Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

16. Mir

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Sleep hasn't been my friend for a long while, nor have dreams. They're always crowded with things I should and shouldn't have done, and could have done better.

Dawn paints the skies purple and pink when I stand in front of the grotesque remains that Yaroslava once called her home. What's left of her house in Blakfait is nothing but charred ruins, weeds overtaking the last of the walls. Whatever she once held dear to her heart is gone. Just like her own dreams.

I wanted to be a doctor, she said. It's maddening how she sees people through, how she saw me through. She lies about her haunted past, yet she easily tells if someone else's past is haunted. If you know how to cure one's pain, you know where it comes from. But what if you aren't allowed to say where it comes from? What if all you're allowed to show is perfection?

How do you know whether a person you defend in court is lying? I asked Father once.

He looked me in the eye for a moment, then took off his glasses, and looked for a moment longer. Everybody lies, Mir. There are no innocent people, he said. It's a question based purely on one's perspective. Just choose the lie that suits you.

And there, in that answer, was my father. Who could find liabilities and accusations and vindications anywhere--a war, a weapon, and a fatal wound. After all, he was the best of the best. Laws aren't written for the best, they're written by them. And if you can't write your own laws, you aren't good enough, he said.

I look at Yaroslava's house again, pushing the shrubs aside and approaching the broken front steps. The grass rustles but lets me wade through. No other sounds around, the town is yet asleep.

The earth is soft, nobody has stepped here in years, and I don't know why I drove here either. I just couldn't stay at my apartment, couldn't look in Fire Girl's eyes tonight and feel nothing. I can't tell when she lies and speaks the truth anymore.

I never wanted to be a lawyer.

And what did you want?

Turning the camera in my hands, I focus its lens on a bush's offshoot protruding through the scorched window frame, and take a picture. Then I stare at the red raspberries caught in the shot, my mind blank. Why don't you show someone your photos? Nilam asked a few years ago. They're good. You could be a photographer.

They reveal too much of myself, I told him. They make me vulnerable, imperfect.

But they keep my mind quiet. Such a rare state. It's never been quiet around my family. Why? Then I realized. When I was around my family, there were too many laws and rules.

Don't cry.

Don't complain.

Don't ask for help, and never show any weaknesses.

Someone was always watching, always waiting for me to misstep, to tell me I'd done not good enough. Not as good as my father would have done. It's easier to feel nothing at all than feel worthless.

Adélard admitted once it was unnerving, this stillness in my features, my emotionless face and my smile that never reached my eyes. You look like a dead man, macabre and silent, were Ady's exact words. But Adélard didn't know that my mind was never silent. All my emotions buried deep down fought a battle with no end, whirled in a storm.

What if I fail?

What if I disappoint everyone?

What if?