"The villains!" Cordelia cried. "The caitiff swine!"
"Worse," Gwen said, face contorted with disgust. "They bartered affection, they withheld approval, they bound her to servitude by her own heart and debased her self-esteem systematically."
"They reared her to be a prostitute and a killer!" Geoffrey exclaimed. "That business with teaching her to slaughter animals—'twas all done in such a way as to lead her to slaughtering people!"
"And to encourage her sexuality only to disable it, to twist it in such a way that they could use it, and her, as a weapon!" Cordelia's voice was harsh with bitterness.
"Not to mention the poisoning of her mind," Gwen said, "in teaching her history from only their own biased point of view and excluding all others, let alone facts that might contradict it!"
"People have done that from time immemorial, Mother," Cordelia said angrily.
"Yes, but not so consciously, not with so great an awareness of what they were doing! She has been reared to be a tool, nothing more, and has not been given the slightest chance to develop her own soul, to become an individual in her own right!"
They were all silent for a moment as the words sank in. Then Cordelia ventured, "But we now propose to do so ourselves, do we not? Can you truly cure her, Mother, or only remake her into the image of what we wish her to be?"
Gwen turned to her youngest son. "What say you, earnest lover? Do you wish the woman to become as you dream her to be, or do you wish her to become fully herself and take the risk that she will no longer find you attractive? Perhaps she will even become someone repugnant to you."
Gregory paled again but said firmly, "I wish her to be herself. Then let us discover if I appeal to her, or her to me."
"You might also discover that your great passion has been only illusion," Geoffrey cautioned.
"Then I must know that! I must know the truth so that I can see the world as it really is—and at this moment, she is the world to me! Cure her, Mother, if you can—make her to be her own person and none other's, not even mine!"
"Well said," Gwen told him, and his siblings murmured assent. "I am proud of the son I have reared," she said, then glanced at Geoffrey. "All of them, but never so proud of Gregory as at this moment. I must have done something right."
"More than you know," Cordelia said, then suddenly frowned and said reluctantly, "I suppose Finister's foster mother and father did a few things well, too."
"Oh, yes," Gwen said. "They reared her with love and devotion her first few years. Even after that, her home was always a secure refuge—until she was sixteen. But they did so only to assure that she would be able to love, for if she did not, she could not have become so loyal to their cause or have ached so for their approval and feared their censure. Truly the right thing for the wrong reason. They were quite clever in achieving their goals."
Cordelia eyed her with misgiving. "You do not mean they were virtuous people mistaken in their beliefs!"
"Mistaken, aye," Gwen said, "but there is little virtue in corrupting children in the name of a cause. We must confront lies with truth, though. Let me find these two and discover what was truly in their hearts."
Her eyes lost focus and her children were silent, careful not to distract her as her mind sped to the farmhouse Finister remembered—not difficult to find, since she also remembered the route from the farm to Runnymede. They knew Mama was sifting through the memories of the man and woman she found in that house. Cordelia, at least, hoped that her mother would not kill the couple in their sleep, though she did not doubt they deserved it.
Then Gwen's eyes focused again and a grimace of disgust crossed her face. "Their memories show that they lied deliberately and often. Worse, they knew what they were doing, and had even come to enjoy the humiliation and the despair they caused."
"Corrupted by their own goals?" Geoffrey asked.
"No, by the means of achieving those goals—and I cannot say which I deplore more, the means or the goals. Let us see if I can counter the one and overturn the other." She reached out to either side. "Join hands again, children. We have thus far only learned what we must confront; the true labor has yet to begin."
"But how can you cure her, Mother, rather than make her into another form of statue?" Cordelia asked.
"By freeing her from the bonds of her past, from the fetters her foster parents and her commanders placed upon her," Gwen said, "but not replacing them with manacles of my own choosing. I must allow her to remember her past without being enslaved by it, leave her free to decide her fate and her faith for herself. Lend me strength, children."
The three young people fell silent and joined hands, gazing upon the unconscious woman who lay in their midst.
Gwen was silent, too, a while, comparing the structure of Finny's brain to that of the healthy brain, which she had learned well from the computer. Synapses had grown wrongly, whether from birth or from learned responses she could not tell. She regenerated here, straightened a pathway there, lowered some resistances, and raised others until the brain was restored to its original functions.
Then she began to work on Finister's past.
Overcome with jealousy, five-year-old Finny reached out to the baby with her mind, to look inside it and see if there were some way she could make it go away. . . .
Sudden blinding pain racked her head and voices echoed there, stern and scolding, Rhea's voice with Beri's and Umi's behind it:
No, Finny! You must never hurt anyone unless they're trying to hurt you very badly!
Finny cried out in fright—then a bigger fright as a huge, horrible ogre stalked into her mind; she could see the hag very clearly, huge muscles bulging under dirty blouse and red plaid kilt, dark jowls and little piggy eyes under an unruly thatch of hair, a club upraised in her hand, mouth opening. . . .
Suddenly, though, the monster froze in midstride and a beautiful motherly face appeared beside it, a kindly-looking woman whose face showed the first lines of age and whose red hair was shot with silver. She spoke, and Finny heard her reassuring voice inside, where the hag was. Foolish, is it not? the lady asked. Only a bogie to frighten children — but far too much of a fright.
Suddenly, by some magic she couldn't understand, Finny was standing outside of the scene, the grown-up Finny watching the little girl she had been and the horrible creature inside her head. The hag began to move again, thundering her dire threat, but the motherly woman only smiled at it with amusement. Then Beri took the little girl in her arms, stroking her forehead and saying, "It's just a bad dream, Finny, but that's what you look like inside when you think about hurting one of us. Never even think about it again." And she crooned a lullaby, soothing the five-year-old to sleep.
The kind lady said, They frightened you far too much, but the rule they told you holds true — that you should not hurt others who are weaker than you.
The grown-up Finister, powerful now and able to hurt many people in her turn, bridled at the notion that she should hold back. Why should I not? They cannot hurt me now!
Someone can, the kind lady warned. There will always be someone stronger than you. That is why a law that protects the weak will someday also protect you.
So I must live by that law if I want its protection? Finister frowned. That is a strange notion. But she could see the sense in it, for she remembered with a shudder the burst of light in her mind when she had attacked Gregory Gallowglass.
There is that, the kind lady acknowledged, but look at the little girl you were. Would it be right for someone older and stronger to hurt her for their own amusement simply because they could?
Finister didn't even have to look—she knew in an instant that it was vile. You mean that if it was wrong to do it to me, then it was wrong to do it to anyone, she said slowly.