Flora Nightingale's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Flora stood before the Shadow, the riddle heavy in her chest. Fed by remembering, starved by forgetting. She turned the words over. The wrong answer would bind the forest forever. She could not guess. She had to know. She lifted the silver feather Orwyn had given her and looked past the Shadow, into the dark it guarded. Behind the towering figure lay a black lake. Its surface held no stars. Instead, faint pictures drifted across the water, like faces half-remembered. Flora understood then. This was where the Heart's memory had gone. "You are what it lost," she whispered. "But I don't know what that is. Show me." The Shadow tilted its head. Drifting leaves swirled around its cloak. "The lake shows what the Heart buried," it said, voice thin as thread. "Look, and you may drown in it." Flora knelt at the water's edge. She held the lantern close. Its silver flame turned blue and began to whisper. The whispers matched the ripples on the lake. She leaned in and looked. A picture rose. She saw the Heart, long ago, casting out one part of itself. A grief too heavy to hold. The Heart had chosen to forget its own sorrow so it could sleep. That cast-off grief had grown alone in the northern dark. It had become the Shadow. Flora's eyes stung. The answer was not a trick. It was a wound. "You are grief," she said softly. "The Heart's grief. It fed you by remembering. It tried to starve you by forgetting. But you only grew." The Shadow went still. The leaves stopped falling. "Say it plainly, witch," it breathed. "Sorrow," Flora said. "You are the Heart's sorrow. And it can't be forgotten away. It has to be carried." The lake trembled. The Shadow drew a long, shaking breath, like a spirit weeping without tears. Its silver mist thinned. "Right," it whispered. "You are right. No one has ever come to look." One root beneath Flora's knees pulsed and warmed. Then another. She felt the northern woods loosen their held breath. But the Shadow did not vanish. It sank, smaller now, back toward the still black water. "You answered," it said. "But answering is not healing. I am freed to be seen. I am not freed to rest. The Heart cast me out. Only the Heart can take me back." Flora rose. The forest around her had softened, no longer fighting her. But the sorrow remained, waiting by its dark lake. She gripped the feather. She had solved the riddle. Now she carried a harder task. She had to return to the Heart. She had to make it remember the grief it threw away. And she did not yet know if a sleeping Heart could bear to feel it.