Page 76 of HeartTorn

I don’t . . . know.

Strange, but I feel as though I’ve had this conversation before. It’s so familiar, and yet . . . and yet I don’t recall where or when or with whom.

The unicorn sings a blast of cacophonous music, which says clearly my answer is inadequate. I feel her frustration, but I’m not sure I can offer anything better.I’m sorry,I tell her.I don’t know what to say. I simply could not bear to live in this world knowing your song had gone out from it.

My song is broken.

But it is beautiful.

Your mortal body is broken too.

Yes. I know.

There was a time I could heal such wounds.

Despite everything I cannot stop the sudden spark of hope kindled in my breast. While a moment before I wouldn’t havethought it possible, it seems I still want to live.What would it take?I sing.What would you need to heal again?

Harmony,she replies at once.A joining of souls more complete even than that which I shared with my last Vellara.When she says the name, there’s a distinct lilt to it, and I know it is her own name for Ashika, the secret name shared only between the two of them.

There’s a gap in her song—it’s been there all along, just outside my range of perception. A new line of melody must be inserted into that gap for her song to be made whole. She reveals it to me now in invitation. I hesitate. Who would have thought, after everything I’ve been through, I could find new ways to be afraid? But I am.

My song is imperfect,I sing.My harmony is broken.

Perhaps we are each the broken parts the other needs.

And there it is: the revelation I’ve sought from the beginning. I know now what was lacking every other time I tried to fix thisvelrhoarsong. I could reach out all I wanted, with as much strength and earnestness as my soul could summon. But until Nyathri—or she who was once Nyathri—reached back, no harmony could be formed.

My spirit looks upon the unicorn, feels the song-soul of her vibrating through my gods-gifted awareness. Her fire is terrible, destructive, and wondrous. It nearly killed me—it might still.

But what would it be like to join my voice with such flame?

Almost before realizing I intend to do so, I begin to sing. My body is too broken to make a sound, but my gift was never contained in a mere physical form. If anything the limitations of tongue, throat, lips, and lungs only ever got in the way of the true song I was meant to sing.

My spirit opens wide, exhaling melody in a line of blue fire that stretches out from me toward that raw, red flame of theunicorn. This time she neither lashes out nor retreats. This time, though she flinches once, as though afraid of the connection and all it might mean, she stands her ground and lets my song approach hers. They wind together—blue fire and red. The broken parts in the unicorn’s song blend with the broken parts in mine until, abruptly, they become one. A triumphant symphony of sound and color and spirits joined. Red and blue flame explode in a purple light which fills up the whole of this spirit-space around us.

With a dreadful shriek, thevardimnarshudders and flees, dragging its darkness behind it. What a strange sight that is—hell turned on heel and running like a frightened little rat.How sad,I think, even as I ride that billowing sound, suffused in soulfire and glory.How pathetic and sad that un-song is when faced with true melody.

The crescendo reached, our two spirits begin to drift back down into a simpler, calmer lyric of light, a natural exchange of one soul to the other. It’s delightful, almost freeing. My mind catches on that word—freeing—and everything it means for me. All the sad years of my life I’ve spent struggling and fighting for a freedom I could never envision. And now . . .

Aurae.My sister’s face appears before my mind’s eye. Her face, her laugh, her screams of terror. That pyre which burns forever in my memory. That scorched prayer veil. I force myself to look upon it now, with this new song wrapped around my soul. And I realize that moment in time, and all the chains of guilt which accompany it, are part of this song. A dissonance which adds to the greater harmony of the whole composition. If I chose, I could let that dissonance grow and create greater discord.

But there are other choices now. I may also choose to accept. To let the darkness remain where it is, let the wound scar over and even heal. To let that moment, that pain, that guilt, becomepart of the ongoing song that is my life. Neither to be forgotten nor dwelt in.

The unicorn stands beside me in this space of acceptance. I feel her own guilt over the loss of her rider flowing into me and back out again. We share that burden, share that pain. And in the sharing we take the first steps forward into a life forever changed.

I turn to the unicorn. She no longer appears to me as she did, burning red flame erupting from a skeletal body. Now the truth of who she was beneath thevelrhoaris visible once more. A delicate purple sheen of fire gleams from blue-black flesh and flickers from the corners of midnight-deep eyes.

What is your name?I sing.

She tips her head to one side, as though listening to a voice singing from far away, a voice even I cannot hear. Then she answers with certainty:I am Diira.

Diira,I sing back and wonder how that trill will sound when spoken with a human tongue.

And you,Diira sings on with confidence,are my Vellara.It’s not the same sound she used when she sang of Ashika, but the song denotes a similar sense of claiming. I like it; it suits me somehow. Better than the name my father gave me, surely.

Suddenly Diira’s soul quickens with tension.Your body will not last much longer.

I’m rather shocked to realize that I do in fact still inhabit a mortal frame. But the moment Diira says it, I find myself dragged back down, out of this spirit place, back into a body which is rapidly failing. My song struggles as a renewed surge of pain overwhelms me.

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