A gift arrived in the mail today from Delia, this book. It’s really cool, hand-bound with hand-slit pages, so they’re all uneven on the edges, and a water colored cover. (Appropriate, no?) Inside was a note written in her hyper-neat handwriting that said “You are on a journey, Red Feather. Keep a record of your travels.”

That’s what we in the apprentice business call a clear instruction. It’s one that makes me a little nervous, since a lot of what I do is stuff that Sleepers don’t need to know about, and that could be used as evidence in a criminal trial.

But usually, Delia gets what she wants, and I am on a journey, and I should start talking about it at the beginning. I’ve never been able to explain exactly why I’m doing this – abandoning goals I’ve had for my whole life and changing who I am at the core.

(Only Delia says what I’m really doing is becoming more truly what I was meant to be, like a river slowly cutting a smoother path to the sea)

(She gets kind of tiresome with the river metaphors)

It started with Centralville, I think. But a river doesn’t really start anywhere. The headwaters came from rain that froze on the mountains and turned to snow, then melted in the spring. (Now she’s got me doing it) Maybe it started when my powers changed, and I realized I could do so much more than just fight and cure simple wounds. Or when Cassie died and made me question everything I’d believed up until then. But Centralville is when I knew. All those people killed for no reason. Just dead. They weren’t involved in any way. Just had the bad luck to live in the town a crazy man picked to kill. And we didn’t save them.

There’s a part of me that yearns to find the people at Smith & Tann who were responsible and make them pay. Make them hurt and bleed and burn. Take away everything they care about. Then kill them. That part used to be all there was.

Well, that’s not true. There’s the parts that like frozen margaritas and romance novels and stuff. But the voice that tells me my Calling and purpose told me what I should do is protect the innocent and punish the evildoers. It was simple and clean, and for years I never doubted it.

And I still think that’s important. Justice is one of the most important virtues. But I looked at all those dead people and I knew it’d never be enough. I can never get enough revenge to make up for what happened to those people. I can never save enough people to make up for having failed those people. Seeing all those bodies, I nearly broke. Right then, I nearly lost every mote of hope I’ve ever had that the world could ever be bright or good or right. All that kept me going for the next few hours was inertia, then danger. Being in danger has a way of focusing my mind. But once the fight was over I had to look around again at another hundred or so bodies, and at a bunch of people whose lives had been shattered by something they couldn’t ever comprehend. And there was Delia, with another way. It was like I was drowning and she was there, holding out a hand to catch me.

 

(Yet another water metaphor. And a pretty silly one since I can grow gills, and she can manipulate water with a thought.)

 

So anyway, that’s the story. As moving as it is profound. I just want to make something grow. I don’t just want to be a destroyer. I want to be a creator, too. And a nurturer. (Geez, that sounds so sappy I need insulin)

I keep circling around the thought of what my past means in light of my future. Was I wrong to pursue battle? Are the other Arrows wrong?

I don’t think so. Well, probably some of them are. But I don’t think their philosophy is wrong. I still follow it myself, just in a new way. And I don’t think I was wrong before to follow my dad’s example. But I can’t BE my dad. (No penis) Even my dad can’t be my dad, I think – at least he’s not the way I always thought of him. Now that I’ve chosen to look for it, I see the creative spark in him, too. Dad took as much pride in training his students as he ever did in fighting, and what made him proud wasn’t how much ass we could kick. It was how we lived. Honor, courage, compassion.

I think he’d be proud of what I’m doing.