.

There is the motion of a soft tissue on my face, and gentle fingers tug my hair until it can be tucked him behind my ears.

"Why have you told no one?" he whispers. His touch on my cheek is motherly, his chest against my knees is firm and warm. "What have you no shared your pain? This household and Circle Daybreak love you, they have so much comfort to give."

"No, no." I try to take the tissue from his hand but he captures my fingers in his own.

"My beautiful lady, why increase this burden by carrying it alone?"

Sniffling, I stop trying to pry my hand out of his. "They will resent me."

"What?" His soothing touch cools my hot cheeks. "No one would begrudge you your sorrow."

"No," I agreed, "they’ll pity me for my sorrow and resent me for not fulfilling the prophesy."

He says nothing. His thumb rubs the back of my hand and I find myself speaking again. "I would have regained my sight," I admit, "if he had lived. It was an exchange, he would kiss me, like in a fairytale, and when I opened my eyes I would be able to see. The first tears I shed would head the scars on his body."

"And he would have loved you forever," the stranger says.

"Yes. I never would have been alone after that. Everyone thinks I’m so calm and poised, I thought that with him I could have been afraid, or ungracious, or doubting."

"That’s lost now."

"They tell me he fell into a fireplace when he was two, that’s where the scarring came from. His parents had a copy of the prophesy, but they were afraid and they wouldn’t let him leave Greece. When he grew up he came here, he knew right where I was, and while he was on his way...when he..."

I dissolve and the stranger holds me. "Oh, my lady," he murmurs. "How dare Fate do this to you?"

I feel as if he has held me before. His touch wakens memories not my own. "Who are you? Tell me the truth."

He stiffens. "I am only who you want-"

"No, tell me. That’s what I want, to know who you are and why you’ve come here."

"My lady," he begs, "ask me anything but this."

But I know who he is, and why he’s come here.

"Anyone I want. If I want, will you be him?"

"As much as it is possible, if that is what you desire."

I lay my head on his shoulder. "That is what I want, Raener."

His voice changes, it is fuller and more solid. "I’m sorry I worried you," he says. "I’m sorry it took me so long to get here."

I would give anything for this to be true, anything. But I can hear him fumbling and trying too hard, and suddenly the charade feels like a dirty thing.

"Let me kiss your eyes, hold still."

"No, no," I say, as his lips brush my eyelids.

"Open your eyes, Ara."

It is the first time he has called me anything but "my lady." Even the small comfort his servitude was beginning to bring is falling apart.

"Go on, Ara."

I open my eyes. I see nothing.

"Now watch," he says, and his body pulls away from mine.

"I can’t see," I tell him weakly as his footsteps retreat. "Raener, I can’t see."

"Wait."

Metal scratches against metal. I recognize the sound; he’s opening the glass doors to the fireplace. A wisp of warmth drifts over to me.

"Watch while you are healed," he says, and I realized what he’s going to do.

"Goddess, no!" I scramble out of the chair, my arms reaching for him. He knocks me easily away and I roll on the floor, disoriented.

His gasps. The world turns gray.

"Stop!"

The wooden logs shift and the flames sizzle. He screams.

Orange forms flash before me.

For the first time in seventeen years, my vision clears.

They tell me now he was a madman. His family knew he was suicidal long before he found his way to my door. His name was Albert singleton. He was a lunatic.

My eyes and my brain are healed. No one can tell me why. I looked up his sister’s phone number myself.

She says he was miserable. She says that if he died believing he was doing good, then I have given him a great gift.

I wander through the cemetery until I find his grave. It reads "Raener Calliope." Next to it is another grave marked "Raener Calliope."

I trace the names and dates with my fingers. I watch the flowers I’ve brought turn their faces up to the sun.

There are no graves here.