Page 164 of Earthbound

‘How?’ she says. I don’t know whether she knows she’s crying.

‘Remember I told you I was once foolish?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I was foolish again.’

‘Alder—’

‘I am not he.’ But I am, and in that is the irony.

‘Explain,’ she pleads.

I am weary and I will need my strength for what is to come but I speak. ‘The spell was an unravelling and it undid all that Hady once bound. The obeah, Mosima, the Jani dynasty: all are unbound.’

‘Yes, I knew that—’

I hold up my hand. I know that if given enough breath, Lettle will not stop her interrogation.

‘The unravelling also unbound me from my sanctuary. And that was my singular purpose here.’

My words condemn me, I know that. But Afa, the person I was, had little time for guilt. His plan had been to free himself only–he thought so little of the person he was beyond the walls of his prison that he did not think about the consequences of what would happen to Alder’s memories.

I should say, I didn’t think of the consequences. We are one now.

Lettle looks betrayed and it breaks my heart. ‘You had no intention of saving the humans?’

‘I had all intentions,’ I admit, ‘but that purpose faded long ago.’

‘So the spell was simply an unravelling? Be free of your prison, and then what?’

‘Live,’ I say, then I laugh. Because how could I expect to live without love? ‘I did not consider that in freeing myself, I would become Alder and Afa both.’

I am changed. For good. For bad.

‘Alder?’ Golan steps forward. Dirt and tears leave muddy tracks down his face.

I raise my hand to wipe them away and he flinches. It is like a serrated knife against my heart. He must see the hurt in my eyes for he gently reaches for me.

‘Do you remember me?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’ All of you.

Golan’s hands grow more confident and I let his fingers trace the lines of my face.

‘You’re really in there, aren’t you?’ he says.

‘I am.’

He smiles, and I think, I am glad to have lived free, to see his smile again.

The ground trembles beneath me, but I am not the cause. The Tree of Souls’ roots run deep, and every inch of it is dying.

‘Lettle, we need to move,’ the king says. Though I wonder if he is still the king. He is no longer tethered to the haven Hady built.

The web of roots below the city is decaying and the earth begins to fold in on itself. I wonder if that is how I shall look when I die.

For die I must.