“The past can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”

- Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

The small child lay in a crib, sunlight shone through windows and curtains dappling the blanket in gold. A chubby hand reached for the light. Outside the crickets worshipped a late summer while a soft breeze blew the curtains into the room. It happened then as natural as breathing as soft as a feather that the child grasped the light but it was too hot to hold and the child let go, crying.

“Don't run, Alea, you will fall!” The mother called exasperatedly chasing after the small three-year-old. The laughter faded into the distance as the girl ran out of the door into the garden. “Present!” the girl stood in the shade of the garden hedge and held out a closed fist radiant light burst from between the fingers coloring her flesh in a reddish hue.

They were at the old castle, mother told her the people there were family but it did not feel like family. The halls were large and cold, and colder were only those who lived here. Fear sat in the corners and grabbed when you were not looking. Spiderwebs of deceit ran deep in the walls and towers and even a child could understand, this was no one's home.

They chased her, laughing while she stumbled deeply afraid of the loud and brash boys, they were her cousins it was said but was that another word for unfriendly stranger? She ran and the heavy door fell shut behind her. There was the rasp of a latch being thrown then nothing. She cried and screamed, the door did not budge. She pleaded and sobbed and the day turned to dusk. When night fell she heard the things in the darkness and she was alone with the fear.

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As the first rat bit her she called to the light and then there was the sun, shining in the darkness burning away the filth and hate, and as rats died shrieking her eyes beheld the last thing they would ever see, this beautiful painful light.

They found her then, the room still glows to this day and it was no one's fault, the door closed on its own they said. Months passed in darkness, sometimes she called the light and it grew warm, but she could not see. Her parents tried to help her but were powerless in the end.

The voice was warm and old and deep “Hold the pliers and give me the essence of nightshade. Sleep my dear, you will see again I swear.” She drank the cup put in her hand and fell asleep. She was someone, something else, a tiny being and it could what she could not, see.

She always was called a smart child and it should be true even her grandfather, the most intelligent person in the world said so, so it must be true. So she knew, that this was, what was called an assassination. Her mother told her to run, and she did. She ran as she never had and then in the small alley behind the houses she had known since she was young there was a scruffy-looking young man, he held a crossbow and spat in the dirt as he said. “I hate this job.” And then he shot her. The bolt punched clear through her breast white-hot even on a day cold as this one with rime on the walls and windows. And while she fell, seeing this through the borrowed eyes of her spider she thought, ‘will there be light on the other side.’

“Her soul is still there. The construct holds. We can still do something.”

“What you are proposing is madness!”

“I lost my daughter, I lost my son, I will not lose her!”

As she woke she was cold, so cold. She felt as the little spider did when she lost herself to the link. And as they told her, that her father, mother, and grandfather had died. She lay there without motion. She could think and knew she should feel something, anything, but there was only the all-pervading cold. Moving her body was strange and unfamiliar, the spider much more comfortable.

Remembering was hard and got harder still but the memories were like sharp-edged ice and with them fading so did the pain they caused, the past was distant like a stone thrown in a green pond, fading swiftly. The last to go was her grandfather's tired words, "Sleep. Sleep and forget, forget what I did to you."

Learning to live again was hard. And it took years.