Psyche

Chapter Seventeen

I saw everything.

It seemed as if the whole world was open to me. I was wide awake, as if I could finally see, as if before I had been blind, and now I was not. I could experience things that were not my own-be someone I was not.

I was not myself anymore.

That should have scared me.

But I'd lie if I said it didn't get easier now that I knew.

***

It felt as if, more and more, I was understanding and getting to know Nick-Phoenyx. And yet, at the same time, it felt like he was slipping farther away. It didn't feel like he was getting better from what had happened to him. On the contrary, I swore he was getting worse.

I learned that. No matter how bad you think it is, it can get worse.

Because the past doesn't know how to stay dead. His dream showed me that.

Darkness is a strange thing to me; indeed, the things that comfort us the most, the people that protect us, are the ones that can hurt us the most. The dark here was strange and alien; though it could have been the darkness I slept in for many years and played in as a child. Pillow forts and cold nights and glow tag. Bright falling stars and white smiles and laughs echoing off pavement.

Phoenyx's dark was not like my dark.

I thought, at first, that this girl with him, so tender, so caring, couldn't have been his sister. She had to be his mom! But I was struck by a paradox: she was so young, and so old. It wasn't her appearance, per say, but . . . the look in her eyes. The look in her eyes was haunting. It reached out and touched my heart, like she knew I was there, and didn't say anything.

Into the cave, off to grandmother's house we go. Phoenyx seemed more spirit than flesh amidst the fog, like a spectral being. His sword, a glowing blade that looked like light made sharp and ready, illuminated his face. He looked so much younger, like time hadn't worn away and smudged the edges of him, like frequent hands can do to precious drawings. He still look sixteen-but he looked less like a guy who wants to travel the world and fight things and more like a kid learning to drive.

He looked more human then.

And that made me wonder what he was now.

As soon as he approached these thrones, these beings, these powers, I instantly felt my body-or whatever I became in this dream-peepings-had frozen in ice. I was completely still, trapped in the darkness of the cave, unable to completely see Phoenyx or these goddesses. The message was clear: this is a place you cannot go.

After seeing Phoenyx smile and play along fifty years ago, I wasn't sure if that dream or this one was more frightening. Seeing Nick being driven insane, seeing him torn down from the noble soldier role he'd taken-I wondered why the hell he was doing this. Why? Why take that pain! They were immortals!

It made me wonder about the Canem-what kind of people allied themselves with immortals in the most painful way possible?

I almost wanted to close my eyes and chant myself away, click my heels three times and be back in Kansas. But something stopped me, as I suddenly saw one of the goddesses descend from the dais, and kneel besides Phoenyx, peering thoughtfully at his face.

I didn't want to see anymore, and squeezed my eyes shut, but my ears, my ears were wide open, and my blood seemed to freeze when I heard it:

"Aphrodite."

***

I woke up with questions looming around my aching head. I noticed that he was outside doing some weird shit (who knew what these kids did these days?) so I got dressed and went to join him. The fall air nipped at my nose and the frosty sun blinded me as light was displaced by the yellow and orange trees. The world was beckoning to us: winter is coming. It's not August anymore . . .