As I draw the child into my arms, her voice cracks, and the sobs pour forth.
You are enough, I tell the girl, who feels slight and unworthy, desperate for a guide.You are deserving, loved, safe, understood. You are important. You are most precious to me.
Yet who is at fault, truly, that so young a spirit would believe herself to be expendable? Father did the best that he could. He carried his own traumas, his own failures, into parenthood. I can’t imagine the difficulty in raising three children alone while grieving the loss of his wife. But what of myself? What responsibility do I hold for my unrelenting grip on resentment? Will I continue to move through life in pieces, or will I begin to work toward wholeness?
Here is what I know. Father is gone. I might never heal the hole he left behind. But I’m still here, still fighting. No matter where the road leads, I can mend the relationship with myself. I can be my own home.
And so my arms tighten around the child.Things are hard now,I tell her,but you will get through this. You cannot be broken. I am here. I will never leave you. I will stay for as long as I am needed.
At this, the girl weeps harder, fingernails gouging my lower back. I absorb that pain into myself as I rock her, again and again, whispering into her ear how brave she is, how strong.
But mostly, I tell her this:I love you. I give voice to what she desperately craves, this promise rarely heard from family. And I think, too, of Fahim. Did he yearn for these words? Might he still be alive had Father offered him an embrace rather than a crown? I might never know. But I press these words into the child’s skin as rosin is pressed into the hair of a bow, until she has absorbed this truth into herself so that she never questions it again.
When her weeping has subsided, I pull away, brush the long strands of hair from her tear-dampened face. “Come with me,” I urge, dark eyes full of mettle.
Young Sarai hiccups, frowns. She is uncertain. She dares not trust. But she places her small hand in mine, and together, we rise.
“Sarai?”
I startle, the South Wind’s hoarse voice yanking me from the depths into which I sink. A rosy-gray light washes the walls of the labyrinth as Notus hovers over me, eyes wild, sweat and grime coating his skin, broad chest heaving for breath. Heat invades the space. The walls of the labyrinth have crumbled in places, opening a path to a doorway in the distance. Sunlight streams through the cracks that have appeared in the ancient stone.
“The beast,” I gasp. “Where is it?”
The South Wind swallows and drops his head in a gesture of defeat. My heart sinks, down and down and down. Did I fail and this is yet another illusion, these cracks and sunlight and doorway out? “Gone,” he whispers.
Gone?“As in dead, or…?”
“Escaped would be my guess,” he says. “It ran straight through you, like you were a mirage. It disappeared down the passage.”
Gingerly, I sit up, curling forward with a groan to relieve the pain seizing my lower back. “It worked,” I say. Pressing my palm to my heart, I marvel at the lightness there, that absence of weight. The beast couldn’t touch me. The darkness had no hold. Not when I finally embraced all that I was, every jagged-edged piece of myself, every cracked and weathered shard.
The South Wind regards me with worrisome solemnity. “You purposefully called the beast to you. Why? Sarai, I—” His fingers spear into his hair, as though they might rip those dark locks from their roots. “I thought I’d lost you. I believed you were gone. Dead. Do you know—” There is a sound I never wish to hear, a god giving in to an all-encompassing fear, a sound of finest cracks.
“I’m sorry.” Taking his hand, I hold it to my chest, sheltering it as I would an injured sparrow. “There wasn’t time to explain.”
“Clearly.” He’s shaking.
I ease nearer, rubbing his upper back. It was not my intention to worry the South Wind so. There’d been no time to decide. I could only act and hope for the best. “Notus, look at me.” I draw his chin up. Reluctantly, his eyes meet mine. “For the first time in years, I trusted myself. Do you know what that felt like?” I shake my head, mouth quirked in a wry softness. “It felt like coming home.”
Notus, however, doesn’t share the sentiment. His frown deepens. “Would it have killed you to inform me of your intentions beforehand?”
When he tries to yank his hand away, I hold tighter, saying, “It was as your brother said. I had to conquer the darkness in my heart and—” Then I gasp. “The violin!” I hurriedly glance around, but the instrument is nowhere to be seen. “Did it vanish?”
“Sarai,” he growls.
Unless Fahim’s violin was a part of my journey? If so, that explains why it’s gone. It was a tool to help me, but now that I’m finally helping myself, I no longer need it. “The beast grew stronger the more we fought against it. That was the trap, don’t you see? As long as we allowed fear to drive us, we were never going to escape. The beast is a symbol, a physical manifestation of the darkness we all carry. The only way to conquer it was to accept the whole of myself.”
“And if you had been wrong?”
Notus appears so pained that I pull him to me, wrapping my arms around his wide shoulders. The weight of his body is comforting. “That was a risk I was willing to take.”
“You are mortal, Sarai.” His voice grinds with a budding frustration. “It could have ended badly. The beast… it took some of my power, do you understand? Drained it. I’m no longer at full capacity. To watch as it charged you—”
“You’re angry with me, I know,” I whisper against his neck, where the desert scent is strongest. “But I am well. The curse is broken. We are free.” Pulling away, I gesture to the door at the end of the passage, light seeping through the bottom crack. Prince Balior claimed I would not escape the labyrinth alive. But he knew little of me and of my will. “We have a chance to save Ammara, Notus. We can save our home.”
Unwittingly, his eyes soften. “Ourhome?”
A gentle warmth bathes my face, a pinkness below the skin. Of course he would notice the detail of a single word. “Yes.” Because what was once mine is now his, this place I am ready to share, and build upon.
