Chapter Fifteen
Theo
The wings were a change that had been unexpected. As the winds were crossing every bit of my estranged body, I felt a surge of power. I remembered how the king’s castle had walls that were too high. There was no way I could have made my way into his castle without my newly acquired wings and sense of flight.
I might have dreaded only one thing—the fact that my father was the one who inspired the wings out of my body. I didn’t hate the man, but I wasn’t able to connect with him. He was quite the mysterious character. He didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, but only because I didn’t want to ask. I was learning what I could learn.
In the end and after a long flight, we descended in some distant valley and he told me briefly that he had left us because he feared for our lives. He was afraid that his dragon form would attract the attention of the Hawks someday. He explained that when one has deep emotions for people like his own family, their own selfishness and awareness disappears. He said that he only thought of us when he left. He believed we were better off without him. He couldn’t protect us—he couldn’t even control his own form.
For a brief moment, I wanted to fight his words with harsher ones, only to hurt him like he had hurt me with his absence. But I found myself choosing not to. I found myself telling him that all was fine, that he was forgiven.
I couldn’t help but understand, and I related what he was telling me to what Elise wrote me in her last letter, the one I kept with me always. Why would I not forgive him after that?
“I hope you continue feeling this way, and like I told you in the beginning, patience is all you need for this journey of yours,” he told me with sincerity in his eyes and paused. “Son.”
I smiled a smile of comfort and consolation.
“You know something,” I told him, “you could have made my life a lot easier if you had stayed. Elise wouldn’t have left, and life would had been a different shade, a lighter one.”
“It would have been a completely different color, not a different shade. Be thankful for whatever happened. This doubt you have is your mind’s attempt to think that the grass is greener on the other side, and by that you are only trying to get out of your fate rather than embrace it,” he said with his hands tapping on my shoulders softly, “and patience, again, is all you need.”
“A wise man told me that anger and fear were the most important things, and now you are telling me that patience is. I don’t know who and what to trust now,” I said in confusion.
“The simultaneous truths will mystify you, son. You need your anger to hold your fears intact, and you need the patience to hold the anger down. How else will you not become a slave to any of those emotions?” he said.
And these were the last words that I heard that night. I followed his words and was led to that place in my mind where peace was an option.
We both sat on the mountains, father and son, and meditated for hours. He knew that I was restless, that every cell of my body wanted to fly toward Elise and save her. The worry was eating me alive, and yet I had to drag every bit of patience from the core of who I was and try hard to sit still.
Sitting still was the easy part. The hard part was making my mind still. I tried and I tried, yet the thoughts and fears kept creeping up on me. I don’t know how he felt it, but as soon as the thoughts were getting too much for me, I found my father’s hands gently tapping on mine.
Eventually, my father told me the way to the castle. However, he insisted on guiding me through the canyons and mountains and the many decaying villages until we could see the castle from a distance.
Before we walked, he helped me with all the cuts and bruises that I had endured from the fight with the king. My back was burned. We found herbs that made my skin regenerate and my broken bones heal in no time.
I enjoyed every moment with my father and all the dread and discomfort that I felt around him all went away. We were alike in many things. I noticed how he would always get lost in contemplation the same way I would when I would think of Elise.
“Are you thinking of Mother?” I asked him as he stared at the setting sun.
“Perhaps I am,” he replied softly, not wanting to distract himself from the thought of my mother.
“Her image is a blur in your head, isn’t it?” I asked, thinking he was feeling like I was with Elise.
“I never let myself think of her eyes, and that is where the blur is. Thinking of her eyes would make me loathe myself for the pain that I carved into them,” he said dreamily.
“Do you want to sharpen the blur?” I asked him.
“That is impossible. She would never even look at me if I went home,” he said dismissively. “It’s better if she had forgotten about me.”
“You are lying to yourself and to me,” I said and punched him in the shoulder. “You want to convince me that you wouldn’t be keeping her safe if you go home?”
“I wouldn’t. Like I told you, I will only attract the eyes of the wicked.”
“Stop it with the lies,” I demanded. “You will die unforgiven if you never go to see her.”
I might have succeeded in getting to him with my words because as I started to walk faster than him and leave him behind, he was lost in thoughts of her again.
It’s ironic how a man can dwell in thought of something and yet never try to save themselves from the pain of it. Maybe it is better to romanticize a matter of the past than it is to fancy dragging the past to the present and creating a better future.
For a long time, we walked. I told him about all my past, about Bernard and Elise. He knew everything about my feelings, and I knew a lot about his past and what happened after he left us.
It had been nearly twenty-three years since he had left us, and he told me that every day the pain of the distance had increased. He met many people, and a few were guides in his journey.
We grew hungry and quiet, and the tall walls of King Harold’s castle loomed into sight.