Page 10 of Winter Queen
"Does that mean I died and can be revived if I choose to?" I ask him, trying to make sense of it all.
"No, you haven't died. Not yet, anyway. For now, time is frozen at the exact point where you could die."
His eyes unfocus for a moment, then his sharp gaze returns.
"There was an explosion, right?"
I nod. "I think my magic flared. I don't really remember."
"It's about to collapse part of the Royal Palace. Your mother is transporting all the people out of it, but your barriers are up and she cannot reach you. Your choice is simple: let her save you or die."
"My Guardians are safe?"
He smiles indulgently.
"Everybody is safe. You're not deciding about anybody else's life. Just your own."
I'm struggling to think of a reason why I wouldn't want to live. I'm happy, right? I have four loving men, I'm healthy, I have my parents...
Wait.
It's as if I'm suddenly doused in cold water.
How could I forget? My mum is dead. My father a prisoner of the Morrigan.
I'm not happy. I was sad, so terribly alone and filled with hate.
Those emotions are only echoes now; this place is filtering out all the negative feelings and leaving just the good ones. Almost like Blaze's sparklies, but less fake. I can see that now. The sparklies only covered the bad things in a thick covering of sweetness, but underneath, it was all still there.
Here, it's not like that at all. I'm at peace here, despite knowing what happened. Like I'm distant from my emotions.
For the first time in weeks, I can think rationally. Not the imposed cold rationality I gained by locking away my very essence. By holding everybody at arm's length.
"Can I have a moment?" I ask the Librarian and he gives me a nod. "Just call when you need me, or once you've made a decision."
As soon as he's out of sight, I run back to the centre of the room, where the large round table is sitting. I take one of the index cards and hastily scribble my mum's name on it, getting ink all over my fingers.
The card flashes and a moment later, a row of text appears below the name.
Spoke 19, 4th shelf on the right, third from the bottom.
I turn around in a circle, looking for the correct spoke. Luckily, each of the shelved corridors leading away from the centre space have metal signs strung above them.
I find number 19 and hasten along it until I'm standing in front of the fourth shelf. It's a more modern one than Mozart's book stood on, made of bright polished beechwood. I don't even have to look for the right book, it's glowing and vibrating as soon as I come close.
The book is a lot thinner than that of Mozart's, but it's lined with something that looks like burgundy silk, putting it apart from the other books on the shelf. Gingerly, I take it and open it at a random page.
There are no words in it, just sketches, in the style she used to plan her paintings. Delicate strokes, precise and purposeful. The first image I see is that of a baby with full cheeks and a large smile, lying on a large pillow. I assume that's me. It must have been shortly after I was brought to Earth and given to my parents.
I turn the page. Another picture of me, this time a little older, crawling on the floor, looking very pleased with myself. I smile at the same time as tears fill my eyes. Even though there are no words in my mother's book, I can feel her essence in it. The love she had for me. The love she had for living. She was always so full of energy and happiness.
I flick past more images of me as a child until I reach one of her and my dad. They're sitting on a bench, hand in hand, looking at each other with unmistakable love in their eyes. It doesn't show the setting of this memory, but it doesn't matter, the important thing is the feelings they had for each other. Even after so many years together, they could still have moments like that.
With a heavy feeling in my stomach, I turn to the final page. It's a sketch of a dark room; most of the paper is filled with rushed, thick pen strokes. In the darkness, a fuzzy shape of a man, looking straight at me. His eyes are as filled with love as the picture of the bench. My dad is showing her what she means to him. It must have been the last thing she saw before the Morrigan killed her. At least he was there with her. She wasn't completely alone.
I glide my fingers over the page. I almost expect the drawing to smudge, but it's somehow part of the page, the ink deep inside the paper. Suddenly desperate to see my mother's face one last time, I flick through the pages, but there are none. Sketches of her parents, of a young version of my dad, a lot of me, but not a single drawing of herself. As if she didn't think herself important enough to be in her very own book. She's always been far too modest. We had to persuade her to show her paintings in an exhibition, and even then, she didn't believe people would want to see them. Only when they were all bought within the first day at the gallery, she started to be a little more confident in her abilities. But even when she had dozens of orders, she still kept her modest, down-to-earth outlook on her art. She wasn't doing it for the money, but because she needed to let the paint out of her body, as she used to say. I never really understood that until I saw the book. Now I know what she meant.
Mum.
