Page 57 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Illuminating Rodhi’s bare asscheeks.
Fantastic.
“Maybe another memory?” I suggested weakly.
Garvis gestured for me to go on. “Lead the way.”
We followed path after path, twisting and doubling back and reaching dead ends but finding a new memory around every corner. There was me, arriving at the Esholian Institute for the first time. Emelle and I first saying hi while Jenia and Dazmine sneered at our backs. Mr. Conine’s lesson with crocodiles, whereFergus Bilderas had insulted one of the females. Parties, classes, and tests that all played like misty, moving pictures.
Nothing of Steeler, though. Nothing of a midnight swim in the Element Wielder lake or any of the other times he’d forced me to take a pill these last few months.
“Every mind is like this?” I asked eventually, after a particularly heartfelt memory of Fabian and Don making me some midnight soup when I couldn’t sleep a few years before the Esholian Institute. Funnily enough, rewatching it made me notice new details I hadn’t before with that moonlight illuminating every angle: how Don’s Summoning magic did most of the vegetable chopping, for instance, while Fabian’s dealt with the mixing and the seasoning.
“Not exactly.” Garvis stroked his mustache. “The substance of the walls always varies from person to person, as does the climate. But there is always a maze of thoughts—a twisting of neurons that we get to view in its personified form. There is always mist to make memories and moonlight to help guide our way.” He paused, as if weighing whether or not to continue. “And a subconscious in the center of it all.”
“A subconscious?” For some reason, my stomach swooped. “Aren’t… aren’t I my own subconscious right now?”
“No. You are yourouterconsciousness right now. But the deeper you explore your own maze, the closer you get to her—and the more in-tune with yourself you’ll become. Would you like to meet her?”
Her. As if my subconscious were an entirely different being.
I shrugged, trying to hide the sudden chill that had trickled down my spine by crossing my arms. “Sure.”
We made it back to the main pathway and trudged through the snow, heading straight into the center of the maze. I tried to keep track of how many different winding pathways we passed,but eventually lost track after fifty. It seemed that the further we traveled, the lower the temperature dropped.
“Almost there,” Garvis said, his teeth chattering.
I squinted into the mist, where a dark, rounded shadow was slowly taking shape up ahead. For a second, I wondered if my subconscious self had seriously decided to take the form of an umbrella… but then we were stepping into a rounded courtyard, where a marble gazebo sat cold and impassive in the center like a dome-crowned shrine.
And in that gazebo, sitting on what looked like a frosted throne…
Wasme.
I stared at myself.
She stared back, her head turning with creaking slowness to meet my gaze straight on.
Her hair—as wild and curly as mine—had stiffened into place. Snowflakes patterned her clothing like lace. Every bare inch of skin—her neck, her arms, her hands—appeared as cold and white and hard as the marble of the shrine itself.
My feet stumbled backward of their own accord.
“Go ahead,” my subconscious said airily, her breath forming a swirling fog that reached out with beckoning fingers. “Ask me anything.”
Myface.Myvoice. And yet I’d never felt less familiar with myself than I did now. As if I’d looked into a warped, alternate mirror.
“N-no, thanks. I’m good.” I turned to Garvis. “Can we go?”
Perhaps a shade of disappointment flitted across his expression, but he bowed his head and took my hand in his own.
“It can be hard at first, I know. But you will get better and braver the more you revisit her. Now.” He smiled. “Before we go back, it’s tradition to give you the sector motto.”
And suddenly it wasn’t just his voice pitching into a chant, but the entire world—the frozen, far-off sunrise and icy walls and eerie subconscious in her shrine, as if Garvis had planted the words into my brain:
We, the captains of the mind,
Welcome all who’ve heard
The discordance of voices
