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Chapter 49
Viola
"Up, child, up. We have much to talk about."
The vaguely familiar voice creeps through my brain, but I pay it no mind. My body is exhausted, my magic depleted, and I just want to sleep. I don't mind that I am on firm, cold ground. All I want to do is rest, to let my body recover from the last day.
When was the last time I slept?
"You can sleep later, you must rise now."
The voice, again, prickles the back of my mind. I should know it. There is a familiarity there that I cannot explain. But my eyelids are so heavy. Maybe after a little bit more rest, I can find out who the voice belongs to.
"No more rest!" The voice is so sharp now that my eyes fly open.
I'd know that voice anywhere.
"Mother?" I say quietly, struggling to my feet. She looks exactly as she did the last time I saw her, in her Race clothes, her tawny skin, just a few shades darker than mine, still covered in the dirt from the Race. "Am I dead?"
"Of course not, child."
"Why are you talking so strange?" I say, approaching her. "You never called me child before."
"Oh, my apologies." She looks down at her body curiously. "I'm not actually your mother," my mother says.
I stumble backward and away from her, searching for something to prop myself against. It's then that I realize there is nothing. For as far as I can see there is only shadows, an endless shadow vision. There are no sounds in the air, no other people.
Just my mother and I, in a shadow vision, facing off.
"What do you mean you're not my mother? Who are you?"
"I have been called many things, but in this realm, I am the Eternal Equinox." She sounds like my mother but softer, more nurturing, like who my mother was supposed to be. It's jarring to hear it come from her mouth. "Be a dear," she says, "and conjure us up places to sit, yes?"
Numbly, I shape some of the shadows into chairs for us, and we both sink down, facing one another. "Why do you look like my mother?"
"If you'd prefer, I could appear as your father, or Max, or Link. I just thought your mother would be the least likely to upset you."
"Please do not become them," I say quickly, my heartbeat racing. "Why do you not have your own appearance?"
She laughs, this stranger in my mother's skin, and shakes her head. "Because you have it." She gestures at all of the parts of me that changed with the magic that I absorbed, and a small smile graces her face. "We have much to discuss and limited time," shesays, looking around the shadow vision.
"What do you mean, limited time?"
"Well, Shadowweaver, to explain that is to go to the beginning. Once, I was like you. I held all of the magic within me, and I looked over the realm from the veil between worlds. But I split myself into four, bringing forth the Gods that you have met, my children, into the realm. All that was left of me was a sliver, and that particular piece of magic is what allows us to speak here today. When you combined all of the seasons within you, you activated that magic. So you understand, it is finite, and we have so much we need to get through before you leave this vision."
"You made the Gods?" I say, my mind stuttering. It's taking more effort than I'd like to push past the image of my mother, so the words take longer to permeate than they should. "Why would you do that?"
"My motivations are my own, but it was not done maliciously. Unfortunately, my mistake was not realizing that by splitting them I took the balance away. As they aged and split pieces of themselves off for their high priests and to populate the world, they opened themselves up to the aspects of humanity that unbalanced them and led to what you experienced today." She crosses her hands daintily on her lap and hangs her head, a demure posture so unlike my mother that I can finally separate the two in my head.
"What happened, then? When the Gods were banished? Who's truth is the one to believe?" I feel desperate to know the true story of the banishing, to maybe alleviate some guilt I amfeeling over the mistakes and choices I have made up until now.
Instead, the Eternal Equinox waves her hand. "What does it matter now? You cannot go back and change the choices you made. You did what you could with the information you had, however true or false it was. There is no need to know the exact details of the past, only how you are going to do better in the future. Every story, every legend, has a basis in fact. You made your choices, and you will live with them regardless of the truth of the past."
"That's not acceptable," I say, anger rising to the surface. "I deserve to know. I deserve to know if I made the right choices. If Himureal was truly wronged or if I fell victim to his ministrations."
"That's what you're worried about?" she asks softly. "That you may have been deceived by the Frostweaver?" She stands and walks towards me, that familiar gait making me feel like I am ten years old again as she squats in front of me. "I know empathy does not come easy to you, Viola Mistflow. And I will not tell you the truth and risk you losing one of the purest empathetic connections you've ever had. Don't you see? Even when you took his life, you did so kindly and without malice. I will not erase the empathy you provided my son in confirming or denying the stories you were told." She pats me gently on the thigh and then stands and returns to her chair.
"I was not so empathetic with the others," I mutter.
