Photographic Memory

I don’t know who took that picture of me. I suspect Fiachra. It seems likely, but then again, I doubt it. She would never do something so sentimental. On the other hand, when I think back to those last months, even years, I remember her a changed woman, and so perhaps it is not so strange after all. Now of course I wonder how much she knew; what secrets Daire had whispered into her ear as she knelt in the Prayer Tower. Perhaps she knew full well what was to come, or at least suspected. Either way, the thought that Fiachra cared enough about me to take my picture touches me.

There I stand, in all the glory of my fifteen years, with a youthfulness that seems frightening to me now. Was I ever that young? It seems improbable. Surely, I think, I was always as I am now, bowed by the weight of my despair, my guilt? The figure smiling up at me from the picture seems a hideous mockery in the face of what I have become.

This former self wears robes of priestess blue. I stay away from blue these days. Too many memories. Though memories are all I have now, bittersweet as they are, and their taste is always on my tongue. I go through the paces of my life wrapped in them; a butterfly returned to its cocoon, life in reverse.

I don’t remember when the picture was taken, only that it must have been near the end. Shei stands with me, arm around my shoulder, smiling. She looks as if she might just step out of the frame, just hike up her robes and walk straight out of time. She is suffused with light; I stand in shadow. I look at her face and feel nothing.

The braighbur is in flower in the background, which places the picture in early or mid-spring. I can’t remember the occasion, though the painted crescent on my forehead suggests there was one. Probably one of countless spring festivals. Once I could name them all; now the labels have started to blur around the edges.

I killed her. No pleasant euphemisms will change that; no amount of time wash away the truth of it. I grew up in a society of warriors and witch-kings, who spoke of their first kills with pride and reverence. My own turned out to be quite different. Nor was it my last kill. I didn’t know it then, but I would come to be known as the destroyer of nations. How many hundreds, thousands, must I have slain? How many millions more must I have ordered the deaths of? All the oceans of Caerwyn could not wash away the blood on my hands. But somehow that first kill, done in ignorance, was the one that has stayed with me.

I sigh, close the book, put the picture away. It is a futile gesture, because of course nothing goes away. I can still see the picture in my mind, outlined in brilliance.