I wept. My spores—who else’s?—intermixed with my snot and tears as they dripped onto the floor. Already, the spores’ acid coating had begun to eat away at the tile.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon cried, “please, talk to me!”

I knew she was there. I’d known for a while, now, but I was just too distraught to care. It took a while longer, still, for me to finally acknowledge her, and by the time I did so, Andalon was nearly as devastated and tear-struck as I. We mirrored each other, in posture and sentiment. We both knelt on the floor, both in tears, and both in the same pose, though Andalon’s body partially phased through the stall’s closed door.

Eventually, I managed to breathe enough and swallow enough to bring myself to speak. My question was curt:

“Why are you crying?”

At the risk of psychoanalyzing myself, it was understandable that I was lashing out at her. Anger was as much a part of the grieving process as the grief itself, and, unfortunately for her, Andalon just happened to be an ideal target for my pain and resentments.

But she answered my question with a question of her own: “Why?” she asked, “Why does it hurt, Mr. Genneth? It hurts so much.” She was sobbing, almost as heartbroken as I was. “Please, Mr. Genneth,” she pressed her hands to her head and shook, “it has to stop! How can you feel this way? Why do you feel this way?” She shuddered uncontrollably. “Mr. Genneth is nice; nice shouldn’t feel so hurt; Andalon does not want it!” Lunging forward, she grabbed my forearm and shook me while leaning back her head to look me in the eyes. “Tell Andalon how to make it better. Please, I need to make it better. Tell me how to help! I don’t want you to feel this. You don’t deserve this… Mr. Genneth. You don’t! You don’t you don’t you don’t!”

I wanted to be angry with her. It would have been so easy to be angry with her. I could have screamed and yelled as much as I wanted; I could do it in my thoughts, where my voice would never go hoarse, and she would be the only one who’d ever know. I could have given her a beating that made the one Ileene had given her seem restrained by comparison.

But then, when Andalon looked me in the eyes and said, “Tell Andalon how to make it better,” I broke all over again. Her words took my leavening grief and shattered it, splitting it up into its elements, and the end result was that my anger came out stillborn.

What good would lashing out accomplish? Andalon wasn’t the cause of the plague. She was a piece of God, trying to fight against it, just like the rest of us. It was the fungus—the Darkness—that was twisting the wyrms into horrors. It was so obvious. Andalon was nearly innocent here; her only wrongdoing was in not having asked, and I was confident that she was learning and understanding why it had been wrong of her to do so.

It would be a sin to turn my ire toward Andalon. She wasn’t the cause of my miseries; not directly. She hadn’t killed my father; the fungus had—the Darkness had. And not just that. She was moved by my pain. She had sympathy and compassion. She wanted to make my pain go away, and were our positions reversed, I would have wanted exactly the same. She wanted to make it better.

So I didn’t lash out. I could have, but I didn’t. Instead, I reached out. I crawled forward on my hands and knees and reached out to her. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, squeezing her frigid body like a pillow as I wept.

Andalon stiffened in my grasp. She didn’t flinch. And it took a second, but… she reciprocated, wrapping her arms as far around my electric green hazmat suit as they would go, which wasn’t very far at all.

She understood. Her actions spoke for her. She knew how this was different. It was a key moment in every child’s life, their recognition of the inherent value of other beings—that lives and feelings played out in heads other than their own. Our previous hugs had been for Andalon’s sake, but now, it was for my own. I was the one in pain. And she recognized that.

I smiled, even as I wept.

Right now, Andalon was the only person I could hug without a weight on my conscience. She was the only one getting my full, unabridged truth. And I had a raw, sinking feeling that someday soon, she’d be all I had left. Dad was dead, and the rest of my family would probably follow in short shrift, along with my colleagues and everyone else who wasn’t misfortunate enough to be turning into inhuman monsters. I was stuck with Andalon, quite possibly for eternity, and, knowing that, the fact that she could grow and mature as a thinking, feeling being was good news. Was it the best good news? No. But it was good news, and that made it good enough for me.

“Mr. Genneth…?” she asked, softly, rippling her fingers.

I gulped before answering her; I sucked in breath. “My Dad died, Andalon. I was talking to him, and he was sick—he was so, so sick, and then… he…” but I couldn’t finish the thought.

“Was… was he your family?”

“Yeah, yeah…” I said, with a nod, squeezing her tightly. “But… he’s gone now. The fungus took him. And I… I—”

Andalon ran her icy fingers through my hair, petting me. My scalp tingled at her spectral touch. “—Don’t worry, Mr. Genneth,” she said, “wyrmehs are gonna save him. I know they will.” She smiled through her drying tears.

With another deep, spore-tainted breath, I let go, straightening my back as I sat up on my knees. I was still broken and devastated and utterly useless, but, at least I was calming down. The emotional scab was beginning to form; the quietude of abiding grief. Things were compounding. They weren’t getting better, but they’d reached the point where they stopped getting worse.

In other words, I’d hit rock bottom.

I tried to smile, and succeeded, but at the cost of sending a fresh wave of tears trickling down my cheeks.

I swallowed sickly-sweet spore-spit ooze. “Do…” I sniffled, “don’t you ever worry that you might be in over your head?”

Andalon tilted her head, staring at me in befuddlement. “I thought you were feeling sad, Mr. Genneth. Why would you say something so silly?” She, too, cried anew. “How can I be in my head, but also over it?”

I almost chuckled. Instead, my expression twisted, and I joined her in staring at the brightness of the ceiling’s buzzing fluorescent lights. I swallowed hard.

“What I mean was,” I looked down at her, “Aren’t you worried you might not be strong enough to save all the people you want to save? Aren’t you worried that you might just be wasting your time, or—worst of all—doing more harm than good?”

Though I’d addressed the question to Andalon, it applied to me just as well. I was in over my head. I was trying to keep pace with events that stretched beyond human ken; I had been ever since things had gotten theological, what with Hell and demons and all that jazz. I was overreaching, dabbling in the stuff of eternity. Actually, no, I should have pulled out even earlier. When Brand and Mistelann told me the fungus’ biology “wasn’t of our world”, I should have recognized that I, Genneth Robert Howle, was not cut out for this. But no: I had persisted. I persisted, even when it made Merrit and Cassius into man-eating monsters. I persisted when it broke Ileene’s soul. I persisted when I lied to my family and to my colleagues, and had been too afraid to talk to my father until it was already too late. And so much else.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

These past few days, my life had been turning into one weird dark fantasy story, and though I didn’t know who—if anyone—was cut out to be this story’s protagonist, but—flibbertigibbet!—it certainly wasn’t me.

For a brief moment, Andalon’s composure changed. She lowered her head slightly; her lips flattened; her gaze deepened. That rare aura of maturity graced her once again. An uncanny resilience took hold of her. It was like a stone’s remains, weathered smooth by the waters of roiled times. Her hair flickered with light. In it, I glimpsed something… deeper.

Was this Andalon’s greater self reaching out to her? Or her to it?

“It’s not easy,” Andalon said, “it’s hard.” She shook her head. “It’s so very, very hard. The Darkness wants to hurt me. The others have hurt me; they’ve chased me. I’m scared. Without the wyrms, I’d feel so alone, but, even with them… I’m scared I won’t ever get a happy ending.”

Andalon’s words affected me far more than I would have thought they could.

“You mentioned someone hurting you last night,” I said. “Who is hurting you? What did they do? Why?”

Andalon’s eyes widened.

“When you found me, they’d hurt me. They’d done something terrible. So much death. So much loss. They chased and chased and wouldn’t stop. I had to swim swim swim, so fast, too fast. And I couldn’t get them to stop. And so, I had to run away. I had to hide.” She looked me in the eyes. “And then you found me.” She started to cry. “It’s so hard, fighting the Darkness. But then these people I don’t even know come out and hurt me, and… and they… destroy the poor wyrmehs.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s awful. Awful awful awful awful.” She rocked side to side, turning around—tying herself into knots. “Andalon almost wanted to give up… but I—I can’t give up. I gotta keep helping,” she said, with a nod. “It’s like… there’s a voice in me, and I just want to follow it. I…” she shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But… Andalon feels so bad, wanting to help, but not knowing if Andalon can or should or can’t or shouldn’t, or if I’ll even make anythin’ better at all.” She looked up at me. “That’s why I gotsta try so hard. I don’t know who I am, or why, and I’m lost and scared and I don’t know when it’s ever gonna get better!”

“You really miss your family, don’t you?” I said.

She shook her head. She sobbed. “I don’t even know who they are! I’m missing them, and I don’t know.”

And I nodded. “Believe it or not, I know exactly how you feel. You’re not alone.” I sighed. “I never got to know my Mom. She died not long after I was born. And my sister died, her life falling to pieces just as she was starting to find her place in the world. And my son…” I wept again. “That’s why I know what it’s like, Andalon. I know what it’s like to desperately, desperately want to do something to help Andalon, but,” I shook my head, “I think I finally have to admit that… I don’t really know if I can.”

“That’s horrible!” she said.

I nodded in agreement. “You could say it’s part of growing up. Even doctors need to grow up, you know.” I chuckle-whimpered. “As a doctor, you have to accept that you’re not going to be able to save everyone, but—fudge,” I knocked my knuckles on the wall of the stall, “I’ve never really accepted that.”

“What do you have to do to ‘ksept it?” Andalon asked.

I sighed. “Change. Grow.” I looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe even pray.”

In that moment, my magic memory did me in. The words came to me without the slightest bit of effort, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. It was only appropriate; it was, after all, the standard prayer for a Lassedile funeral. I know for a fact that Dad would have wanted it, and—at the very least—I could at least oblige him.

It was just my luck: even with the faith, my relationship with my father was anything but simple. Dad was always easy-going; I’d learned to mimic that aspect of him when working with my patients, as it did wonders for my interpersonal repartée. I was, in my sister’s words, “sunshine in a straightjacket”, and I hid my storm clouds beneath that straightjacket.

It really was a paradox. I took the faith far, far more seriously than my father ever did. For Dad, the faith was just another part of the fabric of our culture. More than once, he’d told me that he didn’t know whether or not he believed, and he didn’t think it mattered. And I could never understand that. He, who cared not whether he believed or not, followed the Church’s laws and rituals like clockwork. Meanwhile, I, who desperately wanted to believe, was as inconstant with rite and ritual as rain in the Burugi wastes.

Even without the aid of my wyrm powers, we’d had the conversation so many times, I could recite it from memory:

“But,” I’d ask, “if, in your heart, you don’t believe it, then why go?”

“Gen, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: because it’s what we do. You do what you gotta do, because if you don’t, then who will?”

And so, just like that, it fell to me to recite the Cant for the Dead:

“O Believe, my love, believe:

You have lost nothing.

What you desired, it will be yours;

What you have loved, it will be yours;

What you have fought for; it will be yours.”

When last I’d spoken the Cant, it had been while looking over my son’s open grave on a gloomy morning forever adrift with fog. The Cant was inseparably bound to my grief over Rale’s death. Frissons spidered up and down my back and tail.

“You were not born for nothing.

Have not lived for nothing,

Nor suffered.

What was created

Must perish;

What perished, shall—”

Suddenly, Andalon cut me off. She was pale as a ghost, and weeping all over again.

“—What is that?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“Why?” I asked; I was confused.

Andalon pressed her hand onto her heart. “I feel it.” She patted her chest. “I feel it, right here.” She shook her head in amazement. “It’s like… it’s like it’s a part of me.” She looked me in the eyes. “What is this, Mr. Genneth? Why does it feel like I already know it?”

Swallowing hard, I shivered. When I’d called Andalon a piece of the Godhead, it had been half in jest. Maybe I’d been mistaken. Or, perhaps, was she something even more than that?

I cleared my throat. “It’s the Cant for the Dead. It’s one of my religion’s oldest prayers. You say it when you bury the dead; when you say goodbye to them for the last time.

“What does it do?” she asked.

“We believe that mankind broke the world, long, long ago. The Angel came to fix it, and to show us the way to Paradise. We sing the Cant to the dead as their souls leave their bodies. We remind the soul of what the Angel promised us, and what awaits the righteous after death. Man broke the world, but the Angel will fix it. That’s the message. And, at the end, after all of our suffering, it will not have been for nothing—for no reason. The Cant is a promise that, one day, everything will be set right. It’s hope. Hope for the living, and hope for the dead.”

Andalon sniffled. “Is there hope for Andalon? In the Cant?”

I nodded. “I like to believe there is hope for everyone,” I lowered my head, “even though some people feel differently.”

“Will Andalon get her Question answered?”

“I don’t know.” I cried anew, my voice breaking. “But we can hope.”

“Mr. Genneth, can you start it again?”

I nodded.

“And can Andalon say it with you?”

“Sure,” I nodded, smiling weakly, “if it brings you comfort.”

I took a breath. “Repeat after me,” I said, as I began again, and Andalon followed after me.

“O Believe, my love, believe:

You have lost nothing.

What you desired, it will be yours;

What you have loved, it will be yours;

What you have fought for; it will be yours.

You were not born for nothing.

Have not lived for nothing,

Nor suffered.

What was created

Must perish;

What perished, shall rise again.

Cease from trembling.

Prepare to live.

O Pain, the all-piercer,

We have been wrested from your clutches.

O Death, the all-conqueror,

Now you face defeat.

Love's fierce strivings,

Has won for us our wings,

And with them, we shall soar,

Upwards, upwards,

To the Light no eye has penetrated.

We die in order to live.

You will rise again, my Love,

Rise again, in an instant.

And for that which you have suffered,

To the Angel shall you be carried.”

Andalon stared, awed and overcome.

“I miss you, Dad,” I muttered, “I hope you’re proud of me.” I wept. “Say hi to everyone for me,” I said. “I miss them. I miss them all, so, so much.” I added one final whisper as I said my farewell: “I love you…”

Shaking her head in dismay, Andalon turned around and phased out of the stall, only to phase back in a moment later.

“Mr. Genneth…?”

“Yeah?” I asked, quietly.

She pointed. “We gots company.”

Shakily, I rose to my feet, pulling myself up by the handlebar on the stall’s wall. I opened the door, and stepped out, facing myself in the mirror before turning to where Andalon had pointed.

There stood Ileene’s parents, dressed in their church best.