On my other side, Roun was almost completely hidden in his blanket. Somewhere under the blanket was black hair with one white streak running under it. I had never asked him about the streak. Why did the thought of it glare at me? I let my eyes unfocus on the snow.
Not far, the dark storm was whirling and screaming. Each moment, the air was more heavy with Dark than the moment before. I could not sit and wait. Somewhere, my family and the rest of the world were being oppressed as their heart and minds were slowly squeezed by the Dark. The Dark was slowly permeating everything, and if no one stopped it, the Dark would destroy the world. And I was the one who could stop it. I had to. But if I died, I would kill the world along with me. How could I do anything when there was the tiniest chance that I would cast the world into the darkness for eternity? I, my heart, my soul, was torn. What was right? How could I tell?
I stood suddenly and walked off through the snow. My footsteps were mere creaks of snow on snow in the quiet moonlight, the only sound. But too soon, the ground became rough, torn and frozen, and the sound of crunching snow was hidden in the screaming, the most frightening sound in the world. I hurried toward the storm. Soon I saw the place where Dark blotted out the stars.
But as I neared the screaming, I glimpsed the corpses and turned away. I walked around the storm. It was not endless. I walked until the corpses were out of sight, and then I stopped to consider. My boots were full of snow and my ragged clothes did not keep me warm. I had to do something before my feet froze. I walked toward the storm, and it answered me, and surged outward. I stepped away, and it receded. And I looked, and watched it spin, but saw no way to enter without being destroyed.
For a moment, I closed my eyes and listened to the horrible
screaming. The sound was all around. I opened my eyes and stepped away from the storm, but I could not escape its screaming. As I walked still further back into the screaming, the sound surrounded. I looked around at the starry sky and saw, in horror, that the stars were blocked out both in front of and behind me. My eyes widened in surprise. How many storms were there? I tired to walk away, but instead of escape and clear skies, I saw a third storm, and a fourth. And still further, two more. Six storms ate up the stars equally on six sides of me, and the screaming was intense. I stood in a circle of horrible destructive power.
I knew that I could have escaped, and walked away the way I had come in, but as soon as I realized that I was surrounded by the Dark, I was too afraid walk in a direction other than inward. I tried to get further and further from each storm, and so I walked through the snow until I could not have gone more into the circle without coming out.
And ahead of me I saw a spot in which there was no snow, a perfect circle of earth among the white. I tried to run to it, but I tripped over my flopping snow-filled boots. I kicked the broken boots off of my numb feet and continued running, not caring about the snow. I ran, my hair, grown so much longer since my goosegirl days, trailing free behind me. The blanket was flying, and it waved behind me like wings. I ran, and as I came upon the one spot of bare ground, in the exact center of the six storms, I paused. I swayed on my toes, as if teetering on the edge of a cliff. Then I was forced down.
A power greater than that of the storm seemed to crush me. I struggled to stay on my knees, but I felt my joints creaking under the pressure. I knew that at any moment I would crumple. There was no time to wonder, to ask how or why this was happening. I was simply suddenly confronting my own weakness, too quickly to avoid being shattered. No one could help me.
Could I use the last bit of my strength to save myself? If I did not succeed, and did not save the world, the world would die with me. And if I saved it, I would have no time to save myself. But I did not matter. Only my role mattered. I could do so much. I could save everyone, even the family that I had left what seemed like an eternity ago. In my mind I could see everyone I had ever known and loved. And I knew that I was willing to give up myself for them.
Under the pressure of the force that was about to break me, my thoughts raced faster than lightning. I locked myself against the force, fighting for fractions of fractions of moments, time in which to think. I did not know what to do.
What do I do, I asked.
You save the world.
How?
I wanted with all of my mind and heart and soul to fulfill one last task. In a revelation under the crushing force, I knew that I had not found the place, the center between six Dark storms, by accident. I had been heading toward it from the moment I stood up and left Roun and Epiphany in the snow, ever since I set along the path that the Weilder had set out, ever since the moment I had told Epiphany I was the One, from the moment I had decided. No one had forced my feet to follow the path to this point, but my path had scarcely wavered. At every moment when I believed I would save the world, I had been heading toward the point.
How? I asked again.
If I was destroyed, I would destroy the world with me, but if I lived? The Dark would destroy it, instead. So I had to save the world, now.
How? How could I give myself up for the world? I would do anything.
The force increased, I was about to break, and through me a burning cool spread. It spread and it spread further and it spread endlessly, eternally, in the most insignificant fraction of a moment, in no time at all. The feeling was outside of time, destroyed time, and enveloped existence, and me.
You ask how? You have.
The feeling caught up the world, swept up the Dark, shook out the sky, scoured the sun and washed the stars and the skyflowers and every soul on the earth, and mine, too. The feeling caught up the Dark and pushed and wound and bound and tugged and shoved it together, into one dark space which grew smaller and tighter and smaller, and finally, it popped and turned into stoneless stone, as hard as forever.
It popped and I fell to the snowless ground, not moving or breathing for a moment in which I absorbed the world. Then the force was no longer pressing upon me, I could breathe, and I stood. Epiphany was next to me, and the world felt unreal, like a dream. Epiphany's skyflower eyes looked at me with a happiness that could not have been greater. She moved closer to me, smiling, put out her arms, and hugged me. We held each other, letting our emotions flow through each other's blood, for a time outside of time.
Epiphany spoke. "Everything is right now."
"What?"
"You did it. You made everything right."
"How?"
"You saved the world. And yourself."
"Me, too?"
"Yes."
And a thing like time but without its importance began. Epiphany and I parted. The screaming was gone. The snow had been swept away. I stared, amazed, and tried to clear my head. Suddenly, I remembered.
"Roun! Where's Roun?"
Epiphany looked straight into my eyes, without emotion, then took my hand and turned me. I stared at what seemed to be a floating pebble, a grain of sand, a speck of dusk, darker than the darkest night. And as I looked at it, it floated downwards and became a corpse, and it was Roun, whose eyes were dead and who had paled into a man as white as snow.
"Roun!" I tried to run to the figure.
Epiphany firmly held my wrists.
"Epiphany, let me go! Let me go!!!"
"Understand. He was of the Dark, too. He's dead."
"NO!!!!" I screamed without thinking and tried to run to the still form.
"When you destroyed the Dark, you did this, too."
"NO! Let me go! Let me go!!!"
"Don't touch him, Zia. Did you see the Dark? In his eyes, in his hair, all through him now. Touch him and if you don't kill yourself, you'll unleash the Dark on the world again."
"No! No! Let me go!" I struggled to tear away from the reality which held me in place and tried to run to Roun.
"As soon as you understand," Epiphany said. And she let me go, and I fell to the ground and kneeled, sobbing.
"No." I shook my head. I could not believe. "No, it's not true."
Epiphany knelt besides me as I sobbed and spoke very gently.
"Yes."
"Not Roun."
I shook my head, but Epiphany's words had struck my soul, and I had understood. I had put an end to all Dark. I had destroyed Roun, who had followed me and protected me through my hardest times. I had killed him.
I grabbed onto Epiphany, gripped her and took a deep breath. Tears ran off of my face, and I shook even as I held Epiphany.
Epiphany spoke even more gently than before. "He may have cared about you, but he from the first was doing what he could to destroy you. It does not matter what he seemed. What matters is what he was. He was of the Dark, and against you."
I still cried. How could this person who had always seemed to care about me have been of the Dark? When I had saved the world, I though that I had saved it for him, too. But I had destroyed him. Just as he had cared about me, while working to destroy me. Had he cared about me? Or had he only been pretending? How false had he been? He had smiled and told jokes and made me laughİ was it all manipulation? When he had thrown the knife at the white cat, had he expected to save me? Or did he do it to make himself look good, or to strike me in some way I could not comprehend? I did not understand him now, and I never would, because he was destroyed, gone. And I had killed him.
"When you destroyed the Dark, you saved the world, Zia. Your family, everyone, they all will go on with their lives because of you."
It was irresolvable. I had done the right thing. But the right thing seemed at too a high price.
"He was already dead, Zia. His soul had been consumed by the Dark."
I cried harder. How could someone who seemed so alive be dead? Before or now? Epiphany held me comfortingly as the night wore on, as I cried until I ran out of tears. I had screamed all of my anger at the storm, and then I cried out what sadness I could wring out of myself. I was tired.
"Do we go back?" I asked Epiphany.
"Yes. Let's go home."
Epiphany held out her hand and lifted me up. We walked, together, emotionless until we reached the edge of the torn earth, when we stopped. I looked at the sky, and it was already near daybreak. I suddenly felt giddy within my somberness, and I wanted to smile. I almost laughed.
"You know, Epiphany," I said, and paused. "I don't know what to think. I always knew that this day was coming, but I can't believe it's here. It's been coming from the moment... I..."
"You'll understand everything soon."
"What do we do when we get home?"
Epiphany looked around the snowless plain. Dawn broke.
"We continue living our lives."
"I feel as if I have nothing left to do."
"Zia, you, of all people, know that you never have nothing left to do."
"The town will be needing a new Weilder. You'll be busy."
"Yes, being the Weilder." Though she was somber, Epiphany's eyes shone. "I can read the script of the books. I can learn." She looked at me. "And you will go back to your family."
"That'll be enough for me."
"Really?"
"To see my family again. To someday get married, raise children. To live on a farm and let my little girls be goosegirls. And they'll play with my sister's and brother's children. And everyone will be happy."
"And that will be enough for you?"
"Perhaps." I glanced at the rising sun.
"It's time to go on," Epiphany said. We went back home together.