56.4 Many Hands

General Summary

Day 1113

We land in Dreamfall and Trilium is there, waiting for Doraal. Kaide is waiting too, ready to whisk me into the ziggurat to finally get some time together. So I leave my Little Shadow and her father to finally reconnect and follow me senior sister into the darkness.   She was surprised that Ausha and I are not together, and pleased to hear that she is off adventuring with Lyssa on her own. We lapse into a bit of silence before she speaks again.  

I wonder what it would have been like to meet you in the old days.

  It’s not a fair question for her. She wouldn’t have been ready for it so long ago, not with Teacher the way she was and the Empire in such grave danger. People need to be ready for change, and she hasn’t been until quite recently. But now…of course she is ready. She just needed a push. In a year, maybe more, she’ll have put the Empire’s affairs in order so that we can all head North on our field trip with Teacher. Only a few years ago, she would have thought that meant choosing a regent in her stead (me). But now we both know that leaving the Empire in good hands means leaving it in many hands.   Being back on this side of the Barrier for the first time in millennia, I ask her what she’s looking forward to seeing again. She wants to see the Unfreezing Sea and its physical manifestation of the Longing, of course. And she wants to see the Crystal Spires again. But Deldrin is not on her list, and I chide her for that. It’s our city now, and our Library. And if nothing else, there are Osyr there who have waited faithfully for her, and Archivists who have kept our knowledge safe for all this time. She acquiesces — of course she will visit Deldrin.   From the silence again, she remarks that my whole family is so welcoming and friendly and unafraid of power and unable to maintain a distance. She says she hasn’t been hugged so much in a very long time. I privately think it’s about time she’s been hugged sol much that she can’t count the embraces. She embraces me with all four arms and in our closeness, I can now sense the nuance of her magical strength. Her personal well of power is as deep as the ocean just like mine is as vast as the night sky. I cannot tell who is more expansive. And I can see how her advice towards Alwen has helped him — she must have been managing her own magical depth for a very long time.   She also asks about the ghosts here — not the blaze ghosts, but the ghostly Hands who taught me to stand beside them. Within the ziggurat there are places I haven’t tried to explore since we first came here and they refused to open. Now, they open easily before both of us. In one such alcove, we find a mausoleum with four caskets. The spirits themselves have departed, but Kaide bows and thanks them, offering each spirit a draught of wine from a very old cask. I leave her to her communing and slip back into the bustle of the Dreamfall.   Tugging one or two strings within the family, I make sure that Qing Chen, Nina, and Elnora meet. And I watch happily as Alder, Miriam, and Wayla start their baking. Lastly, I show off Torrick to Cousin Soo, who starts teaching him about Northern magic.   Then it’s time to wake up Hella. She’s been absent for far too long.   Kadia, Alwen, and I start sketching up magical plans outside in the sunshine with Magdalena presiding over our work. Camellia is around just to give us some dawn energy but once we are all properly caffeinated, Magdalena sends Qing Chen to take up a tea apprenticeship with her, thank goodness. I’m very understanding and forgiving of many things, but not all things. The way that demon makes tea is wrong.   Hella’s plight is caused by a demon magic that traps her in dreams and only imposes nightmares. It trapped Hella but not Kadia because the magic was only expecting one consciousness within their body. Kadia says that Hella actually killed all the nightmares herself (that’s my girl) but is now trapped and unable to find her way out, unable to communicate effectively. The plan is quite straightforward, and not difficult to execute against given our specialties. We lure her into the Dreaming proper where I go to fetch her back.   When I find her, she seems disoriented and asks if they won, if Elnora is okay. She’s surprised to hear that we’re “back in Dreamfall” because she hasn’t seen me since I “went North” fifteen years ago. In this moment, I’m grateful for what happened to Liliales when he was competing for the Dream Spike. It is easy to explain to Hella that she has lived out time that the rest of us weren’t part of…yet?   She remembers fighting demons, the Barrier erupting. The war got very bad, then Tira and I and dozens of dragons descended upon the Collective. But then she and Ausha and Elnora and I were up in the mountains for a while..and then it’s blurry. She got on boats and went across the sea to fight churches and zealots and temples. She fought a monster — a monstrous man made out of many pieces, wearing a suit of armour. Erak, I expect. She’s excited to talk to Elnora, she seems to genuinely know her already.   And again, I’m grateful to have the experience I had with Void. It is easier than it should be to explain to my littlest apprentice that the young woman she has known so intimately for years and years in the Dreaming doesn’t know her at all yet. Elnora has dreamed of her too, but not so deeply or thoroughly.   To her credit, Hella takes all of this in stride. I suppose that in the last four years, she’s grown accustomed to the incredible, unworldly changes that occur within our family. We work quickly to preserve the memories she still has of these future events so that she doesn’t lose them as she exits the Dreaming. She can already feel them slipping away and she’s ready to go back to the normal world, but this is not a family that throws away knowledge just because we acquired it in a strange way.