Even now, Finister shrank from this most horrible of all memories, from the intensity of her foster parents' rage, from the humiliation, guilt, and shame they had heaped upon her and Orly—but their lips moved without sound, and the kind lady's face appeared between her and them. It was wrongly done, and they knew it, and at a moment when you were both most vulnerable. They linked your first sexual experience with shame and guilt, and by doing so, they deliberately destroyed your ability to ever enjoy it again, or even to remember this first experience without pain. They publicized something intimate instead of teaching you how to keep it private even in your most ecstatic moments. They contaminated something pure; they desecrated the part of the experience that was spiritual, convinced you it did not exist, that there was only physical sensation and nothing of true joy — and did all this purposely.
Purposely? Deliberately? You talk nonsense! Finister cried, all the more angrily because it resonated with her own unspoken fears. Why would they have done such a thing?
To debase your self-esteem and convince you that you were fit only for prostitution, the kind lady said, the better to make you a tool for their use. They destroyed the core of your sexuality and left you only the husk and the techniques of seduction, the better to make you a more effective agent and assassin in ways that only women can be.
The shriek started deep inside and burgeoned upward and outward into a wild scream of rage that went on and on as Finister took hold of the picture of Mama and Papa ranting and whirled it about and about with her mind, circling it over her head as though on a rope, swinging it again and again as the scream echoed on and on, deep and ugly and shrill and raw until she finally let the picture go to fly away, sailing farther and farther over the farmyard and house, over the trees, over the horizon, and out, far away from Finny's world.
With them, the farm disappeared, leaving a void of darkness, and Finister collapsed in on herself, panting and heaving with exertion, stunned and dizzy and frightened by the magnitude of her own anger. Panic clawed up in her at the thought of losing Mama and Papa, of the farm and her foster siblings.
Then she regained self-awareness with a shock of alarm. I cannot hate them! Without them I have nothing, am nothing!
Only without them can you truly be yourself the kind lady's voice said sternly. You must cast off the chains with which they bound you and discover yourself as you truly are, as you might have been without the devastation they wreaked upon your mind and heart and soul.
Finny longed to believe the words but still felt the numbing fear of being alone. It is all right, she assured herself frantically, I still have SPITE.
Then she froze, suddenly realizing why she had clung so frantically to SPITE, no matter how foul the tasks her superiors ordered her to execute.
Yes, said the kind lady. Your foster parents made sure that, deep within, you saw SPITE as an extension of the farm, as a home away from home, as a place where you might feel secure when you had to go out into the world.
It is that for which they trained me, Finister protested. It is my purpose in living.
It was they who made it so, not you, the kind lady reminded. They never even suggested you might have a choice.
Choice? The concept burst upon Finister like an explosion of light, leaving her numb. But — what else could I do?
You have risen to be Chief Agent by your own strength and intelligence, the kind lady reminded her. SPITE is nothing without you now, but you have no real need of them — only the illusion of such need. Step out of the shadow they have cast over you, put behind you the fears and self-contempt they inculcated in you. Discover your own virtue, your own worthiness, for if you are the most potent of the anarchists tools, you can also be the most outstanding woman of your generation — aye, in virtue and wisdom as well as in strength and intelligence.
But I am nothing! I am corrupted!
Suddenly she was thrashing her arms and legs, though they struck nothing. She lay against something soft but secure and, looking up, saw a blur of a face framed by touseled hair matted with the sweat of labor, a face that sweetened as a smile of delight and amazement lit its features. "She is beautiful! I shall call her Allouette."
Then it was gone, and Finister stood alone, crying, What was that? Who? What name?
Your earliest memory, the kind lady said, dredged by magic from the depths of your mind. She was your mother, and the name she gave you is your true one.
It cannot be! It is a trick, a deception!
Memories can deceive, the kind lady agreed, but this one does not. Allouette is the skylark, whose music charms, and you are a woman of power and great magic who can move a world — this world.
I cannot be! They would have told me! But Finister knew that was not so.
That is why they needed to shackle you, the kind lady corrected. Burst your fetters, stand free, and grow into your true self If you were a valued tool, you can be often times greater value as a woman.
Finister tottered in the void, wanting to believe but afraid. Then she felt a wind at her back, a wind that rose, strengthening to a gale, and it was all she could do to hold her place against its push.
It is the wind of Destiny, the kind lady said. Have the courage to rise without broom or wing and ride it. Trust your destiny, trust your own talent and intelligence, your own immense worth, and see where they all may take you.
A vision of a castle sprang up in Finister's mind, but with shock and amazement she heard herself saying, What use is a castle?
None, unless it shelters people from attack, the kind lady said, or serves as a storehouse for food to feed them when famine comes, and medicines to heal them when they are ill. You who were reared to serve the people — can you make a castle that will truly do so?
Yes! Finister's soul shouted, but she withheld the words from her lips, shocked and frightened by her own essence.
Go and do it, then, the kind lady's voice said, and the darkness seemed to deepen around Finister; she stood naked in the void, the tatters of the illusion in which her foster parents had wrapped her drifting away, drifting thin, fading, extinguishing themselves. At last she stood bare and shivering in the cold wind, still not quite daring to trust it to bear her away, to trust herself to ride it, to fly, but the kind lady's voice echoed around her, saying, Rise and go. Explore your soul, sound your own depths, then rise and grow and become all you can.
That last word rang and echoed and built into a whirlwind of sound that surrounded Finister and dazed her to distraction, vibrating all about her, within her, making her one with it. With glad relief, she realized her consciousness had joined with it and was dissipating, and surrendered herself to harmony and to the Void.
Gwen went limp, shudders racking her every limb. Geoffrey and Cordelia instantly caught her between them.
"You have exhausted yourself, Mama!" Cordelia cried in alarm.
"I shall. . . revive. ..." Gwen gasped. "What of. . . yourselves?"
Cordelia paused a moment to take stock; in her concern for her mother, she hadn't noticed her own depletion. "I am wearied, but far less so than yourself."
"I, too," Geoffrey said. He glared daggers at Gregory. "This lass of yours had better be worth such a wasting of our mother's strength."
"I need only .. . rest," Gwen said, beginning to catch her breath. "Then I shall be ... stronger than ever." With an effort, she straightened. "As to Allouette ..."