Wing & Nien

by Shytei Corellian

  “They died, but in us many may live again. It sounds crazy, right? I mean, we’re talking about people not trees, but maybe we can come back from extinction, too.” He looked at SiQQiy. “You’re a genius!”

  SiQQiy blinked at him. “What?”

  “As it is with the Mesko, death means life.”

  He could see SiQQiy was searching his face for a clue as to what was happening with him.

  “There,” Nien said, trying to explain, “hidden in the most common, one of the most familiar aspects of my life, was the answer all along. Do you see? We’re only three — me, Wing, and Carly. Three very small, insignificant saplings, kept too long out of the sun, damaged, thirsty, but alive…”

  Spotting a gathering of SiQQiy’s guards swimming in the river, Nien called out to them, “Have you seen my brother this evening?”

  One of them raised his head out of the water. “No, but I saw him early this afternoon. He was walking downriver.”

  “Thanks!” He turned back to SiQQiy. “I’ve got to find Wing. I must tell him!”

  SiQQiy gazed at him in confusion, before saying, “There is something you and your brother have to offer our world that will far outweigh what you have already done. Go.”

  Nien took her face in his hands, kissed her, and took off at a run.

  Chapter 74

  The Time Has Come

  N ien had run a fair distance with no sign of Wing. He’d traveled over two bridges: one to cross to the mountain side of the river, and then another further down to bring him back to the valley side. By then twilight had fallen. With darkness coming on, Nien decided to head back. If Wing had doubled back or skirted the valley and gone into town, it was possible he had returned to the cabin by now.

  Hopeful but not expectant, Nien entered the cabin on exhausted legs.

  To his surprise, Wing sat inside, alone.

  Nien wanted to blurt out his excitement, but instead moved quietly to the fire. There were so many things he was bursting to say — “Where’s Carly?” he said instead.

  “Up at the house with Kate.”

  “It’s uh, good to see you.”

  Anxiously, Nien searched Wing’s face. Wing met his eyes, and Nien was relieved to see his brother again instead of the reticent ghost. The sweetness of it washed over him like a clean cascade of water.

  “What is it?” Wing asked.

  Nien walked over and sat down beside him. “I took a walk with SiQQiy tonight after dinner — ”

  “I never would have guessed,” Wing said. “You look like you just got your sword polished.”

  Nien slugged Wing in the leg. Having Wing joke with him felt like the dissolution of a season filled with rain. “Yes I do, but no I didn’t — it’s something else.”

  Wing waited.

  “Obviously something’s been wrong,” Nien continued. “You haven’t said what it is, but I think I have a pretty good idea.” Nien gripped the blanket under his hands. “Tonight, when SiQQiy and I were talking our conversation led to something…” His voice caught. “It’s a whole story, but I guess the short of it is: It wasn’t your fault, what happened to our people. And it wasn’t mine either.” He pressed his palms to the bed, hoping to steady his tremulous hands. “Our people are dead, but thousands, maybe millions of others may be saved through our testimony and Lant’s Plan.” He raised his face. “I see something now that I didn’t before. Without even knowing I was looking, I found my answer. This feeling, this realization — I wish there was a way I could…”

  Nien knew he was attempting to navigate past the long line of barricades he saw in Wing’s eyes and it was not unlike moving in unfamiliar territory filled with rivers and lakes after an Ime storm: Nien had no idea what he’d fall into nor how deep the icy water might be.

  It seemed Wing understood Nien’s dilemma and decided to relieve him of it — he got up and started to leave.

  “Brother,” Nien called quietly.

  Wing turned back around.

  Stepping over to his bed, Nien reached beneath it and withdrew a small leather-bound book. Slowly, he handed it out to Wing. The expected storm of emotions crossed Wing’s face. Nien had found it in a pocket sewn into the long leather cloak Wing had been wearing when he’d arrived in Legran. Nien hadn’t known whether Wing had forgotten about it or not — either way, Wing had never mentioned it.

  Wing took the book from Nien’s hand, his face once again an impenetrable mask, and after a brief moment of silent eye contact, walked out.

  As the cabin door shut, Nien took off his boots and shirt and lay down on his bed. Squeezing his eyes closed, he released a shuddering breath and though he could not speak it, allowed a prayer to fill his mind.

  Wing walked a long way up the river in the silence of the night.

  Nien had found an answer that helped make sense of his pain. Master Monteray had said that one could carry around knowledge their entire life and never realize it.

  All it takes is a moment, Monteray had said. Only a moment.

  That moment had happened for Nien.

  Logically, Wing understood that in order for something to live, something else had to die...

  But I have died a hundred, a thousand times since that night, Wing thought, and still nothing can atone for my inaction. Nothing, now, can make any of it right.

  He’d lied to Carly in the Mietan. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go back to Rieeve because it was broken, unredeemable, unreclaimable. And it wasn’t about Eosha not caring enough to save their people either. That was just another way of putting the blame out there, even if that was to blame some ethereal prophet that he, nor anyone else he’d ever known, had ever seen.

  It was about —

  Me, he thought. That I would never be able to bear seeing Rieeve again knowing it was my fault. Going back only to fail. Again. Because I still don’t understand whatever it was I was supposed to understand.

  Near the riverbank, Wing came to a stop. He stood for some time, gazing into the dark emptiness across the river.

  His body swayed a little, he stumbled forward, caught himself, sank to the earth.

  On his knees, the endless stream of questions that had plagued him all his life rose up in his mind, coming from the bottom of a place so deeply scarred that they tore through him like a sword from a wound —

  There is no forgiveness, no excuse. There is no hope at all, not even in death.

  For in death he would find his family, his people, and there have to answer to them for what he’d seen, what he’d known, and why he’d lied.

  A sob escaped his thin lips followed shortly by another and another. Saliva filled his mouth, mucus his nose. His lungs locked up. He buried his face into the river grass.

  Overhead, stamped black against the canopy of stars, moved the night, folding around Leer as the planet spun along some invisible line, vaulting through the endless dark conveyor of sound that could not be heard and light that could not be seen.

  It could have been days, seasons, or only a moment as the planes of existence shifted. Hidden inside translucent threads, memory as old as life itself rubbed up against the ceiling of life’s most ancient longing…

  Wing opened his eyes, but instead of seeing dirt and grass, he saw a gaping black maw, endless and impossibly dark. Disbelief pierced him briefly —

  The Void.

  He’d been there so many times. Every time, he’d fought it, fought it until Nien had arrived, pulled him back. This time, for the first time, he didn’t care. He had no fight left. No will left to fight.

  Surrender poured into him, followed quickly by an overwhelming feeling of resignation — and acceptance.

  He slid to the edge.

  Wrung of everything, he was at long last willing to let the Void take him. Much better than heaven or hell was the promise of nothing.

  Easily, he let the physical world go: the chirp of the night bugs, the brush of the river, the rustling of the wind. Feelings he could no longer hold fell away: hatr
ed, anger, hope.

  Lastly, he thought of Nien and Carly. With them, most of all, had his shame become acute; even looking in their eyes had become a punishment. They would be undone by his death, but he could not live, not one more day, in the unassailable trap of hope and unanswered questions that had birthed the lie he’d once prayed would buy him enough time...

  Wing leaned forward a little more and tumbled gratefully into the black.

  Inside the cabin, Nien lay in the dark. He’d let the fire die away. On his back in his bed, he gazed at the cabin’s simple ceiling, barely able to make out the dark outline of supporting timbers.

  Wing.

  His brother was out there.

  Somewhere in the dark, perhaps beside the river, Wing suffered, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  The anger at the helplessness, the injustice of it, welled inside him. He had been there so many times when the darkness had come to take Wing from him.

  But not this time.

  Closing his eyes, Nien looked for his brother. As withdrawn as Wing had been the past few days, Nien was unsure if he would be able to find him. Perhaps even their bond would be elusive, unresponsive.

  Their bond was neither elusive nor unresponsive —

  It was nonexistent.

  Nien’s throat closed. His muscles flexed as if to jerk him off the bed, send him flying out into the night to find Wing.

  But he couldn’t move. It was as if some invisible force held him bound.

  In his mind, he cried out: Wing!

  His lips would not move either. He was frozen, transparent stone.

  He’s gone, Nien realized. Wing’s gone.

  Wing looked around. If this was hell, it wasn’t what he expected. If it was death, it wasn’t what he expected either. Maybe this was what the Void looked like now that he’d stopped fighting it and let himself step inside.

  Wing.

  Wing started and looked around. “Nien? I…What are you doing here?”

  I came to tell you you’re being an idiot.

  Wing blinked. “What?”

  I know what you’re thinking.

  “You do?”

  Yes, Weed Farmer.

  “Then you know. You know it’s my fault.”

  Your fault?

  “I knew, Nien.”

  Knew what?

  “What was coming. What would happen to our people.”

  All right.

  “All right?”

  So? We all did. What do you think the Cant was about? Why do you think the people were in such a panic? We all knew.

  “No, I mean, I saw it — the destruction. Of Lou. Of Tou. Of Rieeve.”

  All right. Then what about Legran? Jayak? Quieness?

  Wing blinked again.

  If you need to blame someone, blame me.

  “You?”

  Me.

  “Why?”

  For what I did in Jayak.

  “What you did in Jayak — for fighting?”

  For rushing in…

  “I don’t blame you for that. You were brave. You acted.”

  I acted — rashly. I led a dozen inexperienced men into a battle we had no business being in and lost one of us in the process, giving the Ka’ull exactly what they needed to know about Rieeve in order to exterminate our people; and do it all in one night. How was your patience worse than my recklessness?

  “I didn’t just lie to the Council, to our people, or even to Commander Lant. I lied to you, to Carly, to our family.”

  And telling any of us the truth — what would that have done?

  Wing shook his head miserably. “You don’t understand.”

  What were we going to do had you told us? Relocate our entire race to another valley? You think they would have gone? And if, by some miracle, we had convinced them to leave Rieeve, what makes you believe they would not have died at the hands of the Ka’ull wherever we ran to, a season, a revolution later?

  “I could have left. I should have had the courage to leave.”

  And that would have accomplished…?

  “They would have stopped looking to me, waiting for me. They would have listened to Lant. Believed him. Not fought him — ”

  Wing.

  Wing blinked and before him stood Lant. “Commander?”

  I’m here to share your blame as well.

  “What?”

  You’re not the only one who’s lied, Wing.

  “What?”

  Me. I did. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t Nien’s. The Ka’ull already knew about Rieeve. They knew about it because of me. I should not have come back after I left, but I did because I was selfish, because I was scared, because of Pree K.

  The warrior that led the attack on Castle Viyer — I knew him. At one time, I even called him friend.

  The truth is: I should never have left Rieeve.

  Wing could only stare.

  Wing.

  Wing looked up again. “Lyrik?”

  The ghostly messenger nodded. It was my fault.

  Wing could not even react. He just waited.

  My father, your fourth great grandfather, was a beast. I knew it, and I did nothing. Worse, I helped him. I helped him ruin so many people. And I let him do it to Rieeve. I am the reason why Rieeve cut itself off from the world. Had I been stronger, braver, my father would never have come to Rieeve and Rieeve would have remained open and Lant would not have been driven to leave and you would not have been punished by expectations of being something I should have been.

  I am at cause in this.

  Wing could not speak.

  Wing!

  This time others joined Nien, Lant, and Lyrik. Wing did not recognize them particularly, but he knew all of them.

  As you see, they said as one, we all share this blame. You are not alone, but only you can make it right. We are no longer flesh, so you must go. Make it right. Redeem us all. Turn the tide in Rieeve.

  Had Wing felt his body as flesh, he might have succumbed, dissolved. But there was no physical manifestation to sacrifice. He just...stood.

  Now, see. See who you are, said they all.

  Into the beckoning Void, Wing’s consciousness flew. But where he had expected to find nothingness, he found instead a blinding influx of information, of sensation so immense that it blasted away his mind, scattering him into matter so fine that he passed through the Void itself and became…

  Everything

  With sight that had nothing to do with his eyes, from a vantage point both intimate and vast, Wing watched as the Void tore itself in two. One side spun left, the other spun right. One rose high, the other sunk low, each moving out, creating surface above and beneath itself. He saw the great black giving birth to the light. He saw suns born and planets die. He saw fire level a civilization and water raise a continent. Worlds flew past him, riding through an infinite sea of stars that raced to stay ahead. He saw dimensions within dimensions, lives within lives…

  He was all of it.

  In awe, he wondered: How can this be?

  In direct and immediate answer, Wing became aware of the driving force behind the great expansion —

  Life itself.

  A feeling, a longing that scorched the core of him, drawing him out so thin that light became impossibly heavy: It was the wanting to be this so he could experience that.

  With sight that could take in every imagining, Wing recognized himself as this and from that place saw that —

  The ‘that’ was shockingly familiar.

  It was Nien.

  Brother!

  “Wing!”

  Nien sprang up in his bed. He could move again. The strange paralysis was gone. His fear dissolved. In every corner of his mind and heart, Nien found him. In memory, in feeling, Wing was everywhere.

  Heart pounding, Nien laughed with indescribable relief. He wanted to run out of the cabin and find Wing, but knew he should not. Knowing, somehow, that he should wait. So he flopped back onto the bed as tears rushed from
his eyes, running in hot, delicate streams down his temples, slipping into his hair and onto his pillow.

  Lying there, smiling, incredulous, he thought the miracle had happened. Wing was alive. There was only to wait until he returned to the cabin.

  But the wonder was not over.

  As he lay, reveling in the fact that Wing was not gone, he would never have imagined the feeling that came after —

  Joy

  — and

  Peace

  Where a moment ago had been an emptiness, a sense of loss so vast he thought he’d never recover from it.

  Where he’d felt so cut off, so alone upon Wing’s departure, he now felt connected not only to Wing but to everything. His body had ceased to exist and he knew only light, as if some massive hole had opened in the sky revealing every unfathomable nuance and secret that he could not understand and yet knew perfectly well. Even his own breath didn’t seem real. He’d lost contact with his body.

  It didn’t matter.

  He had been born in the heart of a star.

  Beside the river lay a man. He might have been dead — in a living kind of way. The heart still beat, the lungs still accepted air, nerves still pulsed with tiny waves of energy, but consciousness beyond that of a cell had fled. A thin tendril remained — the physical’s lifeline. Just enough. Enough to await a decision. Sustain a choice.

  From some distant place, Wing saw blood run out along a smooth stone floor, smelled rent flesh, heard a receding moan.

  Taken up from the ground from which it came, he felt the moan transform, rising into a grand chorus of voices, the song they sang unlike any he had ever heard. It rang at the very center of him, his hearing as his sight had become, an entire-being experience beyond individual senses.

  Spinning, falling, he saw the faces, heard the voices, felt the joy and pain of countless beings on infinite worlds, none of whom he remembered but all of which he knew…

  Wing hit the ground beside the river.

  The groan that escaped him on impact died away into the Void.

  Enfolding the body that had once been his, he lay slack. It took some time for his senses to return to the plane of Legran, to the sound of the river, to the smell of the sweet wet dirt beneath the grass. At his side, he became aware of Lucin, the big cat’s breath hot upon his neck.