Page 118 of Better in Black
Too Wise to Love
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
—C. S. Lewis,The Four Loves
Would you like me totell you a story?
Come closer.
Listen well.
—
Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Faerie, lived seven sisters, fairest of the fair. Beautiful, brave, fierce of heart. The Fair Folk love with wild abandon, and these sisters loved stronger than most. One by one, they fell in love—no, leapt, plunged, hurtled recklessly into love.
And love destroyed them.
—
Once upon a time, except time is a funny thing, isn’t it? Sometimes, what was once shall be again, or will always be. And some lands can be far away, and still all too close.
This is no mortalfairy tale,pretty and safe and suitable for children. I can spin no such fiction out of gossamer and spiderwebs, because fairy tales are lies. But Tales of Faerie, those are only ever true.
—
So, then: Once upon a time, in the land under the hill, in the time before and always, six sisters were destroyed by love.
Nerissa gave her heart to a Shadowhunter, and bore him two children, and when he discovered what loving her had cost him, Nerissa loved him enough to harden his heart against her. She let him believe she was dead, split from neck to belly with his own brother’s blade, and she watched him rejoice over her corpse. Nerissa loved for seven years, and when love was lost, so was her reason to live, and so she wasted away to nothing, until only nothing was left.
Talidhe gave her heart to a forest nymph, a raven-haired girl, lovely and true, and felled by an arrow meant for another. And Talidhe, in her grief, was rooted to the spot where her lover was lost, for days, for years, until she became one with the wood.
Eiriana gave her heart to a mortal and maimed herself in body and spirit, chasing, ever chasing a mortal life. Turned her back on Faerie, on magic, on the Shadow World. She cannot lie, but she will live one, till death do they part and beyond.
Lirse fastened all her love to a knight of the Unseelie Court—and he gave his heart to his mortal lover, and Lirse could not bear it. She slaughtered the knight and his lover in their wedding bed—so much blood, spilling from her beloved’s throat, and at the sightof it, she screamed and screamed, and pulled the ragged flesh together over the wound and willed him back to life, but his life was bled dry at her hand, and her screaming has never ended.
Celithe, the gentlest, gave her heart to a mortal who despised her, who treated her only with betrayal and scorn, who dared lift his hand against my gentle sister, and she loved him enough to bear it. Until she could bear it no longer. My gentle sister discovered rage, and made her rage manifest, and burned her lover alive, and delighted in his pain. If love was pain, Celithe decided, then pain was love, and so she loved again and again, one mortal after the next, and the more they suffered, the more she loved, and with each torment she burned away another sliver of the gentle Celithe that was, until the rage was all that remained.
Maelera, the youngest, gave her heart to one of the wild fey. He claimed his gift with an enchanted knife, sliced her open and seized her heart, still beating, from her ragged chest. He buried her empty shell of a body in shallow earth, and bent the bloody heart toward his own dark magic. They say it beats still.
Six sisters, destroyed by love.
But what of the seventh sister, too wise to love?
—
I lost them all.
I made ice of my heart.
I survived.
—
I am known as Nene. This is not, of course, my true name. Only those I trust can know that, which is to say, no one has ever known it, and never will they. Unlike my sisters, I am no fool.
Every life needs a purpose, but I knew love could never be my purpose. That was how it destroyed you. I made healing mypurpose. I learned to salve wounds, purge poisons, ease suffering. I learned to recognize when wounds could be healed and when they could not, and how to bear witness to death, when it comes. Even for the fey, it comes.
In the Seelie Court, there are those who assume that because I excel at healing, I must be soft. That I must be kind, with an open heart. But I am an excellent healer only because my heart is so easily shut. I have met mortal healers, and I recognized something in their chill. Of all mortals, they are the ones who come closest to seeing through the glamour of life, who understand that mortal bodies are nothing but meat and bone. To heal is not to love, but its opposite. To heal is to accept the inevitability of loss, and know that loss will not destroy you. I have lost many, despite my best efforts, and I have endured it all, because what are they to me? Nothing.
