Wordsworth – Chapter 3 (Patreon)

There are always three brothers.

It’s sometimes sad, and sometimes uplifting. Often the older fails, the second struggles, and the youngest succeeds, and it is their father who sets the challenge for them.

Be that as it may, for tragedy or comedy, with their inheritance on the line, or chasing after a princess… there are always three brothers.

But once upon a time, there were two sisters.

They were unusual, as they had between them two mothers and two fathers, and so there was nobody who quite knew how to tell them what their quest would be. One mother would say something only for another father to say quite a different thing, and so the two sisters grew with the freedom to tell themselves what their quest would be.

They dreamed of being heroes, of wearing capes and flying, and all those things heroes do because that’s just who they are. They also dreamed of fighting dragons, but the sisters were very young, and so they didn’t quite know how that would go. It was easier to think how their costumes would look.

Then one of the mothers died, and the black-haired sister was sad.

But she could count on the red one to be there for her, to assist her in lonely nights, to listen to sad things, and let her be sad as long as she needed. It was a story that could have had a happy ending.

And then the red sister died.

And the night she died, a new sister was born.

She inherited all the secrets the red one had held for the black one, but her heart had no kindness, no mercy, and so the happy ending was ever farther away. The black one didn’t even understand this was a new sister, that they were finally three; she just thought she had done something wrong to have the red one hate her so much.

She struggled with it, never knowing she had a sister to grieve alongside her dead mother, because the new one kept appearing before her, haunting her with hair that no longer meant warmth and strawberries as she hugged her.

And then the black sister also died. And was replaced.

And there were four sisters.

But the new one didn’t have the memories of the old one, she was just a blank page, something to be written on, and so she just let life pass, never knowing she was supposed to live it. Not until those pages were written on.

And that’s where the story changed.

Because what was written on the blank pages was a journal, a diary pieced together by a clever fox who had never met the black sister, but had guessed she would have liked to. And so the fox found the scattered pages, the stolen words, and put them together on the fourth sister until she had something of the black sister in her.

The sister who had always wanted to be a hero, and who now understood, thanks to the fox, what had happened to the red sister.

Or, at least, a part of it.

And she had no mother to tell her what her quest should be, but she also had only one sister to compete with her rather than two, and so, the new sister who was also the old one, had to set herself on her quest.

She thought, remembered, and learned.

And then she decided what her quest would be.

It would be a long one, if she had her way, one of those quests that takes one to foreign lands to fight dragons and rescue princesses, even if there were dragons to be fought in her own town and many princesses who needed rescuing. Yes, it would take much time and a lot of work.

But it would begin, as all quests do, with a single step.

By taking a new name.

Wordsworth.

***

My fugues are… I would say annoying, but that’s not really the right word for it.

My new mind sees the world in a different way, an angle almost parallel to that of most people. It’s… sometimes jarring, yet at times perfectly natural. I—it’s a bit of a tangent, but I remember the day I learned what homo sapiens meant, and I was as proud as a child can be and ran to tell mom.

She praised me, patting my head and smiling down at me from the chair in her home office. She had all those big books around her, and I knew she already knew before I told her what I had seen on that cartoon with the man with a long, white beard. I felt a bit angry at it, at her praising me for learning something she must have thought so…. Obvious. I didn’t like being talked down to, not even back then.

Mom picked up on it, and she grabbed me by my armpits and sat me on her lap.

She nuzzled the crown of my head with her chin and started talking.

About how people name things, how names have meaning, how some people had decided that what made a human a human was that it knew, that it thought, and so came the name.

Then she told me there were other names. Homo politicus, homo faber…

Homo narrans.

Because some had thought that what made humans unique, what made up their souls, were stories. Stories that were so much older than knowledge, even if they contained it, stories that shaped the world differently for those that knew of them, because life’s a story, and stories grow better and more complex when entangled with others.

So.

Wordsworth.

… I really hope no one throws in my face how horribly pretentious I’m being by claiming the name of one of the greatest poets in history.

Still, it’s not like I can’t now ace almost any literature test anybody cares to put me through. As long as I don’t have to do some kind of text analysis, I should be gold.

… I am stalling.

From one end of the street, I look at my old home. It’s quite likely being guarded by the PRT, or so Lisa claims, and I have about as much reason to doubt her as… No. I won’t depreciate that with a snide joke or some witty simile. She has earned far more than my trust. I don’t owe her my life: I owe her my self.

I mean, I’m sure she will collect in one way or another at some point, but… Still.

I take a deep breath, the gesture not wholly necessary, but something about it still calming, still resonating with the part of me that knows about so many characters who do this to steady themselves, their experiences closer to my memory than the last time a Taylor Hebert with a different body did this.

I look once again at my home, at the last place two sisters played together in before one of them died.

At the last place I was truly happy in.

At the last place I should want to return to.

But… being a hero is not about doing what one wants, but what one must.

And so I take yet another breath, something rustling inside of me as I do it.

And I speak in careful, measured rhythms, enunciating the words with all the care they deserve.

“She walks in beauty, like the night,” the words flow from my gloves and fishnets, lazily spiraling around me as they draw a veil I can see through, “of cloudless climes and starry skies.”

I take a step out of the shadows, and the shadows cling to me.

“And all that’s best of dark and bright,” the yellow light of an old lamppost hesitates through the spiral of poetry surrounding me, “meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

There should be stars. They should glimmer on the wet asphalt beneath my feet, trembling with each step as if trying to reach the cadence of a silent song. But Brockton Bay is cloudy tonight, and there is no moon, no stars, and so what’s best of dark and bright is the citrine light of ancient lamps shimmering on the pavement and the flickering shadows of people walking across windows.

“Thus mellowed to that tender light which Heaven to gaudy day denies.”

And now I am night.

Carried on words that flicker and glitter to my eyes while being no more than elusive haze to those of others, I, for a few steps more, walk unnoticed. Walk in beauty.

Then I reach the door of my house’s yard, and the poem melts into me once more.

And I almost cry.

It was one of mom’s favorites, and I wasn’t old enough to understand it when she passed away.

I read it at her funeral. Not because Dad asked me to, but because I knew. I knew I wouldn’t ever see her again, and I wanted her to have those words come from me, even if it was too late, even if it was just once.

I must have been so ridiculous, with my black dress, reciting poetry at my mother’s funeral…

Emma hugged me, and I—

I take a deep breath yet again, and I try to open the door.

It is, unsurprisingly, locked.

A part of me wishes to be clever and find the perfect story to open the door. Maybe ‘open sesame’ would even work, but Lisa warned me how capes get with their powers, how most of them get a bit of ‘everything is a nail’ syndrome.

And so I just look for the emergency key buried in the pot that once held bright geraniums and now holds their skeletal, black remains.

I am a bit relieved that Dad hasn’t gotten rid of it or changed its hiding place.

Even if he let the geraniums die.

So I let myself in, lock the door behind me, and…

The kitchen is a mess.

The dirty dishes are piled up, and crushed beer cans have started falling off a trash can that smells like some of those cans weren’t quite empty when they were thrown in. A few flies are circling it, angrily buzzing at my approach, and I can only guess at the no doubt legion of insects hiding from me at this very moment.

It… It makes me sad. Angry. Both.

Because Dad thinks I disappeared, which in this city means that I either died or got into something arguably worse, so of course he would be broken by this last straw. A small, hateful part of me is even glad that I at least got him to react in some way, but I’m too afraid of what he may have done to himself, and…

And I’m angry at him. So angry.

Because this shouldn’t have been about him. This isn’t his tragedy. He didn’t have his memories, his self stolen, that happened to me, so what right does he have to once again devolve into this broken mess, this—this parody of what a father should be, only caring when it’s too late, when I’m no longer there to see him do it, and still managing not to accomplish a single good thing with—

“Taylor?” a broken voice says from the kitchen’s door.

I jump and tackle him, angry tears in my eyes made of black words.

“You are an awful father,” I mutter against his stained shirt as my arms surround him and clutch him, knowing he may vanish as soon as I let go.

He freezes at my touch, hesitating before running a tremulous hand over black locks that are now far more lustrous, far darker than they ever were or could have been.

Then he grabs me with such strength that it is a relief I only need to breathe when I want to speak, and that I don’t want to right now.

“I know,” he whispers. “Oh God, I know.”

And he doesn’t let go.

***

He carries me to the sofa and sits us both on the cushion that doesn’t have dishes nor beer cans piled on top of it, and then keeps holding me in his lap for the first time in years.

And… I…

I can’t waste time like this. Not because of him.

“I know what you’ve been doing,” I say. And if my voice breaks a bit, or if I don’t meet his eyes and keep resting my cheek on his chest, that’s just because I…

I don’t feel like moving.

I’m just… too tired.

“Taylor, I… Tattletale sent me a message.”

And now it’s me that freezes.

“What did you just say?”

His hand resumes stroking my hair, gliding through it with a steady, smooth surety that he couldn’t have managed when it was hair and not something else. Something sleeker.

“It was when she figured out who you were. She first tried to show you pictures of me, our house, your—your mother. You didn’t react. At all.”

He waits for me to interject. To tell him what that means to me, to yell at him, to… I don’t know. To do anything other than remain still, sitting against his chest, listening to his breathing and feeling his heartbeat on my cheek.

I don’t.

“She… She thought she could take care of you. Help you. And she thought that I couldn’t get involved. That you may react badly to me being… emotional.”

I remember those days, lost in my fugues, my mind wandering from a story to the next, words in my head and skin meaning so much more than the faces in front of me. I remember being unable to remember even Lisa’s name, the pretty girl who reminded me of foxes and I liked foxes, because they were clever and always tricked wolves, and wolves are beautiful, but it’s the kind of beauty you don’t want near you, the kind of beauty of moonlight over a razor’s age, dancing with the quivering pulse of a hand holding it in the darkness—

Stop. Stop. Think.

Now.

“She… She’s good at reading people,” I manage to add, more to center myself in the conversation than anything else.

Dad chuckles, and his chest shakes beneath me in a way that is more soothing and comfortable than it should be.

“Yeah, I gathered that.”

He looks up at the ceiling, the room still in that peaceful shadow only broken by what filters through the window, turning everything into the same monochrome that could let us fool ourselves into believing I’m still me, still the black sister that didn’t die only to get replaced by a blank journal waiting to be written on.

The problem with comforting lies is that they are easily seen through by the slightest change in light and shadow.

“… I’ve been looking for you for so long, kiddo…”

Dad kisses the top of my head, and I remember Mom’s chin rubbing it as she explained how men are made up of stories.

And I wonder what Dad’s story is.

“You didn’t find me.” It is half condemnation, half statement. Truth, even if hurtful. Because I don’t feel like letting the shadows trick me once again.

His arms tighten around me, and I can feel him holding something back. Maybe a sob. Maybe a scream.

“I didn’t.”

But… There are other truths.

“The Undersiders are very elusive. If Tattletale didn’t want you to find us, there was very little you could do.” I offer him. Another truth, harsh in its own way.

The hand on my hair shifts and reaches across my cheek to my chin, tugging it up, making me look at eyes too much like my own used to be.

Green. He has green eyes, and I can make the shade out even in this mild darkness.

Then he blinks, and there are motes of other colors, and then we are surrounded.

Silhouettes shifting in and out of distinctive shapes, something recognizable always appearing in them.

Lacey’s curly lock that she never manages to straighten, Kurt’s slight limp from that accident with a crane he always talks about when he gets a bit tipsy, Gerry’s black hair… I recognize all of them.

And I understand why Overseer never acts during the day.

“I can do quite a lot nowadays, Little Owl.” His voice is neither soft nor reassuring. It isn’t anything, just… words, empty words. Even though I like owls.

They are Athenea’s bird, one of the few goddesses who cared for mortals, the one who helped Prometheus sneak into Olympus to steal the fire from the Sun’s chariot after Zeus forbade men from ever eating cooked meat again, because gods are petty, and they take mortals as playthings and drag them across doors that aren’t doors and force them to swallow vile things that change them and turn them into something other, something else, and their minds break, because gods don’t care what happens to their toys after they are done with them, and there once was a beautiful woman whose every movement was a step toward the next one who decided that the black sister no longer needed to be herself, so—

“Taylor. Taylor, it’s all right. I’m here,” he says. And it should be reassuring, but the tone is lost, as lost as a small child left alone in the woods because her parents don’t have enough food for her, but the child was clever enough to leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs, except there were hungry things in the forest that took the crumbs so that the child could never go back to her home, because even if the child managed she would no longer be a child, or at least not the same child—

“Taylor!” The arms around me shake with restrained strength, and the silhouettes gather around me, each of them touching me in a comforting way, in a way unique to them, to the person they represent—

One of them rests her chin on the crown of my head.

I freeze, and nothing comes out. Not even words. Not even stories.

Dad isn’t breathing.

After a moment, I stop feeling that comforting, warm, awful pressure on my head.

“Do you control it?” I ask. And my tone is as devoid of meaning as the empty words from Dad calling me Little Owl.

He takes a moment to answer.

“Sometimes. It’s… It answers to both want and need. The right person for the right job.”

I think about it. About the implications.

“Powerful,” I finally say.

He laughs, and it’s an ugly thing.

“It’s only people I know. People I know really well. If I could summon Alexandria or Eidolon, the Bay would’ve been cleaned up a long time ago.”

A power that only manifests people he knows. People that he knows really well.

A power granted to a man that’s been trapped in a chronic depression since his wife died, unable to connect with even his daughter.

It’s a cruel thing, as powers tend to be. Or at least that’s what Lisa says.

And I…

No, I won’t ask him. Not that. Not after feeling her touch this one last time.

“Join the Protectorate. Meet the heroes, tell them.” Get help.

He shakes his head.

He may as well have been denying the silent part of my request.

“I only wanted to find you, Taylor. Only you.”

“That’s a lie. You care for this city.” That’s the only thing you kept caring about, at times.

“After I thought it had taken you away from me? No. No, Taylor, I really don’t care for this place anymore.”

I open my eyes and look at the faded ghosts gathered around us.

“That’s a lie.”

He sighs.

“It might be. It might not.”

“Dad… It was never about the city; it was about the people. And you’re surrounded by them.”

He leans back, dragging me with him, and I let him as I see him look away from me and toward the ceiling, a passing car making the shadows of the room spin and letting me see his scraggly beard, his sunken eyes, the tear tracts. I know what depression looks like, what it is when you don’t even have the energy to do what a part of you screams, demands that you do. What it’s like to be berated by yourself for not doing the most basic, elementary self-care.

Dad… even at his worse, right after mom died, he never looked quite like this.

A part of me is glad. Glad to know he can feel this much pain over me, to actually care, even if in this misguided, twisted way.

A part of me is glad I can hurt my father as much as he hurt me.

It’s… not a very heroic part.

Mom read a book to me when I was a child, a book I loved. It had a dragon, and an archer who slew it, but the main character was this short, fat person called a hobbit.

I cried when the book ended, because I wanted more of it. I… may have been a bit of a crybaby at the time.

And mom explained that there was another book, but one that I would enjoy more after I grew up a bit. That there wasn’t any hurry, that good books would always wait for me.

I read that book, those three books, years later, if only to feel a bit of the wonder and magic that I had felt when Mom had read the first one to me. I… they were different.

They say most fantasy books are about battles. About something exciting and rushed, about the thrill of combat and victory, but that the Lord of the Rings is about war. Because Tolkien knew what that was.

So there are long passages of dreadful nothing, of walking and waiting and longing for a far-away home. Pages and pages of melancholy and dread, and a quiet tiredness that seeps into your soul.

And then…

I speak, and the words flow out of me.

I speak of two hobbits walking to their final destination, separated from loyal friends because of the burden they carry. I speak of aching feet and weary souls, of elven bread tasting no longer of wonder but of the absence of home.

And then I speak of those hobbits seeing a waterfall right as the sun sets, of the shining rays of light dancing across moving strands of water like the fingers of a harpist gliding over their instrument. I speak of the beauty of an ephemeral yet eternal moment echoing in chests that, for just that moment, stop being empty.

I speak of nature healing a soul. Of beauty that endures. Of peace in the middle of an arduous journey.

My words cannot conjure color. They are black and white, stark contrast. Beauty like the night.

But these ones… These ones, just for a moment…

I can fool myself into seeing a rainbow glittering inside my old home.

And the musical cadence of a waterfall helps me ignore my father’s tears.

***

I don’t know what time it is when I leave my old home.

Old. Because I can’t go back. Because I’m a wanted criminal, and Dad cannot afford to hide me in there for long. Not with both of us trying to be heroes, even if in different ways.

I know it’s late, because I’m as tired as I can be even if I don’t need to sleep.

I force myself not to look at the time when I unlock my phone, because I don’t want anything to let me dissuade myself.

So I just select the contact saved in it, and…

She picks up.

“Lisa, I—I’m sorry, I know it’s late, but—”

A tired, almost grumpy voice cuts me off.

“Come home, Taylor.”

So, gliding across all that’s best of dark and bright, I go to her.

There are always three brothers.

Sisters… There can be as many as we need.