Page 295 of Mother of Death and Dawn

This is what it means to have something to lose.

This is what it means to have something to love.

And these days, I have so much to love.

Still, sometimes I lie awake at night, images that I can’t shake painted on the darkness of the ceiling. Sometimes I’m so afraid of thewhat-if’s and thecould-be’s and the shadows of my past that I can’t breathe.

In these moments, Tisaanah slides closer to me. Her palm presses to my chest, right over my heart. And she murmurs in my ear, “We will all still be here in the morning.”

And for some reason, just like I always have, just like I did that day when she showed up in my garden and told me the world could be better, I believe her.

I close my eyes.

* * *

TISAANAH

Once,many years ago, I told Max that I would build a better world.

And I have.

The years are so kind to us. Together, Max and I leave our marks on the world—a country, a school, a guild, and, finally, our children.

Our daughter is so much like Max, even though she has my eyes and my mother’s nose. Our son, even at three, is already so pensive and temperamental. He came into the world screaming, like he was already enraged by the injustice in life.I know,I wanted to tell him, the first time I held him.I know it’s bright and cold and too much, but we will protect you.

We fulfill that promise. Max and I build them a home so stable, so secure, so full of love. My children will never know what it’s like to run from their home in the middle of the night. They will never need to fight for their lives.

But one night, when our daughter is five years old, something changes. She recently learned how to braid, so I let her sit behind me and play with my hair as I get ready for bed. And in this mundane moment, she asks a question that makes my heart stop:

Mama, she asks,why do you have these bumpy lines on your back?

Max is walking in the doorway, having just put our son to sleep, and he too stops short. We look at each other in sheer panic, as if we both suddenly realize what we will eventually need to do.

I do not need to answer this question today, of course. She is so young, and very easily distracted. Instead I kiss her cheek and say,Do you want to know a secret? Your father is very, very ticklish.

And that will set off a chaotic game, one that will end with all of us exhausted with laughter on the floor, Max loudly declaring me a traitor and our daughter snoring long before her bedtime. But later that night, Max and I curl up in each other’s arms and I know we are both thinking about that moment.

We do not have to tell our children about our pasts today, or tomorrow, or the next day.

But one day, our past and our future will collide.

For some reason, this thought is terrifying to me. We have done so much to separate our children from the worst parts of our past. And yet, at the same time, everything we do is driven by it. We have taken the hardest parts of our lives and turned them into something great. Max comes alive every day teaching in the halls of the home that once haunted his nightmares, making a place of death a place of growth and learning—what is that, if not healing?

Maybe I built the guild for the version of myself who is thirteen years old, living in a tiny room in a grand house, dreaming of freedom. The guild is my third child—my first child, in some ways, as terrible as that might sound. We establish bases in every state of the Alliance, in Besrith, in the southern isles. One day, I even want to build one in the Fey lands.

Sometimes, though, I’m overwhelmed by all the work that is still left to do. Slavery may not exist in Threll anymore, but it still exists in countless other countries. And even where there isn’t slavery, there is poverty, abuse, subjugation. With every new country I visit, I find it hiding in more places. I find more children in tiny rooms. I find more lost hearts.

I see myself in every one of those children. I look at my wonderful life and I wish I could reach through time and space to that little girl, who dreamed of a life just like this one.

But instead, I reach across mountains, I reach across deserts and seas and plains, I reach across the entire world to all those other children sitting in little rooms just like that one, and I whisper,“Look. Look at all you can have.”

Is it enough? Never.

But maybe it is something, to change a world one life at a time. It is something.

* * *

It is early.Max and I often rise before the sun for a few precious moments of solitude before the day begins. We have memorized everything about each other over the years. I know him better than I know myself—every rhythm of his body, every minuscule expression, every small kindness or sign of irritation. Every mundane way he tells me that he loves me.

---