Epilogue. Restoration
Twenty One: “To Say Farewell”
BUT WHEN she was fully in the grip of the wind, she no longer felt its force. It reft her from the Land as if she were mist; but like mist she could not be hurt now. She had been battered numb. When the numbness passed, her pain would find its voice again and cry out. But that prospect had lost its power to frighten her. Pain was only the other side of love; and she did not regret it.
Yet for the present she was quiet, and the wind bore her gently across the illimitable dark. Her percipience was already gone, lost like the Land: she had no way to measure the spans of loneliness she traversed. But the ring-Covenant's ring, her ring-lay in her hand, and she held it for comfort.
And while she was swept through the midnight between worlds, she remembered music-little snatches of a song Pitchwife had once sung. For a time, they were only snatches. Then their ache brought them together.
My heart has rooms that sigh with dust
And ashes in the hearth.
They must be cleaned and blown away
By daylight's breath. But I cannot essay the task,
For even dust to me is dear;
For dust and ashes still recall,
My love was here.
I know not how to say Farewell,
When Farewell is the word
That stays alone for me to say
Or will be heard.
But I cannot speak out that word
Or ever let my loved one go:.
How can I bear it that these rooms
Are empty so?
I sit among the dust and hope
That dust will cover me.
I stir the ashes in the hearth,
Though cold they be.
I cannot bear to close the door,
To seal my loneliness away
While dust and ashes yet remain
Of my love's day.
The song. made her think of her father.
He came back to her like Pitchwife's voice, sprawling there in the old rocker while his last life bled away-driven to self-murder by the possession of Despite. His loathing of himself had grown so great that it had become a loathing of life. It had been like her mother's religion, only able to prove itself true by imposing itself upon the people around it. But it had been false; and she thought of him now with regret and pity which she had never before been able to afford. He had been wrong about her: she had loved him dearly. She had loved both her parents, although she had been badly misled by her own bitterness.
In a curious way, that recognition made her ready. She was not startled or bereft when Covenant spoke to her out of the void.
“Thank you,” he said gruffly, husky with emotion. “There aren't enough words for it anywhere. But thanks.”
The sound of his voice made tears stream down her face. They stung like sorrow on her cheeks. But she welcomed them and him.
“I know it's been terrible,” he went on. “Are you all right?”
She nodded along the wind that seemed to rush without motion around her as if it bad no meaning except loss. I think so. Maybe. It doesn't matter. She only wanted to hear his voice while the chance lasted. She knew it would not last long. To make him speak again, she said the first words that occurred to her.
“You were wonderful. But how did you do it? I don't have any idea how you did it”
In response, he sighed-an exhalation of weariness and remembered pain, not of rue. “I don't think I did it at all. All I did was want. The rest of it-
“Caer-Caveral made it possible. Hile Troy.” An old longing suffused his tone. “That was the 'necessity' he talked about. Why he had to give his life. It was the only way to open mat particular door. So that Hollian could be brought back. And so that I wouldn't be like the rest of the Dead-unable to act He broke the Law that would've kept me from opposing Foul. Otherwise I would’ve been just a spectator.
“And Foul didn't understand. Maybe be was too far gone. Or maybe he just refused to believe it. But he tried to ignore the paradox. The paradox of white gold. And the paradox of himself. He wanted the white gold-the ring. But I'm the white gold too. He couldn't change that by killing me. When he hit me with my own fire, he did me one thing I couldn't do for myself. He burned the venom away. After that, I was free.”
He paused for a moment, turned inward, “I didn't know what was going to happen, I was Just terrified that he would let me live until after he attacked the Arch.” Dimly, she remembered the way Covenant had jibed at Lord Foul as if he were asking for death.
“We aren't enemies, no matter what he says. He and I are one. But he doesn't seem to know that Or maybe he hates it too much to admit it Evil can't exist unless the capacity to stand against it also exists. And you and I are the Land-in a manner of speaking, anyway. He's just one side of us. That's his paradox. He's one side of us. We're one side of him. When he killed me, he was really trying to kill the other half of himself. He just made me stronger. As long as I accepted him-or accepted myself, my own power, didn't try to do to him what he wanted to do to me-he couldn't get past me.”
There he fell silent But she had not been listening to him with any urgency. She had her own answers, and they sufficed. She listened chiefly to the sound of his voice, cared only that he was with her still. When he stopped, she groped for another question. After a moment, she asked him how the First and Pitchwife had been able to escape the Cavewights.
At that, a note like a chuckle gleamed along the wind. “Ah, that” His humour was tinged with grimness; but she treasured it because she had never heard him come so close to laughter. “That I'll take credit for.
“Foul gave me so much power-And it made me crazy to stand there and not be able to touch you. I had to do something. Foul knew what the Cavewights were doing all along. He let them do it to put more pressure on us. So I made something rise out of the Wightbarrow. I don't know what it was-it didn't last long. But while the Cavewights were bowing, the First and Pitchwife had a chance to get away. Then I showed them how to reach you.”
She liked his voice. Perhaps guilt as well as venom had been burned out of it. They shared a moment of companionship. Thinking about what he had done for her, she almost forgot that she would never see him alive again.
But then some visceral instinct warned her that the darkness was shifting-that her time with him was almost over. She made an effort to articulate her appreciation.
“You gave me what I needed. I should be thanking you. For all of it. Even the parts that hurt. I've never been given so many gifts. I just wish- ”
Shifting and growing lighter. On all sides, the void modulated toward definition. She knew where she was going, what she would find when she got there; and the thought of it brought all her hurts and weaknesses together into one lorn outcry. Yet that cry went unuttered back into the dark. In mute surprise, she realized that the future was something she would be able to bear.
Just wish I didn't have to lose you.
Oh, Covenant!
For the last time, she lifted her voice toward him, spoke to him as if she were a woman of the Land.
“Farewell, beloved.”
His response came softly, receding along the wind. “There's no need for that I'm part of you now. You'll always remember.”
At the edge of her heart, he stopped. She was barely able to hear him.
“I'll be with you as long as you live.”
Then he was gone. Slowly, the gulf became stone against her face.
Light swelled beyond her eyelids. She knew before she raised her head that she had come back to herself in the ordinary dawn of a new day.