Sorrow, My Heart

by vifetoile

Author's Note: the song lyrics are by S. J. Tucker, from her song "Daughter of Dying Stars," on her album Sorrow and Solace. Check it out on her website! It's written in reference to Catherynne M. Valente's superb fantasy novels, "The Orphan's Tales."

That said, I don't own The Orphan's Tales, or these lyrics, or the Abhorsen trilogy. This fic contains some strong speculation, and a sad ending. You have been warned.

Sorrow is a child of dying stars with no one to tell her her name

Red in her cloak as a winter sun she wanders

Arielle paced back and forth on the shore of a frozen sea. She was alone.

By the heaviness of her eyes it was past midnight, but the sun was already appearing above the horizon again, brightening the ice around her.

Her hand flew again and again to the Charter mark on her forehead. It steadied her, to reach into the Charter. The magic here, beyond the northern boundary of the Old Kingdom, changed and grew unsteady. She had an idea that it was the same kind of dissolution that happened south of the Wall; she had an idea that a new magic might thrive on the far side of the Pole. She had an idea…

She had a lot of ideas. Precious little good they did her, up here.

With whorls of fate upon your eyes and Sorrow in your heart

Even in the Glacier she had never known cold like this. She pumped her legs back and forth as she walked, bowing her head against the wind. The wind made her think of her daughter. But then, so did the cry of a seagull, the barbarian lullabies she heard after evening meal, the stray syllables of the foreign tongue around her. Lirael was never far from her mind, or her heart.

Let's see. In the Children's Quarter, Lirael would be sleeping even now, her dark hair fanning onto the pillow around her, and onto her face, as she lay curled up on her side. Her little hands would be clasping either side of her pillow, and she might be humming in her sleep, some tuneless subconscious melody.

Arielle dug into her furs and pulled out a battered moonstone on a chain. She had wrenched it out of her precious circlet before she'd left. Those circlets were supposed to be treasures of each seer, handed down within family lines, a symbol of their birthright and sanctity. Arielle had desecrated her small tiara of white stone and wires, and so had forever revoked the title of "Clayr."

She found she didn't mind so much. After all, Lirael would never wear such a circlet either.

She stared into the stone. She prayed and prayed for the vision, the one vision of the one future that she wanted...

But the moonstone's surface remained opaque. Arielle wasted her voice, praying to a Charter that paid her no heed.

The Stars keep watch, the living, dead, and the dying

Arielle had many ideas. Most of them she wrote down in the leatherbound notebook she'd won by bartering. Paper was scarce up here, and so she wrote it in a tiny shorthand that abbreviated everything. It had the distinct advantage of making the tribesmen she lived with believe she had dangerous magic bound in the pages, as she was so intent on capturing and taming the world around her with words. If any Clayr had looked at the book, they would have taken the nigh-illegible scribblings as a sign of insanity. But Arielle had made her peace with that. She'd known she was insane ever since she had taken Finder and embarked, alone, to Abhorsen's House.

Besides, her notes had meticulous organization. She had symbols in the margins to distinguish whether a passage concerned her memories, her Sight, her daughter, the Charter, the Abhorsen, or the Clayr. She had copied out old formulas and poems, legends of the tribespeople, nursery rhymes... even the old song about the Long Ago, and how the Seven wove the Charter. She had an idea of the Seven Bright Shiners arrayed in a ring, seven women weaving at a vast loom with seven sides. They chatted like sisters, like Clayr, as they wove and wove, and the world sat within their threads.

But at other times Arielle had the idea that one of the Seven wept, that her threads of the Charter were stained with tears, long before the weaving was done. And Arielle was glad there was no one to read over her shoulder and say "That's preposterous!", because somehow she felt that this Weeper was reincarnated in her Lirael.

That was why her Sight had given her so many visions of Lirael weeping – weeping on birthdays, weeping as she was led, blindfolded, into the Observatory, weeping as she fought to save and couldn't save so many innocent lives. Arielle began to weep herself, as she remembered these visions. It seemed like every joy Lirael would ever know would only exist to be taken away, to make room for a new sorrow. Sorrowful, the sorrowful outcast, weeping black-haired Lirael. And she must weep, for the Charter needed its Weeper.

Arielle crouched down on the snow as the sun brightened the world around her, and the grey waves of the sea turned translucent. Her tears threatened to freeze on her cheeks, so she wiped them away with her sleeve. She noticed that her hair, caught on the fur at her elbow, was grown knotty and tangled. She felt the bones of her face. She'd lost much weight on the ice, as she ate and slept little.

Why, Lirael would not even recognize her if she met her. They would be always apart –

"That her knowing self will forever be apart from the Charter that her unknowing self is part of."

There, that idea again; it could mean many things, possible ideas spinning off and inspiring new ideas in their wake, but the one idea kept haunting Arielle, that Lirael was the unknowing self of the Weeper, who lived in the Charter.

That was the idea. It was an insane idea. And more than simply being megalomaniacal, Arielle shuddered to think of what it meant for the Charter. To force a child - a baby - into the role of Weeper, the Charter was far colder and less caring than she had been raised to think. It was not woven with love, but with the algebra of necessity. Whatever destiny awaited her Lirael, she must weep to meet it, weep every step of the way.

Fresh tears sprang to Arielle's eyes as she thought of it. She let them fall, a new idea springing to her head.: Please, please, shift some of the burden of Weeper onto me. Let my little one, my dear Lirael, be spared, even a little bit. Let mother and daughter both weep. Let us at least be united in that.

She bowed her head, and willed her thoughts to silence.

There was no answer.

She heard the sounds of stirring behind her; the villagers were coming awake again.

Arielle lifted her head and pulled out the moonstone. She stared into it, willing her Sight to awaken, willing the future she wanted to come to pass -

Lirael sleeping, her dark hair fanning all over the pillow. The door to her small chamber opened, and Arielle bent over her daughter to kiss her cheek, then her ear, then her forehead, and whisper "Good morning, dear heart," and Lirael would sit up, and gasp, and start to laugh and cry with joy and disbelief all at once, and Arielle would hug her and -

The moonstone's surface was empty, opaque, reflecting only the rising sun. Arielle sighed and tucked it back under her furs, before turning her back on the sea, to start the day.

A sister's cloak of feathers wrapped around her here at last,

Her mother walks the lonely shore and cries.